PASSING OVER TO THE RIGHT :

Tempered by violence: In the wake of Mideast bloodshed and rising anti-Semitism, many American Jews have shifted to the right (Ira Rifkin, MSNBC)

[T]he vast majority of Jews have closely identified with liberal Democratic policies, and have ever since Franklin Delano Roosevelt's New Deal. In 2000, as in every presidential election since Roosevelt, American Jews voted overwhelmingly Democratic, giving Gore-Lieberman about 79 percent support. (Interestingly, that percentage was nearly identical to the Democratic vote in the proceeding two presidential elections, despite the presence of Orthodox Jew Joseph Lieberman on the ticket.) Certainly, it's too soon to say whether substantial numbers of American Jews will go Republican in 2004, and begin funneling more of their considerable campaign contributions toward GOP coffers. However, a poll commissioned by a Jewish Republican support group in December showed Bush's rating among Jews at 80 percent-four times what he received in the 2000 ballot - because of his backing for Israel and handling of the war on terrorism.

There are two other issues that matter in so far as the Jewish shift to the Right is concerned, one has already had an effect and one could. The first is affirmative action. This had an influence in the original neoconservative movement, which was predominantly a phenomenon of Jewish intellectuals in New York. Though mainly driven Right by their fear that the Vietnam-era Democratic Party had become an unreliable defender of Israel and Western values generally, folks like Norman Podhoretz were also concerned that establishing quotas along racial lines would tend to restrict opportunities for Jews, who tend, like Asians, to enter college in numbers far higher than their proportion of the population. The ugly truth is that for every student who has an opportunity created for him under an affirmative action regime another has an opportunity denied to him. And this burden, the negative reaction, is likely to fall disproportionately on those groups that overachieve, like Jews historically have in higher education.

The second factor that could conceivably have an influence in the coming years is school choice. It would not be at all surprising to see American Jews, who have become awfully secular over the past few decades seek to reconnect with Judaism as a belief rather than merely maintain it as a heritage. This impulse will only be strengthened as Israel becomes more embattled and as the worldwide population of Jews continues to dwindle, both of which will be the inevitable results of the Jewish demographic crisis. Had the end of the Cold War not unleashed a large-scale migration of Eastern European/Russian Jews to Israel, Jews would already be on the cusp of becoming a minority in Israel. Luckily, these immigrants, with their much higher birthrates than native Israelis, have bought Jewish Israel some time, in which to try to achieve peaceful coexistence with its neighbors. But the awful fact is that if the Palestinians simply wait out the Jews, eventually the sheer weight of the Arab population will give them control of the state of Israel. Jews will be a minority in their own land.

Meanwhile, the American Jewish population is falling too, as a result of low birthrates (the sole exception is among Orthodox Jews) and intermarriage with non-Jews. It is not too much to say that if current trends continue, Jews may eventually breed themselves out of existence.

It is, of course, impossible to predict what the precise effects of these trends may be, but it seems possible that Jews will turn inward and try to strengthen their commitment to the religion of Judaism and renew their sense of being a distinct culture. If this does occur one means of doing so may be to send their children to schools that can offer religious instruction and a focus on Jewish history and culture. This would tend to make Jewish voters supportive of school choice, of the option of sending their kids to such schools, rather than to public schools. It will also tend to make Jews more culturally conservative.

As all of these trends converge, the natural home for American Jews will be the Republican Party, with its support for Israel, for school choice, and for traditional Western culture and morality and for religion generally and its opposition to affirmative action. A transformation like this will take decades, not just years, so the 2004 presidential election seems like too early a test, but it would be very surprising if George W. Bush can't improve on that 21%

Posted by Orrin Judd at April 22, 2002 10:17 AM