Heritage Florida Jewish News - Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice

The 78 percent figure frequently referred to by Democrat apologists as if it were The Holy Grail, is based on entry or exit polls whereas many Jews are reluctant to identify themselves as conservatives and risk peer pressure. In many synagogues, there are both rabbis and congregants who have a knee-jerk reaction to political issues denigrating conservatives and Republicans as reactionaries or anti-Semites, yet even if the real figure is “only” 70 percent, it is tragic and signifies the Jewish vote is of little strategic importance in the pocket of one party.

The fact that Senator Joseph Lieberman, whose nomination on the Democratic ticket in 2000 caused waves of ecstatic jubilation among many Jews, also refused to support Barack Obama in 2008 and spoke at the Republican National Convention in support Senator John McCain is ignored. Most American Jews continue to be oblivious to the fact that the most outstanding, talented Jewish individuals in public life uniformly saw the obvious dangers of an Obama presidency and warned against it, including, to name a few, Charles Krauthammer; Joshua Muravchik, scholar at the American Enterprise Institute; Bill Kristol, columnist and editor of the Weekly Standard; Dick Morris, political analyst and former campaign adviser to President Bill Clinton; David Horowitz, editor of Frontpage Magazine; Jonah Goldberg, National Review columnist; film producer David Zucker and comedian Jackie Mason. In 2018 they have been joined by the most successful conservative Jewish spokesmen, Ben Shapiro, radio show host Dennis Prager, and many new black supporters of President Trump.

Jews, from the time of the first post-Civil War election until 1932, traditionally voted Republican or even Socialist rather than for the party identified in large parts of the country until the 1960s with Sunday “blue laws,” discrimination against blacks, and segregation. Even as late as 1948, American Jews were proud to give a slap in the face to the Democrats in the run up to the presidential election, in spite of their idealization of FDR.

Many Jewish liberals whose identity had been stamped three generations ago by their grandparents under FDR, continue to picture themselves as enlightened and the true inheritors of the mantle of Jewish concerns for “social justice,” followed Obama wherever he led, rather than view the candidates with an open mind. This election will see the pot boil over for those Jews who need no more evidence. They will have to face up to taking the cure or remain partners in their own demise as an influential and respected community.

Liberal Jews who cannot be dissuaded from their support of the Democrats take refuge in spurning Israel to feel comfortable with the “Progressive” camp or recall that their major interest is really in furthering what they think is “social justice,” linking it to the traditional Jewish concern for “Tikun Olam” (Repair of the World). In this regard they are mistaken and have accepted the contemporary Hollywood ultra-liberal Reform interpretation that Jewish tradition and the biblical injunctions of the prophets promoted what they think are “progressive” social and economic policies. As argued cogently by biblical scholars not in the thrall of apologizing for the Democratic Party, the expression “Tikun Olam” is not the automatic Liberal agenda on social and economic policy so fondly embraced by a majority of the Jewish electorate—including abortion, feminism, pacifism, opposition to gun rights, affirmative action, environmental conservation, etc. On almost all these issues, observant Jews are fundamentally at odds with the secular/liberal Jewish majority. Basically, the thrust of Tikun Olam is in the opposite direction... “For the Sake of the Public Interest” rather than “Repairing the World.”

Likewise, appeals to Jews by Democrats committed to higher and higher taxes for the “common good” ignore the many rabbinic rulings and Old Testament’s definition of charity as a purely voluntary act and that its highest form is from an anonymous donor to an anonymous recipient. Taxation to support the priestly class was the tithe—a flat tax of 10 percent, NOT a progressive one! Their scant knowledge of both the Bible and Talmud is, as could be expected, derived from supporters of a wholly secular Democratic platform. 

Some prominent American Jews, particularly among those who cannot escape the trance they have inherited as “progressives” and are essentially secular and ultra-critical of capitalism and American society with its underlying Christian values, have developed a new kind of psychological self-hatred to exhibit a disassociation from the State of Israel and their religious heritage. 

Now, that Jewish solidarity is politically incorrect and Israel is so resented as a successful and prosperous society by so many among the world’s poor and “oppressed,” they must seek compensation and expiation from their fellow “progressives” by identifying with the prevailing winds of anti-Semitism disguised as anti-Zionism.

The Diaspora Jewish critics of Israel easily see its many flaws (both real and imagined) among which, the worst is that Israel, like America is a “privileged” society, enjoying wealth amidst a world of misery.

A majority of Jewish voters are either unconcerned with the increasingly low moral image of the Party’s politicians and candidates and party hacks (David Axelrod, Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, Elliot Spitzer, Richard Blumenthal, and Anthony Wiener). Collectively these five represent some of the worst in American politics. Both Joe Lieberman and former Democratic governor/senator of Georgia Zell Miller told the Democrat party faithful at conventions the same message when they supported George Bush and John McCain: The Democratic Party is a national party no longer!

For many Jews, still in a time warp of the 1930s, the message is only slowly beginning to penetrate.

“If Jews need to know their own interests as well as the interests of others, they also need to know the art of politics as well as the books of the Torah. They need, in short, to live in this world, not in the world of the politically utopian or the religiously messianic.” (the final paragraph in “What is the Use of Jewish History” by Lucy Davidowicz).