To be serious for a bit, I am Israeli by birth, American by happy accident.
Dual citizens like myself and/or ex-pats in Israel vote 85%+ Republican — so much so that Florida routinely tries to keep the absentee votes from Israel out.
The reasons are multiple:
Tradition is one.
But mainly I think American Jewish people are urban Yankees. And Urban Yankees vote Democrat.
There are other factors:
strident Christianity is bothersome to Reform Jews (and the Huckabee types make me want to puke),
the Republican party used to be very anti-Semitic and not particularly fond of Israel. “White Shoe Republicans” like James Baker, for example.
And Jews are descendants of an enslaved and persecuted people. We tend to identify with those in similar situations -— blacks of the last century, for example.
The concept of “tikum olam” makes Jewish people suckers for big ideas
And then there is history: the “Right” in Europe and especially Russia/Ukraine was violently anti-Semitic. The Communists, while in reality just as bad, promised good things and the end of persecution. Those fears came with immigrants over the ocean.
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But, yes, I see the tide shifting significantly. Orthodox Jewish people are overwhelmingly Republican. Conservative majority Republican. The ideas will trickle down and into Jewish culture.
It's a complex. Prior to the Enlightenment, religion was felt to be bound up with the sovereign. If your religion was different from his, that was a potential focal point for unrest and armed revolt. Many rulers winked at persecutions of minority sects for this reason. People of different religions weren't persecuted out of existence - they converted and were then left alone. That's how the Middle East, which was pantheistic, Christian and Jewish before Muhammad, gradually came to embrace Islam. Except during Hitler's reign of terror, Judaism wasn't uniquely persecuted.
Thanks for the insight!
Republicans were anti-Semtic? Can you give more info on that?