Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-m8qmq Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-23T21:39:21.525Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Choosing People: Interpreting the Puzzling Politics of American Jewry

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 October 2014

Kenneth D. Wald
Kenneth D. Wald*
Affiliation:
University of Florida
*
Address correspondence and reprint request to: Kenneth D. Wald, Department of Political Science, University of Florida, P.O. Box 117325, Gainesville, FL 32611-7325. E-mail: kenwald@ufl.edu
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The political liberalism of American Jews is puzzling because it contradicts the assumption that economic self-interest drives political behavior. Attempts to solve this puzzle with “Judaic” explanations compound the problem by offering theories that are static and universal while American Jewish political behavior is dynamic and situational. Using both historical and behavioral data, I argue that the solution to these puzzles is found in the overriding concern of American Jews with maintaining their equal citizenship in a society with a classic liberal regime of religion and state. This situational model also helps integrate work on Jewish political studies with theories and concepts commonly used by political scientists to explain mass political behavior.

Type
Articles
Information
Politics and Religion , Volume 8 , Issue 1 , March 2015 , pp. 4 - 35
Copyright
Copyright © Religion and Politics Section of the American Political Science Association 2014 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

The title of this paper, first used by Asher Arian in a 1973 book about Israeli politics, is meant as a tribute to one of the pioneers of Jewish political studies. I am grateful for comments, suggestions, and insights of my colleagues in the 2011–2012 fellowship group at the Frankel Institute for Advanced Judaic Studies, University of Michigan. I also appreciate the input of various audiences, academic and non-academic, to whom some of these arguments have been presented in various talks and seminars. A much earlier version of this paper is posted in the Guiding Papers series of the American Religion Data Archives (www.thearda.com/rrh/papers/guidingpapers.asp).

References

REFERENCES

Adams, Hannah.1817. A Dictionary of All Religions and Religious Denominations. New York, NY: James Eastburn and Co. https://ia600801.us.archive.org/23/items/dictionaryofallr00adam/dictionaryofallr00adam.pdf (Accessed on April 10, 2014).Google Scholar
Beck, Paul Allen. 1979. “The Electoral Cycle and Patterns of American Politics.” British Journal of Political Science 9: 129–156.Google Scholar
Birnbaum, Pierre, and Katznelson, Ira, eds. 1995. Paths of Emancipation: Jews, States and Citizenship. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Blau, Joseph L., and Baron, Salo W., eds. 1963a. The Jews of the United States, 1790–1840: A Documentary History. Volume 1. New York, NY: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Blau, Joseph L., and Baron, Salo W., eds. 1963b. The Jews of the United States, 1790–1840: A Documentary History. Volume 2. New York, NY: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Bolce, Louis, and De Maio, Gerald. 1999. “The Anti-Christian Fundamentalist Factor in Contemporary Politics.” Public Opinion Quarterly 63: 508–542.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Borden, Morton. 1984. Jews, Turks and Infidels. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press.Google Scholar
Brady, Henry E., Putnam, Robert D., Campbell, Andrea L., Elms, Laurel, Yonish, Steven, and Apollonio, Dorie. 2000. Roper Social and Political Trends Data, 1973-1994 [Computer file]. Individual surveys conducted by the Roper Organization [producers], 1973-1994. Storrs, CT: Roper Center for Public Opinion Research, University of Connecticut [distributor].Google Scholar
Brown, Thad A. 1981. “On Contextual Change and Partisan Attributes.” British Journal of Political Science 11: 427–447.Google Scholar
Chyet, Stanley F. 1958. “The Political Rights of Jews in the United States: 1776–1840.” American Jewish Archives 10: 14–75.Google Scholar
Cohen, Steven M. 2001. “Religion and the Public Square: Attitudes of American Jews in Comparative Perspective.” Jews in the Public Square Project http://www.cjcs.net/survey.htm (Accessed on October 1, 2014).Google Scholar
“The Constitutional Amendment.” 1864 (December 16). American Messenger, p. 178.Google Scholar
Dalin, David G. 2002. “Jewish Critics of Strict Separationism.” In Jews and the American Public Square: Debating Religion and Republic, eds. Mittleman, Alan L., Sarna, Jonathan D., and Licht, Robert. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 291–310.Google Scholar
“Display Ad #4.” 1861 (December 27). American Messenger, p. 10.Google Scholar
Edelman, Martin. 2000. “A Portion of Animosity: The Politics of the Disestablishment of Religion in Israel.” Israel Studies 5: 204–227.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fein, Leonard. 1988. Where Are We? The Inner Life of America's Jews. New York, NY: Harper and Row.Google Scholar
Fisher, Alan. 1979. “Realignment of the Jewish Vote.” Political Science Quarterly 94: 97–116.Google Scholar
Forman, Ira. 2001. “The Politics of Minority Consciousness: The Historical Voting Behavior of American Jews.” In Jews in American Politics, eds. Maisel, Louis, and Forman, Ira. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 141–160.Google Scholar
Fuchs, Lawrence H. 1956. The Political Behavior of American Jews. Glencoe, IL: Free Press.Google Scholar
Glaser, James M. 1997. “Toward an Explanation of the Racial Liberalism of American Jews.” Political Research Quarterly 50: 437–458.Google Scholar
Goldstein, Eric L. 2006. The Price of Whiteness: Jews, Race, and American Identity. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
“Grant's Order: Our True Course.” 1863 (January 16). American Messenger, p. 20.Google Scholar
Greenberg, Anna, and Wald, Kenneth D.. 2001. “Still Liberal After All These Years: The Political Behavior of American Jewry.” In Jews in American Politics, eds. Maisel, Louis, and Forman, Ira. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 167–99.Google Scholar
Greilsammer, Ilan. 1978. “Jews of France: From Neutrality to Involvement.” Forum 28–29: 130–146.Google Scholar
Ho, Daniel, Imai, Kosuke, King, Gary, and Stuart, Elizabeth A.. 2011. “Matchit: Nonparametric Preprocessing for Parametric Causal Inference.” Journal of Statistical Software http://www.jstatsoft.org/v42/i08 (Accessed on October 1, 2014).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hyman, Paula E. 1992. “Was There a ‘Jewish Politics’ in Western and Central Europe?” In The Quest for Utopia: Jewish Political Ideas and Institutions through the Ages, ed. Gitelman, Zvi. Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 105–118.Google Scholar
Ivers, Gregg. 1995. To Build a Wall: American Jews and the Separation of Church and State. Charlottesville, VA: University Press of Virginia.Google Scholar
Ivers, Gregg. 1990. “Organized Religion and the Supreme Court.” Journal of Church & State 32: 775–794.Google Scholar
Jaher, Frederic Cople. 2002. The Jews and the Nation: Revolution, Emancipation, State Formation, and the Liberal Paradigm in America and France. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Jansen, Giedo, Evans, Geoffrey, and De Graaf, Nan Dirk. 2013. “Class Voting and Left-Right Party Positions: A Comparative Study of 15 Western Democracies, 1960–2005.” Social Science Research 42: 376–400.Google Scholar
Kliger, Sam. 2011. “Russian-Jewish Immigrants in the U.S.: Identity, Politics, Religion, and the Future.” Presented at the Conference on the Contemporary Russian-Speaking Jewish Diaspora. Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts.Google Scholar
Kloppenberg, James T. 1998. The Virtues of Liberalism. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Korn, Bertram Wallace. 1961. American Jewry and the Civil War. Philadelphia, PA: Jewish Publication Society of America.Google Scholar
Kotler-Berkowitz, Laurence A. 2002. “Social Cleavages and Political Divisions: A Comparative Analysis of British, American and South African Jews in the 1990s.” Journal of Modern Jewish Studies 1: 204–233.Google Scholar
Kramer, Michael P. 2003. “Beginnings and Ends: The Origins of Jewish American Literary History.” In Cambridge Companion to Jewish American Literature, eds. Wirth-Nesher, Hana and Kramer, Michael P.. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 12–30.Google Scholar
Kramnick, Isaac, and Moore, R. Laurence. 1996. That Godless Constitution. New York, NY: W.W. Norton.Google Scholar
Laponce, Jean A. 1988. “Left or Centre? The Canadian Jewish Electorate, 1953–1983.” Canadian Journal of Political Science 4: 691–714.Google Scholar
Levey, Geoffrey Brahm. 1996. “The Liberalism of American Jews — Has It Been Explained?” British Journal of Political Science 26: 369–401.Google Scholar
Liebman, Charles S., and Cohen, Steven M.. 1990. Two Worlds of Judaism: The Israeli and American Experiences. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Lorberbaum, Menachem. 2013. “Israel's Constitutional Tragedy.” Touro Law Review 29: 289–294.Google Scholar
Marcus, Jacob Rader, ed. 1996a. The Jew in the American World: A Source Book. Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press.Google Scholar
Marcus, Jacob Rader, ed. 1996b. “President Grant Pleads on Behalf of the Persecuted Rumanian Jews, December 8, 1870.” In The Jew in the American World: A Source Book. Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press, 202.Google Scholar
Marcus, Jacob Rader, ed. 1989. United States Jewry, 1776–1985. Volume 1. Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press.Google Scholar
Medding, Peter Y. 1977. “Towards a General Theory of Jewish Political Interests and Behavior.” Jewish Journal of Sociology 19: 115–144.Google Scholar
Medding, Peter Y. 1989. The Transformation of American Jewish Politics. New York, NY: American Jewish Committee.Google Scholar
Mellman, Mark S, Strauss, Aaron, and Wald, Kenneth D.. 2012. Jewish American Voting Behavior 1972–2008: Just the Facts. Washington, DC: Solomon Project http://images.politico.com/global/2012/07/solomonsurvey072012op.html (Accessed on April 18, 2014).Google Scholar
“Memorial: To the Honorable, the Senate and House of Representatives, of the United States of America.” 1861 (December 13). Jewish Messenger, p. 100.Google Scholar
Mendes, Phillip. 2009. ‘We are all German Jews’: Exploring the Prominence of Jews in the New Left.” http://www.manchesterjewishstudies.org/storage/melilah/2009/3.pdf (Accessed on April 11, 2014).Google Scholar
Molnar, George. 1967. “Deviant Case Analysis in Social Science.” Politics 2: 1–11.Google Scholar
Oates, Kathryn L. 2010. “ Group Efficacy: Religious Interests in the Court .” Ph.D diss. University of Florida.Google Scholar
Peled, Yoav. 1992. “Ethnic Democracy and the Legal Construction of Citizenship: Arab Citizens of the Jewish State.” American Political Science Review 86: 432–443.Google Scholar
Pew Research Center. 2014. “How Americans Feel About Religious Groups Washington, DC: Pew Research Center. http://www.pewforum.org/files/2014/07/Views-of-Religious-Groups-full-PDF-for-web.pdf (Accessed on October 1, 2014).Google Scholar
Rabinove, Samuel. 1990. “How — and Why — American Jews Have Contended for Religious Freedom: The Requirements and Limits of Civility.” Journal of Law and Religion 8: 131–152.Google Scholar
Rosenthal, Steven T. 2001. Irreconcilable Differences. Hanover, NH: Brandeis University Press.Google Scholar
Rubin, Lawrence. 1990. “The Emerging Jewish Public-Affairs Culture.” In American Pluralism and the Jewish Community, ed. Lipset, Seymour Martin. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction, 193–201.Google Scholar
Rubinstein, W. D. 1982. The Left, the Right and the Jews. London: Croon Helm.Google Scholar
Samuel, Maurice. 1924. You Gentiles. New York, NY: Harcourt.Google Scholar
Sarna, Jonathan D. 2012. When General Grant Expelled the Jews. New York, NY: Schocken.Google Scholar
Sarna, Jonathan D. 2004. American Judaism: A History. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Sarna, Jonathan D. 1997. “Introduction.” In Religion and State in the American Jewish Experience, eds. Sarna, Jonathan D., and Dalin, David G.. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1–38.Google Scholar
Schappes, Morris U. 1971. A Documentary History of the Jews in the United States. New York, NY: Schocken Books.Google Scholar
Schnapper, Dominique, Bordes-Benayoun, Chantal, and Raphaël, Freddy. 2010. Jewish Citizenship in France: The Temptation of Being among One's Own. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers.Google Scholar
Shain, Yossi. 2000. “American Jews and the Construction of Israel's Jewish Identity.” Diasporas 9: 163–201.Google Scholar
Smith, Rogers M. 1988. “The ‘American Creed’ and American Identity: The Limits of Liberal Citizenship in the United States.” The Western Political Quarterly 41: 225–251.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Smith, Tom W. 1996. A Survey of the Religious Right: Views on Politics, Society, Jews and Other Minorities. New York, NY: American Jewish Committee.Google Scholar
Sorin, Gerald. 1985. The Prophetic Minority: American Jewish Immigrant Radicals, 1880-1920. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
Staub, Michael E. 2002. Torn at the Roots: The Crisis of Jewish Liberalism in Postwar America. New York, NY: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Stow, Kenneth R. 1992. Alienated Minority: The Jews of Medieval Latin Europe. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Uslaner, Eric M., and Lichbach, Mark. 2009. “Identity vs. Identity: Israel and Evangelicals and the Two-Front War for Jewish Votes.” Politics and Religion 2: 395–419.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wald, Kenneth D. 2011. “Paths from Emancipation: American Jews and Same-Sex Marriage.” In Religion, Sexuality, and Politics in Canada and the United States, eds. Rayside, David, and Wilcox, Clyde. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 239–254.Google Scholar
Wald, Kenneth D., and Sigelman, Lee. 1997. “Romancing the Jews: The Christian Right in Search of Strange Bedfellows.” In Sojourners in the Wilderness: The Religious Right in Comparative Perspective, eds. Smidt, Corwin, and Penning, James. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 139–168.Google Scholar
Weisberg, Herbert F. 2012. “Reconsidering Jewish Presidential Voting Statistics.” Contemporary Jewry 32: 215–236.Google Scholar
Wiernik, Peter. 1912. History of the Jews in America, from the Period of the Discovery of the New World to the Present Time. New York, NY: The Jewish Press Publishing Company. http://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/006568145 (Accessed on April 10, 2014).Google Scholar
Yerushalmi, Yosef Hayim. 2005. Servants of Kings and Not Servants of Servants: Some Aspects of the Political History of the Jews. Atlanta, GA: Tam Institute for Jewish Studies, Emory University.Google Scholar
Zola, Gary Phillip. 2014. We Called Him Rabbi Abraham: Lincoln and American Jewry, a Documentary History. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press.Google Scholar
Zuckerman, Alan S. 1999. “Political Science and the Jews: A Review Essay on the Holocaust, the State of Israel, and the Comparative Analysis of Jewish Communities.” American Political Science Review 93: 935–945.CrossRefGoogle Scholar