My Review of Batya Ungar-Sargon's "The Jews and the Left"

 Jews and Democrats: Time for a Divorce?

Last November I wrote that Jews were between a rock and a hard place in that both Democrats and Republicans have become more hostile to Jews. (See: https://shulmaven.blogspot.com/2025/11/american-jews-between-rock-and-hard.html ) Here polemicist Batya Ungar-Sargon argues that that is time for the Jews to divorce from the Democratic Party. Simply put the Left in America has become increasingly hostile to Jews; witness the Michigan senate primary win of Abdul El-Sayed, the near gubernatorial primary win of Francesca Hong in Wisconsin, and Peggy Flanagan’s win the Minnesota Senate primary. However, Ungar-Sargon does not suggest that Jews marry the Republican Party, but rather to vote strategically. As my late father of blessed memory constantly reminded me the criterion for a vote is whether or not a candidate would be good for the Jews.

 

Ungar-Sargon presents a brief history of the relationship of Jews and politics in America starting in colonial times. She notes that with George Washington’s letter to the Jewish congregation in Newport, Rhode Island in 1790 that Jews in America would be free to practice their religion. Aside from Grant’s Civil War order which was cancelled by President Lincoln there hasn’t been official discrimination against the Jews. Thus, in her mind Jews should not consider themselves a persecuted minority. This is especially true because Jews as a group have achieved huge success in “The Golden Land.”

 

A problem with the book is that she ignores the entire 19^th Century history and the whole history of private discrimination against Jews (restictions on club membership and property covenants) that existed from the beginning. She also ignores the rabid antisemitism of the Klan in the 1920’s and Father Coughlin in the 1930’s. She also ignores that in Europe and especially in Russia it was the Left that led the charge against the antisemitism of the Right.

 

To her the source of the bond between the Jews and the Democratic Party is a result of the labor movement in the early 20^th Century where Jewish immigrants were in the vanguard of the growing movement, especially after the Triangle Fire in 1911. (See: https://shulmaven.blogspot.com/2020/01/my-amazon-review-of-terry-golways-frank.html )  The deal was closed with the very pro-Labor Roosevelt Administration and Roosevelt’s opposition to Hitler.

 

It was an easy step from labor activism to civil rights activism in the 1950’s and 1960’s. Here Jews were in lockstep with the northern Democratic Party. However, once the civil rights movement moved away from equal opportunity to equal results and later to the DEI mentality of oppressor versus the oppressed Jews began to have second thoughts about the Democrats. This is especially because DEI treats Jews as oppressors, not the persecuted minority of old. In a nutshell, the Democratic Party abandoned the working class in favor of identity politics.

 

All of this has come to a boil with the virulent anti-Zionism of the Left after October 7^th. Here the Left is calling for the destruction of Israel as a Jewish state and thus condemning half the Jews in the world who happen to live in Israel to death. That is exactly what “from the river to the sea” means.

 

Although I have outlined several issues with Ungar-Sargon’s book, she makes a convincing case that the Democratic Party as it exists today is far from the best political home for Jews today. That said, Trump and the Republican Party do not make for a comfortable home. However, given current trends, in a post-Trump world the Republicans could very well offer a better option than Democrats. In the meantime, a trial separation from the Democrats is in order.