The Jewish Vote 2020 by Ruderman Family Foundation

THE JEWISH VOTE 2020: MORE EMPOWERED THAN POWERFUL By Prof. Gil Troy and the Ruderman Family Foundation

THE JEWISH VOTE 2020: MORE EMPOWERED THAN POWERFUL The American Jewish Community in the United States Presidential Election

By: Prof. Gil Troy and The Ruderman Family Foundation Edited by: Debby Stern Graphic Design: Studio 02 Printing House: Edery, Modi’in

www.rudermanfoundation.org

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The Ruderman Family Foundation Eli Horovitz 12, Rehovot 7608801

THE JEWISH VOTE 2020: MORE EMPOWERED THAN POWERFUL By Prof. Gil Troy and the Ruderman Family Foundation January 2020

Foreword by Shira and Jay Ruderman “The State of Israel seems to owe its very existence to the American Jewish vote.” Attributed to Richard Dawkins, this quote symbolizes the political power of the American Jewish community in the United States. As we approach the 2020 presidential elections in the United States, questions are surfacing about the importance of the Jewish vote in the broader context of the relationship between American Jewry and Israel. The relationship between the communities has become more complex in recent years. While the majority of American Jews remain pro-Israel, they are also becoming much more critical of Israel’s policies, governments, social policies and religious practices. The impact of changing perceptions Among American Jewry is explored in this report which provides a closer understanding into the voting patterns of American Jews and their support of pro-Israel candidates. By providing a closer look this report breaks down the discourse and misconceptions around the Jewish vote, what is important to American Jews in political candidates and why they vote. The Ruderman Family Foundation has worked in the past decade to enhance the relationship between the American Jewish community and Israel. An important facet of this relationship is Jewish involvement and importance within the American political system. With the US presidential elections coming closer and American Jewish connection with Israel remaining strong, this report sheds light on some of the questions concerning the American Jewish vote and its impact on the relationship between American Jewry and Israel.

Jay Ruderman

Shira Ruderman

President

Director

Executive Summary The 2020 presidential campaign is already emerging as yet another watershed seemingly dividing pro-Trump Israeli Jews from anti-Trump American Jews. Talk of this split emphasizes the growing perception that most American Jews are becoming more distant from Israel— whereas, in fact, they remain pro-Israel. It highlights the widespread impression among some Jews and non-Jews that American Jews are single-issue voters, always voting for the most pro-Israel candidate—whereas in the voting booth most American Jews are actually more pro-choice and anti-Trump than pro-Israel. And it allows us to see that the real questions about “the Jewish vote” do not revolve around the negligible impact Jews have on the final results every Election Day. Analyzing whom Jews vote for tells us more about why they vote than about what their vote achieves. It illuminates the ongoing and outsized role Jews play in the American political process—more empowered than all-powerful—as well as the ongoing and outsized role American politics plays in many American Jews’ identity, with many rooting their liberal politics in their Jewish heritage. In Jewish terms, the 2016 Presidential campaign stood out, with Jewish issues proving to be more central than in perhaps any other campaign in American history. It should have been a high point of Jewish pride. Jews featured prominently in both campaigns, both major party nominees had Jewish sons-in-law, and as usual both squabbled over who was more pro-Israel. Instead, 2016 became a sustained moment of fear as spurts of Jew-hatred clouded the campaign. That anti-Semitism reinforced the disdain most American Jews had for Donald Trump. But 2016 reinforced another fascinating phenomenon: Orthodox Jews were overwhelmingly propelled to support Trump due to his pro-Israel policies. At the same time, more and more American Jews reasoned backwards, assuming that their favorite politician’s pro-Israel policy was the best policy for Israel. For many, that meant that Hillary Clinton’s pro-Israel stance, like Obama’s, acted not as a propeller but as a prop, reinforcing a pre-existing political bond. This position paper is subtitled “More Empowered than Powerful” because it highlights American Jewry’s deep engagement in the American political process—and the centrality of that process to American Jewish identity. The paper is divided into three parts. Part I—“How Do Jews Do Politics during the Presidential Campaign?”—looks at Jewish voting and giving patterns. While viewing American Jewish politics as an expression of identity more than a vehicle of great impact, it offers the acronym POWER to summarize the impressive way Jews Punch far above their weight politically thanks to Older, Wealthier, Educated voters in relevant Regions. Moreover, two headlines from the previous position paper1 remain. Although it is hard to prove authoritatively, Jews contribute as much as 50 percent of the unregulated “soft” campaign funds Democrats collect from big donors. Wealthy Jewish donors have a big

role in Republican fundraising too, although that is related to individuals, rather than a community-wide phenomena. At the same time, sophisticated estimates of Jewish voting patterns show sky-high turnout, sometimes as high as 95 percent in swing-state metropolitan areas with large Jewish communities such as Detroit. Jews should not apologize for the disproportionate generosity, community-mindedness, and political engagement of so many of their co-religionists. If anti-Semites spin those admirable qualities into dark conspiracies, shame on the accusers, not the accused. Part II explores the history of Jewish liberalism in America and suggests that while voting Democratic is often considered as central to the American Jewish inheritance as an inspirational immigration story, silver candlesticks, or Grandma’s matzah ball recipe, it evolved in three stages. Eastern European immigrants and their children—“Bourgeois Bolsheviks”—came to the New World with dreams of success but were still shaped by Eastern Europe’s Communist and labor union traditions. The next generation, “Yuppies with a Conscience,” remembered their parents’ struggles, thanked Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal for giving their families a new lease on life, and voted Democratic accordingly. Many of them were anxious to be like everyone else in public and increasingly diluted their traditional practices privately at home. Nevertheless, when they or their people were under attack, they mobilized. Today, many Jews live like Yuppies and vote like hipsters. While they have a social conscience they associate with their Judaism and the phrase tikkun olam, they are increasingly disconnected from their immigrant past and Jewish tradition. They are openspirited “Freedom-from-ers”—deeply, proudly American, but very decidedly Not-Christians. They have inherited from their understanding of their past and absorbed from postmodern culture a fear of restrictions, commitments, and norms imposed from the outside, especially by government or religion. To understand this process, it helps to understand the fears that united American Jews, from the czars to the bosses to Donald Trump and the Evangelicals today. At the core of American Jewish identity is the affirmation “I am not Christian.” Thus, American Jews protect their Jewish selves by pressing the government to champion individualism and to remain aloof from “religious matters,” while many Israeli Jews affirm their Jewish selves by pressing the government to champion Jewish communalism and become enmeshed in “religious matters.” Finally, Part III, “Jewish Fears and Furies in 2016 and 2020,” examines the ugly anti-Semitism that coursed through the 2016 campaign, the ongoing debate about Barack Obama’s and Donald Trump’s policies toward America, the Jews, and Israel, and some of the top items on the agenda as the 2020 campaign develops. Thinking of King David’s focus on sovereignty and the prophet Isaiah’s focus on justice, one could characterize the small, committed minority of pro-Trumpers as Davidian—putting

their pro-Israel Jewish patriotism first—and the outraged Jewish majority of anti-Trumpers as Isaiahan—with their fury against Trump reinforcing their already-deeply-baked-in universalistic and social justice instincts. A closer look identifies six distinct groups among Jews. There is a small group of Jewish Never Trumpers, Jewish Republicans who detest Donald Trump. More typical among GOPJews are Orthodox Trumpers, or Always Israelites. Most are Orthodox in both senses of the word: Orthodox Jews who support Donald Trump wholeheartedly and consistently. Finally, there is a small group of Still Republicans. Despite some concerns about Trump, culturally and economically they are still Republicans. The anti-Trumpers are divided into three groups: Herzl Jews, Harassed Jews, and Hostile “AsaJew” Jews. Herzl Jews are proud liberal Jews who, as good Democrats and good Jews, hate Trump—as well as most Republicans—and love Israel. More numerous than these Herzl Jews are Harassed Jews, who think they have outgrown Judaism, beyond some Holocaust consciousness as a fundamental building block of whatever Jewish solidarity they feel. Holocaust imagery and nostalgia were weaponized against them during the 2016 campaign—as they are against most modern victims of anti-Semitism; though still half-hearted and wary of the label “Jewish,” they were defined as Jews by their enemies. These people express hatred for Trump as both an American and a Jewish value statement. Finally, a small but loud minority of Hostile Jews who hate Trump and hate “the occupation” follow their fury into a true hostility toward Israel and Zionism that also feeds modern leftwing anti-Semitism. The British novelist and Man Booker Prize winner Howard Jacobson characterized these “AsaJews” as people with little connection to Judaism who only assert their Jewish heritage to give themselves some sort of standing while seeming brave by denouncing Israel. Israelis would be amused to hear that most American Jews define Judaism as inherently liberal. Since 1977, Israelis have elected more right-wing governments than left-wing ones, and many feel betrayed by Progressives. American Orthodox and traditional Jews also find the Judaism-is-liberalism equation amusing, at times even infuriating, because in an everpolarized America, they are increasingly conservative politically as well as religiously. Israelis would be fascinated to learn that many American Jews locate the Promised Land in North America, not the Middle East. They would be distressed to hear that American Jews rarely vote with Israel in mind and usually prioritize American issues. They complain again and again about the many liberal American Jews who refuse to thank President Trump for recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, for validating Israel’s Golan Heights annexation, for recognizing the settlements as legal, or for pressuring two of Israel’s most hostile neighbors—the Palestinians and Iran. The liberal-Jewish-Democratic connection has grown stronger, not weaker, in the Age of Trump. America’s Jews are mostly “blue,” and highly enraged and engaged politically. Despite some claims, that doesn’t make them un-American; it is simply that the blue field of their

red, white, and blue identity is the largest, strongest, and deepest. Similarly, it doesn’t make them anti-Israel, but merely more enthusiastic about some aspects of Israel than others. This, then, is the story of the American Jewish vote—a story of contradictions and confusions, of frustration for the right and inspiration for the left, a story, ultimately, about cultural identity and shared fears more than political stances or personalities. It is a story that is often reported as yet another blow to the unity of the Jewish people and the America-Israel alliance, but actually reflects Jews’ remarkable solidarity and helps explain this ongoing friendship between the world’s largest democracy and one of its smallest. Many of the “why-do-Jews-vote-liberal-hate-Trump-and-confuse-Judaism-with-liberalism” questions are simplistic and static. They treat Jews, liberalism, and the Democratic Party as one-dimensional and unchanging. Beyond appreciating the diversity of views within the various communities and ideologies, we need to understand the dynamics as more complex. Liberalism isn’t a suit that Jews wear because “it fits.” Part of the reason why American liberalism and American Judaism fit so well together is that Jews helped customize both to mesh the two together. The history of the Jews in America is ultimately about the historical impact of the Jews on America—and the historical impact of America on the Jews—individually and collectively. There is a Jewish vote—a solid, stable, liberal Democratic majority, usually in the 70-percent range in presidential elections. It rarely affects the national outcome but it does reflect the American Jewish mentality. In so many ways, the liberal Democratic Jews who constitute the Jewish vote are living and expressing the new Jewish consensus: ultimately, they are more pro-choice than pro-Israel, anti-Trump and anti-Bibi but not anti-Israel, and more focused on domestic concerns than on international affairs. In voting this way, American Jews are following a script written for them decades ago, when the poet Emma Lazarus welcomed them and so many others of “your tired, your poor/ Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.” Some view this as the American Jews’ corrupt bargain and great betrayal of their people. Most American Jews toast it as the product of their golden opportunity. More empowered than all-powerful, after thousands of years of suffering, once-persecuted Jews can now exercise their national responsibility freely as proud—and ever more normal—Americans.

Preface The 2020 presidential campaign is already emerging as yet another watershed seemingly dividing Israeli Jews from American Jews. We are told that Israelis are dumbfounded by the American Jewish hatred for Donald Trump. He moved the US Embassy to Jerusalem. He scotched Barack Obama’s dangerous Iran deal. He recognized the settlements as legal. He stands up to Palestinians, “they” say. How can you not vote for him? Where’s your loyalty to the Jewish state? And American Jews are reportedly equally dumbfounded by the Israeli love for Donald Trump. How dare you? “they” say. He encourages anti-Semitism, appeals to anti-Semites, and is anti-Semitic himself. Besides, his crass, vulgar demagoguery makes him a disaster for the country and a threat to the world. How could Israel be one of the few countries in the world that approves of him, and how could I possibly vote for him? The conversation sometimes degenerates to Israelis admitting, “I’d rather have a pro-Israel meshugana like Trump than an anti-Israel mensch like Obama.” More frequently, however, in our age of all-or-nothing support of politicians, Israelis praise Trump as unreservedly as anti-Trump Jews condemn him. Pro-Trump Israelis express few moral qualms about his leadership—after all, “he’s pro-Israel”—although the Syria turnaround was unnerving. Anti-Trumpers cannot even thank him for fulfilling a forty-year-old bipartisan promise to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. Of course, communities are complex, not caricatures. Some American Jews—especially 71 percent of Orthodox Jews as of September 20172—support Donald Trump because of his dramatic pro-Israel moves and statements. And some Israelis share most American Jews’ disdain for Trump’s demagoguery, xenophobia, and seemingly anti-Semitic dog whistling. Still, even if overstated, this clash is instructive. It emphasizes the growing perception in many circle, including endless media articles dedicated to the issue, that most American Jews are becoming more distant from Israel—even though it is not true. It highlights the widespread impressions among some Israeli Jews and American non-Jews that American Jews are single-issue voters, always voting for the most pro-Israel candidate—even though that has rarely been true over the decades. And it allows us to see that the real questions about “the Jewish vote” do not revolve around the negligible impact Jews have on the final results every Election Day. Analyzing whom Jews vote for tells us more about why they vote than about what their vote achieves. It illuminates the ongoing and outsized role Jews play in the American political process, as well as the ongoing and outsized role American politics plays in many American Jews’ identity. A joke from the 2016 campaign captures this identity dynamic crudely but cleverly, suggesting that the real drift among Jewish Democrats hasn’t been away from Israel, but from Judaism itself: Question: What’s the difference between Donald Trump and a liberal Jew? Answer: Trump has Jewish grandchildren.

PART I:

How Do Jews Do Politics during the Presidential Campaign? The Jewish Vote Is about Identity More than Impact, but There Is Some Impact Throughout the 2016 presidential campaign, “the Jewish vote” once again attracted a lot of attention without affecting the final outcome much. But in Jewish terms, 2016 stood out. Jewish issues proved to be more central than in perhaps any other campaign in American history. Even as the presidential season proved yet again just how Americanized American Jews were, spurts of Jew-hatred clouded the campaign. Still, in an election fight so hard to forecast nearly every pollster got it wrong, there was one easy prediction. It was clear that come Inauguration Day 2017, as the joke emphasized, the new president would have a Jewish son-in-law, the first Jew ever to belong to the First Family. A close look at the Jewish question in 2016 disproves another truism that has become especially popular among the most defensive Israelis and the most critical American Jews. Those on the right and the left often claim that American Jews are distancing themselves from Israel. Yet once again, as in 2012, 2008, 2004, 2000, and almost every election since 1948, both major party nominees competed to prove who was more pro-Israel, not less. Opinion polls show that the overwhelming majority of American Jews are not just pro-Israel, but proud of their connection to the Jewish state.3 This does not mean, however, that when American Jews entered the voting booth, their decisions depended on either candidate’s stance toward Israel. On the contrary, many Democrats who hated Donald Trump expressed their contempt by insisting he wasn’t as proIsrael as he claimed to be, just as many Republicans who hated Hillary Clinton insisted she wasn’t as pro-Israel as she claimed to be. Beyond that, American Jews, like most Americans, voted based on their domestic worries, not the candidates’ foreign policy stances. Just as most Israelis base their votes on statehood and not peoplehood issues but that doesn’t make them against Jewish peoplehood, most American Jews vote pro-choice or anti-Trump, even though they are pro-Israel too. When we talk about “the Jewish vote,” then, we are addressing a number of different issues. First, every presidential contest is ultimately an exercise in raw political power, democratically dictating who gets to lead the nation. It is fascinating to track the prominent role Jews, a small minority, play in American politics—and to try understanding why. Doing so

offers interesting insights about Americans Jews—and about American democracy. Second, every campaign is also a referendum, reflecting and shaping the national conversation, along with the internal Jewish communal debate. Finally, every vote is not just a snapshot, summarizing each voter’s most compelling likes and dislikes, values and interests. It is a long-running movie, reflecting each voter’s identity on many levels. The defining political facts about American Jewry remain that, while 93 percent are proud to be Jewish, two-thirds of them fuse their Judaism with their liberalism, often seeing their vote for Democrats as a moral position, a rational decision, a protective move, and testimony to who they are as Americans, as Jews, and as human beings.4 In this historic moment, when President Donald Trump has been so flamboyantly pro-Israel and the Democratic Party, while still mostly pro-Israel, has become the major American political party most welcoming to anti-Israel voters, American Jewry’s deep commitment to the Democratic Party feels to many Israelis like an act of disloyalty. This is the tension Trump kept exploiting with his many controversial, pot-stirring tweets as the 2020 campaign heated up.

Jewish Power: Thanks to Older, Wealthier, Educated Voters in Relevant Regions In 2014, noting that Jews constituted only two percent of the population, Emma Green of the Atlantic marveled: “Here are some of the other constituencies that make up two percent of the American electorate: customer-service representatives. People who participate in archery and bow hunting. AOL users. Residents of Indiana.” So, she wondered, “why all the attention” to the Jewish vote?5 In fact, in a country where barely 50 percent go to the polls,6 Jewish voter turnout averages around 85 percent—with the demographer Ira Sheskin estimating that 95 percent of Jews voted in strategically important areas such as the Detroit metropolitan area in the critical, electoral-vote-rich state of Michigan.7 Furthermore, in a political system addicted to funds and fundraising, some estimate that Jews donate as much as 50 percent of the funds from individual big donors raised by Democrats and 25 percent of such funds raised by Republicans. In 2016, six of the seven most generous political donors were Jewish. The seventh—the biggest giver, Tom Steyer—was married in an interfaith ceremony and while Episcopalian today, remains proud that his Jewish father was a prosecutor in the Nuremburg Trials of Nazis. The 2020 campaign began with one Jew, Bernie Sanders, as a leading Democratic candidate; one marginal Jewish candidate, Marianne Williamson; one candidate, Kamala Harris, married to a Jew; and one candidate, Cory Booker, fond of quoting Jewish scripture, all opposing a president with Jewish grandchildren. For a few weeks, another Jew—Michael Bloomberg—threw his hat into the ring and announced he was joining the race. Beyond that,

Voting percentage among American Jews and among the general American public

50%

Among the general American public

85%

Among American Jews

Jews constitute nearly seven percent of the 116th Congress, with eight Jewish senators and 26 Jewish members of the House of Representatives.8 The Supreme Court is also one-third Jewish, with three of the nine justices Jewish. The US presidential system pivots on key “swing states” closely split between Republicans and Democrats, including Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Michigan; Jews have sizeable concentrations in southern Florida, Cleveland, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, and suburban Detroit. Finally, since the 2016 campaign, issues around support for Israel and anti-Semitism have been debated in the media and online with particular intensity. While one shouldn’t overstate Jews’ communal ability to determine the electoral outcome, American Jews do punch above their weight politically. Jews are, as the political scientist Kenneth Wald explains, “supervoters” and “superdonors.”9 The acronym POWER summarizes their Punch as statistically Older, Wealthier, Educated and living in relevant Regions—all of which are indicators and motivators of greater political involvement. Beyond that, what Jimmy Carter’s chief political advisor, Hamilton Jordan, wrote in 1977 remains true: “It is a mistake to take note of Jewish contributions to political campaigns without seeing this in the larger context of the Jewish tradition of using one’s material wealth for the benefit of others.”10

The electoral system stands and falls with "swing states", which are very close in terms of Democratic and Republic votes, and where Jews live in relatively large concentrations

NEW HAMPSHIRE

RHODE ISLAND

NEW JERSEY DELAWARE

ALASKA

HAWAII

Jewish Donors as a Major Source of Jewish Power: Identity and Impact For decades now, Jewish donors have had an outsized impact on political fundraising. In his 1977 memorandum explaining American Jewish politics to President Carter, Hamilton Jordan wrote admiringly: “Out of 125 members of the Democratic National Finance Council, over 70 are Jewish. In 1976, over 60% of the large donors to the Democratic Party were Jewish. Over 60% of the monies raised by [President Richard] Nixon in 1972 was from Jewish contributors. Over 75% of the monies raised in [Hubert] Humphrey's 1968 campaign was from Jewish contributors. Over 90% of the monies raised by Scoop Jackson in the Democratic primaries was from Jewish contributors.” Underlining his conclusion, Jordan wrote: “Wherever there is major political fundraising in this country, you will find American Jews playing a significant role.”11

Before the post-Watergate reforms of the late 1970s, donors writing big checks funded a large percentage of any given presidential campaign. Today, limits on direct giving to presidential campaigns and opportunities for public financing have broadened the base of donors exponentially, reducing the impact any group of individuals can have on the overall budget. Still, in the first six months of the 2019 lead-up to the 2020 campaign, Aiden Pink of the Forward estimated that 5.5 percent of Democratic donors were Jews who donated at least 7 percent of the total contributions, with Buttigieg starting off as the most popular Democrat in the field among Jewish donors.12 More dramatically, in the candidates’ constant search for unregulated “soft money,” which buoys political campaigns in numerous ways, Jews continue to lead generously. Back in 2003, Thomas B. Edsall and Alan Cooperman estimated in the Washington Post that in “presidential elections, Democratic candidates depend on Jewish supporters to supply as much as 60 percent of the money raised from private sources.”13 In the 2000–2004 election cycle, the Hollywood mogul Haim Saban, working through the Saban Capital Group, contributed $9,280,000 of the $162,062,084 raised by the Democratic National Committee and its affiliates. The top ten donors overall in 2016 contributed $406.3 million, $356.8 million of it from Jews, including Tom Steyer. Early on in the current election cycle, George Soros became the first big donor to the 2020 campaign, with a $5.1 million gift establishing Democracy PAC.

20 out of the 50 largest single donors in the 2016 pre-elections were Jews

11/14

11 Jewish donors out of 14 in total from the Democratic Party

Distribution of Distribution of donors by donors byparties parties

9/36 9 Jewish donors out of 36 in total from the Republican Party

While most Jewish donors, like Soros and Saban, were Democrats, Jewish financial contributions remained disproportionately important for both parties. During the 2016 primary season, one Washington Post analysis estimated that nearly half the Super PAC money—$249 million of $607 million—came from 50 donors.14 J. J. Goldberg of the Forward then estimated that 20 of the 50 mega-donors were Jewish: 9 of the 36 Republicans and at least 11 of the 14 Democrats.15 These figures predated the entry of Sheldon Adelson into the 2016 funding game, as the Las Vegas casino mogul and Republican benefactor, who set records for political gift-giving in 2012, sat out the confusing early rounds of that cycle. By November, however, Adelson had donated $82.6 million,16 with another Jewish conservative in the top ten, Paul Singer, donating $26.1 million.17 Jewish money deviates from the usual “Jewish vote” script in two critical ways. First, wealthy Republican donors, especially Adelson and Singer over the last decade or so, have shaped Republican politics too, encouraging the recurring, so-far-always-incorrect predictions that “the Jews” are veering right, rather than “some Jews.” Second, single-issue politics, especially support for Israel, often counts more during the fundraising sweepstakes than on Election Day. The pro-Israel lobby AIPAC, dozens of other Jewish political action committees (PACs), and individual Jewish donors, such as Saban the Democrat and Adelson the Republican, earmark campaign funds for candidates who pass either explicit or implicit pro-Israel litmus tests. Such targeted support is, of course, a legitimate democratic exercise, engaged in by most donors. But thanks to the growing toxicity of the debate about Israel and traditional antiSemitic tropes about Jews, money, and power, critics have been far quicker to exaggerate the Jewish concern for Israel and make it seem illegitimate. Jew-hatred, centered on fears of Jewish influence-peddling, offers a rare plane on which the far left and the far right often meet. From the left, academics like John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt led the charge against the “Israel Lobby”18 and its supposed undue influence on American foreign policy. From the right, talk of “ZOG”—the Zionist Occupied Government—summarized the ugly whisperings about the “shekels” injected into American politics to boost Israel. In truth, the broad-based public support for Israel over decades has been organic and natural, more grassroots than Astroturf. No lobby is powerful enough to convince 70 percent of Americans to approve of something as consistently as Americans have supported the Jewish state. When they caught rival candidates in the act of appealing to Jews directly about Israel—rather than pandering on any other issue—opponents acted scandalized. Early in Democrat Michelle Nunn’s unsuccessful 2014 campaign for the US Senate seat from Georgia, a fundraising memo from her consultants that targeted pro-Israel Jews and noted that “Michelle’s position on Israel will largely determine the level of support” in the “Jewish community” was leaked to National Review. More sophisticated observers, including a blogger on Vox, noted that “this is getting spun in certain circles as a damning indictment of Nunn or her staff, as if

she is planning to tailor her entire foreign policy around fundraising concerns. … But really, it’s just people doing their jobs.”19 Beyond the dollars and cents involved, which are particularly important in the “invisible primary”—the early posturing, fundraising, friend-raising, and debating in the months leading up to the first primaries and caucuses—there is also symbolic value to gaining Jewish support. Benjamin Ginsberg, a professor of political science at Johns Hopkins University, explained that Jews “account for a huge share of the activist base of the Democratic Party and account for much of the money available to Democratic candidates. If you are a Republican strategist, it seems fairly obvious that if you can shift Jewish support even a little bit away from the Democrats, it makes the Democratic Party less competitive.”20 In this age of renewed anti-Semitism, when Jew-haters left and right keep resurrecting old slurs about Jews being rich and power-hungry, perhaps this entire discussion about Jews’ disproportionate impact should come with warning labels. Truthfully, the statistics about Jewish fundraising and voting are intelligent guesstimates, partly based on prominent scholars like the demographer Ira Sheskin identifying Jewish last names, residential neighborhoods, and voting patterns.21 The results, especially the voter turnout rates, are further complicated by limited sample sizes. Most importantly, money isn’t everything in politics, especially in the age of social media. In 2016 former Florida governor Jeb Bush joined Nixon’s Secretary of the Treasury John Connally, among others, in a long line of well-financed candidates who fizzled. Bush raised more than $150 million dollars to go home with no states won and an unhappy nickname for his troubles, having been christened by Trump “Low Energy Jeb.” Jews should not apologize for the disproportionate generosity, community-mindedness, and political engagement of so many of their co-religionists. If anti-Semites spin those admirable qualities into dark conspiracies, shame on the accusers, not the accused. And, inevitably, the bigots run into contradictory slurs: if Jews are cheap and greedy, how can they also be so generous? Such slurs highlight the idiocy behind generalizing about “the” Jews, and the enmity behind these demonizations, which have a long, ugly history.

Surprises for Israelis Israelis would be amused to hear that most American Jews define Judaism as inherently liberal. Since 1977, Israelis have elected more right-wing governments than left-wing ones, and many feel betrayed by Progressives in Europe and North America. American Orthodox and traditional Jews also find the oft-used “Judaism-is-liberalism” equation amusing, even infuriating, because in an ever-polarized America, they are increasingly conservative politically as well as religiously.

Israelis would be fascinated to learn that many American Jews locate the Promised Land in North America, not the Middle East. They would be distressed to hear that American Jews rarely vote with Israel in mind and usually prioritize American issues. They complain again and again about the many liberal American Jews who refuse to thank President Trump for recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, for validating Israel’s Golan Heights annexation, for recognizing the settlements as legal, or for pressuring two of Israel’s most hostile neighbors—the Palestinians and Iran. But Israelis would be heartened to discover that despite that neglect on Election Day, and contrary to the many hysterical headlines, reports of the great rift between Israel and even liberal American Jews are often overstated. According to a Gallup analysis in August 2019, only 35 percent of Jews approve of Trump’s presidency, 44 percent of Jews call themselves liberal, and 65 percent support the Democratic Party. However, 76 percent of Jews say they are at least somewhat emotionally attached to Israel, while an overwhelming 95 percent of Jews have favorable views of Israel.22 In short, Donald Trump and his best friends in Israel should take notice: most American Jews are anti-Trump and pro-Israel. Older research from the Maurice and Marilyn Cohen Center at Brandeis University shows something intriguing that still appears to be true: Unlike 20 and 30 years ago, 20- to 30-year-olds tend to be even more pro-Israel than 30to 40-year-olds.23 Because most Americans and American politicians champion the idea of a Jewish state while passionately supporting Israel over the Palestinians, voters in a presidential contest have never had to choose between “pro-Israel” and “anti-Israel” candidates. Some mainstream American politicians may be more critical of Israel or sympathetic to the Palestinians than others, but—as of 2016—no major party presidential nominee has ever accepted the label “anti-Israel” or earned that dishonorable status by rejecting Israel’s right to exist. As noted, in most elections, including 2016, the Democratic and Republican candidates squabble over who is more pro-Israel and who better defends the Jewish state. Considering Jews’ unhappy history, when leaders often competed to prove who could hit Jews harder, American Jews should appreciate their good fortune. It is because of these ongoing trends that Trump’s assertion that “any Jewish people that vote for a Democrat, I think it shows either a total lack of knowledge or great disloyalty”24 attacks most American Jews. The statement should set off alarm bells for Jews and Israelis—but not the ones it did. Many thought Trump was playing the old “dual loyalty” card, dismissing Jews as shifty and untrustworthy. Others doubt he is that sophisticated. Trump is obsessed with loyalty. He has tweeted dozens of times questioning the loyalty and gratitude of supporters. He even chided Hillary Clinton for her supposed character flaw of not being loyal enough to her people. As his re-election campaign heats up, the gap between the loyalty and gratitude he expects from Jews for being pro-Israel and the Jewish fury and fear his

presidency has unleashed could shake his support for Israel—unless Evangelicals, who are grateful and committed to both Trump and Israel, continue reinforcing it. The present analysis, offering a historical perspective, suggests that the same behaviors— voting Democratic, being liberal—have had different motivations and meanings over the years. America has changed. Liberalism has changed. The Jewish community has changed— and has changed America. But this alliance persists, defying its many eulogies. The liberal-Jewish-Democratic connection has grown stronger, not weaker, in the Age of Trump. America’s Jews are mostly “blue,” and highly enraged and engaged politically. Despite the political spin by some, this does not make them un-American; it just means that the blue field of their red, white, and blue identity is the largest, strongest, and deepest. Similarly, it doesn’t make them against Israel, but merely more enthusiastic about some aspects of Israel than others.

PART II:

The History of Jewish Liberalism in America How Judaism Became “Liberal” in America Despite that bizarre, aforementioned point where boastful Jews and vicious anti-Semites meet—with both exaggerating the Jewish vote’s importance—Jews have rarely been the deciding factor in electing or trying to impeach a president. Having written a book about American presidential election campaigns that never mentions “the Jewish vote,” and edited an encyclopedia on the history of American presidential elections that barely refers to Jews, I can state authoritatively that Jews have been marginal players in most electoral outcomes.25 The most significant Jewish vote played out in what I have nicknamed the Big Butterfly Ballot Bungle of 2000. That year, 19,000 voters – a large percentage of them elderly Jewish ones – in southern Florida, many of them New York “snowbirds,” marked their “butterfly ballots” for the anti-Israel Third Party candidate Pat Buchanan rather than for the proIsrael Democrat Al Gore (or for both). Those mass errors created the electoral deadlock that resulted in George W. Bush’s presidency—depriving America of its first Jewish vice president, Senator Joseph Lieberman. Less directly, in 1980, many Jews’ disgust with Jimmy Carter’s pro-Palestinian policies in the UN helped Ted Kennedy win the New York primary. That victory kept the Massachusetts liberal in the race, weakening Carter against Ronald Reagan in the fall. These examples highlight the most relevant fact: even with a disproportionately high Jewish voter turnout and the Jewish concentration in key battleground states and major media markets, there simply are not enough American Jews to sway American elections. Just as most Americans after the Civil War defined themselves as Democrats or Republicans “becuz that’s how my daddy and granddaddy voted,” voting Democratic is often considered as central to the American Jewish inheritance as an inspirational immigration story, silver candlesticks, or Grandma’s matzah ball recipe. George W. Bush’s press secretary Ari Fleischer has often said that when his “horrified” parents discovered that he had become a Republican activist in college, they told sympathetic neighbors in their liberal New York suburb: “At least he’s not a drug addict.”26

Moreover, as noted, despite the writer Peter Beinart’s claim that most American Jews feel forced to “check their liberalism at Zionism’s door,”27 most American Jews still embrace liberalism and Zionism. Most American Jewish liberals define their liberalism as simply, naturally, and obviously “Jewish,” repudiating not only their conservative Jewish cousins in the United States but non-liberal Jews worldwide, including in Israel. The great writer Leon Wieseltier counters: “Judaism is not liberal and it is not conservative: it is Jewish.”28 In fact, American Jewish liberalism is quintessentially American. It reflects not only America’s uniqueness but something else most historians ignore. Too many discussions about American Jewry treat American Jews as passive actors collectively, even while emphasizing their extraordinary impact individually. The story of American Jewish liberalism is not only about how American Jews found an ideological home in the United States, but about how they redefined American liberalism to make it even more welcoming. The biggest shift has been in the rise of a cultural liberalism to accompany a social welfare mentality. While some Jews like Irving Kristol and Allan Bloom have been prominent critics of the new cultural relativism and political correctness, many Jewish intellectuals and professors helped mainstream that approach. Just as many prominent American Jewish thinkers and activists helped define the New Deal and shape the civil rights movement, disproportionate shares of Jews were influential in the new cultural forces such as feminism, the broader sexual revolution or the movement toward gay marriage. All these forces established new lifestyles and protocols that pried American cultural life away from the control of the White Anglo-Saxon Protestants (WASPs) of the 1950s. American Jewish liberalism today, as in preceding decades, is a cultural and political phenomenon: it is about identity, not just issues, and it is about standing up aggressively so American Jews can fit in naturally. This tenacious American Jewish political identity reveals much about the American Jewish community and America itself. Ultimately, the story of the Jewish vote is one illustrative chapter in the great romance between America and its Jews. This love story is rooted in American exceptionalism, which emphasizes the uniqueness of America’s history, especially compared to Europe’s. It is reflected in the astonishing Jewish success in America—the many American celebrities, billionaires, intellectuals, and leaders who are Jewish, as well as the deep sense of comfort most Jews enjoy in America. This, then, is the story of the American Jewish vote—a story of contradictions and confusions, of frustration for the right and inspiration for the left, a story, ultimately, about cultural identity and shared fears more than political stances or personalities. It is a story that is often reported as yet another blow to the unity of the Jewish people and the AmericaIsrael alliance, but in fact reflects Jews’ remarkable solidarity and helps explain this ongoing friendship between a tiny, embattled democracy and the US, the democratic world’s “New Colossus.”

American Jewish Liberalism: Big-Hearted, Dim-Witted—or Both? In 1988, the liberal writer Leonard Fein affirmed: “Politics is our religion; our preferred denomination is liberalism.”29 This proud American Jewish righteousness explained the anomaly that Milton Himmelfarb had identified in his classic 1973 statement, “Jews earn like Episcopalians and vote like Puerto Ricans.”30 More pointedly, the NPR humorist Peter Sagal quipped: “What is it about being rich and white that American Jews don’t understand?”31 For decades, many American Jews have insisted that “Judaism is liberalism and liberalism is Judaism.” More recently, the idea has been wrapped in the rhetoric of tikkun olam, healing the world. The Reform rabbi and social activist David Saperstein calls tikkun olam “the most common organizing principle of Jewish identity”32—and many agree. But this popular equation is misleading. As the Jewish scholar and ethicist Byron Sherwin noted, “The secular morality that many contemporary Jews identify with Judaism has little to do with the faith of their ancestors. It may be the ethics of groups of Jews but it is not the ethics of Judaism.”33 Many highly assimilated American Jews have abandoned Jewish tradition but not traditional Jewish liberalism. In fact, according to the historian Deborah Dash Moore, “When conflict occurs between historical Jewish responses and American values, [the liberal] Jewish civil religion tends to accommodate to the American.”34 The latest surveys show that the more religious and traditional you are, the less likely you are to embrace the full American Jewish liberal/tikkun olam package.35 In this argument, American Jewish liberalism becomes one more impressive achievement to add to the Great American Jewish Tally Sheet. The American Jewish social and economic climb facilitated and was facilitated by a shrewd use of American Jewish power to change America from a WASP-run closed shop to today’s pluralistic, multicultural open shop. A mixed symbol of this success is that Jews went from being seen as members of the “Jewish race” to being “white folk” enjoying “white privilege.” This meant that whereas there were quotas limiting enrollment of Jewish students at universities until the 1940s, in the 1970s those same Jews did not merit “minority” status in affirmative action assessments, despite being a statistical minority that had suffered discrimination. In other words – they were institutionally discriminated against as students, but brushed off when others were compensated for such injustices. By the twenty-first century, in a backhanded compliment— or more accurately a backhanded insult—Jews were targeted on “woke” campuses as oppressors, not the oppressed, because of their “whiteness” and “wealth.” Most American Jews also increasingly accepted the popular blurring of Judaism and liberalism advanced by many in the Conservative, Reform, and Reconstructionist movements. In response, the politically conservative commentator Richard Brookhiser has snapped that the only difference between Reform Judaism and Democratic politics is the holidays.36

Steven M. Cohen and the late Charles Liebman explained American Jews’ exceptional openmindedness and cosmopolitanism as an expression of Jews’ “minority group interests” and their “religious modernism.” This mix of motivations, the two sociologists argued, helps explain why American Jews are liberal, with the emphasis on “church-state separation (school prayer), social codes (largely issues relating to sex), and domestic spending.”37 Many commentators like to frame this ideological stance as either a heroic or a naive Jewish refusal to vote their interests—with “their interests” defined by economics. The political scientist Kenneth Wald argues that Jews vote against their class interests because they are voting for something more profound: their equal billing. According to this, Jews are acting according to “rational self-interest,” but a political, existential one, not an economic one.38 The neoconservative intellectual Irving Kristol was blunter in 1999, bemoaning “the political stupidity of Jews.”39 Still, it is a mistake to equate the American Jewish liberalism of 2020 with that of 1932. American Jewry has evolved, as has liberalism itself. This evolution can be summarized by considering three generations of American Jewish liberalism.

American Jewish Liberalism Evolves in Three Stages The first generation is what we could call “Bourgeois Bolsheviks.” The Eastern European immigrants, adults and children, came to the New World with much Old World baggage. Tradition! Among this baggage were much of the socialist idealism and labor unionist values that were roiling Europe at the time. As these ambitious American Jewish urban pioneers worked like dogs and dreamed of advancing their children thanks to the secret ingredient of American success—an education—they instinctively looked left politically. This first mass American Jewish dream involved advancing as individuals and families, while still supporting the broader radical communal pitch. Theirs was the politics of the ILGWU (International Ladies’ Garment Workers Union) and the ACWU (Amalgamated Clothing Workers Union), of the AFL (American Federation of Labor) and the CIO (Congress of Industrial Organizations). They were the ones who squabbled over European politics and Communist doctrine so intensely that in the 1980s there were housing co-op boards in New York still divided over who broke with Stalin too early or too late in the 1950s. Many but not all of the children and grandchildren of these immigrant workers “made it.” Although most didn’t become millionaires, they were the first generation of American Jews to be so disproportionately well educated, white collar, and well-off. These were the Jews who earned like Episcopalians but voted like Puerto Ricans. These “Yuppies with a Conscience” remembered their parents’ struggles and thanked Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal for giving their families a new lease on life. Many of them were also anxious to be

like everyone else in public and increasingly diluted their traditional practices privately at home. Nevertheless, when they or their people were under attack, they mobilized. These Jews internalized the lessons, first of the Czarist oppression, then of the Holocaust, that a society is only as free as its most downtrodden members, be they Jews, blacks, or the poor. American Jews developed a keen instinct for detecting the bully and bigot. What looked like (and was often framed as) altruistic concern for others was also a form of selfdefense, both economically and politically. Today, many Jews live like Yuppies and vote like hipsters. While they have a social conscience that they associate with their Judaism and the tikkun olam label, most are increasingly disconnected from their immigrant past and Jewish tradition. The members of this third generation, no longer Bourgeois Bolsheviks, no longer Yuppies with a Conscience, are openspirited “Freedom-from-ers”—deeply, proudly American, but very decidedly Not-Christians. Taking their cue from the British Jewish philosopher Isaiah Berlin’s distinction between “freedom to” (positive freedoms to build, contribute, create) and “freedom from” (negative freedom from restrictions and constraints), they most fear the “no” while being open to different “yeses.” They have inherited from their understanding of their past and absorbed from postmodern culture a fear of restrictions, commitments, and norms imposed from the outside, especially by government or religion. They want freedom from traditional inhibitions and from legal restrictions on premarital sex, divorce, abortion, and homosexuality. They want as open a market in lifestyle as the Republicans demand in business. (They are also more open to gun control and higher taxes than their Republican peers, but their essential orientation is toward individual prerogative, not authority. They like the idea of Big Government—not Big Brother.) From the 1970s until Donald Trump’s polarizing presidency, the test case of loyalty and the defining issue was fighting for a woman’s right to choose. To understand this multigenerational process, it helps to understand the fears that united American Jews, the scares that glued them together as what sociologists call a negative reference group. Beyond what they loved, it is important to note whom they hated. Originally it was the czar. Then it was the bosses. Finally, it was the Republicans: the Evangelicals and the Reaganites in the 1980s, the Corporate Bushies and the Tea Party more recently, and now Donald Trump. Beyond that, ever since the 1930s the shadow of Hitler and Nazism has united Jews, as shown by how quick they are to compare many far more innocuous threats to Nazism. With this unconscious communal defense mechanism implanted deep in their DNA, most Jews look like suburban Americans but worry like ghetto Jews. Clearly, at the core of American Jewish identity, generation after generation, is the affirmation “I am not Christian.” That otherness expresses itself in the informal communal Christmas Eve and Christmas Day traditions of eating Chinese food, going to suddenly available Broadway shows, and volunteering in understaffed hospitals. It expresses itself in a deep aversion to Jews for Jesus, even among highly assimilated Jews. And it expresses itself in a nonChristian, and today specifically non–Evangelical Christian, political agenda.

Israelis should take particular interest in the glaring contrast between the world’s two largest Jewish communities: American Jews protect their Jewish selves by pressing the government to champion individualism and remain aloof from religious matters, while Israeli Jews affirm their Jewish selves when the government champions Jewish communalism and becomes enmeshed in religious matters. Even as a fierce sense of survivalism and Zionism bonds Israeli and American Jews, two very different politics have developed in their respective countries. Ultimately, most American Jews are “Isaiahans,” moved by the prophetic teachings, including the harsh critiques of power, particularism, and the status quo. Israeli Jews are “Davidians,” following the realpolitik of the kings, especially David, who was pious, poetic, and principled—but ready to use force when necessary. Lawrence Fuchs, an immigration scholar, wrote about American Jewish political identity: “Zedakeh, Torah, and this-worldliness have, along with the insecurity of the group, all promoted political liberalism among Jews in our time. Their liberalism and internationalism have favorably disposed them to a Democratic choice in recent presidential elections and largely explain the resistance of Jews to class politics.”40 A scholar skeptical about this argument, Kenneth Wald, wrote: “American Jews seem to have foregrounded only those aspects of the tradition that comport with liberal values, suggesting that theology is not the cause but a consequence of other factors peculiar to the American Jewish experience.”41 Many of the “why-do-Jews-vote-liberal-hate-Trump-and-confuse-Judaism-with-liberalism” questions are simplistic and static. They treat Jews, liberalism, and the Democratic Party as one-dimensional and unchanging. Beyond appreciating the diversity of views within the various communities and ideologies, we need to understand the dynamics as more complex. Liberalism is not a suit that Jews wear because “it fits.” Part of the reason American liberalism and American Judaism fit so well together is that Jews helped customize both to mesh the two together. The great prominence of Jews in the civil rights, feminist, and gay rights revolutions of the 1960s, and on the more cosmopolitan side in the Culture Wars since then, has fundamentally changed Judaism, liberalism, and America. Just how that occurred and what that means for Jews, liberals, and Americans is beyond the scope of this paper. But studying American Jewish history must be more than tracking the great successes of American Jewry’s superstars while assessing the blessings and curses of the kind of welcome mat America laid out for the Jews. The history of the Jews in America is ultimately about the historical impact of the Jews on America—and the historical impact of America on the Jews—individually and collectively.

PART III:

Jewish Fears and Furies in 2016 and 2020 From Joy to Oy in 2016: How What Should Have Been the Greatest Presidential Campaign for Jews Became the Scariest The 2016 US presidential campaign should have been a high point of Jewish history, especially in Middle Eastern, Eastern European, and even Western European terms. The looming ascension into First Familyhood of Jared Kushner (along with Ivanka Trump) or Marc Mezvinsky was the least of it. Not only did both major party nominees compete over who was more pro-Israel; both candidates relied heavily on Jewish advisors, Jewish donors, and Jewish friends, all while courting the Jewish vote intensely. From afar, both Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton would have been deemed “Jewish,” not “goyish,” in the comedian Lenny Bruce’s classic riff revealing just how much Jews shaped modern American culture. In fact, both had marched in the Israel Day Parade—repeatedly. Love him or hate him, but a real estate mogul from Queens, New York, who established his reputation building flashy buildings in Manhattan, had a familiarity with Jews and Jewish culture his German grandfather certainly lacked. In fact, Donald Trump felt so comfortable with Jews that when he spoke at a Republican Jewish Coalition forum in December 2015, his ethnic-based “shtick” was not politically correct but was clearly a reflection of what goes on in many a Fifth Avenue boardroom among old friends comfortable enough to “kibitz” about each other’s alleged ethnic tics. “You just like me because my daughter happens to be Jewish,” Trump said as he began—then griped as a true insider: “The only bad news is I can’t get her on Saturday.” He offended some by saying, “Look, I’m a negotiator like you folks, we’re negotiators,” but those who liked him got the message—he’s one of us.42 Love her or hate her, but an Ivy League liberal from Wellesley and Yale, who built her network of friends among the Northeastern meritocracy, had a familiarity with Jews and Jewish culture her suburban Midwestern parents certainly lacked. In fact, Hillary Clinton felt so comfortable with Jews she often celebrated Sara Ehrman as her mentor, despite the fact that Ehrman had strongly urged Hillary not to marry Bill in 1974—or perhaps thanks to such candor. Like many friends of the Clintons, Ehrman was not just Jewish but proudly so, describing herself as “first a Jew, second a Democrat, and above all a feminist.”43 In her speeches to Jewish groups, Hillary could “kibitz” about Yitzhak Rabin never forgiving her “for banishing him to the White House balcony when he wanted to smoke,” while smoothly ending with “divrei Torah” of sorts quoting Mordechai, Esther, and Elie Wiesel.44

True, neither candidate sang “Dayenu” while helping kids bake matzah in Brooklyn, as one of Trump’s rivals for the nomination, Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, did.45 And it was Cruz who said Donald Trump “embodies New York values,” which to many Jews sounded like code words describing them rudely, especially when Cruz clarified “that the values in New York City are socially liberal or pro-abortion or pro-gay marriage [and] focus around money and the media.”46 Such lunacy was typical of the 2016 campaign: Donald Trump, the candidate some suspected of being anti-Semitic, was also subject to anti-Semitic attacks by a proIsrael, philo-Semitic candidate. Still, the only thing more extraordinary than both Clinton’s and Trump’s Jewish literacy, familiarity, and intimacy was how ordinary it all appeared to Americans, both Jewish and non-Jewish. Beyond that, from Wolf Blitzer and Jake Tapper on CNN to Ruth Bader Ginsberg and Elena Kagan on the Supreme Court to Senator Bernie Sanders on the campaign trail, American Jews were organically, comfortably a part of American politics and this election in particular. No longer that People that Dwells Apart, Jews in America were a People who Feel at Home. Yet rather than celebrate this unprecedented moment in Jewish history, many American Jews were on edge even before the campaign began. Although most Jews supported her enthusiastically, Hillary Clinton’s Republican Jewish opponents used her long but somewhat complex relationship with Israel and the Palestinians to stir ongoing fears of a Democratic drift away from the Jewish state. And, far more profoundly, despite his pride in having been Grand Marshal of the Israel Day Parade, Donald Trump proved doubly disturbing to the vast majority of American Jews. For starters, Trump’s bullying persona and bigoted demagoguery were almost perfectly engineered to stir deep-seated American Jewish anxieties about authoritarian despots. Even worse, a small number of his supporters used his words, his example, and the internet’s ability to shock and spread toxins, to unleash the largest and ugliest wave of anti-Semitism in the public sphere since Father Charles Coughlin’s anti-Semitic radio diatribes in the 1930s.

The Three Hillary Clintons Regarding Israel: Each Tells a Story Hillary Clinton articulated a passionate, classically pro-Israel position during the Democratic primary season. She denounced the boycott movement against Israel, charming media mogul Haim Saban and other mega-generous, pro-Israel Democratic donors. She condemned terrorism, Hamas, and her rival Bernie Sanders’ ambivalence regarding Israel’s “disproportionate” selfdefense operations in Gaza. During one debate, Clinton’s counterpunch balanced out Sanders’ critique of Israel’s firepower by offering context. Invoking “25 years” of experience with “Israeli officials,” she said: “They do not invite the rockets raining down on their towns and villages.” She blasted “a constant incitement by Hamas aided and abetted by Iran against

Israel.” She reminded Sanders and his young, 20-something fans that “Israel left Gaza. … They turned the keys over to the Palestinian people. … And what happened? Hamas took over Gaza,” creating “a terrorist haven.” And, most boldly, rejecting the claims that Israel had undermined the two-state solution, she added: “If Yasser Arafat had agreed with my husband at Camp David in the late 1990s to the offer then Prime Minister [Ehud] Barak put on the table, we would have had a Palestinian state for 15 years.”47 Nevertheless, some pro-Israel advocates worried, especially considering her email exchanges with Clinton consigliere Sidney Blumenthal. Secretary of State Clinton’s tolerance for the anti-Israel venom of Blumenthal and his son Max unsettled them. During her tenure at the State Department, she relied on the elder Blumenthal, a Clinton-family loyalist whose son wrote a mean-spirited, anti-Zionist screed, Goliath: Life and Loathing in Greater Israel. The elder Blumenthal shared with Secretary Clinton articles that ultimately became part of Blumenthal Junior’s 410-page rant against Israel’s alleged “colonialism” and “racism,” replete with the expected Holocaust analogies. Blumenthal’s looming presence reminded pro-Israel critics that when she was America’s polarizing First Lady in the 1990s, Hillary Clinton was considered to be among the most skeptical of Clintonites regarding Israel and the most pro-Palestinian, far to her husband’s “left” on the issue. The doubts about her swelled in November 1999, when she visited Yasser Arafat’s wife, Suha, in the West Bank. During one speech, Suha Arafat accused “Israeli forces” of spraying “poison gas,” causing “an increase in cancer cases among Palestinian women and children.” Throughout the tirade, with Arafat’s words translated simultaneously, Clinton kept smiling. After the speech, Clinton kissed Arafat warmly on the cheek. Critics charged that the First Lady had shown her true colors, implicitly endorsing this modern blood libel. The next day Clinton called the remarks “inflammatory and outrageous.” She said that the translation she heard had been milder than Suha’s actual Arabic words. Later, while running for the Senate in New York, Clinton dismissed criticism, saying that in the Middle East, “a kiss is a handshake.” In fairness, Hillary Clinton’s plastic smile and scripted kiss may have reflected a First Lady on automatic pilot, not an Israel-hater. But the story exploded because it reflected fears stemming from earlier combustible statements she had made about Palestinians. Many feared that she did not share her husband’s instinctive love for Israel. As a senator representing New York starting in 2001, Hillary Clinton became Israel’s biggest fan—a conversion some dismissed as transparent homage to the Jewish vote in New York. She decried Yasser Arafat’s war of terrorism against the Oslo peace process, in which Palestinians killed hundreds of Jews, including some New Yorkers. Most movingly, in February 2002, while visiting Israel, Senator Clinton met Yochai Porat, a 26-year-old paramedic. Days later, on March 3, a Palestinian sniper murdered Porat and nine others at an army roadblock on the Ramallah-Nablus road. Porat, characteristically, had been tending to the wounded when shot. Three years later, visiting Israel again, Senator Clinton met Porat’s family and quietly consoled them. His family asked her to help Magen David Adom

(MDA) in its quest for international recognition. To her credit—and contrary to the Clinton reputation for milking every honest sentiment—she launched an ultimately successful campaign to persuade the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies to admit MDA, without flaunting her support for Porat’s grieving family.48 As secretary of state, Clinton admitted that she was “often the designated yeller”49 in the administration’s many confrontations with Benjamin Netanyahu. She especially earned that title in 2010, when she berated Israel’s prime minister for 45 minutes, accusing him of “humiliating the United States of America”50 after a Jerusalem municipal official announced bidding to expand a Jerusalem residential neighborhood in “occupied territory” during Vice President Biden’s visit to Israel. Subsequently, Secretary Clinton accused Israel of “lacking empathy for oppressed Palestinians.”51After leaving the State Department, she supported the deal with Iran that lifted the sanctions she had helped impose while in office, in exchange for Iran promising to dismantle much of its nuclear capability for a period of 10 to 15 years. Netanyahu and most Israelis feared the deal as toothless in the long run with respect to Iran’s rush to go nuclear and disastrous in the short term because of all the money Iran received from the US and was pumping into Hezbollah and Hamas.

Bernie Sanders: A Blame Israel Firster, but Not Anti-Israel The Sanders-Clinton clash in the Democratic primaries mapped out the contours of the Israel debate among mainstream Democrats in 2016. Then as now during his second run for the presidency, Sanders belongs to the Tough Love faction: pro-Israel in theory but fed up with “Netanyahu’s Israel” in fact—and strikingly insensitive to what triggers Jewish alarm bells. He and other Blame Israel Firsters don’t want to see the Jewish state destroyed but also refuse to see how their one-sided finger-pointing threatens the Jewish state or upsets many American Jews. Taking a tough-love approach, they allege Israel is too quick to attack and too slow to make peace. They emphasize the destruction in Gaza, overlooking what triggered it—both immediate causes like Kassam rockets and the ultimate cause, Palestinian rejectionism, incitement, and terrorism. Still, although some of Sanders’ supporters were anti-Israel, and the appointment of a pro-boycott activist like Prof. Cornell West to the Democratic platform committee was a hostile act, Sanders is not anti-Israel. With so many people worldwide happily embracing the phrase, sophisticated supporters of Israel understand that it doesn’t help to clump Blame Israel Firsters like Sanders with those who actively seek Israel’s destruction. The fact, however, that American Jewry’s first truly serious presidential candidate is so tough on the Jewish state will make for interesting chapters in future books about the American Jewish psyche and the complex relationship American Jews have with Israel and Zionism.

Sanders’ churlish and tone-deaf approach to Israel—exemplified in 2019 when he appointed the pro-BDS, anti-Zionist Palestinian activist Linda Sarsour as a “campaign surrogate” and endorsed efforts to make American aid to Israel contingent on Israel ending “the occupation”—also reflected the crisis in relations between Progressives and Zionists. Once, the mostly pro-Israel Republican Party was the home of the small minority of anti-Semitic anti-Zionists. Today, the still-mostly-pro-Israel Democratic Party is the home of a growing minority of anti-Semitic anti-Zionists—and a larger group of fellow travelers, enabling this enmity rather than confronting it. Beyond his political critique of Israeli policy toward the Palestinians, Sanders had his own identity ambivalences and baggage. He looked the part of the typical left-leaning, wild-haired, heavily accented Brooklyn Jew—and had even volunteered on a kibbutz when young. Yet early in the 2016 campaign, Sanders called himself “the son of a Polish immigrant.”52 When his father Eli Sanders emigrated from a village south of Krakow in 1921, most Poles didn’t think of the elder Sanders as a Pole, nor did most Jews from Poland think of themselves as such. It seemed like a weak attempt at hiding his obvious Jewishness. More surprisingly, this fiery candidate turned uncharacteristically mousy when he faced anti-Semitism on the campaign trail. At one candidate forum, a questioner asked about how “the Zionist Jews ... run the Federal Reserve ... Wall Street.” Sanders blandly chided the questioner. He then implicitly justified the ugliness by quickly adding, “I also believe that we have got to pay attention to the needs of the Palestinian people.”53 Sanders’ response connected the dots between anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism and reflected a fear that simply denouncing anti-Semitism risked Progressive votes. Sanders soon realized—or was told—that 2016 is not 1966, when downplaying your ethnicity was the all-American thing to do. He tried moving beyond his “Polish immigrant” fumble by appearing on Saturday Night Live with a fellow Brooklyn boy made good, Larry David. In an opening sketch on the ship taking immigrants to America, Sanders introduced himself as “Bernie Sanderswitsky.” He then added: “We are going to change it when we get to America so it doesn’t sound so Jewish.” “Yeah, that will trick them,” Larry David replied.54 Sanders’ appearance was clever. But with the 24/7 news cycle constantly recycling their gravest errors, it was often hard for candidates to move on. Four years later, the spread of anti-Semitism and a growing backlash made it impossible for Sanders to deny its toxicity or his Jewishness. Writing in a small leftist journal, Jewish Currents, Sanders now called himself “a proud Jewish American.” He identified the fight against anti-Semitism narrowly, as a fight against “a dangerous political ideology that targets Jews and anyone who does not fit a narrow vision of a whites-only America.” But he also went broad, essentially equating the fight against anti-Semitism with the fight for “progressive values.” And, of course, he blamed Donald Trump, saying Trump’s “own words

helped inspire the worst act of anti-Semitic violence in American history,” the Pittsburgh Tree of Life massacre.55

Obama’s Hostility to Netanyahu Encourages Anti-Israel Democrats The more fundamental—and worrying—shift to do with Democrats and Israel was shaped in particular by Barack Obama’s complicated relationship with Israel, the pro-Israel community, and Jews. Obama talked the pro-Israel talk—sounding more unreservedly Zionist than Sanders. “It would be a moral failing on my part if we did not stand up firmly, steadfastly not just on behalf of Israel’s right to exist, but its right to thrive and prosper,” the president said.56 Obama walked the walk, providing more than $20.5 billion in military assistance to Israel while defending Israel most of the time in international forums. Like Bill Clinton, Obama was so culturally comfortable with Jewish liberalism and so friendly with Jews that he challenged Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu about what being “pro-Israel” meant and what the defining Jewish values are. Echoing earlier remarks that he was pro-Israel but not pro-Likud, Obama justified his “tough love” on settlements and Iran, insisting that “to paper over difficult questions, particularly about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict,” is “not a true measure of friendship.”57 More boldly, in 2015 Obama spoke effusively at Adas Israel, the Washington synagogue dedicated by President Ulysses S. Grant in 1876—the first time a sitting president had attended a synagogue service. Obama declared himself “an honorary member of the tribe” and equated Jewishness with liberalism. As “a community, American Jews have helped make our union more perfect,” Obama said. “The story of Exodus inspired oppressed people around the world in their own struggles for civil rights. From the founding members of the NAACP to a freedom summer in Mississippi, from women’s rights to gay rights to workers’ rights, Jews took [to] heart [the] Biblical edict that we must not oppress a stranger, having been strangers once ourselves.” Chemi Shalev of the Israeli daily Haaretz wryly noted that the president of the United States “made no mention of the Israeli prime minister, but his essential message to American Jews was nonetheless stark: I represent your core values far better than the elected leader of Israel.”58 By contrast, Hillary Clinton on the 2016 campaign trail embraced her husband’s approach, which recognizes that Israelis respond better to “love love” than to tough love. Most Democrats envision the same two-state solution, following the (Bill) Clinton parameters: the 1967 borders, with some land swaps. But these Two Staters acknowledge that while Israel may err occasionally, the Palestinians have behaved abominably. Rather than being blindly “evenhanded”—which often means bashing Israel and excusing the Palestinians—they make moral distinctions. They respect Palestinians enough to hold them responsible for repeatedly sabotaging the chances for peace, especially while the Oslo process endured. Ultimately, the fight over Israel is a fight about foreign policy and America’s role in the world. From

the candies thrown in Gaza to celebrate 9/11 to Iran’s targeting of “Big Satan” and “Little Satan,” the Islamist world keeps proving that anti-Zionism and anti-Americanism overlap. Sanders racked up an impressive string of Jewish “firsts” in his campaign, including becoming the first Jew to win a state primary. He also won more primary votes than any other Jew in American history. Nevertheless, pollsters estimated that Clinton won two-thirds of the Jewish vote. She reassured Jewish Democrats that she would remain “pro-Israel” as president and that being pro-Israel remained the consensus position in the Democratic Party mainstream. Still, while no watershed, 2016 was one more step in distancing the Democratic Party from its traditional role as the more Israel-friendly of America’s two major political parties. The bipartisan consensus in favor of Israel remained. But there were cracks in the consensus, which were more visible and numerous on the Democratic side. Sanders’ candidacy multiplied these fissures—and legitimized them. Ira Sheskin’s work in Detroit found that while 23 percent of Jewish Republicans are extremely attached to Israel, with 48 percent very attached, 20 percent of Jewish Democrats are extremely attached to Israel but only 26 percent are very attached.59

In the 2016 Presidential Elections, the percentage of Jewish votes cast for Barack Obama plummeted by 9%, this is after a term characterized by not seeing eye to eye with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu

78% 2008

-9%

69% 2012

Support for Israel as a Prop for Liberals and a Propeller for ProTrumpers Although American Jews have long been motivated by domestic concerns rather than Israel issues in the voting booth, the 2016 campaign intensified another worrying trend for Israel supporters. In the past, at least some Jews would find themselves propelled toward the more pro-Israel candidate, especially at the start of a campaign. But increasingly, many pro-Israel Jewish voters reversed the process, reducing a candidate’s pro-Israel position to a prop, yet another reason to support the candidate but not the main reason. In such an environment, many Jewish voters—especially liberals—started reasoning backwards. If they liked a candidate and liked Israel, they justified the candidate’s Israel policy as just what Israel needed. And if they disliked a candidate who liked Israel, they started either distancing themselves from Israel—or from that candidate’s attitude toward Israel. For example, in 2015 most pro-Israel voters who liked Obama justified his support for the Iran treaty and his rejection of settlements as just what Israel needed. A year later, most of those voters disdained Trump and declared pro-Israel policies that most Israelis loved to be unproductive, insincere gestures.60 In short, in an age of polarizing partisanship, more and more Americans, including Jews, were misapplying the transitive property from math to politics. In math, if a=b and b=c, then a=c. But in politics, if I like b and b dislikes c, I need not dislike c. And if I hate b and b loves c, I need not hate c. The late New York mayor Ed Koch’s wise witticism was forgotten. When running for governor, he told supporters: “If you agree with me on 9 out of 12 issues, vote for me. If you agree with me on 12 out of 12 issues, see a psychiatrist!”61 Democrats and Republicans were treating candidates as either all good or all evil. Inconvenient stances on any one particular issue would be ignored or ironed over to perpetuate the package of the perfect candidate opposed by a perfectly awful opposition.

Republicans Start Positioning Themselves as the Pro-Israel Party under George W. Bush Jewish Republicans often approached their support for Israel as a propeller, not a prop: their commitment to Israel frequently propelled them toward the GOP, starting with the George W. Bush administration. By 2004, American Jews knew that George W. Bush was far friendlier to Israel than his father had been. After the terrorist atrocity of September 11, 2001, Bush Junior applied the “Bush Doctrine” to Israel: “Terror must be stopped. No nation can negotiate with terrorists.”62 Nevertheless, Bush’s opponent that year, John Kerry, won 76 percent of the Jewish vote. Ultimately, most Jews were more alarmed by Bush’s right-wing domestic policies, values, and allies—and appalled by the Iraq War—than impressed by his pro-Israel stance.

During Bush’s two terms, Republicans started positioning themselves as more passionately pro-Israel than Democrats, whose radical faction was increasingly critical of Israel. While the label “anti-Israel” rarely applied to any mainstream American politicians, more Democratic politicians were open to a “tough love” position, willing to squeeze Israel to force it to stop building settlements and consider withdrawing from the territories. More Republican politicians took an unconditional “love love” approach and tried turning support for Israel from a bipartisan tenet into a wedge issue. And despite Ariel Sharon’s sweeping disengagement from Gaza in 2005, and Ehud Olmert’s generous concessions to Mahmoud Abbas that resulted in yet another round of Palestinian “nos,” liberal Jews kept grumbling about Israel. The transitive property was being misapplied: the more ardently George W. Bush embraced Israel, the more some Jews—and some Democrats—recoiled instinctively from Israel because they hated George W. Bush.

Obama: Far More Pro-Jewish than Pro-Israel These nuanced differences had little impact on the Jewish vote in 2008. Despite the concerns of pro-Israel advocates about Barack Obama’s personal commitment to Israel and his long ties to his anti-Semitic, anti-Israel preacher Jeremiah Wright, prominent Jews vouched for him, led by those from Obama’s home base in Chicago. Most Jews had soured on George W. Bush long before the stock market crashed just weeks prior to the election—perhaps the greatest domestic disruption so close to a presidential election in American history. The Republican nominee, Senator John McCain, was a strong supporter of Israel. By any standard, McCain’s record of friendship for Israel was far deeper than Obama’s. But the Jewish support for Obama was as much cultural as political. Comedian Sarah Silverman’s “The Great Schlep” video went viral, mocking elderly Jews who doubted Obama and encouraging their grandchildren to insist that Jews vote Democratic. “If Barack Obama doesn’t become the next president of the United States, I’m gonna blame the Jews. … I am,” Silverman said, in one of her less vulgar riffs. “And I know you’re saying like, ‘Oh my God, Sarah, I can’t believe you’re saying this. Jews are the most liberal, scrappy, civil rights-y people there are.’ Yes, that’s true. But you’re forgetting a whole large group of Jews that are not that way, and they go by several aliases. Nana, Papa, Zaide, Bubbe, plain old grandma and grandpa. These are the people who vote in Florida. And the Florida vote can make or break an election. If you don’t think that’s true, why don’t you think back to two elections ago when a little man named Al Gore got fucked by Florida.”63 The Jewish comedian Larry David evoked the Jewish fear of Evangelicals, declaring at Dartmouth College: “Candidates who do not believe in evolution are not my cup of tea.”64 On Election Day, 78 percent of the Jews voted for Obama.65

The most important subjects for the United States Presidential Elections among the Jewish population

28%

43%

The right to bear arms

Health Insurance

25%

Pro-Israel stance

Other

The Republican campaign made some inroads in 2012. Television ads had Jews who voted for Obama in 2008 regretting their choice. Billboards in Jewish areas cried out: “Obama: Oy vay!” Barack Obama’s share of the Jewish vote did drop nine percentage points, to 69 percent,66 after a term marked by frequent clashes with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. It became clear that most Orthodox Jews were now Republicans and that the less Jewishly affiliated you were, the more liberal and Democratic you became. Yet once again, the long-predicted great Jewish realignment did not occur. More and more Republicans, Jewish and otherwise, marveled at the denunciations of Israel issuing from the left, about Obama’s willingness to reach out to Iran, at the tensions between blacks and Jews, and wondered, as Irving Kristol had in 1999, about the Jews’ “political stupidity.”67 Obama’s poll ratings among Jews did drop further after the divisive debate over the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) regarding Iran’s quest to go nuclear.68 But then, as

Obama’s poll ratings improved overall, so did his standing with the Jews. Polls, of course, are far more volatile and less consequential than the ballot box. Still, Obama’s final approval rating among Jews averaged 13 points higher than that among the population as a whole.69 The Jews most supportive of Obama included the liberal, nonreligious, and highly educated. Jews continue to be nearly twice as liberal as Americans in general—41 percent versus 23 percent—and 85 percent of Jewish liberals approved of Obama.70 Half of all Jews defined themselves as “not religious,” compared to only 31 percent of the general population; 36 percent of Jews had done postgraduate work, nearly three times the rate for all Americans.71 Obama’s Jewish critics were passionate. In 2014, the conservative columnist and blogger Ben Shapiro wrote a column condemning “the Jew-hating Obama Administration,” charging, “Jewish blood is cheap to this administration.” 72 During the angry debate over the Iran deal, others accused Obama of “dog whistling,” singling out Jewish critics and emphasizing Israel’s opposition as a way of tarring critics as self-involved Jews and Zionists. The Brandeis University historian Jonathan Sarna speculated that Obama and some of his aides “have not been as sensitive as they should be to the ease with which a stray comment can give aid and comfort to those who believe in Jewish power, dual loyalty, and a whole variety of other anti-Semitic tropes.”73 But unlike Shapiro and other critics, Sarna stopped there. It was hard to accuse Obama of being anti-Semitic, anti-Israel, or anti-Zionist. Many Jewish supporters loved toasting him as “the first Jewish president.”74 The Hollywood mogul Steven Spielberg said, “This president has a great Jewish soul.”75 Obama denounced anti-Semitism by saying “I, too, am a Jew” to show solidarity.76 He hosted Passover seders at the White House. He was the first president to speak at Israel’s embassy in Washington. He visited Buchenwald and Israel, making sure to honor Theodor Herzl as a way of legitimizing Zionism. And Obama spoke repeatedly about “the deep affinities that I feel for the Israeli people and for the Jewish people.”77 Nevertheless, being so pro-Jewish and beloved by Jews did not stop Obama from becoming a caustic critic of the Israeli prime minister, many Israeli policies, and Israel’s continuing presence in the West Bank. The result was an occasionally testy relationship with Israel and many Jews. That was to be expected. More surprising, however, was how loyal the liberal Jewish majority remained to Obama, thanks to Obama’s support for liberal agenda items such as gay marriage, abortion, and national health care, which Obama’s Republican opponents opposed passionately. At a time when many Americans were reasoning backwards, fine-tuning their issue stances based on which candidate or party they supported, many Jews were so pro-Obama they rationalized his positions regarding Israel as being in Israel’s best interests, especially regarding the Iran deal.78 During the harsh fights over the Iran nuclear agreement, which most Israelis opposed but most American Jews apparently supported, the politicized transitive property seemed to

kick in. More and more pro-Obama Jews supported Obama’s approach to Israel and Iran because they supported Obama. Forced to trust either their president’s reading of Israel’s security or most Israelis’ reading of Israel’s security, most trusted Obama. A Los Angeles Jewish Journal poll found 48 percent of American Jews supporting the deal, with 28 percent opposing it.79 A poll commissioned by the left-leaning J Street found 60 percent of American Jews supporting it.80 Research by Prof. Jonathan Rynhold of Bar-Ilan University made it clear: “The strongest indicator of [American Jewish] support for the agreement was support for President Obama.”81

The Trump Trauma Scares Most Jews While liberal American Jews’ great faith in Obama disturbed many Israelis, Donald Trump’s campaign proved to be the most anxiety-provoking campaign for the most Jews in American history. On one level, this discomfort was surprising. After all, most Republican candidates including Trump kept competing among themselves to prove just how pro-Israel, proBenjamin Netanyahu, and anti-terrorism they could be. During one debate, the conservative commentator Ann Coulter tweeted: “How many f—ing Jews do these people think there are in the United States?” Coulter missed how important Israel’s defense and the symbolism of standing with Israel had become to many Republican voters, especially Evangelical Christians, not just Jews. Lacking any political or foreign-policy experience, Trump was reduced to proving his proIsrael bona fides by boasting about his grand marshalship of the Israel Day Parade and his friendship with Netanyahu. He also had no problem bashing Obama’s pressure on Israel, raising the conundrum that was so bedeviling to many Republicans, with a key word that would emerge years later in Trump’s discussions about Israel too: “The thing I don’t understand is,” Trump said, “in my opinion, Barack Obama has been tremendously disloyal to Israel [emphasis added]. Tremendously. And yet my Jewish friends go out and have fundraisers for him.”82 Trump’s question was answered not only by Jews but by Republican voters too. Surveys showed the continuing Jewish loyalty to liberal values and the Democratic Party most of all. Surveys also showed that in 2018 only four percent of Jewish voters (and only ten percent of Orthodox voters) put Israel as the first or second most important issue. Instead, 43 percent prioritized health care, 28 percent prioritized gun violence, and 21 percent Social Security and Medicare.83 Israel was only twelfth on the list in what was a domestic-focused election; those who cared about the Jewish state intensely remained a minority. Despite his emphasis on loyalty and payback early in the campaign, Trump’s characteristically self-promoting comments about his being the kind of honest broker who could impose “a deal” on the Israelis and Palestinians unnerved Israelis. Eventually, he reassured them of his

enthusiastic support. His two key Middle East aides were two of his Jewish lawyers, adding to the strangeness of it all. At the same time, his aggressive denunciation of terrorism and his sweeping calls to limit Muslim immigration until the United States could control its borders thrilled most right-wing Jews. Trump’s comments and his comrades triggered broader cultural and political distaste within the liberal Jewish community. Long before Trump tweeted a hastily recycled attack on Hillary Clinton’s supposed corruption, using a six-pointed star against a background of money, his many Jewish detractors were convinced he was a closet anti-Semite stirring up the uncloseted ones. And as much as Trump’s running mate, Gov. Mike Pence of Indiana, reassured Evangelicals, Pence’s ardent social conservatism alienated most American Jews. Most disturbing, some of Trump’s most extreme supporters in the blogosphere resorted to the crassest, ugliest anti-Semitic images and epithets to “flame” journalists and others with obviously Jewish last names who dared to criticize “The Donald” or his wife. After Julia Ioffe profiled Melania Trump in GQ, one alt-right leader on the Daily Stormer website demanded: “Please go ahead and send her a tweet and let her know what you think of her dirty kike trickery. Make sure to identify her as a Jew working against White interests.”84 An internet barrage followed. For the crime of defending Democrats on Fox News, Julie Roginsky received tweets like this: “Keep scribbling KIKE! Americans are taking the country back from the Israel First scum. INTO THE OVEN.”85 And the online vitriol against the conservative anti-Trumper Bethany Mandel was so intense and personal, she bought a gun to protect herself and her family.86 A classic exchange bringing together all these layered identities and clashing plotlines occurred in July 2016, when the journalist Dana Schwartz wrote an open letter to her boss Jared Kushner, the owner of the New York Observer and Donald Trump’s son-in-law. Schwartz asked Kushner how he, as a Jew, could accept being used to mask the anti-Semitism of Trump and his supporters.87 Kushner responded by declaring, “My father-in-law is not an anti-Semite.”88 Kushner backed up the declaration—and his own Jewish street cred, his Jewish bona fides—by going into the heartbreaking stories of ghetto deportations, murder, and resistance in the woods with the Bielski brothers that constituted the Kushner family background. In short, Kushner said, I know how to worry about Hitler too—and that’s not a problem with Donald Trump. The escalation from debating about whether a tweet Trump sent in 2016, in the midst of an American presidential campaign, was insensitive, to the Nazi annihilation of Novogrudok’s Jews more than seven decades earlier shows how the shadow of the Holocaust continues to loom over American Jewry and America, even in the twenty-first century.

The Great Lopsided Divide: Orthodox Trumpers versus Liberal Democrats In a deeply polarized America, it was too easy to see American Jews as being sharply divided too, although in lopsided numbers. One could characterize the small, committed minority of pro-Trumpers as Davidian, putting their pro-Israel Jewish patriotism first, and the outraged Jewish majority of anti-Trumpers as Isaiahan—with their fury against Trump reinforcing their already-deeply-baked-in universalistic and social justice instincts. This is, of course, true to a degree. A closer look, however, discerns six distinct groups among Jews – which might not account for the entire community, but are a better characterization of it than the oft-used two previously described. There was a small group of Jewish Never Trumpers, Jewish Republicans who detest Donald Trump but could nevertheless applaud his pro-Israel stand. Bill Kristol, for instance, the founder and editor-at-large of the recently closed Weekly Standard, often blasted Trump during and after the campaign. In the fall of 2017, for example, Kristol tweeted: “The GOP tax bill’s bringing out my inner socialist. The sex scandals are bringing out my inner feminist. Donald Trump and Roy Moore are bringing out my inner liberal. WHAT IS HAPPENING?”89 Nevertheless, Kristol could also proclaim: “I support the moving of the [US] embassy to Jerusalem.”90 Similarly, Jonah Goldberg tweeted that “Jerusalem was a Jewish capital roughly 1,000 years before Jesus was born and 1,500 years before Mohammad was born. #History.”91 On KCRW’s “Left, Right and Center” podcast, David Frum acknowledged: “The president’s office [in] Israel is in West Jerusalem. You don’t have to like that fact, it’s just a fact, and foreign policy should be based on fact, and nothing good comes of pretending facts are not facts.”92 More typical among GOP Jews were Orthodox Trumpers, or Always Israelites. Most were Orthodox in both senses of the word: Orthodox Jews who supported Donald Trump wholeheartedly and consistently. Some Russian Jews and business-oriented Jews joined them. For most Jewish pro-Trumpers, Trump’s support of Israel was a keystone for their support for the president. Orthodox Jewish Orthodox Trumpers, in particular, started with Trump’s ardent support from Israel and enjoyed his alliance with America’s more culturally conservative and pro-business forces. They thanked their friend by overlooking—and too-often excusing—his ethical indiscretions, his bullying, and his occasional infelicitous descriptions of Jews and Judaism. Finally, there was a small group of what we could call “Still Republicans”—sticking with their party out of loyalty to the institution or to its business or cultural agenda, despite their concerns about Trump. They reflect the partisanship of the moment—which has a long pedigree in American history. In 1896, when New York governor David B. Hill saw his Democratic Party nominate the radical populist William Jennings Bryan to run for president, Hill famously said: “I am a Democrat still, very still.”93

The anti-Trumpers could also be divided into three groups: Herzl Jews, Harassed Jews, and Hostile “AsaJew” Jews. Herzl Jews were proud liberal Jews who, as good Democrats and good Jews, hated Trump— as well as most Republicans—and loved Israel. For them, Trump’s behavior and policies were despicable assaults on their Jewish identity and values as well as on their American identity and values. The surge of authoritarian anti-Semitism that they blamed on Trump reinforced their hatred of him and added to their anguish over “Bibi’s Israel,” which seemed to have peaked when Netanyahu addressed Congress in 2015 without an invitation from Barack Obama. It then only worsened amid the Bibi-Trump political love match. One typical “Herzl Jew” was Bari Weiss, an op-ed writer for the New York Times. In her 2019 book How to Fight Anti-Semitism, she describes herself as an involved, literate, liberal Jew, committed to both liberalism and Zionism. A crazed white supremacist’s murder of eleven congregants in the Pittsburgh synagogue where she grew up ended her “holiday from history.”94 Weiss is able to see modern anti-Semitism in three dimensions, unlike most American Jews, who “tend to be much more attuned to anti-Semitism when it comes from the political right.” But she also sees the presidential dimension to the problem, despite Trump’s pro-Israel actions. Weiss writes: “In the end, Trump’s incessant dog whistling is less significant than the larger charge of which he stands guilty: the systemic removal of what my colleague Bret Stephens”—a Never Trumper—“has called ‘the moral guardrails that keep bigotry down.’ Trump has done this by denigrating both the most heroic and the weakest people in our culture, by stoking angry mobs, by showing contempt for the rule of law and disdain for the very best of American traditions.”95 Similarly, Rabbi Rick Jacobs attends AIPAC’s Annual Policy Conference regularly and is famous for owning a second home in Jerusalem. He has long been a leader of the Zionist wing of the Reform movement and president of the Union of Reform Judaism (URJ). Naturally, he opposed Trump’s candidacy from the beginning. “If you want to be a candidate for the highest office in the world, you can’t be a person of hate and division like Donald Trump is,” Jacobs wrote in March 2016, explaining why he walked out of the AIPAC Policy Conference when Trump walked on stage.96 Jacobs allowed his hatred of Trump to trump his love of Jerusalem when a New York Times reporter solicited his reaction to Trump’s decision to move the US Embassy to Jerusalem in December 2017. “Jerusalem has always been the most delicate issue in every discussion about peace,” Jacobs said. “So we’re very concerned that the announcement will either delay or undermine the very, very important resuming of a serious peace process.”97 The URJ’s formal statement on December 6 expressed “serious concern” that Trump’s recognition “may well undercut the Administration’s peace process efforts and risk destabilizing the region.”98

Predictably, many Israelis were furious. “We were taken aback by the official position of the URJ. We are a little concerned,” said Akiva Tor, head of the Israeli Foreign Ministry’s Bureau for World Jewish Affairs and World Religions, based in Jerusalem.99 Many “Herzl Jews” among Jacobs’ colleagues were concerned too: “I want the Jewish world to know that [the URJ’s] position is not my position, nor does it reflect the views of multitudes of, perhaps most, Reform Jews,” Rabbi Ammiel Hirsch told his congregants at the Stephen Wise Free Synagogue in Manhattan.100 “Now is not the right time?” Hirsch asked in his sermon, which he posted on YouTube. “Twothousand years later and it is still not the right time? … There were critics who accused the civil rights movement of moving too quickly. The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s response: ‘The time is always ripe to do what is right.’ ” When six thousand Reform Jews gathered immediately after Trump’s announcement for their previously scheduled national convention, Rabbi Jeffrey K. Salkin of Temple Solel in Hollywood, Florida, told the Jewish News Syndicate: “I heard many whispered and not-sowhispered conversations in the corridors of the URJ biennial. … An impressive number of rabbis and lay people support Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, even if Trump said it. … Whatever Trump’s motives were for the proclamation, he spoke the truth.”101 Trying to quell the controversy, Jacobs delivered a sermon at the Biennial, backtracking. “Before this decision, we expressed our serious concern—never, never about the concept— but about the timing of these actions,” that is, absent a “broader strategy that enhances the two-state solution,” he explained. “Now that the decision has been made, our movement stands in solidarity with this recognition. Jerusalem is, in fact, the capital of Israel. That is how it should and must be.”102 Two weeks later, on December 22, the URJ denounced the UN when it condemned Trump’s decision.103 This fight reflected some of the Herzl Jews’ dilemmas. There was little tolerance among “the Resistance” opposing Trump for any deviation from the anti-Trump line. Still, sometimes, as hard as it was to praise Trump, it was even harder to condemn him. More numerous than these Herzl Jews were what we might call “Harassed Jews.” They were among the 73 percent of American Jews who reported to the Pew Study researchers that the Holocaust was the number one factor shaping their Jewish identities. Nevertheless, most were, ahem, “Americans First” and often quite distant from Judaism. Bari Weiss’s New York Times colleague Jonathan Weisman took a very different approach to Judaism in his 2018 book (((Semitism))): Being Jewish in the Age of Trump than Weiss did in hers. Until the 2016 campaign, Weisman was “largely disconnected from Jewish life and faith”— and proud of it. His Judaism and that of “millions of American Jews” was “easy.” It was “cafeteria-style: observe or don’t, join a synagogue or attend the occasional Jewish film festival, read Philip Roth, eat bagels and babka, say ‘oy’ ironically. You could be Jewish by

religion, Jewish by culture, Jewish by birth or identity—take your pick. … We succeeded without apology but also struggled like everyone else. Anti-Semitism was in the past. The ‘Jewish Question’ was little worth mentioning.”104 Then, suddenly, during the Trump campaign of 2016, “it was. On my phone, on my computer, in my voice mail. … I got that sad cancer face from colleagues and friends—I’m so sorry about what you’re going through.” One retweet by Weisman of an article by Robert Kagan warning about Fascism resulted in the two of them—both with Jewish-sounding names— being targeted by “the Neo-Nazi website the Daily Stormer” and thousands of followers: Someone calling himself “Trump God Emperor” sent Weisman “the Nazi iconography of the shiftless, hook-nosed Jew. I was served an image of the gates of Auschwitz, the famous words Arbeit macht frei replaced without irony with ‘Machen Amerika Great.’ Holocaust taunts, like a path of dollar bills leading into an oven, were followed by Holocaust denial. … The Holocaust didn’t happen, but boy, was it cool.” More than two thousand such messages taught Weisman that “The Jew can be all things to some people … none of them good.” These messages were among the 19,253 messages directed at more than 800 journalists, ten of whom absorbed 83 percent of the total attacks. Overall, the Anti-Defamation League would track 2.6 million anti-Semitic messages posted on Twitter from August 2015 to July 2016.105 Weisman and others are Harassed Jews because they thought they had outgrown Judaism, beyond some Holocaust consciousness as a fundamental building block of whatever Jewish solidarity they felt. Like most modern victims of anti-Semitism, they experienced Holocaust imagery and nostalgia being weaponized against them; though still half-hearted and wary of the label “Jewish,” they were defined as Jews by their enemies. Weisman, like many such Jews, continues to resist Israel as too “tribal” and Judaism itself as vaguely embarrassing and distracting from the happy, normal American life he yearns to lead, yet again. The only kind of Judaism he can tolerate is a “liberal internationalist” kind. He still enjoys “cheeseburgers and pepperoni pizza and Friday nights out too much” to get too serious. And for him it’s clear: right-wing anti-Semitism is a threat; left-wing antiSemitism is a minor distraction—to be expected because of Israel’s aggressiveness. “And for God’s sake, don’t get exorcised about the fringe left at the Dyke March in Chicago when the orchestrators sit in the West Wing,” Weisman would write. “Yes, anti-Israel sentiment is real on the Left, on campuses and in the Resistance, and some of it swerves beyond the bounds of political sentiment into anti-Semitism. But the real problem lies in the censorious reaction to the rising hatred of the alt-right.”106 Finally, a small but loud minority of Hostile Jews who hate Trump and hate “the occupation” follow their fury into a true hostility toward Israel and Zionism that also feeds modern leftwing anti-Semitism. These are the activists of IfNotNow and Jewish Voice for Peace, many of whom harassed Democratic candidates in 2019, demanding they denounce “the occupation.” The British novelist and Man Booker Prize winner Howard Jacobson characterized these

“AsaJews” or “ASHamed Jews” as people with little connection to Judaism who only assert their Jewish heritage to give themselves some sort of standing while seeming brave by bashing Israel.107 Though numerically negligible, such Jewish critics command much attention. Within the Jewish community, they feed fears about “our youth” abandoning “us.” Beyond the Jewish community, they help mainstream anti-Zionism, obscuring the anti-Semitism that often feeds Israel-bashing. Some non-Jews turn “AsaJews” into “IfaJews,” assuming that if a Jew says these awful things about Israel, they must be true and cannot be anti-Semitic.

Conclusion: Israelis Want a Pro-Israel Vote; American Jews Cast an American Jewish Ballot For many Israelis, for most of the Orthodox Jews who support Donald Trump, and for Donald Trump himself, Jewish voters face a classic choice in the voting booth: us or them. In a world in which the former British prime minister David Cameron called Barack Obama “the most pro-Arab, pro-Palestinian president in history,”108 in a world in which President Trump proudly retweets claims calling him “the greatest President for Jews and for Israel in the history of the world, not just America,”109 there should be no real choice for “the Jewish vote.” It should be delivered in one nice package to Donald Trump. From this perspective, Jews should also be the most enthusiastic friends of the most enthusiastic pro-Israel Christians: Evangelicals. Jews should also top the charts in saying “yes” to the question, “Was Israel given to the Jewish people by God?”110 Instead, twice as many white Christian Evangelicals than American Jews answered “yes” to the question about God giving Jews the land of Israel—82 percent to 40 percent. Similarly, while 69 percent of white Evangelicals feel warmly toward Jews, only 34 percent of Jews feel warmly toward Evangelicals—which is even lower than Jews’ warmth toward Muslims at 35 percent.111 And in the 2018 Congressional midterm elections, more than three-quarters of Jewish voters surveyed voted Democratic and denounced Donald Trump.112 The seemingly obvious explanation—that Jews have abandoned Israel—doesn’t fly. Even in a book called Trouble in the Tribe: The American Jewish Conflict over Israel, Prof. Dov Waxman acknowledges that “American Jewry, as a whole … is not as polarized in its views about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as the public debate suggests.” Waxman characterizes “most American Jews,” as “ambivalent centrists” who “want peace and favor some Israeli territorial concessions,” “worry about Israeli security,” and remain “highly suspicious about Palestinians’ intentions.”113 This paper has argued that the Jewish vote is driven by other factors, including fear of Evangelicals—most of whom deny global warming, oppose gay marriage, resist immigration,

abhor abortion, and endorse Donald Trump. The American Jewish liberal identity does not support voting “just for Israel” in the voting booth, nor does it permit abandoning a liberal worldview that many define as quintessentially American and Jewish. At the same time, few American Jews accepted the choice as framed by Donald Trump, the media, and an increasing number of Israeli Jews and Jewish communal leaders. Rather than seeing the choice as loyalty to Trump and Israel or not, most American Jews framed Trump as bad for America, for Jews, and for Israel. The argument then became about what was best for the Jewish state, not about whether they wanted what was best for the Jewish state. So the American Jews’ more relevant “world” was not the one of Trump as Israel’s “best friend” and Obama as the “most … pro-Palestinian president in history.” Instead, most American Jews lived with a cleaner, more comprehensive, all-or-nothing narrative. They saw Trump as the anti-Semite, his supporters as the threat to Israel and America, and the right-wing Israeli policies Trump supported as being as toxic to Israel as Trump seemed to them to be to America. The subtleties about the Jewish vote were lost in a Jewish world where people enjoyed catastrophizing as much as anyone else. The loudest Jewish liberals would yell about Israel abandoning liberalism just as the loudest Israelis yelled about American Jews abandoning Israel. Both extremes—and the reporters echoing them—filtered out all the complexities and nuances in the positions most people took. In this polarized Age of Trump, even the fight against anti-Semitism became a partisan flashpoint. Once, a wide swath of Jews easily united in common cause against common enemies. Suddenly, when “Herzl” liberals called out anti-Semitism on the left, they often encountered claims that “the white nationalist, xenophobic far-right is the clear source of rising anti-Semitic violence in this country,” as Dylan Williams, vice president of government affairs at J Street, put it. “Instead of seriously combating that threat—which the president has stoked with his own hateful rhetoric—the Trump administration and its allies in the right-wing minority of the Jewish community prefer to focus overwhelming attention on nonviolent campus critics of Israel,” Williams insisted, “and to wield false accusations of anti-Semitism as a partisan weapon against progressives.”114 There is a Jewish vote—a solid, stable, liberal Democratic majority, usually in the 70-percent range in presidential elections. It rarely affects the national outcome but it does reflect the American Jewish mentality. In so many ways, the liberal Democratic Jews who constitute the Jewish vote are living and expressing the new Jewish consensus: ultimately, they are more pro-choice than pro-Israel, anti-Trump and anti-Bibi but not anti-Israel, and more focused on domestic concerns than on international affairs. In voting this way, American Jews are following a script written for them decades ago, when the poet Emma Lazarus welcomed them and so many others of “your tired, your poor/ Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.” As the legendary twentieth-century Jewish

communal leader Max Fisher explained, the loyalty hierarchy was clear: “My fundamental responsibility was as an American,” he was quoted as saying in his biography. “Then as an American Jewish leader. And finally, I had my love for Israel.”115 Some view this as American Jews’ corrupt bargain and great betrayal of their people. Most American Jews toast it as the product of their golden opportunity. More empowered than all-powerful, after thousands of years of suffering, once-persecuted Jews can now exercise their national responsibility freely as proud—and ever more normal—Americans.

Afterword: The Jewish Vote at T Minus 100, One Hundred Days before Election Day, 2020 There was a moment, in February, when it looked like the 2020 election was going to break all kinds of historical patterns regarding the Jewish vote, and we were going to have our first genuinely Jewish American presidential election. True, the majority of Jews were going to continue identifying as liberal and the overwhelming majority would vote Democratic. Donald Trump’s rhetoric, behavior, dog whistles, and anti-Semitic cheerleaders guaranteed that. But there was a chance that the Democratic primary was going to turn into a fight between two Jewish finalists. Moreover there was a spate of articles speculating that one of them – Michael Bloomberg -- just might end up as America’s first Jewish president. At one point, speaking in a Miami synagogue, Bloomberg, the media billionaire and former New York mayor, mocked his rival, Senator Bernie Sanders, who kept rooting his socialism in his newly-acknowledged Jewish identity. “Now, I know I’m not the only Jewish candidate running for president,” Bloomberg said drily, “but I am the only one who doesn’t want to turn America into a kibbutz.” Maclean’s, the popular Canadian magazine which helped fuel the trend with an article "America's First Jewish President?” noted: “Sanders and Bloomberg are both 78 year-old New York Jews running for president, and yet they’re incredibly different, and attract very different Jewish supporters. That might be, in the worn-out phrase, good for the Jews” – because it would break assumptions that Jews act monolithically, especially regarding Israel. 116 In fact, the Jewish diversity on display in the campaign was bad for the Jews. Bernie Sanders was far to most Jews’ left on Israel-related issues. His harsh criticism of the Israeli government and the Jewish establishment perpetuated the media-fueled myth – and confirmed Israeli fears -- that American Jewry was abandoning Israel. Polls continued to show that between eighty and ninety percent of American Jews – like most Americans – were pro-Israel.117 Mere hundreds not thousands joined marginal radical organizations like Jewish Voice for Peace and If Not Now – but they had Sanders’ ear, and a revolving door sharing personnel.118 Similarly, few American Jews tolerated the anti-Semitic statements of Sanders allies like Representative Ilhan Omar, or even the more ambiguous but obsessively anti-Zionist activities of the prominent Palestinian activist and Trump critic Linda Sarsour. Yet, even before Sanders charged that AIPAC offers a “platform … for leaders who express bigotry,” 119 his positioning on the Israel issue misleadingly suggested there was this broader re-positioning on Israel among his fellow Jews. Even more confusing was the fact that even if only a few Jews agreed with him regarding Israel, many liberal Jews did agree with him on many other issues. Whatever popularity Sanders enjoyed in the Jewish community – and he was especially appealing to young Jews – was because of his domestic stance on health care, on free college, on the economy. In fact, overall a February, 2020 poll for the non-partisan Jewish Electorate Institute found

that barely a third of Jewish voters considered Israel as a factor when assessing candidates, while nearly two-thirds focused on healthcare, medicare and social security, then gun safety -in that order.120 True, for the most intensely pro-Israel Democrats – the AIPAC activists -- a Sanders versus Trump showdown in November would be like choosing between eating a poisonous falafel ball laced with ham and a poisonous gefilte fish stuffed with hot peppers. But for most Jews such a showdown would have been a no-brainer. The enmity against Trump made it clear: most Jews had one desire in 2020: Anybody But Trump. Revealingly, only 52 percent of American Jews had a favorable view of Sanders, with 45 percent viewing him unfavorably. Yet, if forced to choose in November, 65 percent of Jews were ready to go Sanders with only 30 percent considering Trump. Clearly, the historic pattern of voting based on domestic concerns not Israel-related matters persisted, Jewish voters remained more pro-Choice and anti-Trump in the voting booth – while still pro-Israel in general. In the surprising, scary, spring of 2020, many of these issues disappeared as quickly as theatre, movie and concert hall revenues vanished. First, in a matter of days, Bloomberg’s campaign collapsed. After a huge buildup, after spending more than $400 million in campaign commercials, he performed abysmally in the presidential debates. At his February 19, 2020, debut in Las Vegas, he sounded excruciatingly unprepared and out-of-touch. His well-practiced rivals skewered his behavior toward women, they eviscerated New York’s stop-and-frisk policy when he was mayor, they mocked his wealth.121 As his campaign fizzled, establishment Democrats panicked. They worried that the one thing that might drive voters to Donald Trump or immobilize them in November, was Bernie Sanders’ campaign to win the White House – and make Socialism respectable. The turn to the safe, reliable, reassuring former Senator and Vice President, Joe Biden, reinforced by the massive support Biden enjoyed from the African-American community, made the campaign for the 2020 Democratic nomination flip from a populist free-for-all to a seeming coronation. Super Tuesday, March 3, gave Biden 10 state wins – and an overall aura of invincibility. By the time the Corona health and economic crisis really hit in mid-March, the Democratic nominating campaign was all but over. Since then, the unprecedented, history-making triple blows of pandemic, depression, and racial unrest, have actually sent the Jewish vote question back to its historic position – as, essentially, a side issue in the 2020 campaign – and being much more about Jewish identity than Jewish influence. -Initially, the prolonged lockdown kept the presidential campaign focused on the bread and butter issues of the pandemic. With intense debates about wearing masks, managing the cratering economy, how to cope with isolation, and, as always, Donald Trump’s blustery,

bullying approach to the presidency – there was little focus on the Jews. Predictably, there was a spike in Corona-related Jew-hatred online, with some chatter blaming Jews or Israel or Zionists for the outbreak,122but that conversation took place in parallel to the presidential campaign. The huge divisions in the country dominated, especially as Blue States like New York, New Jersey and California first took the lead in suffering. Tensions spiked – and a broader sense of social, political, and economic crisis intensified on May 25, when a Minneapolis policeman murdered an African-American man, George Floyd. Classically, tragically, as the fight against “systemic racism” spread, and as the White Supremacist backlash grew, Jews were caught in the crossfire. The anti-Semitic tweets and memes of March and April became more menacing attacks –from the far left and the far right – in June and July. From the far left came anti-Zionist and Jew-hating graffiti during the Floyd riots,123 as well as Jew-hating Tweets and re-Tweets from a few leading celebrities and athletes, especially those enamored with one of America’s most prominent yet mainstreamed anti-Semites, Louis Farrakhan.124 From the far right, came obsessive accusations that Jews, especially the left-wing billionaire George Soros125, were funding the Floyd protests, accompanied by an avalanche of innuendo about “the Jews” ruining America through immigration and other conspiracies as White Supremacists lashed out against masks, business closures, and Black Lives Matter.126 There was good news too. Back in 2016, Black Lives Matter issued a manifesto which singled Israel out for special opprobrium, claiming it was an “apartheid state” perpetrating “genocide” against Palestinians.127 Four years later, BLM removed the entire document from its website. As what was once a particular organization morphed into a broader network and symbol of the moment, many activists tried distancing themselves from the organization’s original, instinctive, “from Ferguson to Gaza” impulse. At the same time, by this point in his presidency, Trump was much more cautious about offending his Jewish supporters when right-wing anti-Semitism growled. Moreover, in truth, as in 2016, both candidates in 2020 were remarkably wired into the Jewish community and Jewish culture. Like a scene in the popular comedy, “Crazy ExGirlfriend,” Trump supporters and Biden supporters could plunge into a who-is-more-Jewpositive showdown. Trump has one Jewish in-law; Biden has three. Trump the blusterer needles wealthy Jews about their being good negotiators; Biden the mensch makes shiva calls in communal laundry rooms for steady-eddie $18 donors (or at least did it once in 2006, in an oft-told tale).128 Trump grumbles that his daughter Ivanka won’t take his phone calls on Shabbat; Biden boasts “I’m probably one of the few Christian members of the Congress who can say the motzi.”129 Still, watching the Republican Jewish Coalition ads for President Donald Trump130 and the Jewish Democratic Council of America ads against him,131 was like listening in to the Cabinet discussions between Likud and Blue-and-White in Israel’s supposedly united government.

The pro-Trump ads targeting Jews made one point again and again: Donald Trump is Israel’s “best friend ever.” The anti-Trump ads (which barely mentioned Joe Biden), emphasized “our values,” “Jewish values,” the Charlottesville hate demonstration, and anti-Semitism. The strategies reflected the polls. Jewish Republicans weren’t praising Trump’s values, or his presidential stature, or what he’s done for America – partially because in the quiet of a phone call, 69 percent of all Americans agreed that Trump had damaged the dignity of the presidency. Among Jews, while a little more than half could admit that they approved of Trump’s recognition of Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights, and his handling over US-Israel relations, 71 percent disapproved of his approach to “anti-Semitism/white nationalism.”132 The Trump ads sought to exploit pro-Israel Democrats’ concerns that anti-Israel sentiment was growing in the Democratic Party. The justifiable fury against racism, boosted a series of more radical candidates in Democratic primaries who happened to be less pro-Israel than their opponents. Going into November 2020, the loss through retirement of stalwarts like Nita Lowey and the humiliating defeat of Eliot Engel, suggested that their just might be a generational change afoot in the upcoming Congress – with the pro-Israel caucus shrunken as collateral damage.133 Still, with it all, in the campaign’s final hundred days, speculation settled on the by nowritualized question: what impact would the swing state Jews, the Jews of Florida, Michigan, and Pennsylvania have on the actual outcome? And, as always, the smart money was on the Jewish question being debated loudly, American Jewish intra-communal battles and internal struggles escalating intensely, but the presidential election being one more opportunity for American Jews to vote as Americans not as Jews.

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71 Ibid.

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Rynhold, “Israel, the Pro-Israel Lobby, American Jews and the Iran Deal.”

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Rynhold, “Israel, the Pro-Israel Lobby, American Jews and the Iran Deal.”

Uri Heilman, “Trump Meets with Orthodox Jews and Reveals His Israel Advisers—His Jewish Lawyers,” Haaretz, Apr. 16, 2016, https://www.haaretz.com/world-news/trump-meets-with-orthodox-jews-namedrops-his-jewish-lawyers-1.5433577.

J Street Poll, “The 2018 Jewish Vote, National Post-Election Survey,” November 2018, https://jstreet. org/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/J-Street-2018-Election-Night-Survey-Presentation-11072018.pdf.

Julie Saumur, “In 2016, People Have Read Anti-Semitic Tweets 10 Billion Times, Many from Trump Supporters,” Washington Post, Oct. 19, 2016, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/acts-of-faith/ wp/2016/10/19/in-one-year-people-have-read-anti-semitic-tweets-a-staggering-10-billion-times/.

Jonathan Weisman, (((Semitism))): Being Jewish in America in the Age of Trump (St. Martin’s Press, 2018).

Bethany Mandel, “My Trump Tweets Earned Me So Many Anti-Semitic Haters That I Bought a Gun,” Forward, Mar. 21, 2016, https://forward.com/opinion/336159/my-trump-tweets-earned-me-so-many-antisemitic-haters-that-i-bought-a-gun/.

Dana Schwarz, “An Open Letter to Jared Kushner, from One of Your Jewish Employees,” Observer (blog), July 5, 2016, https://observer.com/2016/07/an-open-letter-to-jared-kushner-from-one-of-your-jewishemployees/.

Jared Kushner, “Jared Kushner: The Donald Trump I Know,” Observer (blog), July 6, 2016, https://observer. com/2016/07/jared-kushner-the-donald-trump-i-know/.

Bill Kristol, “The GOP tax bill’s bringing out my inner socialist. The sex scandals are bringing out my inner feminist. Donald Trump and Roy Moore are bringing out my inner liberal. WHAT IS HAPPENING?” Twitter, Nov. 21, 2017, https://twitter.com/BillKristol/status/933074207637991424.

Jane Coaston, “Bill Kristol Thinks ‘People Are Just Too Unhappy with the Status Quo,’ ” Vox, Jan. 10, 2018, https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/1/10/16865502/bill-kristol-trump-status-quo.

Jonah Goldberg, “Jerusalem was a Jewish capital roughly 1,000 years before Jesus was born and 1,500 years before Mohammad was born. #History,” Twitter, Dec. 6, 2017, https://twitter.com/jonahnro/ status/938494741964042240.

KCRW’s Left Right and Center, Dec. 10, 2017, https://www.facebook.com/KCRWLeftRightandCenter/posts/ on-the-decision-to-move-the-us-embassy-to-jerusalem-david-frum-said-the-presiden/1753607134673154/.

Quoted in Troy, See How They Ran.

Bari Weiss, How to Fight Anti-Semitism (Crown, 2019).

95 Ibid. 96

Nathan Guttmann, “Donald Trump Works His Magic on a Frustrated AIPAC,” Forward, Mar. 21, 2016, https:// forward.com/news/breaking-news/336578/donald-trump-works-his-magic-on-a-frustrated-aipac/.

Laurie Goodstein, “Praise and Alarm from American Jews over Trump’s Jerusalem Move,” New York Times, Dec. 6, 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/06/us/trump-jerusalem-jews.html.

“Rabbi Rick Jacobs Responds to Today’s White House Statement on Jerusalem,” Union for Reform Judaism, Dec. 6, 2017, https://urj.org/blog/2017/12/06/rabbi-rick-jacobs-responds-todays-white-house-statementjerusalem.

Penny Schwartz, “Debates with Israel Weigh on Reform Movement’s Largest-Ever Gathering,” Jewish Telegraphic Agency (blog), Dec. 8, 2017, https://www.jta.org/2017/12/08/united-states/strained-ties-withisrael-weigh-on-reform-movements-largest-ever-gathering.

100 Rafael Medoff, “URJ Not Opposed to Jerusalem Decision,” Heritage Florida Jewish News, Jan. 5, 2018, https://www.heritagefl.com/story/2018/01/05/news/urj-not-opposed-to-jerusalem-decision/9087.html. 101

Rafael Medoff, “Are Some Reform Leaders Now Embracing Trump’s Jerusalem Decision?” Algemeiner, Jan. 3, 2018, https://www.algemeiner.com/2018/01/03/are-some-reform-leaders-now-embracing-trumpsjerusalem-decision/.

102 “Rabbi Rick Jacobs: URJ Continues to Deepen Commitments to and Investment in Israel,” Union for Reform Judaism, Dec. 15, 2017, https://urj.org/blog/2017/12/15/rabbi-rick-jacobs-urj-continues-deepencommitments-and-investment-israel. 103 Medoff, “URJ Not Opposed to Jerusalem Decision.” 104 Weisman, (((Semitism))). 105 ADL Report: Anti-Semitic Targeting of Journalists during the 2016 Presidential Campaign,” AntiDefamation League, Oct. 19, 2016, https://www.adl.org/sites/default/files/documents/assets/pdf/presscenter/CR_4862_Journalism-Task-Force_v2.pdf (accessed Sept. 29, 2019). 106 Weisman, (((Semitism))). 107

Howard Jacobson, The Finkler Question (Bloomsbury, 2010).

108 Herb Keinon, “Cameron: Obama Was Most Pro-Palestinian and Pro-Arab US President Ever”, Jerusalem Post, Sept. 24, 2019, https://www.jpost.com/Diaspora/Cameron-Obama-was-most-pro-Palestinian-andpro-Arab-US-president-ever-602699. 109 Donald J. Trump “Thank you to Wayne Allyn Root for the very nice words. “President Trump is the greatest President for Jews and for Israel in the history of the world, not just America, he is the best President for Israel in the history of the world...and the Jewish People in Israel love him....,” Twitter, Aug. 21, 2019, https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/1164138795475881986. 110

Jon Perr, “Why Jewish Voters Still Won’t Support Republicans in 2016,” Daily Kos, February 28, 2016, https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2016/2/28/1490970/-Why-Jewish-voters-still-won-t-support-Republicansin-2016.

111

Cathy Lynn Grossman, “Americans View Jews, Christians Warmly; Atheists, Muslims Get Cold Shoulder,” National Catholic Reporter, July 16, 2014, https://www.ncronline.org/news/parish/americans-view-jewschristians-warmly-atheists-muslims-get-cold-shoulder.

112

Jonathan Lemire and Darlene Superville, “Trump: Any Jew Voting Democratic Is Uninformed Or Disloyal,” AP News, Aug. 21, 2019, https://apnews.com/1bc3065eb2e4414289ef0ac1ac4ebaf7.

113

Dov Waxman, Trouble in the Tribe: The American Jewish Conflict over Israel (Princeton University Press, 2016).

114

Alexander Nazaryan, “Anti-Semitism Event at Justice Department Turns into pro-Israel Rally,” Yahoo News, July 16, 2019, https://news.yahoo.com/anti-semitism-summit-justice-department-212905266.html.

115

Peter Golden, Quiet Diplomat: A Biography of Max M. Fisher (Cornwall, 1992), 323.

116

Jamie Weinman, “America's first Jewish president?,” Maclean’s, March 2 2020, https://www.macleans. ca/politics/washington/americas-first-jewish-president/

117

Jeremy Sharon, “80% of US Jews say they are pro-Israel study finds,” The Jerusalem Post, February 4 2020, https://www.jpost.com/diaspora/80-percent-of-us-jews-say-they-are-pro-israel-study-finds-616479

118

Eric R. Mandel “Sorry, but Bernie Sanders is no Zionist,” The Jerusalem Post, February 19 2020, https:// www.jpost.com/opinion/sorry-but-bernie-sanders-is-no-zionist-618138

119

Katie Shepard, “Amid Sander’s rise, candidate battles AIPAC and pundit comparing campaign’s momentum to Nazi invasion,” The Washington Post, February 24 2020, https://www.washingtonpost. com/nation/2020/02/24/sanders-aipac-jewish/

120 National Survey of Likely Jewish Voters in 2020, Jewish Electorate Institute, February 28 2020, https:// www.jewishelectorateinstitute.org/national-survey-of-likely-jewish-voters-in-2020/ 121

Matt Flegenheimer, Alexander Burns and Jeremy W. Peters, “How Bloomberg Bungled a Debate That He Had Been Prepped For,” The New York Times, February 20 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/20/ us/politics/bloomberg-nevada-debate.html

122

Aron Heller, “Experts: Coronavirus brings spike in anti-Semitic sentiments,” ABC News, April 20 2020, https://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/experts-coronvirus-brings-spike-anti-semiticsentiments-70237662

123

Tom Tugend, “Los Angeles Jews take stock after George Floyd Protest batter local institutions,” Jewish Telegraphic Agency, June 2 2020, https://www.jta.org/2020/06/02/united-states/los-angeles-jews-takestock-after-george-floyd-protests-batter-local-institutions

124

Ben Sales, “Why celebrities keep quoting Louis Farrakhan- despite his anti-Semitism,” Jewish Telegraphic Agency, July 20 2020, https://www.jta.org/2020/07/20/united-states/why-celebrities-keep-quotinglouis-farrakhan-despite-his-anti-semitism

125

Ben Sales, “ There are now 500,000 negative tweets about George Soros every day. Many claim he’s funding George Floyd protests” Jewish Telegraphic Agency, June 3 2020, https://www.jta.org/2020/06/03/ united-states/there-are-now-500000-negative-tweets-about-george-soros-every-day

126

See for example ADL Blogs, “Hate, Conspiracy Theories and Advertising on Facebook,” June 22, 2020, https://www.adl.org/blog/hate-conspiracy-theories-and-advertising-on-facebook

127

Yair Rosenberg “ From Left to Right Jewish Groups Condemn ‘Repellent’ Black Lives Matter Claim of Israeli ‘Genocide’,” Tablet Magazine, August 6 2016, https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/ from-left-to-right-jewish-groups-condemn-repellent-black-lives-matter-claim-of-israeli-genocide

128 Ron Kampeas, “Biden Fundraising Letter Features Rabbi’s Story About Senator Making Shiva Calls,” Forward, September 9, 2019, https://forward.com/fast-forward/431059/joe-biden-fundraising-rabbi-shiva/ 129

Ron Kampeas, “Joe Biden’s SuperTuesday Sweep Changes the Jewish 2020 Campaign,” JTA, March 6, 2020, https://www.jta.org/2020/03/06/politics/joe-bidens-super-tuesday-sweep-changes-the-jewish2020-campaign

130 Marcy Oster, “Republican Jewish Coalition launches $50,000 pro-Trump ad campaign,” The Times of Israel, June 21 2020, https://www.timesofisrael.com/republican-jewish-coalition-launches-50000-protrump-ad-campaign/

131

JTA, “Jewish Democratic Council ad calls Trump the ‘biggest threat’ to Jews,” The Times of Israel, November 21 2019, https://www.timesofisrael.com/jewish-democratic-council-ad-calls-trump-the-biggest-threatto-jews/

132

National Survey of Likely Jewish Voters in 2020, Jewish Electorate Institute, February 28 2020, https:// www.jewishelectorateinstitute.org/national-survey-of-likely-jewish-voters-in-2020/

133

Douglas Bloomfield, “Eliot Engel’s Loss to Bowman is a Changing of the Guard for Democrats,” Jerusalem Post, July 1, 2020, https://www.jpost.com/opinion/engels-loss-to-bowman-is-a-changing-of-the-guardfor-democrats-633505