As elections approach in Canada and the United States, partisans of the left and right vie for Jewish support. In both countries, and elsewhere, Jews have historically sided with the liberal left. Increasingly, however, conservative-minded Jews, encouraged by uncritical pro-Israel pronouncements of the contemporary political and religious right, and motivated by their own perceived economic interests, have been touting a rightward tilt. Many of them seem oblivious to history.

A recent CJN column notes that American Jews in the pre-Depression, pre-FDR years usually voted Republican. But in those years, the Republicans tended to be more socially conscious than the Democrats. Theodore Roosevelt, a Republican, was a reformer with few equals in the Democratic Party, and in 1906, he became the first president to appoint a Jew to his cabinet.

That Warren Harding (elected in 1920) was the last Republican president to receive a majority of Jewish votes attests to Jews’ sense of probity. Harding’s short-lived presidency is remembered mostly for the Teapot Dome oil scandal, which landed one of his cabinet members in jail. The scandal might have reached the president had he not died in office with the investigation still underway.

In Canada, Jews have historically tended to vote Liberal, hardly a left-wing party. The Liberals were not always supporters of Jewish interests. But if they were mean-spirited regarding immigration during the Holocaust, over the years they favoured at least limited immigration. During the Holocaust years, the party in power in Quebec was the right-wing, conservative Union Nationale led by Maurice Duplessis, an outspoken enemy of the province’s Jews, Jehovah’s Witnesses and left-wingers. There, and elsewhere in the country in those years, right-wing groups were often allied with Nazi sympathizers.

South of the border in the ’30s and ’40s, Henry Ford lavishly promoted anti-Semitism; flyer-hero and Nazi sympathizer “Lucky” Lindbergh railed against Jewish plots to control America; the “radio priest,” Father Coughlin, lent a religious voice to anti-Semitism. All were associated with the political right. During the war, Gerald L.K. Smith and others founded the conservative, anti-Semitic America First Party. While the United States under FDR opened its doors only a bit to Jews fleeing the Holocaust, many more Jews found refuge there than anywhere else.

And then there was Europe. Does any Jew need to be reminded that Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini belonged to the political right, as did Vichy’s wartime leaders, Philippe Pétain and Pierre Laval, on whose watch tens of thousands of Jews were murdered? And let’s not forget the Hungarian fascists and Ion Antonescu, Romania’s right-wing leader. In prewar Poland, the powerful right-wing, anti-Semitic nationalists were led by Roman Dmowski. Recently, the European right has found new voices: Jean-Marie LePen in France; neo-Nazis in Germany; recrudescent Hungarian fascists – all outspoken anti-Semites. In South America, the Argentine generals under whom many Jews – and other “leftists” – “disappeared” were also men of the right.

No wonder many Jews with a memory lean to the left!

“If I am not for myself, who will be for me?” Hillel’s maxim reminds Jews that, to a degree, we are responsible for our own fate. By living in Israel or supporting Israel, most Jews today show they have learnt that lesson. 

But Hillel followed up with a second question: “If I am for myself, what am I?” Jews leaning left (usually not very far), respond to that question by engaging in tikkun olam. These Jews have not lost their way! Rather, they are Jews looking after the world God has given us, through concern for the environment, sensitivity to biblical injunctions to succour the needy, feed and house the poor and homeless, treat the refugee, “the stranger among us,” as we wish the world had treated us only a short time ago. And, as Hillel added, “If not now, when?” 

Michael Brown is professor emeritus and senior scholar of History, Humanities, and Hebrew at York University.