Posted on 09/28/2016 11:55:10 PM PDT by Mr. Mojo
There is grumbling in progressive circles over polls showing that Orthodox Jews will vote for Trump. Among non-Orthodox Jews, Hillary beats Trump by 66 to 23 percent. Among the Orthodox, Trump beats her 66 to 22 percent. In New York, Hillary scores 61 to 19 percent among Jews, but among Orthodox Jews, Trump wins 50% of the vote while Hillary lags at 21%.
It’s no wonder then that Jewish Democrats for Trump is largely targeting Orthodox Jewish voters.
Why Orthodox Jews? It might be tempting to attribute this support to Trump’s daughter having converted to Orthodox Judaism, but these same statistics were reflected in earlier elections.
This is as much about what Orthodox Jews aren’t as about what they are. The Jewish “area” that Trump supporters are focused on isn’t in Florida or New York. It’s Israel.
Trump’s ground game is more focused on Israel than on Florida because it’s the perfect place to find large numbers of political conservatives. The Israeli chapter of Republicans Abroad estimates that it may be able to turn up 300,000 voters in Israel. Some of them will be registered to vote in swing states.
Contrast that with Democrats Abroad, whose vote was cast by Bernie Sanders’ British brother, a BDS supporter and an opponent of Israel, linked to an extreme left-wing political organization.
There are five Republican offices open in Israel. But just as with Netanyahu’s speech, the Democrats aren’t even bothering to show up. And why would they? Israelis are more likely to lean to the right.
As one researcher said, “Israel is a red state and American Jews are a blue country.”
The election reflects that. But it also reflects something deeper. Nationally the election can be summed up as determining whether Americans want to be Americans or liberals. The same is true among Jews.
As Eve Stiglitz, the Orthodox founder of Jews Choose Trump, put it, this is the choice of more traditional and religious Jews who “put Judaism before their liberalism, whereas more secular Jews who are not as connected to Judaism or to Israel put liberalism before their Judaism.”
Some elections come down to policies and issues. Others delineate who you are.
Orthodox Jews and Israeli Jews are not confused about who they are or what their priorities should be. Israeli and Orthodox Jews are far more likely to identify with the right. American Jews with the left.
The left is a tiny 9% of the Israeli Jewish spectrum, but a whopping 49% of the American Jewish spectrum. 42% of American Jews believe having a sense of humor is an essential part of being Jewish. Only 9% of Israeli Jews believe in such an absurdity. That’s why the joke isn’t on them.
Israel has a chaotic political culture, but Israelis don’t take their cues from the likes of Sarah Silverman.
Traditional Jews value history and religion. Liberal Jews believe in neurotic humor and even more neurotic social justice. They also believe in Obama’s Iran nuke deal. That is why the joke is on them.
There are Jews working to build a future for their descendants. And there are other Jews sponsoring Muslim migrants. There are Jews who support Israel and Jews who support Iran.
Most of all there are Jews who are confident in their right to exist and Jews who aren’t.
As the Jewish New Year approaches, Israel’s Central Bureau of Statistics estimates that the country’s Jewish population has passed 6.4 million. The growth of Israel’s Jewish population stands in sharp contrast to the decline of America’s Jewish population. Jewish fertility rates are below replacement in the United States. Or at least they are in less religious communities. And that is what it’s all about.
A widely touted left-wing survey claims that American Jews are more pro-abortion than pro-Israel. Jewish demographics reflect that phenomenon. Israel has one of the healthiest birth rates in the free world. Many liberal American Jews are producing Planned Parenthood legacies Instead of children. In this week’s synagogue Bible reading, G-d exhorts the Jews, "I have set before you life and death, the blessing and the curse; therefore choose life, that you live, you and your descendants" (Deuteronomy 30:19). The choices for life and death have been made.
Israel will hold a majority of the world’s Jewish population. Even in America, a quarter of Jewish children live in Orthodox households. And children are the ultimate vote of confidence in the future.
Many liberal Jews were traumatized when the racist hate group Black Lives Matter endorsed BDS. They fear being locked out of progressive politics. They are right to be afraid. UK Labour’s purge of Jews is a sign of things to come. There is no future for Jews on the left except as collaborators in anti-Semitism.
Mainstream Jewish liberals were shocked by Obama’s embrace of anti-Semitic language in support of the Iran Deal. They were upset when Hillary Clinton and then Cory Booker backed the nuke sellout. To be on a Jew the left is to experience a constant stream of such betrayals and surprises. Remaining there will require confessing their Jewish privilege and apologizing for their very existence.
But that is what they have been doing, in one form or another, all along.
The FDR Jews chose the Democratic Party over the six million Jews who died in the Holocaust. Now the FDR Jew is passing into his last twilight. The irreconcilable contradictions of his existence are finally coming apart. The American Jewish community is slowly being divided. The center is vanishing. To remain on the left will require abandoning Israel and accepting anti-Semitism as normative.
And there will be many Jews on the left who will happily make that terrible bargain. You can already see them protesting outside synagogues, harassing Jewish charities who donate to Israel and defending the career anti-Semites of the left. The rest will pay tribute to their ethnic origins by sharing “Top 5 Jewish Things About Hillary” listicles and marveling at her name clumsily spelled out in Hebrew letters.
Why support Hillary? Because she is less anti-Israel than Bernie Sanders. Hillary may have been the first in her administration to call for an Islamic terrorist state inside Israel. Her email inbox may have been full of conspiracies against Israel. She may have been a fan of Max Blumenthal, whose hatred of Israel was deemed too extreme even by German Communists, and the self-described “designated yeller” at Israel’s Prime Minister Netanyahu. But her official views are less anti-Israel than those of Bernie Sanders.
Such lesser evil calculations and diminished expectations now define Jewish support for the Democrats.
Meanwhile Jews on the right have less reason and less need to compromise. Unlike the DNC, no one is booing Israel at the RNC. A new generation of Jews is breaking with the compromises of the old. Jewish Republicans feel no need to apologize to anyone and no need to compromise their Jewishness.
A few days ago, I attended the Republican Jewish Coalition dinner. A room filled with various subsections of the Jewish people had one thing in common. They were confident in the future.
The Jews of the right believe in their people. The Jews of the left believe in the left. The former are building a future. The latter are being entombed in their ideology of progressive despair.
Very interesting analysis. Thank you for posting.
Orthodox Jews are the only ones that don’t want to go to a concentration camp
Orthodox have more kids, right?
Oh yeah, a lot more.
Its no secret that American and European Jews are overwhelmingly liberal but Orthodox Jews are overwhelmingly conservative.
GOOD!!
As for as the non orthodox Jews voting heavily dem, what can you do?
They’re 2 percent of the population and MIGHT be important in FL. that’s it.
Good people, but misguided.
Thought NY JEWS WERE THE ONLY group that voted against delasio!!!
Doesn’t make sense.
The Hasidim have the most kids.
The problem with calling anyone with Jewish forebears, JEWS, is only the case in an Hitlerian sense. Secular Jews' religion is liberalism/Marxism/Socialism. They are less Jewish than Christians who only go to church at Easter and Christmas.
If you'd like to be on or off, please FR mail me.
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Should read "To be a Jew on the left..."
My wife’s aunt, who is Hasidic, makes the most strident anti-Obama person on this forum look like a piker! I’ve known this woman for probably 30 years, and I have never seen such venom towards an individual and political policies as I’ve seen when she talks about the current squatter in the People’s House.
I don’t dare ask her what she thinks of Hillary, though I can guess the answer.
So, yeah, it doesn’t surprise me one bit that Trump is winning the Orthodox and Hasidic Jewish vote big time.
There is no future for Jews on the left except as collaborators in anti-Semitism. ... Remaining there will require confessing their Jewish privilege and apologizing for their very existence.....To remain on the left will require abandoning Israel and accepting anti-Semitism as normative. And there will be many Jews on the left who will happily make that terrible bargain. You can already see them protesting outside synagogues, harassing Jewish charities who donate to Israel and defending the career anti-Semites of the left.
Amazingly.
Greenfield calls it. Auntie and other Leftists Jews who hate Jews who defend the faith, their own bloodline AND Israel are demonizing...*themselves.* That makes their "bargain" with the devil.
Tell me something I haven’t known for years and years and YEARS; PEASE! LOL
In a nutshell.
And if "America First" isn't a winning mantra for the majority of Americans of every stripe during this election, we no longer are a "nation," are we?
This is fine with 0bama, whose arrogant meme, "THAT'S NOT WHO WE ARE!" will truly have become fulfillment of the biggest riddle ever.
Exactly. Decades of institutional brainwashing to equate nationalism with Nazism and to embrace suicidal one-world-kumbayaism in all its forms has screwed with the heads of countless Americans (and Europeans). The odds of our culture making a recovery are very slim, at best.
Slim, and at that, the best we can hope for is an approximate 8 year semi-renaissance of "America" before the NWO globalist hell breaks loose.
At this rate of our traditions, culture AND identity as a nation are being obliterated by the Progs-in-Charge, all we'll become is a tribal "Out of One, many" The polar-opposite of E Pluribus Unum. Dived and conquered by design.
Back to 0bama's annoying, "THAT'S NOT WHO WE ARE" BS - has he EVER even been challenged on that statement with any specificity??
Ever notice that in 7+ years the punk has NEVER been called out by more than a single reporter at one time the way they used to pile on Bush or Reagan? Wait -- he was early on; Helen Thomas of all people did it.
Remember for her trouble Old Helen was punished and banished to the back of the room? She'd been in the front row since JFK. The media was predictably docile about it. Since then 0bama has NEVER been challenged by back-to-back follow up questions, having learned their "lesson."
Should Trump win, the press will pile on a dozen times for the same question.
It's nauseatingly trite. And nope, neither Hussein nor Hillary has ever been challenged on it. If they answered the challenge honestly, they'd say that "we (they) are out to destroy American nationalism with the ultimate intent of ushering in a one-world gov't. THAT'S who we are."
But when have they ever answered honestly about anything? About as often as they've been challenged by the MSM. Helen being sent to the back of the class probably dissuaded a few reporters from asking tough questions, but most of 'em weren't (and still aren't) inclined to challenge him anyway.
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