Why Are Jews Liberals?
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Product Description
From the bestselling leader of World War IV, a brilliant and provocative examination of a central question in American politics and culture that is sure to generate tremendous controversy.
Norman Podhoretz says he has never in his entire life been questioned any question on any theme as regularly as “Why are so many Jews liberals?”-or in its more specifically political form, “Why do most Jews permanently vote for the Democrats?” Podhoretz proposes to solve this puzzle. He first offers a fascinating account of anti-Semitism in the West to show why, for most of that time, Jews reasonably sensibly concluded that they had much more to dread from the right than the left. But since the Six Day War of 1967, he argues, this position has no longer made sense, and yet most Jews go on supporting the Democratic Party and the liberal agenda. Reviewing the history of Jewish political attitudes and painstakingly examining the available evidence, he then demonstrates that all the usual explanations-such as a passion for justice allegedly deriving from the prophets of the Hebrew Bible-are either inadequate or flat-out fake. Finally he proposes his own answer to the fantastic puzzle of why most Jews remain as committed to liberalism as ever.
There is no more vigorous thinker or skilled polemicist in American intellectual life than Norman Podhoretz. In Why Are Jews Liberals? he sums up his thinking on the political inclinations of his fellow Jews-in the process confounding conventional wisdom and changing the way we view American politics.
From the Hardcover edition.
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As long as the Social Conservatives keep pushing for a Theocracy, as long as they continue to devalue education, as long as they continue to trample on civil rights, as long as they continue to emphasize that only people who come from the “heartland” (read: White, Straight, Anglo-Saxon Protestants) then guess what? We Will Continue To Vote Democrat.
Reader’s Rating: 1 / 5
A excellent thing Jews like to buy books and will certainly buy this one. But they won’t really learn anything they didn’t know. Half of the book is a brisk history of Jewish-Gentile relations lacking the slightest hint of inventiveness, insight, or surprise.
The second half is the discussion of the obvious fact that American Jews vote for the liberal side of things most of the time, and massively at that. Neither the concern with Israel (the degree of which is undocumented and uncertain) the rise of black anti-semitism, and the seeming friendliness (which is largely exaggerated) of evangelical Christians for Jews and Jewish concerns — none of this seems to have made any difference and Podhoretz is miserable that his fellow circumcized do not all vote GOP and neoconservative as he does.
He discounts the influence of the Jewish religion in a liberal direction and ends by asserting that the real religion of American Jews is Liberalism. How’s that for begging the question?
It is no surprise that the religion of Jews may be Liberalism, but he has no real explanation for this. I reflect I do. Judaism is so devoid of spiritual content, religious imagination, and unadorned ancient messianic and eschatological hope — this is what the Talmudic rabbis accomplished –that fleeting of apt Christians or Muslims the Jews have small choice but to adopt the religion of Liberalism. Of course Podhoretz says nothing of this; he likes to pretend he is a religious Jew but I doubt that very much. For him Judaism is just a culture, as it was for his pal recently deceased Irving Kristol, who could hardly be called a religious person at all. In any case, Podhoretz is just an intellectual thug.
This book is worthless. Podhoretz doesn’t need the dough but he will be laughing all the way to the bank.
Reader’s Rating: 1 / 5
Let me be perfectly clear. Being Jewish has absolutely nothing to do with “Israel”. Jews have lived and prospered for thousands of years in the diaspora, some Jewish thinkers have gone as far as to say the right definition of Judaism is to live outside the holy land. Israel is a nation-state made 50 years ago in the area where the holy land existed thousands of years ago. There are many, many political and sociological factors that form one’s opinion of the state of Israel, REGARDLESS of one’s religion! Maybe the reason why Jews aren’t so quick to place all their faith in the modern day state of Israel: they’re educated, and attempt to view the situation as a rational human being.
Reader’s Rating: 3 / 5
Let me keep this brief: American Jews remain tied to Liberal identity politics because the Christian Right, for all of its support of Israel, holds quick to insanely treacherous thoughts about “The Jews.”
- The “Jews” secretly control the world’s money supply
- “Jewish Bankers” secretly control the Federal Government
- “The Jews” killed Jesus Christ and must atone (or convert)
Were there Jews on The Mayflower? Is there a Jewish family tree in The Social Register (along with Bushes and Kerrys and Biddles)? How many times have I heard the term “Jew him down” when people in my presence didn’t realize or admit that my family tree is of Jewish heritage?
These seemingly tiny infractions of decorum stand as stark reminders that hatred and hurtfulness seethe beneath the veneer of civility.
Yes, people of Jewish faith are by the scenery of that faith God-fearing, God-loving and God-following “conservatives” because they follow “The Law” (the first five books of The Bible). Heck, there would be no Biblical Laws to follow if not for “The Jews.”
But that doesn’t mean they will vote for the political faction whose most vocal adherents and self-avowed “I am the mob” followers would disenfranchise them in a heartbeat. The Progressive and Liberal movements in American politics vow to support diversity among the heterogeneous citizenry of the Nation. Conservatives tout individual liberty, but have demonstrated historically a penchant for allowing disenfranchisement based on ethnicity, immigration and beliefs.
When the “Hard Right” speaks about establishing the United States as a “Christian Nation,” it tells the rest of us that we may not be afforded the “life, liberty and pursuit of happiness” of equal citizenship. So, we veer toward the additional side of the aisle, among proponents of “inclusiveness” and “equality” for all.
Reader’s Rating: 3 / 5
The first part of the book (about one-third of it) is devoted to a generally well-balanced history of Jews in Europe, and of anti-Semitism.
Mr Podhoretz has the excellent graces to mention that the second part, on why Jews have stayed liberal, is much more personal, demonstrating in the process a gift for understatement. This part is mostly a paean to how horribly anti-Semitic liberals in America have become, how welcoming the Right have been, how vital Mr Podhoretz and his editees have been in building this so…and how blinkered and foolish the vast majority of American Jews have been in not agreeing with him in this wise.
Perhaps a fossil of his radical past, the concept of ‘fake consciousness’ looms large: Mr Podhoretz is so certain of his positions, perceptions, and judgements that he just cannot allow that additional Jews’ might make enough sense to be worth considering as legitimate reasons to stay liberal. His own biases are evident in (for example) his discussion of Richard Nixon that omits the blatantly anti-Semitic character of his Senatorial battle. Worse, his discussion of Israel’s incursion into Lebanon in the 1980s completely elides the Lebanese Falangist massacres at Sabra and Shatila—not at all perpetrated and only abstractedly permitted by the Israelis, but still horrible and massive enough to make intimations of genocide not so far beyond the pale as Mr Podhoretz would aver them to be. He cannot admit that some of the policies he has supported to increase the safety of America and of Israel have had the effect of building us both less secure, a fact understood by more Israelis than he want to admit (and fewer Americans than should do). He seems to snub the fact that one possible lesson to take away from our history is that of the essential unfairness and uncertainty of the world, and its partial remedy in action to make it less so, avoiding the complacency with material success that painstakingly pervades his later narrative.
He also frequently indulges in question-begging by characterisation, of the ‘Why did Jews back an thought so antithetical to their interests?,’ sort which assumes that the characterisation in question is objectively and obviously so, when decent and sane men and women (and Jew and Greek) may and do disagree. This is particularly noticeable in his treatment of Jewish concern for African-Americans’ rights, which he seems to dismiss as an affectation. For some of us, including my father, who grew up on the fringes of a European ghetto that became a killing-ground before long after he left, it is an obvious practical as well as moral imperative; I share his views in this wise, and my own concern for gay rights has been reinforced by noticing that though I am not in that group, every group I’ve seen which despises them seems also to dislike me…. In this connexion, Mr Podhoretz willingly forgets that American Jews’ status as ‘white’, though not immediately in danger, has not been eternal and universal, and is theme to change, perhaps in the second Scudder Administration. His discussion of women’s and gay rights omits the fact that part of modern anti-Semitism is the construction of ‘The Jew’ as being insufficiently a man or too mannish a woman, and so loathing for such is at one with loathing for all non-{conformers with standard gender roles}.
His Obama paranoia, not at all supported by the evidence to date, makes him the bedfellow of persons on the nativist Right who say ‘elitist’ and mean ‘Jew’—perhaps not the Orthodox, whom Mr Podhoretz lauds even as he will not join them, but (as they might have it) New-York/Hollywood-Jew-atheist-liberal-latté-sippers like me and many others. A brief perusal of the Web, or perhaps of the rest of the reviews of the book, might help demonstrate why so many of us find the main body of the Right so much more frightening than the fringe of what passes for a Left in this country.
No, the second part of this book is small more than a bilious screed in service of the grand proposition that Mr Podhoretz has permanently been right, and my part of American Jewry so blinkered and idiotic that we have become unplanned enemies of the State of Israel and the People of Israel. The work would have done better had it more obvious sympathy with persons with whom Mr Podhoretz disagrees, at least to the extent that I can exercise in adage that Mr Podhoretz seems to have a fine mind, has been well-rewarded by certain fundamentals in this society, and so perhaps has had small reason to change or question his views, which appear to have been well-canalised with age, as mine certainly have been to some extent already. But I wish that for his fellow-Jews, as he should for all people, he were a small less rigid in the effort to know, if only to more aptly criticise. He could have done with a lot more (‘as we say in French’) rachmones.
Reader’s Rating: 2 / 5