The Jewish American Divide by Eric Futterman

There’s an old joke in the Jewish cultural world. Put two Jews in a room and you get six opinions.

The joke is a result of the centuries of a powerful tradition in Jewish culture; the tradition of scholarship. The differences in Jewish faith and culture within the religion are significant but the one commonality is the tradition of scholarship. Jews want to be educated. The Jewish people have taken the commandment proclaimed in Deuteronomy to “…teach them diligently unto thy children, and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up. “

So naturally getting two Jews or even an entire population of Jews who have taken it upon themselves to be as educated as possible to find different opinions, on the arts, Jewish law, tradition and life is pretty typical in Jewish culture. 

Then there’s politics.   

Today there is a burgeoning divide among Jews in America. And it’s a split that could very well create a chasm of negativity; hurting relationships and preventing Jews from uniting against the common enemy of antisemitism

Until recently Jews in America have been solidly Liberal; siding with Democrats and their policies throughout the 2oth century. There’s good reason for this. In the run up to World War II Jews in America were understandably concerned about the rise of Nazism and the destruction of Jewish rights and property in Germany and throughout Europe. At the time leading Republicans did not share these views.  One of the most prominent heroes of American culture at the time, Charles Lindbergh, spoke often in admiration of Hitler, Mussolini and fascism. Many Republicans in Congress railed against President Franklin Roosevelt’s efforts to support Hitler’s enemies in Europe, with the Lend Lease program to Great Britain and other efforts to stem the rising tide of Fascism.

Roosevelt’s all out effort to destroy the Nazi’s in Germany created a solid friendship between Jews and Democrats as they watched American forces destroy Hitler’s powerful army and free Jews from Concentration Camps. 

 As the children and brethren of oppressed populations throughout the world, Jews in America also found common ground with oppressed and impoverished populations in the United States. The Ku Klux Klan was the common enemy of African Americans and Jews alike. With the Holocaust fresh in their minds, Jews stood side by side with blacks in America throughout the civil rights movement that led to the 1965-68 Civil Rights Acts signed into law by Lyndon Johnson.  These laws were opposed by leading Republicans at the time; including Conservative pioneer Barry Goldwater and future GOP icon Ronald Reagan.

Polls at the time showed overwhelming Jewish support for Liberalism as a philosophy and Democrats as a party. 

Today things are quite different. 

Throughout the world of Facebook political debates, I have found that many of my fellow Jews, including those with whom I grew up in my hometown of Norfolk, are tossing out much vitriol toward President Obama; oftentimes accusing him of being ‘anti-Israel’ and anti-Semitic.

At the same time, many of my Liberal friends have been accusing Israel of being an oppressive nation toward innocent Palestinians. They are saying that Israel is illegally holding on to territory in the West Bank and on the borders won in the 1967 War. 

As a frequent participant in political Facebook debates I have found these discussions to be nothing less than head-turning. Arguing with fellow Liberals in defense of Israel while arguing with Conservative friends on Obama’s Israel policies have certainly turned political discourse upside down.

At the same time polls are showing Jews are becoming more and more aligned with Conservative politics and even the political evangelical right. J-Street, a pro-Israel Liberal lobbying group, conducted a poll during the 2010 mid-term elections and found that 66% of Jews supported Democrats. That’s a significant drop from the more than 80% who supported Barack Obama and Democrats in the ’06 and ’08 elections. 

And of course there is Eric Cantor. A Jewish member of Congress who is part of my generation of sub baby boomers, Cantor has clearly broken free of the Liberal Jewish tradition by identifying with some of the most Conservative causes and philosophies of the modern Republican party. During the 2008 election Cantor even accused Obama of calling Israel “a sore on  America.” This was a misquote from an interview Obama gave with Atlantic magazine calling the never ending Israeli-Palestinian conflict “a sore on America and a danger to Israel’s security.”

This move toward Jewish conservatism has its roots in the rise of Reagan conservatism in the 1980s. As Jews shook off their early 20^th century poverty and the anti-Semitism that was prevalent up until the 1960s, becoming prosperous and influential in the process, the idea of lower taxes for top earners started to become more and more appealing to American Jews. While many of these Jews greatly appreciated Democratic President Jimmy Carter’s extraordinary accomplishment in negotiating a peace between Israel and Egypt (a peace that continues to this day) Carter’s later assertions that Israel was becoming too strident in its relationship with Palestinians and his use of the word Apartheid, alienated Jews from Carter and from Democrats who agreed with the former President. 

And then the ‘politics create strange bedfellows’ phenomenon took place. Evangelical Christians, the most powerful religious force in politics over the last three decades, started becoming aggressively supportive of Israel as, not just the Jewish homeland but the Christian homeland. These Evangelicals share the fundamentalist belief that when Christ returns for the much anticipated Resurrection, Israel will then be in the hands of Jesus' followers as Jews and Muslims turn to dust. This the foundation of their support.

I remember one prominent Jew telling me, that he’ll take any support he can get for Israel.

That support has come from the many pilgrimages Evangelical Christians take to Israel in a powerful boost to the Jewish state’s economy. It’s also created an all or nothing political support of Israel, especially in the post-9-11 era. 

Hatred toward Muslims in general for the actions of a small percentage of the most fundamentalist of Muslims, have united religious Jews and fundamentalist Christians in ways never before imagined. Even though these Christians believe all Jews, even Holocaust survivors, will burn in hell forever, the two groups have found a common kinship in their support of their religious homeland and their common hatred toward Islam.

This has led to statements on Facebook debates like: “Everyone knows Obama hates Israel.”  One time  a fellow Jew called me a “one of those self-hating Jews.” 

On the other hand, for Liberals who are supporting the Palestinian people as an oppressed population fail to recognize that Israel is the only country in the Middle East that provides full rights toward women, full rights toward free speech and allows Muslims and Christians to practice their faith peacefully within its borders. No other Arab state can make that claim. 

If the Arab world truly wanted the Palestinians to be free and have their own homeland, economy and borders that would have happened long ago. The Arab world has shamelessly used the Palestinian people as a wedge against Israel and they have been successful at it for more than half a century. 

American journalism has also helped in creating this false stereotype of Israel as a quasi-apartheid nation. Oftentimes Israel’s retaliation for terrorist attacks has gotten more publicity than the attacks that started the fight. This was most notable during the last skirmish when hundreds of rockets were launched into Israel from the Palestinian territory before Israel responded with significant force. 

I am concerned that this overreaching sympathy for the Palestinian people will create a new form of anti-Semitism among Liberals. And just like Conservatives who stereotype Barack Obama as someone who must be anti-Israel, we are letting our fears and prejudices get in the way of real solutions and real justice.

This readiness by Conservative Jews to label Obama as anti-Israel is easy to understand considering the falsehoods that have been spread about our President since he started running in 2008. Many people have accused him of being a closet Muslim, a friend of terrorists (I don’t think the bin Laden family would think so) and of course being a non-citizen. This ties very easily into that narrative. 

 This concerns me on two fronts. First I never like seeing anyone from the Jewish faith and culture revert to the kind of bigotry that has victimized our people for centuries. Making assumptions about Obama because of his middle name and because of false allegations about him falls in the Protocols of the Elders of Zion category.  It’s an easy thing to do. The fact is Obama stood up to the Arab world on many occasions in defending Israel most notably in the Cairo speech he made shortly after taking office. 

Never has an American president stood before an Arab audience and uttered words like this:

“Around the world, the Jewish people were persecuted for centuries, and anti-Semitism in Europe culminated in an unprecedented Holocaust.  Tomorrow, I will visit Buchenwald, which was part of a network of camps where Jews were enslaved, tortured, shot and gassed to death by the Third Reich.  Six million Jews were killed -- more than the entire Jewish population of Israel today.  Denying that fact is baseless, it is ignorant, and it is hateful.  Threatening Israel with destruction -- or repeating vile stereotypes about Jews -- is deeply wrong, and only serves to evoke in the minds of Israelis this most painful of memories while preventing the peace that the people of this region deserve.”

The other disturbing aspect in this new Jewish Conservative rise is the association with the political evangelical right. This is a group of people who have constantly opposed American democracy and freedom of every religion but their own. They clearly believe all Jews are going to burn in hell forever, even, as I mentioned earlier, Holocaust survivors. 

And finally this new trend tells me many American Jews are distancing themselves from our association with the poor and downtrodden in society. Many Jews have taken on the Movement Conservative mantra that poor people must have done something to deserve their poverty and therefore we have the moral responsibility to essentially leave them in the dust. 

Eric Cantor has personified this new generation of Conservative Jews by embracing massive tax cuts for the wealthy while voting to cut funding for impoverished seniors and children, Veterans health care, food assistance programs and of course Medicare. 

The big difference between Judaism and Christianity comes in the law each religion follows. Christian law lays down the foundation of a personal relationship with God and Christ. Jewish laws, all 613 of them, are all about how we deal with each other; with our communities and with our families. 

We must never forget that the vast majority of Jewish Americans descend from impoverished and persecuted immigrants. We must never forget that the persecution of our people is based on the same types of false stereotypes now being thrown down on President Obama. Even if many of us disagree with his Israel strategy we must remember it is essentially the same strategy as George W. Bush and Bill Clinton applied to beginning negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians. Calling him anti-Israel without calling either of his predecessor’s anti-Israel is nothing short of bigotry. 

For Liberals who want the Palestinians to be free of violence they must remember that their violent leader, Yasser Arafat, died as a very wealthy man; worth billions according to some estimates. He ordered the slaughter of thousands of innocent Jews, many of them children. How did the money he received from Arab support end up in his pockets and not in the creation of a burgeoning Palestinian economy?  

Israel has been surrounded by enemies its entire existence. Jews have lived in Israel for hundreds of years, not just a few generations. And in fact Jews and Palestinians lived side by side peacefully all the way up to World War II. 

There are no easy answers to these dilemmas. The land is small and vengeful hatred has an inertia that seems unstoppable. When Liberals and Conservatives resort to old prejudices in trying to find solutions to these problems then we move further and further away from achieving the ultimate goal: 

Peace.