Collectivist secretive ideology

A business colleague asked me the other day why all of the Jews he knows are Democrats. He didn't mean anything malicious about it - he's truly curious about all aspects of Judaism, although his ideas about it are a bit confused. He has family in the "messianic Judaism" movement, which means not Jewish at all, but his exposure to real Jews is so limited (among other things, he lives in Idaho) that they provide his foundation for Jewish understanding.

At any rate, I hesitated to answer, because it's much too complex to describe quickly and because I have no desire to get into a political debate.

I considered pointing him to the conservatives over at Commentary, whom a befuddled NoPo last year rounded up to take on the task of explaining to other Republican Jews why so many other Jews, from their perspective, muff their personal interest and go with the wrong team, as if Michael Medved's and Bill Kristol's explanations for liberal Judaism matter a whole lot. It's all, you see, based on their perception of what's good for Jews, as Jews. Liberalism, it so happens, is anti-values, anti-religion, anti-Israel, anti-Jew. The Commentary commentariat requires you, as a foundation for their arguments, to believe that anti-Semitism is a feature of the "Left;" that the President is a danger to Israel's existence; that real support for Israel is on the "Right;" that real "Jewish" values are consistent with conservative values.

For those commentators, it's never about what is right, what is honorable, what is just. Instead, the only question is, what is good for me. So Bill Kristol says: "One also wonders whether the Obama administration won’t present some 'teachable moments' to those Jews who are willing to learn about which political party, and which political persuasion, is friendlier to Jewish interests." Jeff Jacoby says "the loyalty of American Jews to the Left has been unaffected by the failure of the Left to reciprocate that loyalty." Because, you know, if we don't look out for ourselves, who is gonna do it? Gotta look out for number one.

Medved, for his part, substitutes Kristolian selfishness for a view of liberal Jews simply as racists, concluding that Jewish liberalism is all about opposition to Christianity. And Medved minces no words in identifying anti-Christianity as the binding force in American Jewish life. A taste:

Anyone who doubts that rejection of Jesus has replaced acceptance of Torah (or commitment to Israel) as the eekur sach—the essential element—of American Jewish identity should pause to consider an uncomfortable question. What is the one political or religious position that makes a Jew utterly unwelcome in the organized community? We accept atheist Jews, Buddhist Jews, pro-Palestinian Jews, Communist Jews, homosexual Jews, and even sanction Hindu-Jewish meditation societies. “Jews for Jesus,” however, or “Messianic Jews” face resistance and exclusion everywhere. In Left-leaning congregations, many rabbis welcome stridently anti-Israel speakers and even Palestinian apologists for Islamo-Nazi terror. But if they invited a “Messianic Jewish” missionary, they’d face indignant denunciation from their boards and, very probably, condemnation by their national denominational leadership. It is far more acceptable in the Jewish community today to denounce Israel (or the United States), to deny the existence of God, or to deride the validity of Torah than it is to affirm Jesus as Lord and Savior.

No mistaking what Medved is thinking there.

Still, Medved gets one of the reasons partially right. There is a significant unifying force for Jews created by Christianity itself, and particularly, as Medved puts it, the "Christian right." But in focusing on Christianity as a unifying force for Jews, Medved gets cause and effect completely backwards, confuses the offense with the defense, and goes completely off the rails.

Medved thinks liberal Jews are simply rejecting all Christian views. It's a perspective only a "conservative" (as in, right wing) Jew could have, and lacks any fundamental understanding of true liberal American Jewry. The concern isn't about an objection to Christianity, or even vocal Christianity. "We" don't far President Obama's invocation of Christian values, for example. Rather, the perspective of liberal Jews is a recoiling from the demands of what Andrew Sullivan refers to as Christianism, and the subordination of Judaism to a view of Christianity held by a vocal segment of the conservative electorate, the second class status that Jews are given by the evangelical Christian movement that (particularly here in the South, but which has expanded its control country-wide) forms the intellectual (so to speak) foundation of the modern GOP, the understanding that Jews are a useful tool for Christianism, so long as the Right believes we are still fighting the same fight, their fight - against Muslims, or for Israel (but perhaps not the same Israel, or only the same Israel as the means to an end(time), but whatever).

I could go on, and perhaps will at some point, but the difference between Medved's view of the so-called liberal-Jewish / conservative-Christian divide is more reflected in this story than in anything Medved says, and shows why the so-called coalition of Jews and conservative Christian Republicanism is based on a dangerous illusion. The idea that the Republican speaker of a state legislative body should not be a Jew because GOP voters have worked for Christian values - "We elected a house with Christian, conservative values. We now want a true Christian, conservative running it."

You can talk all day about whether you think one party or the other is more sympathetic to Jewish pet issues, or the issues you condescendingly believe Jews should be concerned about. It seems to me, however, that not being truly welcome would be as good a place as any to start exploring why we usually identify as Democrats.