The question of Jewish liberalism
Why Are Jews Liberals?, by Norman Podhoretz, Doubleday, 2009. $27, 295 pp.
The story of Norman Podhoretz is as complicated as the political history he examines in Why are Jews Liberals? Once a leftist, he moved rightwards in the 1960s to become one of the great voices of neoconservatism. In Why Are Jews Liberals?, Podhoretz asks why the rest of the Jewish community hasn’t followed suit. Along the search for a satisfactory explanation, the reader is continually reminded of the author’s agenda: to show that the centuries-old connection between Judaism and liberalism is no longer a sensible alliance, and never was. This agenda constantly undermines Podhoretz’s attempt to establish a convincing history of the relation of Judaism and Western politics.
Old Habits Die Hard
Podhoretz’s case against the alliance of Judaism and leftism begins in the time of Jesus Christ, passes through Europe and the enlightenment, and ends with the 2008 presidential election in the United States. As a history of the Jewish people, his scholarship is solid. Soon, however, the narrative develops several antagonists – Enlightenment thinkers like Voltaire, socialist leaders like Karl Marx, and American 20th-century progressives. In the case of the first, philosophes encouraged conversion to the “Religion of Reason” to escape anti-Semitism. The socialists in turn won over Jews with the “Marxist promise of a world in which there would be ‘neither a Jew nor Greek.”In both cases, however, Podhoretz argues Jewish joiners were ill-served by their new alliance. Finally, from Franklin D. Roosevelt to Carter, Democratic presidents have managed to make Jews part of their coalitions while being less-than-faithful friends of the Jews or Israel abroad. Not least of these fair-weather friends was Roosevelt himself, who “made little effort…to help Hitler’s Jewish victims.”
Starting from the last, Podhoretz bluntly claims that Jews of each place and era should have seen these groups as enemies, asserting that it is self-defeating to support a cause, group, or party that does not support you in return, framing this assumption in oppositional, simplistic terms such as, “…all animals, including humans, are equipped by nature with an instinct for telling the difference between friends and enemies…”Absent from Podhoretz’s analysis is a prescription for getting along with groups with differing interests. Instead, he focuses on an abhorrent rapport, “partaking of the pathological,” between Jews and their supposed enemies.
Various leftist movements may have been ideological “enemies” of the Jews, but Podhoretz fails to examine the anti-Semitism of traditional societies or right-wing movements across European and American history. Restricting social and political interaction only to those groups that bore no animosity or ill will toward the Jewish community does not seem a convincing strategy, and what “animal”, put in Podhoretz’s terms, surrounded by predators and faced with the possibility of destruction, would not make sacrifices in exchange for continued existence?
An analogous struggle applies to the debate over Israel. Just as a Jew might share political beliefs with an anti-Semite, so too could a Jew agree with someone opposed to Israel. The author disagrees with both assertions, and views anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism as points along the same spectrum: “hostility [toward Israel] has by now metastasized to the point where the difference between ‘anti-Zionism’ and anti-Semitism has become almost invisible to the naked eye.” Podhoretz unfairly conflates the political issues surrounding Israel and the existential issue of Jewish continuity. Yet policy on Israel does not imply disagreement on all political issues, or contradiction of Jewish interests elsewhere.
A Convincing Alternative?
Podhoretz does address more popular explanations for Jewish liberalism. In the case of the most common – the shared values between Judaism and liberalism – he fails to convincingly rebut the argument. He claims that if Jewish teachings, namely “the Bible and…the Talmud” were the source of liberalism, Orthodox Jews, those most adherent to religious tradition, would be the most liberal. Indeed, he is correct to say that they are the “least liberal of all their fellow Jews,” and that “Orthodox enclaves are the only Jewish neighborhoods where conservative candidates get any votes to speak of.” Podhoretz is correct that Orthodox Jews might align with American conservative causes like the protection of Israel or the preservation of religious displays, but fails to establish that religious texts are the only source of Jewish values; holidays, stories, and the community-constructed fabric of Jewish life are an equally powerful source of the Jewish perspective.
Second, the fact that Orthodox are, on average, more conservative than less religious Jews elides the point that they are still more liberal than the average American. Furthermore, Podhoretz describes the conservative religious rules to which Orthodox Jews tend to adhere, and describes a set of purely social principles – on subjects like gay marriage and abortion – that make Orthodox Jews more conservative. However, there are just as many progressive principles on socioeconomic matters, like the advancement of social justice and compassion for the disadvantaged, which inform the political views of both religious and secular Jews. The fact that Orthodox Jews tend to be more conservative reflects their stronger adherence to religious principles on social issues, but the economic ideas that Judaism imparts might well be liberal ones.
Synagogue and State
In his historical narrative, Podhoretz endeavors to demonstrate that contemporary Jewish liberalism traces back to years of poor decision-making that have become engrained in the contemporary Jewish psyche, implying that Jews have lost their agency over their own political choices. The authentic political choice for Jews seems to be conservatism, yet Podhoretz’s story is a story of a people balancing their political interests with their religious interests, revealing the fact that most Jews, like most people of any faith, do not lead their lives strictly according to religious commands, and cannot be reduced to their faith when at the ballot box.
Podhoretz is frustrated with fellow members of his own faith, and the story becomes very personal at times. Any bitterness that shows through the pages, as it clearly does in the chapters covering contemporary American politics, ultimately does a disservice to the pursuit of an honest answer to the question of Jewish leftism. By claiming that Jews should not be liberals before investigating why they are, Podhoretz closes himself off to a number of explanations that seem both logical and compelling. The explanation at which he finally arrives – that Jewish liberalism has replaced actual Judaism as its adherents’ religion – forces a division between liberal values and Jewish values that is hard to believe. Millennia of Jewish history have encompassed much; why not liberalism?
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