Involvement in Secular Politics: From Left to Center to Right?

This chapter notes that Jews who adopted Political Activism as their Jewish Option reacted to the modern world at the intersection of a Cultural Guideline reflecting Western Modernity rather than Jewish Tradition and a Structural Focus reflecting an ethnic rather than religious approach. The most popular choice has been Political Activism based upon liberalism. In previous chapters, the emphasis has been on how the changes that accompanied emancipation and modernity induced changes in how Jews related to their Jewish heritage and to their fellow Jews. This chapter examines how emancipation changed the manner in which Jews related to the non-Jewish world, particularly in the manner in which Jews related to the American political system. A variety of hypotheses have been developed to account for why Jews are disproportionately liberal rather than conservative. This chapter reviews the history of the political positions of American Jews, divided into seven phases: Colonial to Constitutional Rule (Phase I, 1654–1789); Jeffersonian Democratic-Republicans (Phase II, 1789–1828); Whigs and Jacksonian Democrats (Phase III, 1828–1860); The (Mostly) Republican Years (Phase IV, 1860–1896); Populists, Progressives, and the Socialist Movement (Phase V, 1896–1932); Jewish Participation in the New Deal (Liberal) Coalition (Phase VI, 1932–1967); and Challenges to Jewish Loyalty to Liberalism (Phase VII, 1967–Present). The review of the history of American Jewish political positions is followed by a review of a number of empirical studies examining the politics of American Jews and the correlates of Jewish liberalism. Despite the liberal proclivities that have endured throughout most of the twentieth and well into the twenty-first century, a minority, about one-quarter of American Jews, have preferred the Republican party, owing to a conservative or libertarian outlook.