Once there was a significant Jewish population in America, it was concentrated in large cities. These large cities like New York were often dominated by Democratic machine politics. New York in the 20s was probably over a quarter Jewish, so it would make sense that Jews were still more likely to be Democrats prior to becoming a solidly Democratic group.
It's important to remember though that politics was less polarized with Republicans being the right wing party and Democrats being the left wing party. There were many urban progressives in the Republican Party and many redneck conservatives in the Democratic Party. Ideologically, Jews were largely on the left side of the spectrum, but that could lead them to support Republicans like Hazen Pingree or Teddy Roosevelt.
Considering that Democrats started the KKK, as well as fiscal conservatism (at least as a stereotype), I would think that Jews might have been more Republican prior to 1932 and the New Deal. Of course, a lot of the social reforms that many Republicans advocated prior to that could have been seen as targeting Jews along with Catholics, so I could see them leaning Democrat prior to that. However, I do remember reading somewhere that a lot of the German Jewish immigrants tended to lean Republican (along with the German Protestants, while the German Catholics leaned Democrat.) Of course, that can't be used to generalize about all Jews, though.
I'm assuming you mean that the stereotype is that Jews are greedy so they are and were fiscally conservative politically. Could you please confine your arguments based on fixed ignorant stereotypes to the political parties and not religious/ethnic groups? Thanks.
