Canadian Jews have shifted to the political right in recent years. In contrast, American Jews have tilted even more heavily to the political left.
The fact that American Jews support left-leaning parties is no surprise. Although the community primarily voted for the Republicans in the latter 19th century, they’ve been a fixture on the Democratic side since the days of Woodrow Wilson.
The last Republican president to win the Jewish vote was Warren G. Harding in 1920. To be sure, there have since been some glimmers of hope, including Dwight Eisenhower (40 per cent in 1956), Richard Nixon (35 per cent in 1972), Ronald Reagan (39 per cent in 1980), George H.W. Bush (35 per cent in 1988) and Mitt Romney (30 per cent in 2012). For the most part, it’s been a difficult road for Jewish Republicans.
Alas, it’s about to become even tougher. J-Street, a U.S. lobby group, recently released a poll of 1,000 American Jews (conducted by the GBA Center) that seems to indicate a massive political shift for domestic and international issues.
Some examples include:
• 59 per cent of respondents support a deal with the Islamic Republic.
• 57 per cent believe President Barack Obama’s relations with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu included “appropriate” amounts of criticism. Only 43 per cent believe that Obama went “too far.”
• 72 per cent support a two-state solution in the Middle East.
• 84 per cent feel the White House should actively participate in the conflict between Israel and Palestine.
Here’s the real kicker: while Obama has the approval rating of only 45 per cent of Americans, he has 56 per cent support from American Jews.
Are these results accurate? It’s hardly a big secret that J-Street is left wing and joined at the hip with the Democrats. This partisan group doesn’t particularly like Jewish Republicans, the GOP or small “c” conservatism.
That said, many findings in J-Street’s poll are in line with previous data from Gallup, the respected, nonpartisan polling firm. So, irrespective of the source, there may be something to this political trend.
Why is this happening?
U.S. talk show host Dennis Prager has a theory. He told Ron Csillag in a June 3 CJN interview: “Most American Jews are not disenchanted with Obama because most American Jews completely share his left-wing values and positions – including his disdain for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.”
Prager also said, “For most American Jews, Judaism is an ethnic identity, not a religious one. Their ethnicity is Jewish but their religion is leftism – feminism, environmentalism, egalitarianism, socialism (à la western Europe). Leftism has been the most dynamic religion in the world for the last 100 years, and no group has been attracted as much as have Jews.”
I agree. Many American Jews support the incorrect assumption that their political/religious views are defined by left-wing theories and attributes such as tikkun olam. Plenty of non-American Jews feel the same way, too.
As I argued in this newspaper last July, “please stop this juxtaposition of tikkun olam with left-wing voting behaviour… Our Christian brethren also believe in charity, helping the poor and the needy. Somehow, they’ve voted for right-leaning political parties without being consistently reprimanded for not following biblical writings and traditions.”
Some Jews now recognize that these positions are separate. An impressive 69 per cent of British Jews intended to vote for David Cameron and the Tories in this year’s U.K. election. Meanwhile, 52 per cent of Canadian Jews voted for Stephen Harper and the Tories in the 2011 federal election.
Not American Jews, however. They seem to believe their views and values are different. They have no justification for their position, except to blindly chant one of Topol’s famous songs from the 1971 film Fiddler on the Roof, Tradition.
Who knows? In the not-too-distant future, American Jews could very well be the last ones singing this old, traditional leftist tune.