Top Jewish Americans ponder support for Obama

(Reuters) - Some prominent Jewish Americans are rethinking their support for President Barack Obama's 2012 re-election bid after he effectively called on Israel to give back territory it has occupied since 1967 to Palestinians. The backlash after Obama's keynote speech on the Middle East has Democratic Party operatives scrambling to mollify the Jewish community as the president prepares to seek a second term in the White House.

absolutely...I “had” a close gal pal there from when I lived down in Coral Gables 20 years ago

she was bonafide lefty Jewish gal with great hair and big hooters...head of local NOW for a while...lawyer...great lawyer

we were opposites but really were fond of one another...hell I still respect her and loved her wit and whatnot

but in 2004 just chatting on the phone...she went on and on about how she hated Bush and conservative Christians had to be kept in check and all that crapola and that besides that fear she only cared about Israel (I though wow..you are so misguided to be so smart?)

I asked her how could she say that after 9-11 and how many of her rights did Christians want besides abortion to take away snd that we sure helped Israel aplenty to be so fearsome to her..

Silence.

We ended the call frostily and haven't spoken since nor done Holiday season cards.

That about sums it up.

Jews are either like her and this insane logic over Christian Pogroms in the US or they are great stalwarts like Levin and several Jewish freepers.

I don't know when this happened. The first Jews ..English and French and Sephardi Jews who settled here...many in the antebellum South where they were landed gentry same as Protestants or early urban areas up north did not think so much outside the mainstream and agitate for so much humanist change.

I think...just musing....that the latter huge waves from Eastern Europe brought a destructive way of thinking with many of them. Some have shaken it off...some not.

I was just in Miami..after 20 years...even the beach seemed less Jewish than the old days.

Good lord at the pretty girls though..wow...whiplash for an old horndog like me

It is hard for those of us who have thinking and logical minds that question what is happening in this country to understand that for some people PARTY is the religion...it is the god...it is the savior...it must be upheld.

It seems (at least to me) that Democrats are much more reluctant to turn even Independent than are Republicans. My family would choke on a chicken bone before they ever voted anything other than Democrat. Jews have voted for Democrats since Roosevelt was President and helped in the rescue of the Jews from Hitler. They aren’t about to give up their party.

I don't know how many people realize this, but this bloc-vote approach has been the Democrat m.o. since at least the "redeemer" governments of the post-Reconstruction South. Just as today Fundamentalist Blacks (though I must confess to some doubt as to just how Fundamentalist Blacks are any more), Catholic Hispanics, and Jews (including even some Orthodox Jews) automatically vote for and support the Democrat party regardless of any and all considerations, from about 1877 on the majority of Southern whites were exactly the same way. It made no difference who the candidate was, whether he was left, right, center, none of the above, or an abomination, the Democrat would always receive the votes of the South. Most of the South didn't even have a Republican party--exactly like today's inner cities. As late as the 1950's the (for that time) Adlai Stevenson carried the "Bible Belt" because of its ancient, unthinking grudge against the Republican party. In fact, to this very day there are white Southern "yellow dog Democrats" who are still voting against Abraham Lincoln at every election. And neo-Confederate publications are still claiming that the Republican party was founded by Marxists and was "red from the beginning" even as they hail the original American "red," Thomas Jefferson, as their hero.

During most of this time the rural South was allied with Northern urban Irish Catholic Democrat machines against the rural people of the rest of the country, but they didn't care. They were Democrats and that's all that mattered. Urban Irish Catholics are still voting Democrat and remain the longest-lived Democrat voting bloc, spanning the time from the alliance with the "Solid South" to today's alliances with freaks.

I am proud and humbled to be able to say that I am the descendant of Southern Unionists who have been Republican since Lincoln and have never been defiled and polluted with the foulness of the Democrat party.

Ironically, those early Jewish settlers weren't known for their Orthodoxy and were sort of "proto-Reform" in many ways. Many of them intermarried and their descendants have melted into the non-Jewish population.

I think...just musing....that the latter huge waves from Eastern Europe brought a destructive way of thinking with many of them. Some have shaken it off...some not.

Eastern European Jewish immigration was a mixed bag. While many were Marxist radicals others were real Orthodox Jews--perhaps the first real Orthodox Jews to come to America.

Contrary to popular stereotype, the Eastern European 'Ashkenazim, not the Sefaradim, are the true "fundies" of Judaism. The Sefaradim were always highly assimilated, more conversant with modern notions, and religiously laxer. The Eastern European 'Ashkenazi Orthodox Jews were totally isolated from the outside world, fanatically strict, and untouched by modernity--almost Amish. Unfortunately when Jews of this background rebelled, they went all the way and became radicals. Sefaradim, being laxer, more easy-going, and more assimilated, never had to make this all or nothing choice. At any rate, the Eastern European 'Ashkenazim are among the greatest Jews in the world.

Three hundred years ago all Jews everywhere were members of autonomous, self-governing Theocratic communities under the civil authority of Theocratic rabbinic courts. It was the "enlightenment" that put an end to that. Personally, I'd like to see a restoration of the former system, but such a thing would rub a lot of "enlightenment"-influenced "conservatives" the wrong way.

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