While Peter Beinart writes about The Crisis of Zionism, the reality is that secular Judaism is the one in crisis. Both in Israel and in the US, Orthodox and traditional Jews are constituting an every increasing percentage of Jews. Its not just because they are having more children but it is also because of the attractiveness of traditional Judaism as opposed to secularism. Ted Belman
The latest numbers show that Obama’s national support among Jews is down to 64 percent. That puts Obama in line with stalwart vote-getters like Walter Mondale and Michael Dukakis. More significantly a Siena College poll shows that Jewish support for Obama in New York City has fallen to 51 percent.
Those numbers might seem strange until you read the latest study on the Jewish population in the city which finds that 40 percent of the city’s Jews are Orthodox—up from a third, ten years ago.
74 percent of all Jewish children in the city are Orthodox, a baby boom that will completely transform the city’s Jewish population. And that means the transformation of the Jewish vote. Within another decade, New York City will have an Orthodox majority; within a generation that majority will be so decisive as to define its political orientation. The end of the New York Jewish liberal is here.
As the New York Times disdainfully puts it, “Members of these Orthodox groups also have been known to be far more likely to adopt more conservative positions on matters like abortion, same-sex marriage and the Israeli approach to the Palestinians.”
The Siena College survey gives us a preview of what the new American Jewish vote will look like by studying the changing Jewish political attitudes of New York City today.
62 percent of New York City Jews believe that America is headed in the wrong direction. 34 percent rate Obama’s job performance as poor, tying for the number that rate him as good, while only 7 percent rate him as excellent.
46 percent would prefer to vote for someone other than Obama. 42 percent have a favorable view of Mitt Romney. 43 percent are planning to vote for Mitt Romney. 48 percent think that Romney would be better at addressing the deficit. 45 percent think that Romney would be better at improving the economy (versus 43 percent for Barack Obama).
New York City Jews are suddenly polling as more conservative than Protestants and only moderately more liberal than Catholics. There is no doubt that Obama’s poor performance has played its part, but the most significant element is simple demographics.
These numbers may seem strange to some, but they are why Congressman Bob Turner won the battle for Anthony Weiner’s Congressional seat and why Republican Russian-Jewish candidate Storobin defeated his Democratic challenger for a state senate seat. Democrats have responded by using gerrymandered districts to destroy as much of the Orthodox vote as possible, with the district juggling efforts of Judge Roanne Mann, a slimy Clinton appointee. But the temporary disenfranchisement of voters is not going to win them over. It is only going to further alienate them.
Orthodox Jewish neighborhoods in New York City are routinely divided into three or five districts, set aside for minority politicians who will reliably vote the Democratic Party line. When no amount of redistricting will do, then they are piled into a Super-Orthodox district. If any other group were subjected to a similar pattern of targeted disenfranchisement, it would be grounds for a Voting Rights action by the Justice Department. But these bigoted tactics can only slow down the inevitable transformation of New York City’s political landscape. They can’t stop it.
The Jewish Population Study records nearly 500,000 Orthodox Jews in the area and another 220,000 Russian Jews, groups that share conservative beliefs and values. While Russian Jews have been wedged into the district that is likely to be won by Charles Barron, a radical Democratic Party bigot who has made his feelings about Jews clear, many Orthodox Jews have been wedged into the district of Congresswoman Nydia Velazquez, who is not as vocal in her hostility, but who has also made her opposition to the Jewish State clear.
However, as the Orthodox Jewish population continues its dramatic increase, it will become impossible to turn them into uncounted votes imprisoned in districts set aside for African-American and Puerto Rican Democrats. And the day will come when not even the most aggressive gerrymandering schemes will prevent their votes from being counted.
The majority of Orthodox Jews in America live in the New York area and the transformation is being felt most keenly here. But in the long term it will be a national transformation that will fundamentally change what people regard as the political affiliation of Jewish voters.
Orthodox Jews have a birth rate that is three times higher than that of other Jews, Haredi and Hassidic Jews (often wrongly referred to as ultra-Orthodox), have 12 times as many children per household, and Modern Orthodox (who tend to be strongly pro-Israel) have 4 times as many children per household as Non-Orthodox households do. And so given time the American Jewish vote will start looking like the New York Jewish vote. And for the first time in a long time, that will be a good thing.
There are of course plenty of non-Orthodox Jewish conservatives. And there are Orthodox Jews who are not conservative. But the liberal establishment has been able to use the tilt of the Jewish vote to cement a politically liberal identity. That identity will become much harder to sustain with growing numbers of Jewish Republicans on the scene. It will lead to a political transformation for the Jewish community by removing the sense that voting Republican is a betrayal of a liberal communal identity.
Orthodox Jews will provide cover for Non-Orthodox Jews, who are hesitant about walking away from a communal identification with the Democratic Party, to switch their vote. And their pro-Israel positions (more than double that of the non-Orthodox) will end any hopes that J Street or Peter Beinart have of representing a Jewish anti-Israel majority.
Liberals have dramatically scaled up their attacks on Orthodox Jews, from a barrage of hostile media articles to attempts at infiltration by groups such as Uri L’Tzedek, but persecution has never been a match for the raw force of demographics. Smear campaigns, abuse articles and elitist sneering will not keep Orthodox children from being born, marrying and rejecting Democratic dogma.
These shifts will not happen overnight. The demographic trends will take a while to kick in, but they are already having an impact. The New York Jewish vote is a bellwether for the national Jewish vote. And the New York Jewish vote has made a difference before.
In 1946, Jewish voters shook the political landscape by electing Senator Jacob Javitz, the first Republican Senator from New York in 30 years. In 2046, a Republican Jewish base in New York may be capable of doing much more than that.
So procreation will save the Jews in 2012. No it will not. If only it were so easy!
The true story, is not the amazing fecundity of Orthodox Jews in NY, but rather the allergy to children that America’s elite has developed, especially the secular, liberal elite, that most Jews belong to. While America as a whole, is in good demographic shape compared to Europe, Japan, and even Canada, that is entirely thanks to the Hispanic and Asian immigrants, who still prefer having children over buying organic, free range steaks for their dogs.
4 years ago I spent 4 days at the national convention of the Reformed Movement. The people that I met were lovely and idealistic and worried. The most common lament that I heard, was not that their children had intermarried, or that their grandchildren are not Jewish, but rather that they will not have any grandchildren at all!
My own extended family has turned this disappearing act into an art form.
The majority of Jewish children in the worlds, are now in Israel. Arithmetic will make the American Jewish community increasingly irrelevant to the future of the Jewish people. And that is not just thanks to the religious community here in Israel. I have never met a healthy couple in Israel, who chose not to have children. I have never met a family, with just one child, by choice.
Even among married Russians who came on Aliya many years after their wedding, the typical family consists of one child born there… and then a second or third “last minute” child born in Israel, once they settled down.
?? ????!
Yidvocate Said:
The sooner these progressives under whatever name they use disappear the better. The ‘reform’ movement has imploded in its former headquarters, Cincinnati. The Orthodox (or true Judaism) community here is growing while the ‘reform’ are intermarrying or leaving the faith completely and assimilating. They have been raised in a liberal atmosphere which has no incentive to remain Jews.
In Israel the leftists are waging a war on Judaism and are trying to destroy the country’s Jewish character by bringing non Jewish Russians and allowing an infestation of Arab Sudanese and Eritreans to enter the country and pose a danger to Jews. These Antisemitic non Jews pose a danger and are turning Israel into a ghetto. While they are disappearing slowly as religious Jews increase, the erev rav leftists want to drag everyone down as they go down into the ash heap of history.
I am taking it that Bill is writing off all of these Jews in America. Why would you do that Bill except from a totally pessimistic perspective, and pessimistic about Jews, and how their ideas may change. And you leave out of this the main thing which is the role of leadership. There is an unfilled crisis of leadership inside American Jews and always has been. Your only answer Bill is the Republican Party. That is no answer at all. I batter my brains out here raising point after point, for example that the Greenfield article misses out on the issue of TIME and on the issue of potential leaps caused by the economic crisis in capitalism, BUT IT SEEMS I AM BEING STUDIOUSLY SHUT OUT. That however is your problem not mine.
If history is any guide, secular, Reform, Conservative, Reconstructionist and Egalitarian Judaism are destined for the dustbin of history as only authentic Torah Judaism has stood the test of time.
Jews cannot wait this long:
This is the problem with Greenfield and Jewish leaders like him. He is not aware and indeed is totally opposed to the analysis made by Leon Trotsky of the developments in world capitalism from, to pick a date, 1930 onwards.
Thus Greenfield is actually preparing a trap in his writing and thinking for Jews not only in America, but internationally and above all in Israel.
Inside the space of a year the situation for Jews and Israel has worsened and Israel is thrown into a far greater danger inside one year. And these dangers are accelerating
One of the basic problems that Greenfield leaves out above is that the US is no longer competitive on the world capitalist market, and even more so European countries are not competitive on the world market.
Hitler was coasting along as a small figure in German politics in the 1920s, but as a rather large figure in extreme right wing politics in the same period, but a,ll that changed WITH GREAT SPEED as the conditions of mass unemployment followed the Wall Street Crash of 1929.
Antisemitism which was clearly stated in Mein Kamph inside a very short time suddenly became a big force in German politics and the Nazis of Hitler were barely able to keep up with their new popularity.
All of that Greenfield leaves out of his estimation of Jews in America today.
Also greenfield brings this issue of American Party politics into the Jewish issue and I am not at all clear what exactly he is bringing in, because he is fuzzy on key issues.
The Republican Party and groups like Breitbart are obviously anti US Trade Union and they are not at all clear on what is the purpose of trade unions, and they do not distinguish between Union membership and Union leadership.
The Republican Party of Reagan , I believe, was giving arms to the Iranian Khomeini Fascists.
Nixon, as well as Kennedy, orchestrated the war against the Vietnamese, but it was the Vietnamese and not the Americans who intervened to stop the murdering of the way out stalinist sect of Khmer Rouge from carrying on.
it was McCain who joined with Clinton in accelerating the war on the Serbs.
The Republicans seem to be more true to American tradition, especially to the First Amendment and this is reflected in Breitbart, and also to preserving the power of Congress, while Obama is moving in an American Fascist direction, over both Libya and the recent refugee issue. He seems “progressive” but is actually Populist Fascist. (Not yet a Fascist but weakening the basic structures of the American democratic state whichmakes Fascism possible)
So I really do reject that Jews of whatever religious persuasion should choose between these two.
What therefore for Jews in America to do.
One principle to really fight for is that Jews in America are both authentic citizens of America and also of Israel. This is the basis of everthing and it places at the very front of all discussions in America by all Jews in America that Jonathon Pollard be freed and the position accepted by the US that Polard only did his duty, to Israel. It was the US who were the traitors to their Constitution values.