American Jews and the 2012 Election

Next to blacks, Jews have been the most consistently loyal ethnic constituency of the Democratic Party. And considering that until 1965 blacks could not vote in the South, and that many in the North do not vote, Jews have been a more electorally important one. Jews are concentrated demographically in the states with the largest electoral votes: New York, Illinois, California, Florida, Connecticut, New Jersey, and Texas (in roughly that order). Jews are only between two and two and a half percent of the American population, but because they vote in much higher numbers they are about three or four percent of the electorate on election day.  Jews have voted consistently Democratic since the Progressive Era when they voted for Woodrow Wilson.

About eighty-five percent of the affiliated Jewish community--Jews that participate in Jewish communal life through membership and attendance at synagogues or through other Jewish organizations--is made up of either secular Jews or Jews of non-Orthodox denominations that aren't officially recognized in Israel (Reform, Conservative, Reconstructionist).  The fifteen percent of Jews who are Orthodox, either ultra-Orthodox or Modern Orthodox, tend to vote Republican because their religious views are more in line with Republicans on matters of personal morality than with Democrats. For secular and Reform Jews so-called Jewish values (tolerance, aid to the poor, equal rights) have replaced Orthodox ritual as the expression of their spiritual values. Most of these Jews consider themselves moderates or liberals/ Progressives politically and vote Democratic. About an additional ten percent of non-Orthodox Jews, roughly equal in number to Orthodox Jewish voters, vote for Republicans. This has been the situation for the past century, but with exceptions in individual presidential elections. Eisenhower and Reagan received about double the normal Republican  percentage of the Jewish vote. Eisenhower probably in gratitude and recognition for his role in defeating Hitler and Reagan in 1980 because Jimmy Carter was so disliked for attacking Menahem Begin over settlements. This previous analysis is based on several of the essays collected in Arthur Hertzberg's Jewish Polemics, a 1992 collection of his essays published over the previous decade. Hertzberg is a professor of religion who specialized in Judaism and the intellectual history of Zionism.  The present incumbent seems to attract the same disdain, contempt, and outright hatred among Jews that Carter did. But even Carter won 60 percent of the Jewish vote!


Obama is hated by those American Jews who are either already Republicans or who are Democrats but who identify with the Likud Party in Israel. Typical of this group is Martin Peretz, the publisher and former senior editor of The New Republic.  Peretz supported Obama in 2008, but then felt betrayed after Obama made overtures to the Arabs in 2009 and pushed for a settlement freeze in Israel. These Jews tend to put Israel at the top of their considerations when considering for whom to vote in presidential elections. Most American Jews, like other Americans, tend to vote on domestic issues and although Israel is important to them it is important as a homeland from which they can derive pride just as Irish-Americans identify in a vague way with Ireland, Italian-Americans with Italy, and Polish-Americans with Poland. These Israel-first voters might be compared to the Cuban exile community in Miami, where opposing Castro has traditionally been the only issue on which it votes.

The Republican Party now sees the 2012 election as an historic opportunity to part Jews from the Democratic Party in record numbers by casting the vote in terms of loyalty to Israel. Ironically, the insinuation that Jews were more loyal to Israel than to the U.S. was seen as an anti-semitic aspersion. Now some Jewish Republicans are making the charge that those who vote for Barack Hussein Obama are disloyal to Israel. I predict that this will backfire and that Jews will vote for Obama in their traditional percentages, if for no other reason than that they find the Evangelical Right supporters of the Republican Party to be more of a threat to their interests than they find Obama. This will be especially true if the GOP nominates a candidate other than Mitt Romney such as Rick Perry, Herman Cain or Newt Gingrich. And if that weren't enough there is always this Likud rally of Rick Perry to persuade all those J-Street supporters. And even Mitt, after flipping on all major social and economic issues from when he was governor of Massachusetts in order to win the nomination, will then be hard pressed to credibly flop back in order to win the general election.

Israel and the American Diaspora: A Troubled Relationship

Israel has long had a troubled relationship with American Jewry. I believe that this is primarily due to three reasons. First, Zionism as an ideology was conceived in late nineteenth-century Europe--a rather hostile environment for Jews. Hence, it conceived of the natural state of the diaspora (a Greek word meaning dispersion or exile) as anti-semitic. So Israel has problems relating to a country that is philo-semitic, that is one that is welcoming of Jews. This has been the case since the American Revolution and is due to America being both a democracy and being Protestant and not Catholic or Orthodox Christian. Second, most affiliated Jews in America are either Reform or Conservative, two denominations that do not receive official recognition as Jewish in Israel. This is because religiously Israel is like Europe before the Reformation or like Islam today. Most of these Reform and Conservative Jews would be secular Jews in Israel with no attachment to a synagogue. In America synagogues function as community centers and rabbis as community leaders. Third, under Labor Zionism the ruling ideology was anti-capitalist and thus opposed in class terms to the most successful Jews in America--the capitalist businessmen. The Labor Zionists were happy to take American money but thought that the Jews who earned it were somehow to be looked down upon.

Traditionally Israel has demanded three things from American Jews. First, that they glorify Israel and thereby promote aliya (immigration to Israel) by its members. Second, that they support a number of welfare projects within Israel through donations. Third, that Jews use their clout politically to vote for American governments that were and are pro-Israel.  They were to do all of this without having any real input into Israeli policies. American Jews were supposed to lobby for Israeli policies like professional diplomats, making no distinction between one government and the next. They were to embrace limited settlement in the occupied territories, then unrestricted settlement, then peace with settlements, and then military repression against the Palestinians.

What was impermissible and beyond the bounds for Breira in the mid-1970s became kosher for Israeli governments in the 1990s. Figures like Menahem Begin and Yitzhak Shamir who were deemed to be terrorists by the Zionist establishment in the 1940s became the establishment in the late 1970s and 1980s. After having seen various Israeli governments fail to make peace with the Arabs, some American Jews became impatient and have now started lobbying for their own American Middle East policy in Washington. The establishment American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) now has competition in the form of J Street, and organization with 40 local chapters and 170,000 supporters after only three years in existence.

American Jewry and the Israeli government are moving in opposite directions. American Jewry is becoming more assertive and the Israeli government is becoming more closed off. Israel is becoming less democratic and American Jews are remaining defiantly Democratic.  Expect fireworks in the near future.