Why Are Jews Liberals? by Norman Podhoretz
Doubleday, 2009, 337 pages

When a book’s title is a question, one generally expects the book to answer that question, or at least to properly ask it. The fact that Norman Podhoretz’s newest polemic, Why Are Jews Liberals? does neither is especially surprising, given that Podhoretz has spent the better part of the last sixty years as one of the foremost Jewish intellectuals in the United States, loved and despised in equal measure, sometimes fascinating, sometimes exasperating, but certainly never boring. His journey from left to right, and his role as one of the founding fathers of neoconservatism, has become paradigmatic, and there can be no questioning his significance and the measure of his accomplishments. That a thinker of his stature could produce a book on such a weighty subject – and one so near to his heart – so strikingly empty and unenlightening certainly says something depressing about the state of Jewish political thought in America.

Podhoretz, of course, has more than a vested interest in the issue at hand. He believes that American liberalism, which was once the natural home of American Jews, has, since the 1960s at least, adopted an ideology and a series of policies to go with it that are both detrimental to Jewish interests and, in many ways, anti-Jewish in their essence. As the grand old man of the small but formidable Jewish conservative political establishment, he has spent most of his career being both exasperated by his fellow Jews’ failure to embrace conservatism and frightened for their future as a result. Clearly, he has also had to answer some difficult questions, including the one his new book purports to answer. As he puts it,

At one time, it seemed reasonable to suppose—and many did so suppose, some in hope and others in fear—that this reversal of roles would lead to a change in the political culture of American Jews. But it was not to be. No wonder, then, that non-Jewish conservatives are puzzled, so puzzled that I cannot remember ever being asked any question as often as I have been asked why so many Jews continue clinging to the Left and why they still vote as heavily as ever for the Democratic Party.

Indeed, Podhoretz is absolutely right that “it was not to be.” As was proved yet again in the most recent American presidential elections, America’s Jewish minority remains overwhelmingly liberal (”liberal” in the American sense of the word, i.e. what everyone else calls social democracy or, in its more radical form, democratic socialism). Perhaps as a result, Podhoretz’s book was written in order to express “what I believe really explains why American Jews are still committed to liberalism and why this is bad for them both as Americans and as Jews.” He proposes, in short, to solve the puzzle, and to answer the unanswerable question that has vexed him and many others for decades.

Why Are Jews Liberals? is divided into two parts. According to its author, the first is meant to be a brief history of Jewish-Christian relations, which he believes plays a fundamental role in Jewish attachment to modern liberalism. The second part is an overview of recent American Jewish political history, up to and including the presidency of George W. Bush, through which Podhoretz outlines the relationship between American Jews and modern liberalism, and why the two have remained so inseparable.

In many ways, the first part is more a history of Christian antisemitism than anything else, or at the very least of Christian hostility toward the Jews. It enumerates the theological origins of Christian antipathy toward the Jews, the admonitions of Saint Augustine that the Jews should be made witnesses to the divinity of Christ through their suffering, the blood libels and anti-Jewish riots of the Middle Ages and the early modern era, and ultimately arrives at the emancipation of the Jews of Europe in the late 18th century. While Podhoretz does point out that many of the most fervent advocates of revolution and liberty in Europe (Voltaire, Proudhon, etc.) were committed and often vicious antisemites, he emphasizes that it was the “left,” as it were, which supported and ultimately granted emancipation and equal rights to the Jews, and it was the nascent “right” that saw this as merely another symptom of the decay, decadence, and destruction that modernity represented. It was the forces of change and revolt that granted (sometimes begrudgingly) political acceptance to the Jewish citizens of the new nation states of Europe and, in the case of the socialist and communist movements, welcomed their participation. Perhaps even more importantly, it was the forces of reaction and conservatism who opposed emancipation and who enthusiastically embraced the new, racially based antisemitism and molded it into a political program.

Upon their arrival in America, Podhoretz claims, these political, social, and historical factors pushed the Jews in the direction of liberalism. “The reason Jews had been attracted to the Democratic Party in the first place,” he writes, “was that it represented the closest American counterpart to the forces on the Left that had favored Jewish emancipation in Europe—just as the Republicans seemed to represent an American version of the conservative forces that had opposed equal rights for Jews in the past.” The decisive moment, however, in determining Jewish political loyalties was the political success of antisemitism in the form of the Nazi party, and particularly so for the one diaspora community in the West that escaped the genocide the Nazis eventually unleashed. As he puts it, few American Jews “were unaware of the fact that this party, even though it called itself National Socialist, had come not from the Left but from the Right—precisely where their worst enemies had always been located.” Nazism, the Holocaust, and their aftermath, Podhoretz claims, permanently entrenched American Jews on the left of the political spectrum, where they have stayed ever since. To an extent, he admits, the Jewish alliance with American liberalism made sense, at least for a time. “In the late 1960s, however,” he writes, “changes began taking place that would more and more rob the Jewish commitment to the Democrats of the sense it had formerly made.”

These changes make up the lion’s share of the second part of Podhoretz’s book, in which he both analyzes the various political and ideological developments on the left that he considers detrimental to American Jews and American Judaism, and recounts his own personal involvement in the often violent debates surrounding them. The issues in question should not come as a surprise to anyone who has followed Podhoretz’s work for any length of time: the political left’s turn against Israel following the Six Day War, which has only become more violent and intense over time; the rise of the anti-war movement and the popularity of isolationist, pacifist, and even anti-American sentiment on the liberal left, all of which threaten American military support for Israel; affirmative action and racial quotas, which threaten to minimize Jewish numbers in academia and government; liberal support for a redistributionist welfare state, which would harm the economic standing of the mostly affluent Jewish community; the rise of anti-Jewish sentiment on the left, sometimes subtly expressed and sometimes not, etc., etc. But Podhoretz also believes that something else has occurred in the ranks of American liberalism; something far more disturbing and potentially destructive. “Contemporary liberalism,” he writes, “demands that, unlike any other people, Jews justify the space they take up on the earth.” Put bluntly, Podhoretz believes that American liberalism is becoming, or perhaps already is antisemitic.

And despite this, American Jews remain resolutely liberal. Indeed, they may be the most reliable supporters the left wing of the Democratic party has or has ever had. As Podhoretz puts it, “To most American Jews… liberalism is not, as has often been said, merely a necessary component of Judaism: it is the very essence of being a Jew.” To him, this is not merely puzzling, but frankly irrational, and in his conclusion, he attempts to answer the question of why and how American Jews have, in his opinion, gone politically insane.

Podhoretz’s answer is not entirely original, although he does manage to add an interesting twist to it. Put simply, he claims that, for American Jews, liberalism has become a religion; more precisely, it has become Judaism itself. This occurred, he believes, because of two major factors: the loss of belief in traditional Judaism amongst the new immigrants to America, whose descendents make up the overwhelming majority of American Jewry, and the early dominance of Marxist politics in this first, decisive generation. “Almost all the young intellectuals and political leaders” among the immigrant Jews, he writes,

had stopped believing in the God of Judaism, but it was not “anything” they now believed—it was Marxism…. To this new “Torah” they grew as stubbornly attached—both out of conviction and as a matter of honor—as their fathers and grandfathers had been to the Torah of Judaism itself, And as it was with their forebears in relation to Judaism, so it became with them in relation to Marxism: nothing could shake their faith in its doctrines.

Much like those who claim that the Puritanism of the early settlers of New England continues to define the culture and politics of that region, Podhoretz holds that the Marxism of the founding generation of American Jews still exerts a literally theological influence on American Jewish politics, culture, and religion. Even as the Jews have become more affluent, and thus shifted somewhat from socialism to a more moderate liberalism, they have retained, like their ancestors before them, a stubborn and resolute loyalty to the ancient faith. Citing the case of Irving Howe, the late editor of the left wing journal Dissent, Podhoretz remarks,

Howe, who had gone from Marxism… to democratic socialism, could now describe liberalism as “our natural home” and as the “’secular religion’ of many American Jews.” Indeed it was; and the Jews of America were holding on to it for dear life because beyond the liberal faith there was nowhere to go but into the outright apostasy of conservatism. To them this was deeply repugnant, and even horrifying, as conversion to Christianity had been to their grandparents in the shtetls of Eastern Europe, who had treated converted offspring as dead and had observed the prescribed rituals of mourning (shivah) for them.

American Jews’ passionate attachment to this “new Torah,” Podhoretz writes, is so profound that they are more than willing to forsake the old Torah – or at least reinterpret it until it is unrecognizable – in order to hold to it. “Liberalism,” he writes,

has not only superseded socialism as the religion of most American Jews, it has even superseded Judaism itself among many Jewish liberals who presume to speak in its name. So far as they are concerned, where the Torah of contemporary liberalism conflicts with the Torah of Judaism, it is the Torah of liberalism that prevails and the Torah of Judaism that must give way.

Put bluntly, Podhoretz believes that American Jews are in the grip of a messianic heresy, similar to proto-Christianity or Sabbateanism in the past. In the name of a new revelation, they have thrown aside their old beliefs, laws, and traditions in order to become part of a new, universal faith. As an opponent of this faith, and a believer in the value of traditional Judaism, as well as someone who thinks that American values and institutions are both good and good for the Jews, and therefore ought to be conserved and not changed, Podhoretz clearly finds this a somewhat depressing state of affairs. Nonetheless, he ends his book on an optimistic note, declaring that “I cannot for the life of me give up the hope that the Jews of America will eventually break free of their political delusions, and that they will then begin to recognize where their interests and their ideals both as Jews and as Americans truly lie.” Podhoretz probably hopes in vain, at least insofar as it seems unlikely that American Jews are going to stop being liberal anytime soon. The future is, in any case, unknowable, so one must look instead to Podhoretz’s retelling of the past and his analysis of the present in order to decide if his theory has any value. Unfortunately, doing so reveals that it is of depressingly little value indeed.

Why Are Jews Liberals? is unquestionably a grandiose failure written by a brilliant mind, and reading it is something like watching Einstein do jumping jacks in order to prove the Unified Field Theory. Nonetheless, it does tackle an important and fascinating question. Indeed, one of the first things about American Jewry that strikes the outside observer is the monolithic quality of its politics. In Israel, Jews come in every political stripe, from communists to free-market liberals to social democrats to fundamentalist theocrats, and it has been so since before the founding of the state. In America, on the other hand, the Jews are overwhelmingly on the left; so much so that they have become one of the cornerstones of the Democratic party. Given that America is not and has never been an antisemitic country, and the mainstream conservative movement has long since rejected antisemitism outright, to the extent that it actually worries about how to recruit Jewish supporters and is troubled by their absence, one does sense that this must be a sign of a deeper social and historical phenomenon. Simply by the law of averages, and certainly based on any objective analysis of their economic and social success, one imagines that a substantial number of American Jews ought to lean at least somewhat to the right; and yet almost none of them do. Like them or not, there is no question that American Jewish political loyalties are a bizarre conundrum, and Podhoretz is correct in thinking that the issue deserves serious consideration. The fact that he fails in this task, however, may inadvertently tell us more about the phenomenon than he perhaps intended.

Unfortunately, one must begin by pointing out that Why Are Jews Liberals? is not a very good book. It is shockingly disorganized, often tendentious to the point of absurdity, and a great deal of it completely irrelevant. This is most notable in the first part of the book, which is an excellent example of what in Israel is called historia bachyanit, “lachrymose history” or, less generously, “whiny history.” In short, it is a historical viewpoint that emphasizes Jewish suffering, persecution, and trauma. While there has been plenty of all three over the last two thousand years, many students of Jewish history (and I include myself among them), tend to find this kind of historiography deeply problematic, emphasizing as it does the negative aspects of Jewish history at the expense of what was often a profoundly creative and vibrant minority civilization. It is, in other words, a history that tells only half the story, if that.

More to the point, however, the entire first half of the book has almost nothing to do with the question Podhoretz is trying to answer. Jewish liberalism and its discontents are unquestionably a modern phenomenon, deeply rooted in the issues of emancipation, assimilation, and the politics and culture of Europe in the aftermath of the French revolution. In all fairness, even professional historians who have spent their lives studying Jewish history have reached no consensus on the subject, so Podhoretz cannot be expected to give us anything particularly groundbreaking; but his insistence on giving us a long and largely pointless history of Christian antisemitism bespeaks an author who is, quite simply, out of his depth on this particular subject. And even when he does arrive at the modern era of Jewish history, he glosses over or ignores some of the most important aspects of it in relation to the development of Jewish political thought: Spinoza’s heresy, the French national assembly’s debate on the Jewish question, Napoleon’s Sanhedrin, Moses Mendelsohn and the haskala, the immigration of Eastern European Jews into more assimilated Central Europe, the ambivalence of many Jewish intellectuals and leaders toward emancipation, the eventual emergence of Zionism as a result, etc., etc. None of these things has much to do with Christianity or Christian antisemitism, and to the extent that they do, it is purely as background to the changes undergone by European society and European antisemitism in the modern era. As to why American Jews of today are so monolithically liberal, then, fully half of Podhoretz’s book tells us next to nothing.

The second half, while more interesting, at least for its behind-the-scenes details, is not much more enlightening. It is more of a political autobiography than a serious analysis of the issue of Jewish liberalism, and could easily be titled “Famous People I Have Pissed Off.” There is also an unfortunately strong sense of egoism at work. As edifying as it may be for Podhoretz to write about how he wrote a famous speech for Daniel P. Moynihan or was the recipient of an apologetic phone call from president Reagan, it doesn’t tell us much about why Jews are liberals, or about anything else, for that matter. As for the rest, what is not simply gossip or self-aggrandizing anecdotes are rewrites or retreads of Podhoretz’s previous work on the subject – as the author freely admits – and while it may be rewarding for the uninitiated, it adds nothing new to what Podhoretz has already said, and has been saying for years, on all manner of various subjects.

It is only in the conclusion, then, that Podhoretz actually tackles the question his entire book is ostensibly about, and it must be admitted that his attempt to provide an answer is a dismal failure. Essentially, it is little more than the reductio ad marxism of which many conservatives are unfortunately fond. Marx’s sins may be many, but he is not some demiurgic force coursing through history like Satan going up and down upon the face of the earth. In this case in particular, the theory has little to recommend it. While many Jewish intellectuals and leaders (at least in the labor movement) may have been Marxists of one sort or another, and at least nominally socialist, the overwhelming majority of American Jews were not. Like any other immigrant group, their primary concern was not social revolution, but forging a better life for themselves. Their attraction to the left – especially the labor movement – came not because of an abstract, semi-religious adoption of Marxist theory, but because the left seemed most likely help them achieve that better life. This does leave us with the question, however, of why, having achieved it, American Jews remain liberals.

The answer, I think, has very little to do with Podhoretz’s theory, and everything to do with the state of American Jewry and American liberalism today. The real reason Jews are liberals is that modern American liberalism is, essentially, a politics of perpetual discontent. Its various principles and policies are often self-contradictory and incoherent, but what unites them all is a feeling – sometimes a violent one – that things must be changed; and if they were to be changed, we would all be happy. This is, of course, a delusion, as politics can in fact do very little to make people happier, but it is an extremely seductive one, and many people (most of whom, it should be noted, are not Jewish) are much attracted to it. The Jews of America, however, are particularly attached to it for, I think, a very specific reason: their usually silent and often unconscious ambivalence about life in America and the Jewish experience of it.

This is partly because the United States is such a striking anomaly in diaspora Jewish history. It is a country which has not only accepted the Jews as citizens but, contrary to all previous Jewish experience, has actively welcomed them into the mainstream of its politics and culture with a relative minimum of hostility. As a result of this, however, American Jews are faced with two contradictory impulses: One is to fully engage with American culture and make the most of the unprecedented opportunity it offers for Jewish life and well-being. The other, by contrast, is the nagging fear that, because it contradicts the entire history of Jews in the diaspora, this situation may well be temporary, the bottom could drop out at any moment, and one must always be on one’s guard, so as not to be caught unawares when the catastrophe hits.

Added to this is another, deeper source of discontent, which I doubt most American Jews admit even to themselves. It is the simple fact that the Jews are a tiny minority in America, and the overwhelming majority of their fellow citizens do not share their religion, their history, their collective experience, or the unique concerns and terrors mentioned above. However happy its experience may be, a minority is always a minority, and it must always remain aware and constantly reminded of this fact. And for a minority, acceptance, equality, and even material success are often not enough. Their sense of being different and apart remains, perhaps only because they are different and apart, and this feeling, while inevitable and hardly catastrophic, is often not a happy one.

Once this ambivalence is coupled with the traditional Jewish anxiety as to their status and security inherited from the history of the diaspora, however, it creates a maddening Catch-22. Americans Jews’ discontents with life in America are real and inevitable for any small minority, but they feel that they cannot and dare not express them, for fear of arousing antisemitism and threatening their unprecedented acceptance by American society. Modern American liberalism offers an irresistible remedy to this dilemma. First, it offers the vague but fervent promise of change and resulting happiness mentioned above. Second, and perhaps more importantly, it allows American Jews to vicariously express their discontents through their identification with the perpetual discontent that defines liberal politics and by advocating the causes of minorities and other groups who are able to express their discontents, such as African-Americans and activist homosexuals. Given all of this, it is not so surprising that most Jews are liberals; in fact, it is more surprising that some of them are conservatives.

Podhoretz, of course, is one of those Jewish conservatives, and yet perhaps his failure to answer the question he poses in this book points to some discontents of his own, and they do not seem so very different from those of his liberal brethren. Perhaps he fears that if he looked at the real reasons behind the Jewish attachment to liberalism, he may see some things in himself that he does not wish to see. Neoconservatism, after all, is very different from traditional conservatism. Most notably, it does hold that the world – and America – can be changed, and we will all be happier as a result. Indeed, even Podhoretz’s admonitions to his fellow Jews bespeak a desire for all-encompassing change that is ironically akin to that of his rivals. Jewish liberals believe that, if only America could be changed, they’d be happy. Podhoretz, and many other neoconservatives, believe that, if only the Jews could be changed, they and the Jews would be happy. It is, perhaps, a more modest ambition, but it is no less telling.

It is also somewhat tragic, because America has, by and large, done right by the Jews; and perhaps this is the real problem, because nothing in the Jewish past has prepared them for such a thing; and at the moment, right or left, liberal or conservative, they seem unable to decide what to do about it. If they could, if both liberal and conservative Jews could finally make peace with themselves and with life in America, perhaps the discontents that gave birth to Jewish liberalism and to those who question it might become – and this is perhaps the best one can hope for – easier to bear.

Benjamin Kerstein is a Senior Writer for The New Ledger.