I hear you. Liberal Jews have this problem of embracing those who screw us and screwing those who embrace us. When I was growing up in the Bronx, registering as a democrat was as sacrosanct as Bar/Bat Mitzvahs and circumcisions. Back then being a dem meant something, We have nothing to fear but fear itself, The buck stops here, Ask not what your country can do for you. My parents switched parties around the same time Pres Reagan did, and for the reason, they didn’t leave the party, the party left them.
But the truth is...it made a little bit of sense then, for Jews to be liberal. The arts, helping the poor, charity. Being the underdog and making common cause with other underdogs. Now that worldwide anti-Semitism is apparently staging an alarming comeback, amazingly, only a snippet more diffuse than before WW2 yet arguably far more dangerous now with the arming and sophistication of pan-Arabism, it makes absolutely no sense whatsoever, now, for Jews to be libs. Yet overwhelmingly, they are.
Jews never castigated FDR for refusing to bomb rail lines leading to the concentration camps. Instead, Jews identified with the more collectivist movement that the early union movement embodied. Jews embraced America, and despite their difficult times in early 20th century US, came to embrace the utopian part of the American dream. I am of course oversimplifying. I grew up in NJ, not far from where you grew up. Voting Republican, those rich white guys, was unthinkable.
My parents were hardcore Dems until they died. It was genetically engrained in them. Despite their relatively high level of education, they didn’t know that the Dem party was the party of the KKK. They didn’t know Lincoln (a great man by any measure) was a Republican. These facts did not register. To them, all Republicans were Barry Goldwater types who wouldn’t let them into their country clubs. Not that they played golf or even were members of any other country club. It was just a well developed habit pattern borne of utter ignorance of historical fact. It was all based on this weird mishmosh of “lore”. Tribal lore, is all I can call it. That evangelical Christians might try to convert people was a worse thing than Arabs trying to slaughter people, to slit their throats. Amazing. Someone talking to you, sure, with an agenda, maybe an agenda you reject yet can walk away from or ignore, that’s more threatening than someone with a gun up your nose ready to blow your brains out.
(American) Jews act out of a complete reverence for utopianism. The world should be perfect. The underdog should be given a chance. If the underdog robs me and beats me, it’s only because he’s still an underdog after all this time and we just have to keep trying to help them. I just haven’t done enough.