were jews republicans before 1928?

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In many cities - most famously New York - they formed the electoral and activist backbone of the Socialist Party.

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Those tended to be Eastern European Jews who came to America at the end of the 19th century.

Though they formed an overwhelming majority of the Jewish population very quickly. Those that weren't Socialists tended to be machine Democrats, of course.

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But none of the European romantic conservative movements showed any of the pure racial hate exhibited by the ideologies that grew from the grass roots socialism of western Europe (Nazism, Fascism, and such).

That grew from grassroots-to-astroturf populist nationalism - 'völkisch' in a German context, but you can see parallel tendencies elsewhere, even if not quite so stomach turning; you can even stretch it to Joseph Chamberlain in Britain, who had more in common with Karl Lueger than is entirely polite to mention - which was generally explicitly hostile to socialism as well.

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As an aside, Irving Howe is also worth a read on New York Jewish politics (culture, society, everything) during this period.