https://www.city-journal.org/article/the-paradox-of-jewish-liberalism
After the October 7 terrorist attack, many American Jews have stomached two shocks: the shock of Hamas’s brutality, and the shock of their putative political allies’ support for the brutes. Liberal Jews are not only horrified by campus chants of “there is only one solution: Intifada, revolution.” They are also surprised.
Less surprised are those of us among the one in six American Jews who are conservatives. The anti-Semitic elements of the American Left, from funders to campus activists, have been obvious for years, even decades. It is at turns refreshing and off-putting, therefore, to see other Jews wake up to what we already knew.
At this moment, Jewish conservatives should resist any compulsion to tell their liberal brethren “I told you so.” This is an opportunity, rather, for making hard truths plain. Many American Jews are liberals out of a profound, identity-level connection between their Judaism and their liberalism—a connection that developed alongside Jewish-American identity. It is this association that consistently blinds them to the anti-Semitism of others on the left; only by unearthing this tension can they overcome it.
American Jews, it should be emphasized, are remarkably liberal. In Pew’s 2020 survey of Jews, 71 percent identified as Democrats, versus 26 percent as Republicans. Half of Jews describe themselves as “liberal” compared with 16 percent “conservative” and the remainder “moderate.” By these proportions, Jews are more Democratic than Hispanics, Asians, and Muslims; they are more liberal than blacks. Jews are also more Democratic than those who earn as much as the average Jewish household does. As Milton Himmelfarb, the longtime research director of the American Jewish Committee, famously put it, “Jews earn like Episcopalians and vote like Puerto Ricans.”
Most Jews, in fact, express their Jewish identity through liberal values. Asked by Pew which aspects of Judaism were “essential” to what it means to be Jewish, Orthodox Jews said leading an ethical and moral life, observing Jewish law, and continuing family traditions—all of which are, if not the same, then highly related for observant Jews. For the non-Orthodox, though, the top slots went to remembering the Holocaust, leading an ethical and moral life, working for justice and equality, and being intellectually curious. These last two, especially, identify Judaism with liberal values of intellectual independence and commitment to social justice.
This association between Judaism and liberalism is not new. Since Jews first immigrated to the United States, they have articulated their identity in the language of liberalism. Indeed, Jewish ethnogenesis—the process by which Jews became Jewish-Americans—has often entailed making Judaism synonymous with progressivism.
