they were wrong. it took a long time for many Southern conservatives to leave the Democrat party…..but they did it. If someone supports a party that is run by nutroots that have an antisimitic tinge, and a party that regulary criticizes Israel, one has to wonder at what point will they realize they are not even wanted.

This is not my area of history at all, but as I understand it, American Jews were big in the Civil Rights battles of the 1960’s, so were Barry Goldwater (not a Jew) and Charleton Heston for that matter. But since that time, Jews have voted disproportianately for Democrats.

It seems to me they need to realize what we all have realized. Even the Dem candidates of the 60’s were much different than the presend Dem leaders. In fact, if Bill Clinton ran today under another name, he would be trounced in a primary as being way to conservative.

If the majority of Jews want to vote for people who disdain religion, success, and Zionism, than that is their business. I say you can tell people what you stand for, but if they are not willing to listen, then it is time to move to more fertile ground.

just get out of here

Traditionally it is passed on from the mother but some denominations now include patrilenal decent. But all these surveys are those who self-identify as Jews regardles of their Jewish legal status - which means it excludes some that the strictest would consider Jews and includes some they wouldn’t. Yet another problem with using generalized groups to drive political strategy.

Harding received over 40% of the Jewish vote. Since then, no Republican candidate has broken 40 (although a few came within five points).

Reagan got 39 in 1980
Nixon got 35 in 1972
Ike got 36

But in the rest of the elections it was under 30 mainly

http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/US-Israel/jewvote.html

look at the blacks in our party, there are quite a few who are real intellectual leaders, and we always have Jackie Mason

because the attachment of many Jews, especially the less religious ones, to political liberalism did not come about because of FDR or any other single president. After all, why did they favor FDR in the first place? It wasn’t a sudden epiphany. The development began much longer ago and involved greater political and religious events than the 1930’s in America.

right now, I’ll add that there is a Rashi interpretation that complements your Midrashic teaching. It says in Exodus that when the Jews went up out of Egypt, they went up “armed.” But the root of the word “armed” also relates to the word for one-fifth. Rashi reasoned that the additional meaning of the text was that only one-fifth of the Jews left Egypt because the rest were too spiritually degraded to leave. (I get this from the Stone edition Chumash, which isn’t with me right now or I’d give you the page number. I’m no Rashi scholar, although I wouldn’t mind having that knowledge!)

As for the rest of what you say, I would argue that the French Revolution created something new in politics, and changed political involvement from what it had been before, at least for the Left. It was, after all, the birth of the modern Left. Whereas before, for instance, certain things in human nature and society were seen as ever-present - poverty is one example - the revolutionaries sought to remake society from the ground up, wipe it clean and redraw it. This trend continues to this day, with those on the Left telling us that we can eradicate, not just alleviate, poverty, or homelessness, or any other suffering. So to have left Judaism and assimilated at the time of the French Revolution was to open oneself to a different kind of social belief and political activity than to have assimilated in, say, the Spain into which Maimonides was born. (Furthermore, Maimonides’s Spain did not require Jews to renounce their traditional beliefs and customs in order to participate in the Moorish government. Likewise for the Ottomons (if I remember correctly). Whereas the Leftism that came out of the French Revolution not only required assimilation but actual hostility toward religion itself.)

I can’t address your 2nd comment right now, unfortunately. My guess is that our disagreements may stem from a larger religious disagreement. My sympathies lie with the orthodox, and I tend to resist certain kinds of statements about the “evolution” of Jewish thought, while, of course, freely acknowledging that change has certainly occurred (and I even disagree with parts of it). As an orthodox friend of mine once remarked to me in jest, “Of course, it’s very obvious that Moses was a black hatter.” (I do not want to presume to know where your religious sympathies lie - if indeed they lie with a particular denomination.)

Finally, I would be interested in knowing your sources. For instance, I take much of what I say about the French Revolution from Arendt’s work, “On Revolution,” as well as from the works of others (de Tocqueville, Burke, etc.). As for my knowledge of Jewish history before that, I can’t name any one source, and it’s spotty, anyway.

Let me know, especially regarding books on Jewish history you might recommend - either here or by email. Thanks.