Talk Elections

I never understood this- I know a few Jews and they are Republicans. I have the utmost respect for the Jewish people and them being Democrats does not change that at all- but it seems they would be socially conservative and agree more with the GOP on foreing policy...

What gives?

Socially conservative?  Really?  American Jews are about 90% secularized, clarence.  Think Woody Allen.

Because they are a cultural minority group and the Democratic Party is the party of minorities.

I mean real Jews... not just of Jewish heritage but actual practicing Jews. I probably know more Hebrew then Woody Allen- I can recite the Shema

Orthodox Jews in concentrated communities actually tend to swing very heavily on the basis of personal attributes, real or perceived, of the candidates. Some of the really densely packed Orthodox enclaves in the New York exurbs went from 95% Gore in 2000 to 95% Bush in 2004. Non-Orthodox practicing Jews tend to live in similar social and cultural environments to their secularized counterparts and they're from a cultural and religious tradition that strongly emphasizes values like social solidarity as well as (we can argue about 'more than' or 'less than', but certainly as well as) personal success. The New Deal/Great Society ideals seem to have a lot of appeal within a Jewish mindset, or at least a certain type of Jewish mindset that's common among American Jews.

Well gosh, those practicing types are a rarity, thank goodness!

It's a cultural thing. Just like why are most Congregationalists and Episcopalians Republican? The answer is that they historically stuck to the GOP back in the days when that party represented moderate-to-liberal New England upper crust WASPism. Similarly practicing and religious Jews support the Democrats because of their heritage as the party of immigrants and the working class. This allegiance held strong even as the general outlook of the parties shifted and more and more Jews rose in society.

Assuming you are right about that, do you think they will become more Republican in the next 20-30 years?

Maybe, maybe not. Non-secular Jews are becoming a smaller and smaller group, so it's possible that there will be a conservative reaction or that they might simply die out altogether.

This combined with the fact that Jews are disproportionately members of the "creative class" or are urban professionals and you get a heavily Democratic demographic: one that dominates the party where it is a significant minority.

If you looked at general Jewish class-based demographics and made them vote as gentiles according to those demographics, they'd still be a Democratic-leaning group. Retirees would be more split and certain Orthodox communities would be certain to vote for the GOP as opposed to splitting their tickets but towns like St. Louis Park or Newton would still be Democratic bastions.

^^^ this

There are a few issues here. All are generalization, obviously, but here are my observations:
1. Most Jews are terrified of the Republican Party's Christian nationalism.
2. Jews have a soft spot for the politics of poverty. Huge numbers of Jewish women in particular are teachers and social workers. Jews want to help.
3. Jews place a high value on personal freedom, and particularly resent Republicans invasion of their bedrooms
4. Jews also frequently work in financial services and accounting and see everyday that our economy is strongly biased in favor of organized wealth. That doesn't sit well with Jewish notions of social justice.
5. This is a relatively new one, but the GOP has marketed itself strongly in recent years as an anti-intellectual party. Jews are true believers in the power of schooling and the progress of science in particular.
6. American Jews have a strong distaste for unnecessary military adventures.
7. American Jews are very likely to judge a candidate (and regular people too) based on how they present themselves. If you come up swaggering with a 10 gallon hat on, dropping your gs, and trying to be a "regular guy," that doesn't play well with Jews. We want somebody who looks more professional.
8. Jews don't buy into the good old days narrative of the Republican Party. They weren't so good for us.

The Republican Party has always been a party for Protestants, and non-Protestants have naturally gravitated to the Democratic Party.

Because Republicans are morons, and Jews don't fall for that load of crap.


''Real Jews''? Like ones who go to temple regularly and keep kosher?

That's almost no one.

I'm Jewish, and not a Democrat, so I win :P

#RepublicanJewsFTW

#Hashtagsaregay

The single most salient reason these days is that Jews are more secular than the general population.

It seem more of a case wanting someone who are more like you (white-collar worker)than anything else. In fact it seem the one thing almost all voter segment have in common, they prefer politician who talk like them and behave like them.

Nowadays, however, that's changed, as those are among the denominations whose polities are becoming more associated with the political left. The days when you could really say that about most Congregationalists and Episcopalians were also back when you could generalize about the 'Catholic vote' (and say that it usually went Democratic).

The members of those churches, most likely, are far more right-wing than the clergy and doctrine espoused by both though, so it's hard to say how Democratic religious WASPs really are at this point.

#hipsterbandwagonsareworse

But Orthodox aside, even the religiously engaged Jews vote overwhelmingly for the Democrats. I grew up forcibly attending a Conservative synagogue. My mother still attends every Saturday. And it's a very Democratic crowd. Mostly for the reasons that I articulated earlier.

One big thing besides the fact that Jews are more secular than the rest of the country is their repulsion to the Christian nationalism of the Republican party. This is also the reason why Republicans do worse with Indians than other Asians, and will continue to do worse with them even if they find a way to woo back the more Christian Korean and Chinese population.

A point that someone else has made on here prior that I think is worth noting is that the rhetoric Republicans use can often bring up some uncomfortable connotations, even if entirely unintentional. Think of Sarah Palin talking about "Real America" or whatever, and thus implying that there are people who are "less American" than others... (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/DoesThisRemindYouOfAnything)

One also should just note even though it's kind of boring that Jews disproportionately live in urban or at least inner suburban areas.

That really isn't the case. I'm not positive about Congregationalism but the divisions of the Episcopal Church telegraph pretty closely at most levels of its structure, by nature of its polity. Right-wing parishes and dioceses aren't going to be choosing these people as their rectors and bishops. There's a definitive progressive, often left-leaning-Anglo-Catholic or 'emergent' depending on the parish majority, and a sizable conservative, often Evangelical-leaning minority, in the House of Deputies as well as the House of Bishops.

Considering how disproportionately Episcopalians and Congregationalists are clustered in New England I don't see how it's remotely possible they are a Republican-voting bloc today.

Hell just look at Connecticut where Obama won white Protestants by about 2:1. Yes, larger than the state number, (McCain actually won white Catholics, but this isn't too surprising when you consider there Catholics are probably "ethnic" whites living in areas with more racial tensions, and most Catholics in Connecticut live in the traditionally Republican areas.)

OK checking the exit polls it looks like I was a bit off, Obama "only" won white Protestants 55-42 in Connecticut, he won Protestants in general 2:1 (blacks no doubt accounting for the rest of that). But McCain also won white Catholics 56-40, a fairly wide margin and greater than his national numbers with white Catholics.

Fun fact: I sat down once and worked out that every single New England state has a higher proportion of Episcopalians than any non-New England state other than for some bizarre reason Wyoming, which has more than Massachusetts but not by much.

but it's Orthodox, Russians, Iranian, Sefeardi (non Orthodox), Jews are the ones who are the most likely jews to live there and are the most Conservative.

here's the true reason (short answer is secular this is the longer answer)
https://uselectionatlas.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=150186.0
(for some strange reason when I introduced this topic it was met with a different reaction)

You seriously live in a bubble dude. Seriously, look at where Jews live in states like California, Florida, Illinois and Maryland. Where I live there's probably more Jews in my district and St. Paul's than the rest of the state combined despite those being only 1/4th of the state.

Oh and there is obviously no shortage of liberal Jews in NYC.

I've just noticed that that's the case for mainline Protestantism in general. Active members of PCUSA and ELCA congregations are right-leaning, even though the clergy of both voted strongly for Gore. The PCUSA, in particular, has a democratic structure and at the General Assembly, it was decided that gays can become pastors, that Arizona was to be boycotted because of their immigration policy etc.

Yet look at these figures:

Note to BRTD: I'm speaking of how Democratic active Episcopalian and Congregationalist members are today. I think it would be difficult to pinpoint how Democratic they are because as a demographic, active church goers of mainline protestant congregations tend to be much older and slightly more conservative than younger members that casually affiliate with them (I'm partially speaking from my own experience, although data backs me up here). I doubt that they're a Republican constituency but I could see them being swingy group that's in the political middle.

I didn't say there wasn't I said Jews in big cities and it's suburbs are more likely to vote Republican than a jew in a rural or semi rural area.

I've noticed that in the PCUSA too, but if it's a phenomenon that's present in the ECUSA it's considerably less stark and I haven't noticed it in years of being a practicing, every-week Episcopalian. As I said, ECUSA demographics are among other things overwhelmingly Northeastern.

I found this short blurb on the ECUSA in the American Spectator:

Pew confirms my suspicions about the divide between casual and active mainline Protestants:
()

I'll try and dig up more information from Pew.

That is within the general bailiwick of what I would guess, something like ~57-60 Obama for the whole church (which, it must be remembered, is one of the more liberal mainline Protestant ones). It's the clergy being that overwhelmingly Democratic that's surprising to me, considering how many roughly 60-40 votes (percentagewise, since there are 110 bishops) on contentious issues go down in the House of Bishops. (The episcopate might be more conservative than the priesthood. This is the case in England. It's often hard to notice what views a parish priest might or might not register.)

There are admittedly some residual Yankee Republicans among Episcopalians in the Northeast, I would venture to guess more so than with many other denominations in this area, but you can still hardly call Episcopalians as a group conservative or Republican-leaning, especially if we're being compared within mainline Protestantism. I would also take the American Spectator's statistics, unless they're specifically sourced, with a grain of salt.

I wasn't disputing rough parity among mainline Protestants in general whatsoever. I've been to some fairly conservative Episcopal parishes, though not nearly as many as conservative Presbyterian or Methodist ones. By all means do see what you can find on Pew. This is interesting to me.

Though let's be honest dude, you live in Amherst. If I based my estimates entirely on my experience in Minneapolis I'd conclude that a majority of evangelicals are Democrats and evangelical clergy are more likely than not to oppose anti-gay marriage ballot initiatives.

Since I suppose that lots of mainline churches especially in rural areas are mostly full of olds it wouldn't surprise me that they'd be more conservative/Republican, I'm sure plenty others also have a lot of upper middle class families who go more for societal benefits than actual beliefs and vote Republican on economics as well. But while this might be true for ELCA and PCUSA in some areas (though Obama obviously won ELCA members in Minnesota, and by a pretty wide margin at that), I can't see it being the case for Congregationalists and Episcopalians due to their clustering in New England.

Olds stubbornly refusing to leave their mainline churches despite them now being far more liberal than them and there being hordes of more conservative churches reminded me of kind of a funny story my grandmother told me shortly after I was baptized about her friend that was baptized about 5 years earlier. She had been a lifelong Lutheran for 60+ years and was an organist at her church, but got in some sort of dispute with the church over that so she quit it and joined the local Baptist church instead, and then got baptized. She joined the Baptist church out of lack of options, there's a total of four churches in that town, two ELCA, one Baptist and one Catholic (I didn't ask why she just didn't go to the other ELCA, though I'm going to assume it was probably another petty trivial reason.) So yeah that's what it'll take for an old to leave their church, not anything to do with politics or theology, lol.

...True. Ah, Amherst, the cultural context within which I am a 'Christian conservative'.


Yeah. We should also remember that ECUSA is one of the smaller 'classical' mainline churches, much smaller than UMC and ELCA and smaller than PCUSA. General statistics for mainline Protestants have much more UMC, ELCA, and PCUSA in their samples than ECUSA or UCC.


I am given to understand that Howard Dean went from the ECUSA to the UCC over a dispute involving diocesan use of a bike path, so yeah, not surprising in the slightest.

Where are the heavily Jewish rural areas? The few Jews who did live in rural areas probably moved there and came from a more urban and liberal background and probably brought their voting habits with them. I have a feeling though that Jews who lives in exurbs are significantly more Republican than Jews in general since they would move to the exurbs for the same reasons non-Jewish whites do (caring more about owning a big house than having a sane commute to work or good culture and amenities around, and fear of minorities.)

prove that.  The fact is that Orthodox Jews vote overwhelmingly Republican and are more likely to live in the big cities then their liberal Jewish counterparts increasing drastically their numbers.  Ditto with Russian Jews and other sub Jewish demographics that vote republican.

California actually tracks "Jewish" as an ethnicity for voter registration reasons, and your intuitions are correct.  Granted, California hardly has tons of hyper-ethnic Jews, but Jews in heavily Republican areas tend to lean Republican -- less so, but the heavily Dem tilt of Jews would be significant reduced were their distributions reflective of the urban/suburban/exurban/rural make-up of the U.S. as a whole.

I'm not sure whether the orthodox Jews really compensate for this nationwide effect.  I'm also not sure how the hell to characterize the places they live on the urban/suburban scale...

Something that came to me a few days ago while walking downtown was that fear of progressive taxation or "class warfare" is not necessarily the primary reason upper middle class Republicans vote that way because someone who makes $250k a year isn't going to see their lifestyle significantly threatened by having their taxes go up 3% or so (not saying it's not a factor for some people obviously.) But they might vote Republican if they feel their job and industry is threatened by Democratic policies. Industries like entertainment, fashion, tech and even banking don't feel threatened by Democrats. Industries like oil, health insurance, anything related to the military-industrial complex and industry/manufacturing in general with high unionization (since we're thinking of the management voting here) will feel threatened and thus tend to be more Republican.

Wealthy Jews are far more represented in the former categories than the latter.

What percentage of Jews are Orthodox? I was under the impression that they form a very small portion.

Eh well his point is valid if you look at the parts of NYC he's talking about, but this is similar to someone in a Cuban part of Miami arguing that urban Hispanics aren't likely to be Democrats. He doesn't seem to realize that Jews outside of NYC exist (and by this we're even including the rest of New York State, since places like Monsey and Kiryas Joel are obviously not urban.)

And of course this all ignores the fact that the Orthodox are a very very small percentage of the national Jewish population if you disregard his No True Scotsman argument.

Because they're educated and live in urban areas where the effectiveness and necessity of government is easier to see.

it's not just NY (maybe the "park" makes it rural)
Baltimore McCain won Park Heights.
Chicago McCain won West Rogers Park
you can also spot Orthodox presence on a Obama McCain map in Greater Miami, Greater Los Angeles, and Greater Cleveland.

Apparently, about 13 percent of Jews in the United States are Orthodox (http://www.jewishfederations.org/local_includes/downloads/7579.pdf), including 23 percent of Jewish children.

that is 10 years old I'm sure if accurate it changed at least 1 % point and children wise a quite a few.  (Orthodox children are clearly over 50% of the NY metro now)

Where in Greater Los Angeles?

This pretty much.

Which explains why we haven't seen the shift in voting habits that we have in other traditionally Democratic immigrant groups (namely Catholics).

While taken at face value it is correct, I don't really like that answer because it ignores the  historical background.  It would be similar to saying that Cuban Americans are more likely to vote for Republicans because they live in Florida.  Many Jewish immigrants had a strong influence in socialist and labor movement stretching back to the continent.  Their roots as a persecuted minority and their location in the urban cores all had and continue to have a strong influence on their mores and voting patterns.   The strength of the Nativist element, KKK and Bircher movements during periods of the GOP's history did not help matters either.  Voting patterns for some groups are not as changeable as many think. Therefore, the current GOP would be wise to pump the brakes on a lot of their anti-immigration rhetoric.

Russian Jews are settling heavily in suburbs, too, particularly in NJ. They're just following the traditional immigrant pattern.

Granted.
Jewish populations have traditionally been very progressive in regards to issues like labor and civil rights.
And as one of a few people who continually point out that the GOP wasn't all good in the 19th Century, I agree about the Nativist elements.  Arguably, the adoption of Know Nothing members into the GOP back in the Civil War Era, along with the draft, arguably made groups like German, Irish, and Polish Catholics staunch Democrats in the urban areas.  Jewish immigration into these urban areas, where the aforementioned immigrants were becoming influential in the urban machinery of the Democratic Party, naturally leaned Democratic after a few decades of settlement.
Arguably, Republican endorsements of movements like Women's Rights and Civil Rights for blacks probably kept the Jewish population less Democratic than their immigrant fellows.  I don't have the numbers, but from what I gathered about Jewish voting habits it seems as if though Jewish support for Democrats didn't become "die hard" (ie 75% or above) until about FDR when the ideological lines of the parties got more clear. The GOP becoming the party of right wing economic policies and the Democrats adopting the Civil Rights plank in 1948 and other clear statements of ideological intent probably made the Jews even more Democratic.
This is in contrast to say Catholics who voted Democratic from the 19th Century-mid 20th Century more out of disdain of the moneyed WASP elites than actual ideology (except maybe opposition to anti-immigrant policies and maybe Prohibition).

So yes, a good deal of historical perspective goes into this and I apologize for making it sound so simple.

The thing with claiming that orthodox Jews are a growing proportion of American Jewry is that, many secular Jews marry non-Jews.

So American Jewry is constantly spreading as it's being dilluted at the edges. I don't know how many Orthodox children grow up to be Reform adults, but obviously some of these Orthodox children will grow up and marry outside of the faith.

What kind of causation are we assuming here?

Not really true. Although it is certainly the case that more active members of liberal mainline churches tend to be less liberal than their clergy, still studies show that two-thirds of Presbyterians, and about three-quarters of Episcopalians and Congregationalists are pro-choice on abortion, and sizeable majorities are liberal on other social issues as well. Since the 1960s and probably earlier surveys were finding more liberal and progressive social views associated with these groups. They were the strongest supporters of desegregation in the 50s and 60s and then the strongest proponents of the ERA in the 70s. Most of the Republican PCUSA and ECUSA people I've come across (including those involved in churches) are actually quite liberal on social issues. Theologically, these denominations are heavily skewed towards the liberal position as well: Pew surveys have found that less than 20% of members of Episcopal and Congregational churches believe in the literal truth of the Bible, while 40% believe it has no supernatural inspiration at all. Other surveys have found that these views have existed since the 1950s. Truth is, these denominations have always been among the best-educated and most intellectual groups in America, and that naturally leads to more progressive attitudes toward theology and social issues.

As far as "churchgoers being more conservative" in many of these denominations that isn't really much of an issue. Take for instance the local big, liberal Methodist church in my area. There isn't a whole lot of pressure to attend church regularly, as a result only the old people who grew up in Methodism their whole life will still be there faithfully every week. Younger people, families, etc. whose views tend to be more progressive will drop by casually every month or so. I read that in the Congregationalist church (for the purpose of this discussion I will use this term rather than UCC because UCC contains many non-Congregationalists) only about one-fifth of members consider themselves weekly attenders. In fact, in this denomination, it is considered "regular" attendance if you go once a month. So you can't necessarily say that because only old people still go to church weekly in liberal denominations, therefore practicing members of these denominations are more conservative. The standards necessary to be a "practicing" member are much looser.

And for those who say that the liberal denominations are no longer Republican: the Pew research center carried out a nation-wide survey of religious groups, which, although not perfect, is about the best source that we have to use for determining the US's religious landscape (it's called the Religious Landscape Survey in fact). The survey found that only 31% of mainline Presbyterians, 44% of UCC members (presumably higher among Congregationalists), and 45% of Episcopalians voted for Kerry in 2004. This would indicate that PCUSA is staunchly Republican while the other two are more mixed theologically.

There's a difference between Orthodox Jews and what NY Jew is talking about, who are called Hasids or Haredi (sometimes "ultra-Orthodox" but that's kind of a silly term.) These are the those guys in the beards and black hats who live in their own segregated communes, speak Yiddish or Hebrew at home and aren't very integrated into society at all. Standard Orthodox are Jews that might be serious about keeping fast days and kosher laws and might even be socially conservative, but are still fairly integrated into society, don't dress any different than most people (at least out of synagogue) and don't vote in bloc 90+% for the candidate their rabbi tells them to. Joe Lieberman is actually one of these Orthodox. The types NY Jew is always talking about I'd be surprised if they were much more than 1% of the American Jewish population.

You are, sort of, right on everything, except the last - they are A LOT more than 1% of US Jewish population - and growing fast. NY City has a lot of them, as do certain other parts of the country - in Rockland county there are whole communities, where 2nd and 3rd generation US Jews speak English haltingly and with a heavy Yiddish accent. That you don't see them as much is because they are, normally, content to stay within their own ghettos. But they are quite numerous there.

Though, of course, you should not confuse the Hassid and the Haredi - these are not synonims. Well, Hassids are Haredi, but the other way around is not true.

The Haredi is a general lable for the ultra-Orthodox, but these are highly diverse. There are a bunch of Hassidic movements, each following a historical rabbincial dynasty (or a memory of a great rabbi, as the case may be w/ the Bratslaver and, these days, in part w/ the Lubavicher). Hassidim, of course, are heirs to a raidcal mystical movement that emerged in the 18th century, mostly in what's now Ukraine, Poland and Romania (the "Lithuanian"-origin Lubavicher are an exception - they are, historically, from what's now Belarus) , and for decades was considered quit UNorthodox.  There are quite a few Lithuanian yeshivas, which follow the anti-Hassidic Orthodox "misnaged" tradition. There are the Haredi Sephardic and other Oriental communities, that have their own distinct traditions. It cannot be assumed that on every given issue even the Bobover, Satmar and Lubavicher hassids would be in agreement between themselves - though, of course, on most "All-American" issues they are pretty much the same sort of the "Amish". But, to the extent there is a block voting, it is not an "all-Haredi" block vote - it is a matter of a given rabbi or a given Hassid community coordinating w/ the others.

There are several reasons why Jews are historically Dem. But these two are the most important, in my view:

1. Most US Jews are heirs to the secular tradition that emerged w/ the Jewish enlightenment in the 19th century Europe and flourished between the World Wars in and around Poland. When this was transplanted to the US soil, it was far to the left of the American mainstream. In the 1950s New York Jewish community being a "rightwinger" meant being a socialist - proper leftwingers were communist (or, may be, even card-carying Communist) :)) Even when the kids of the earstwhile "right-" and "left-wingers" moderated their views, they stayed, generally, within the truly and sincerely leftwing political discourse. Even a moderate Republican, such as Giuliani, in this discourse is frequently described as a "fascist" - and a good Jew simply doesn't vote for a fascist. Mainstream Republicans are simply too much in league w/ the Devil even to be considered.

2. Of course, American Jews have always been archetypal outsiders in a Christian nation. Even today, they are the largest community in the US that does not claim to be Christian. This has always made them a thorn in the eyes of the mainstream. And, of course, the Democratic Party has always had an outsider wing. To put it bluntly, one reason the Jews have always voted Dem are the BigSkyBobs of this world - as long as there are a lot of people around who believe that if you don't celebrate Christmas you are somehow evil, Jews have every reason to stay w/ the outsider party.  

The ultra-Orthodox are very unlikely to be responsible for most Jewish kids in the "NY metro". At least, if we think of the NY metro as the Tri-State area, which includes the Long Island and big chunks of New Jersey and Connecticut. With certain exceptions (e.g., Rockland), most suburban Jews are secular (even if they are Orthodox). Yes, they do have fewer kids, on average, but there are simply much too many of them.

Of course, if one starts to be more rigorous in the definition of who's a Jew, this might be viewed differently. There is quite a bit of intermarriage, many kids in secular families are not Halakhikally Jewish, so, by defining the Jewish community sufficiently narrowly, you might make the ultras the majority.

However, there is a reason why doing this is not very consistent w/ asking for any sort of government protection. If you go to the government, you have to follow the governmental definition of who's a Jew, whatever it might be. Halakha is NOT part of the US law - not any more than its Muslim equivalent, the Sharia (or, for that matter, than the cannons of the Catholic Church). I remember that case in the UK, when a government-supported Jewish school was forced to accept as a Jew somebody, who was not Jewish by the Halakhic tradition. That's what happens if you breach the wall between the Church and State: the Church (or, for that matter, the Synagogue) looses the ability to apply its own doctrine. It's a very dangerous path, which, if I were a believer (still more so, if I were a believer of a minority faith), I would have been very much afraid to take.   

Jews have been Democratic since FDR; this comes from a combination of anti-immigrant sentiment in the 20's in the GOP (the Klan was very bipartisan then instead of just the military arm of the southern Democrats), plus a Jewish tradition of supporting "the common good". In addition, as there was no "Moral Majority" revival with Jews, they ended up more socially liberal than Christians.

Beverly Hills

Sorry, where?  In my theoretical proportional redistribution of Jews?  None -- just if we took the current Jewish population and re-weighted the geographical distributions to be proportionate to the U.S.  Obviously that makes no sense, and I'm not arguing that living in the exurbs necessarily causes Jews to be Republican (that would be an ecological fallacy.)  It's more to do with pointing out that Jews aren't all that Democratic relative to the sort of areas they tend to live in, that's all.

many parts of Southern Brooklyn don't meet your criteria I know much more Orthodox jews who don't speak yiddish then I do who voted for Obama.  Flatbush is not hasidic but still went big for McCain

who said Ultra Orthodox (all Orthodox Jews are likley to vote for the Republican candidate this year)

This is the correct answer, especially the bolded reasons.  The Christian right really does scare the hell out of us and when you throw in the Republican party's anti-intellectualism/proud ignorance...well...that alone would explain it :P  

Btw, Clarence, most Jews in the U.S. are socially liberal.  

but the key question is why when your great great grandparents would be much more socially Conservative then the avg Americans great great grandparents.

They wouldn't necessarily, though. I don't see where a brace of Orthodox Jewish immigrants from, say, the Pinsk Marshes (where my ancestors on that side came from) a hundred years ago would be more 'conservative' on what would now or then be considered 'social issues' than most other groups in America, immigrant or otherwise, at that time.

Why is that? I would assume that there are many Orthoox Jews with the same sort of political affiliation as Sheldon Silver.

If we magically brought back everyone who's able to vote in America's today's ancestors who were voting age in 1850 I doubt there would be more 1 issue voters then the 1850 Eastern European Jewish vote.

I'm not even sure that Sheldon Silver voted for Obama in a secret ballot.  (there is no person who is even close to Sheldon Silver on anything in the Orthodox community because every single political decision that he makes stars with what's best politically for Shelly)

look at Teaneck's a "Modern" Orthodox community's voting record in the McCain Obama election also look at the modern Orthodox vote in the 5 towns area.

If we were to do the same based on the time of the first vote in the United States, it would have been the opposite. You chose the date before the massive secular cultural explosion that created modern secular Jewry. If you really want to base yourself on 1850 and isisted on people voting as their ancestor then, most Jews would simply not have voted in a goyisher election. Back at the time they would have considered it treason to go to a state-sponsored rabbinical academy to study Torah under the goyishe-approved teachers.

actually most jews who came to this country from 1880-1900 were Orthodox it was their children that went off the deep end.  There is no reason to assume that 1850 jews wouldn't have voted in American elections.  (anybody who doesn't know that Brooklyn had many sefardiem's opinion on many things is worthless anyway)

and trust me you have no clue as to what would have been considered treasonous (Voloizien had nothing to do with that)

Jews in Canada have begun to vote Conservative, so there's hope for the Republicans yet. As soon as they wake up and realize they should stop attacking immigrants, and instead embrace the conservative values that many minorities have. That's what the Tories have done here, and is what helped them win the last election.

here's the real reason (this could easily be expanded into a book) why jews vote democrat and are liberal
Most Jews who came to this country from 1880-1900 were Orthodox jews and due to many factors when they got here there young children left Orthodoxy and became more assimilated. To prove my point to you one of the classic reasons given why jews were so strongly involved in the labor movement was because of the exploiting in the sweatshops but what they don't focus on is why Jews originally joined the sweatshops as opposed to the factories like the Irish and Italians mostly did. The reason was because originally a jew could get a job in the sweatshops and keep the sabbath which would have been impossible to take off in a factory. Many Jews therefore voluntary went into the unregulated sweatshops to avoid working on sabbath. Many of the second generation kids grew up in this environment where keeping sabbath would mean you would lose your job. The fact that this was such a big issue at the time is clear from the fact that the 2 names America was referred to at the time was the "golden land" and the "trefa (non kosher) land" Using the argument of separation of church and state was one the main way that they tried to fight the blue laws. But to the jews who were arguing that what they really cared about was Sabbath not separation of church and state (as opposed to even as early the 40's-60's where that clearlly really was the issue )

The way this was finally won for the most part was a Jewish labor alliance pushing for the 5 day work week. Even the biggest labor leaders agreed that the only reason they were successful was because of Orthodox Jews (who by this time were no longer even close to the majority of all jews).

eventuality as Non Orthodox Jews abandoned Judaism the new set of "religious" principles that were adopted based on the problems of the 1st and 2nd generation American jews, and zero regards for context.

Well, an opinion of anybody, who does not know that many Jews came to the United States long past 1900 on matters of US Jewry is even more worthless, my dearest Anti-American Jew (I believe that sobriquet fits you better - in the sense that you hate American Jews, not that you hate Americans or Jews :)) ).

As for the Jews in 1850... Well, you seem to be truly unaware of the life of the Jews in Russian empire in the 1850s. Yes, European Jews had been the archetypal cultural separatists in Europe for a 1000 years. Compared to them today's Haredim or Amish in the US or ultra-conservative Arabs in Europe (or even in Saudi Arabia) are paragons of assimilationism into the general European culture. There would have been no Jews left in Europe otherwisem, our ancestors would have completely assimilated - that much I'd grant you.

However, that degree of cultural separatism has consequences .There is a reason those people did not migrate en masse during the 1850s (back then most Jewish migrants into the US were from the much more assimilated communities; they were German Jews, not Russian Jews, and they were economic, not cultural conservatives, if they were conservative at all). Most Russian Jews would have had trouble migrating. Many of them were completely out of the civilization around them - much more so than today's ultra-Orthodox. They had no common language with the surrounding population - they spoke neither Russian, nor Polish, nor Ukrainian, nor Lithuanian (I guess, they could get by w/ the German-speakers by speaking Yiddish). If one of them had a Jewish newspaper from Germany delivered, he was viewed as a dangerous radical. If Russia were to hold elections at the time (which, of course, was something completely impossible for reasons unrelated), they would not have been able to participate: they would not have been able to file for such an election, or read a ballot. In some places they would, probably, only learn that it was happening from that same German Jewish newspaper - the news would have traveled via Berlin (and the secular newspaper office there :) )

Now, of course, there were other Jews in Russia as well. But the bulk of those, whose offsrping would later migrate were that way - completely, utterly separated from the contemporary civilization, except through an occasional beating by a police officer and an extortion by the tax collector.  Without the initial secularization that started, albeit tentatively, back in Russia, they would not have gotten  to the coast, still less to America: they wouldn't have known how to board a train.

Of course, secularization did not necessarily mean abandonment of the (somewhat relaxed) Orthodoxy, but in many cases it did lead to it. And, of course, the resettlement across the ocean reinforced it. True, they might still arrive to Ellis island with a full beard, but that beard would be cut fairly short some time after arrival, and their children would never let it grow in the first place. And they would become not merely leftist, but radical leftist. As community representatives in San Francisco told a visiting Russian Jewish terrorist leader (Gershuni), "All Jews are ready for the Revolution" - this was not a mere figure of speach, but a true reflection of the sentiment in a substantial part of the Jewish community in the US.

But this secularization was continuing back in the old countries as well - that was the period of the great secular outburst in the Jewish community. The Nazis would later take care of that society so well, that it is hard to imagine today that it ever existed, but there was real secular Yiddishland back then, a non-Medieval Jewish world and a modern (non-Zionist) Jewish civilization. Remants of this civilization would also find its refuge across the ocean.

Where you are VERY WRONG, is in that the Jews moved left because they were clueless about the origins of the socialist concerns among them. Unlike you, they were back then very well aware what they were doing: they personally and deliberately struggled against the Orthodox barbarism. Some of them retained sentimental attachment to the old rituals and mores, albeit loyal more in their breach than in their execution; others (and there were many of them) sincerely and wholeheartedly hated and despised them. Some attached themselves to the new secular (often socialist) Yiddishkeit, which had grown from the abandonment of the Orthodoxy; others followed the Jewish Renaissance ideal of becoming Jewish citizens of America (or Poland, or Germany - Mendelssohn's old ideal of the "German citizens of the Mossaic faith" was more than a catchy slogan); still others went for the new Zionist (back then also mostly socialist) idea. Their political ideals commonly developed in the conscious opposition to the barbarism of the previous century. They became socialists and communists not because they forgot how their ancestors lived their lives - but because they remembered it all too well.

In any case, claimng that modern American Jewish political ideas should follow those of their ancestors from 1850 is like claiming that German Americans should follow the political ideas of their pre-Reformation ancestors from the 1500.

Iranian Jews, correct? I didn't know they were orthodox? Probably supporting heavyhanded US military action and wealthy to boot. I can see why they might vote Republican. Of course there's a lot more Jews that live in the Greater Los Angeles area and they vote Democrat.

Ok. Let's figure out what do we call Orthodox. Because there seems to be a HUGE confusion.

1. "Orthodox" may mean following the more traditional interpretation of Judaism. There is one sense in which most Jews in the world (though not in the US) are Orthodox - i.e., they are neither Conservative, Reform, or (god forbid :)) ) Reconstructionist. This is, basically, what pretty much all Israeli Jews are (with a few well-defined exceptions) - they might not go to a synagogue, but the synagogue they don't go to is Orthodox, as they don't even think of the existence of the others. If, for any reason, they need a rabbinical ruling, they'd go to an Orthodox rabbi.

2. In the US it is more common for religious Jews to follow Conservative (this movement first surged in Germany already quite a long time ago) or a Reform interpretation of the faith. These are all those modernist Jews who have women for rabbis, etc. Obviously, these aren't Orthodox in any definition. On the other hand, some truly secular Jews (including many Russians) don't even much think in those terms - they don't care enough about religion to try to modernize it. In that sense they stay Orthodox - the only rabbis they'd recognize as such are the Orthodox (not that they care much about the rabbis in the first place).

3. Then there are the Modern Orthodox, of varying degree of Orthodoxy. These are the Joe Liebermans of this world - though there is quite a bit of variety among them, both in terms of religiousity and in terms of integration into the modern world. There are also some fairly Orthodox non-European communities, that are traditional, but still non-Haredi. This is what a lot of the Bukharans, Georgians, etc. are - I presume it's also true of many Iranians, though I don't know them that well. They are provincial, very culturally conservative, to a degree isolated in a small-town provincial way, they follow their rabbis, who are, most definitely Orthodox, but they don't isolate themselves from the outside world more deliberately than, say, Catholic migrants from small-town Poland would.

4. Finally there are the Haredim, whom I've talked about: Hassidim, non-Hassidic "Lithuanians" (they don't like the word "misnaged", I believe, but that's what they, historically, are :)) ), some (not all) Sephardim and other Orientals (I prefer to keep the word "Serphard" for those, whose ancestors had been expelled from the Iberian peninsula; the rest, properly speaking, are Orientals). These are, basically, the Jewish Amish. Actually, given the numbers, I should, probably, say, the Amish are the Christian Haredim :))

Why is it that Russian Jews spoke Yiddish and not a Slavic language?

except I never said that many jews came after 1900 (my grandfather for example came post WWI)  what I did say is that a significant majority who came before 1900 were Orthodox and afterward a significant majority.  There is a very good case (more likely then not) to be made that around half of all jews who came to America after the Germans and  before the immigration bill were Orthodox.

Even many of the German Jews that came were originally Orthodox.  (proof is that many of the original synagogues they founded were Orthodox).

IN regards to the socialistic forces in Judaism they were always way in the minority that doesn't mean that they I don't think they excited but they were not more then 30% and that doesn't equal jews being the most left wing group ever (they also had less kids then other Jews did).  I was speaking for majority of jews today who are not decedents from socialistic jews on all sides.

in order to understand where something came from you have to understand it's history. 

You see this in portions of the Great Neck region on Long Island as well.  Kings Point and Northern portions of Great Neck, which have a large Iranian Jewish population swung strongly to the GOP after 9/11.  The rest of Great Neck, which also heavily Jewish, but has far fewer Iranian Jews (is a bit more Asian as well) has remained heavily Democratic.

no one is claiming that Republicans won the urban Jewish vote what I'm claiming is that due to the Jewish groups that vote republicans that are much more liklely to live in an urban setting then the Democrat voting jew, that the % of jews who voted for McCain in a urban setting is higher then jews who voted for McCain in a rural or semi rural one.

since you seem to think you know what your talking about what would you call the jewish shtetel of teaneck?
how come you leave out oberlanders and Yekkis for example

Because they came from Germany long ago. Luther and his German followers weren't too keen on the Jews. There is a touch of Slavic influence in Yiddish, but it's impressive how much the Jews of Eastern Europe avoided taking on the language of those around them. Yiddish was my grandmother's first language. I'm sad that I didn't pick up much from her. She and her friends would speak it when they didn't want the children to know what they were saying.

Hey, who cares about the Hungarians :)) You also could say I forgot the Tat-speaking "Mountain Jews" - I am sure, there is some community of them somewhere in NY area (I've only seen them in the old country, but NY has everything :)) ).  And, yes, I'll fess up, I've never heard of the Yekkes (ok, I googled it now - seems like I've seen quite a few when I lived on Fort Washington, just never knew the name), nor do I care about Teaneck: you, probably, have to drive to get there, like you have to get to most Jersey sh**tholes, and I do not drive, so I never went West from Washington Heights.

Listen, I am not claiming to be a specialist on every obscure subset of the ultra-Orthodox community in NY, with which I am not associated in any way (nor would I want to) - not any more than you claim to be a specialist on every branch of Jewish socialism, of which you seem to know quite little (not that I am a great authority on that either :)) ). I am, merely, a reasonably educated secular Russian Jew, who hasn't lived in NY in 10 years, who loves his Sholom Aleykhem and has read some other good books :)) You know, I didn't know about Yekkes, and you, probably, don't know about Gershuni and what he did in the US - in my view, it's as much a gap in your Jewish education as not knowing about Yekkes is in mine :)))

In any case, I wasn't writing the background stories for you - I am sure you have better knowledge of the "intra-ultra" intricacies than I would ever care to have. But we aren't the only ones talking here, and you weren't sharing any of this knowledge w/ the other posters here, which created confusion among the rest. So, I took it upon myself to elucidate a few points to our goyisher companions here, mostly so that everyone knows what means what. I was provoked by the post in which someone confused the Hassids and the Haredim - I never had any doubts that you were aware of the difference, but you chose not to correct the guy, and I did.  I would have more doubts about your knowledge of the secular Jewry - you seem to think it was just one big nasty error not worth learning about :)) - but on the Ultra-Orthodox in today's New York I will happily acknowledge your intellectual supremacy :)) It's just you seem to think of your knowledge as something esoteric, that you are unwilling to share, except in making bold but unclear statements that you hope nobody will ever be able to verify :))

One last point. 100% of Jews alive today (except, may be recent converts) descended from the Orthodox - there were no other Jews back 400 years ago (ok, let's forget the Karaites and other similar tangents, as they are not ancestors of the modern Jews). This also includes 100% of Socialist Jews today, or back in the 1930s. This is absolutely irrelevant to their views - as irrelevant as the observation that around year 1400 pretty much all other Europeans were Catholic or that the last pagans in Europe were the now uber-Catholic Lithuanians (they actually only converted around 1400). But that does not negate the fact, that later ancestors of most US Jews became secular (even if they formally remained Orthodox in some cases).  Nor does it negate the fact of an overwhelming popularity of left-wing ideas among, at least, Eastern European Jews in the US during the last century. Of course, the ultra-Orthodox were always there - locked in their self-established ghetto and their cultural barbarity. That Jews, both in the past and now (78% in 2010 voted for Obama, according to the only data there is), vote overwhelmingly for the Democratic party is NOT an error: it's a VERY conscious decision.

BTW, a disclaimer: As my ancestors never migrated to the US, I, actually, have no legacy of leftism, only of secularism. When I talk of American Jewish socialism I feel almost as much ironic sadness, as I feel when talking of the behatted Jewish Amish you seem to consider the only real Jews :)))

ag, if I haven't said this lately, you're a consistently fantastic poster.  Thanks for hanging around :)

I have to blush :))

Wouldn't most Jews today have significant Khazar ancestry? Then again I'd suppose they were basically absorbed into "the Orthodox" before 400 years ago.

Well before. Khazaria fell in the High Middle Ages.

Has anyone touched on the issue that German Jews tend to be more Pub?  That is certainly the case in Cincinnati, and I suspect generally true.

ag, you make an excellent point about how virtually all Jews in Russia were definitionally Orthodox because that's what it meant to be Jewish and part of the community you were bound to. Which means that the label is pretty meaningless when we make comparisons to how we live today, where in theory people have more choices (although NY Jew was born into his lifestyle and raised into it, the same way I was born into Conservative-trending-secular Judaism.)

I would wonder how many German Jews now are descended from the 1930s diaspora as opposed to the 1840s/1850s immigration, and how many of the latter have preserved an identity as German Jewish in the long term. So many of those smaller communities in places like Dixie have died out.

 

I doubt they think of themselves as German much these days of course, but they are still Jewish. I think the Jews in Cincinnati are from the earlier migration to a fair extent. In any event, they have been well assimilated into the local bourgeoise there for a long time.  Gradison (R) used to be a representative from there, who was Jewish.

Semi-related (http://www.jpr.org.uk/publications/publication.php?id=231) especially when context (namely which General Election the survey was conducted during, and also that it's a survey of a very middle class section of the population in a country where class tends to be a major factor in voting patterns) is remembered.

The stereotypical American secular Jew would love the ideal of the Lib Dems. The reality of the Lib Dems and the difference between secular American Jews and British Jews would explain why the LD share was so much lower than I expected.

I would be interested in your views as to how you consider Jews of the two nationalities to be different. I have never thought about that before. Granted the Tories these days have a more secular - and less Christian-centric - image than the Pubs do these days, but you are suggesting it is less about the image of the parties, and more about the differences between the two groups of Jews themselves.

Except that religion is not a static thing. Belief systems evolve over time. It is a major fallacy of any religion that claims to be the alpha and the omega.

I believe British Jews have long favored the Tories. I'm out of my depth on this, but Thatcher represented a Jewish constituency (not that it mattered that much which one she represented) and she liked Jewish businessmen for representing the business side of Toryism rather than genteel paternalism she loathed. You just didn't have the same history that led to Jewish identification with the Dems that you have in the U.S.

I feel I know very little about British Jews other than where they live and roughly how they vote. If I got anything wrong in the above paragraph someone will come along and correct it.

A lot of people do* but (and as the study shows) that's not exactly the case. Particularly relevant to the general discussion (?) in this thread are the (very) left-wing voting habits of secular Jews as a group. Essentially this is not an exclusively American phenomenon.

*For obvious reasons given the main internal electoral cleavages. The most noticeable people are the most noticeable people, after all.

If you look at Kinsey's report Orthodox jews were the least likley group to have homosexual relations and non Orthodox Jews (remember this was in the pre sexual revaluation days) were the least likley to have them then other non religious people.

Have you ever heard of the word "anachronism"? It's surprisingly reach in meaning. Google it.

what's your point Judaism's been an "anachronism" for the past 2,300 years?

Judaism has varied a lot during the past 2,300 years - so, with some notable exceptions, it hasn't been that anachronistic (hey, Hasidim didn't even exist 400 years ago - it's very much an 18th century phenomenon).

My point has more to do w/ your reasoning.

The true reason is that they're liberal.

the difference between a hasidic jew and and the avg Jew in Babylonia in 300 ACE is much smaller then the difference between the avg Orthodox Jew and the avg non Orthodox Jew today.  I doubt you could even know the reasons why Hasidiem were put in cherem with out looking it up.

Well, given how little we really know about life in Babylonia this is a very brave statement, based, primarily, on reconstruction of life in Babylonia from the present-day models :))) Which brings me back to the idea of anachronism :))

BTW, if you insist on using anachronistic arguments, you should recall that "traditional Jewish orthodox values" (circa 1800) involve what, according to the modern secular law, is pedophilia, child abuse and statutory rape. You are still arguing, these haven't changed? :)))

In Sweden I'd say Jews are generally on the political right, regardless of whether they're secular or not. Then again, the party they typically have been identified with (the People's Party) is a type  of party who's voters would be on the left in many other settings.

There has been a fair share of Social Democrat Jews in Sweden as well, of course.

That's something racist buy into that has been disproven with DNA testing.  I'm not suggesting you are a racist, just that you may be buying into racist propoganda.  cite (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khazars#Theory_of_Khazar_ancestry_of_Ashkenazi_Jews)