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 it 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 19th 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 20th 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 7th.
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.
