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October 8, 2009
A Review of Norman Podhoretz: ‘Why Are Jews Liberals?’
As a youngster growing up in a working class Jewish home the mere mention of Republicans, much less conservatives, was a transgression. While I could not explain this condition, I was well aware of its reflexive response: “Those people are not our people.”
It wasn’t until adulthood that I finally penetrated the opaque logic behind this sentiment. My parents, who imbibed a left wing European ideology, i.e. quasi Marxism, transmogrified this belief into contemporary American liberalism and a devotion to the Democrat Party. Even though FDR rejected the ship called the St. Louis at our borders, sending many Jews to their deaths, even though he didn’t bomb the railway to Auschwitz, claiming he has other priorities in the war, he did embrace a universal liberalism that appealed to my parents and superordinated his status in our home.
In a new remarkable book, Why Are Jews Liberals? (Doubleday 2009), by a remarkable man, Norman Podhoretz, a compelling explanation is provided for this perplexing question. After all, whatever Jews have suffered in the past, they are now fully integrated into the United States where they have enjoyed the fruits of prosperity and little if any anti-Semitism. Why, then, should “Jews earn like Episcopalians and vote like Puerto Ricans?” (Credit to Milton Himmelfarb for this now famous epigram.)
Through 300 pages, Mr. Podhoretz analyzes the motives for anti-Semitism and the general Jewish revulsion with the right, even though many on the left, e.g. Voltaire, Marx, were vehemently anti Semites. He notes with painstaking detail the hatred that emerged against Jews, alleged Christ killers, the suspicions that unfolded when Jews were thought of as a “nation within a nation” and finally, the Social Darwinian precepts that resulted in a view of Jews as racially inferior.
These atrocious suppositions which led to pogroms and ultimately the Holocaust encouraged Jews to rationalize attitudes on the left as universalistic secularism that would mitigate prejudice and to consider the genuine persecution from the right as a particularistic hatred. What remains enigmatic is the transfer of the European persecution to American soil where persecution against Jews is largely unknown.
On this point, Podhoretz is at his best. Examining theories from the historic to the genetic, he postulates that liberalism has become the religion of American Jews, “even though it conflicts in substance with the Torah of Judaism at many points, and even though it is also at variance with the most basic of all Jewish interests- the survival of the Jewish people.” The liberalism that once offered Jews succor and relief from persecution has become liberalism inhospitable to the basic interests of the Jewish people.
That explains why Jews invariantly favor the Democrats with its ties to the left instead of Republicans, notwithstanding, the Republicans support for Israel which “runs from solid to fervent.” As Podhoretz notes, “what the Left mainly sees when it looks at America is injustice and oppression of every kind… By sharp contrast, the Right sees a complex of tradition, principles, and institutions that have made it possible for more freedom…more prosperity to be enjoyed by more of its citizens then in any society known to human history.” What follows, of course, is that liberals are eager for change that will uproot the very conditions conservatives want to preserve.
One might assume that since Jews have been beneficiaries of the American system, they would prefer to b allied with conservatives. But that assumption is wrong. Coruscating through the body of Jewish thought is the Torah of liberalism, a new religion with a powerful grip on the American Jewish population that is not easily discarded despite its many irrational components.
As is often the case with analysis by Norman Podhoretz, his thesis is provocative, brilliant, and addictive. I couldn’t let its pages rest until the book was devoured. For years I’ve been confounded by the essential question the book poses. Now, thanks to Mr. Podhoretz, I have the answer.
FamilySecurityMatters.org Contributing Editor Herbert London is president of Hudson Institute and professor emeritus of New YorkUniversity. He is the author of Decade of Denial (Lanham, Maryland: Lexington Books, 2001) and America's Secular Challenge (Encounter Books).
Reader Comments: Submit Your Comment (2)
Thank you for mentioning my father, Milton Himmelfarb, but there's a glitch in the line you quoted. It should read "vote" like Puerto Ricans.
Some sharp insights and the jokes go down well. Thank you!
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