American Jews are not all the same ideologically or politically — they never have been. Rich or middle class, and even when very poor, Jews have always been more politically engaged than most other American groups to “civil rights” issues … because their history has prepped them to pay attention to all lurking dangers to themselves and to other national minorities as well.
Today they are overwhelmingly united in defending Israel, but that certainly doesn’t mean most have supported Netanyahu’s policies or Likud’s policies in recent years, and even less does it make them vulnerable to demagogery served up by MAGA Trumpsters or “Christian Zionists.” They know that “nationalism” in countries even where they are well embedded can turn on them quickly in tough times, as it did in virtually every European country at one time or another.
At the root of Jewish thought and tradition is a certain critical intelligence and almost tribal sensitivity to political danger that has kept them alive through centuries as they were banned and harassed in one emerging “nation state” after another.
The rise of fascism and the Holocaust in Europe led them to create Israel and adopt a “Never Again” attitude. It made them in general less cosmopolitan and more nationalist, but older reform Jewish Enlightenment traditions remain alive in the U.S. to a greater extent than in Israel itself.
Most American Jews are not so simple-minded as their non-Jewish neighbors are about many things, and they remain especially suspicious of Donald Trump’s “America First” populist demagogery.
www.haaretz.com
