A 'Jewish Vote'?
HERBERG, WILL
A 'Jewish Vote'? The Political Behavior of American Jews. By Lawrence H. Fuchs. Free Press. 220 pp. $4.00. Reviewed by Will Herberg Author, "Protestant-Catholic-J eiv" The "Jewish vote," like...
...Fuchs does not seem to be much interested...
...They have split tickets and given support to minority parties far more readily than most other groups in the New Deal coalition...
...Fuchs traces this anomaly to the same tendency to vote "liberal" and "internationalist," without regard to party labels...
...Paradoxically, Mr...
...Fuchs) by their opposition to slavery and by Lincoln's "humani-tarianism...
...But, on the whole, the reader is left with a certain sense of disappointment...
...Fuchs seems to miss his own best opportunities...
...Fuchs's findings are in many ways important, though he does not make the most of them...
...It would have helped a great deal, it seems to me, had the author made a more serious attempt to relate his findings about American Jews to the general pattern of American ethno-religious life...
...Fuchs seems to have no profound understanding...
...Reviewed by Will Herberg Author, "Protestant-Catholic-J eiv" The "Jewish vote," like the "Catholic vote," is a matter of continuing interest not only to the practical politician but also to the more detached observer of the political scene...
...Fuchs's explanation of the American Jewish proclivity to "liberalism" and "internationalism" is no more satisfactory...
...then they threw their support to the emerging Republican party, moved (according to Mr...
...He just barely hints of the shift in general outlook taking place with the emergence of a characteristic third generation of American Jews, living no longer in compact "Jewish" neighborhoods in the inner cities, but in the new suburbs with their very different social and cultural conditions...
...Fuchs brings forward are certainly interesting, and his comments on them in many cases enlightening...
...Virtually all his material comes from these old-established "Jewish" communities, although they represent the past rather than the future, or even the present, of American Jewry...
...for another, he is not very convincing in his elaborate attempt to link the "liberal"-"inter-nationalist" attitude of American Jews with their moral and religious heritage, of which, incidentally, Mr...
...Fuchs points out, this devotion to the New Deal has been accompanied by a marked proclivity toward "independence" in voting...
...Fuchs is right in pointing out that "ethno-religious politics is basically a product of ethno-religious pluralism in American life...
...As far as American Jews are concerned, Lawrence H. Fuchs concludes, I think quite rightly, that there is such a thing as a "Jewish vote" in the sense that "an unusual number of [American] Jews do derive their political attitudes and opinions from being Jewish...
...It surely makes a good deal of difference, from the standpoint of one's responsibility to his American citizenship, whether he strives to promote the welfare of his particular group of Americans or whether he tries to influence U.S...
...Do the many millions of Americans comprehended by these ethno-reli-gious designations tend to vote in line with their religious and ethnic loyalties, or are we up against just another of those myths compounded of popular belief and political self-interest...
...We need not go far in our history to learn this lesson...
...For one thing, he makes no attempt to subject these verv broad terms to any kind of critical scrutiny...
...Here and there a hint of the dynamics of the problem breaks through, but Mr...
...For twenty years now, since 1936, American Jews have been the most ardent, devoted and unwavering supporters of New Deal democracy that the nation possesses...
...American Jews have not been firm party Democrats, even in their period of greatest enthusiasm for the New Deal...
...The data Mr...
...But it was not until FDR and the New Deal appeared that American Jews found a political cause with which they could identify themselves almost without reservation...
...Fuchs finds the unifying theme of the story to be the tendency of American Jews to align themselves with the "liberal" forces of the day...
...They apparently remained firm in their Republican allegiance until 1912, when Wilson and his New Freedom captured their imagination...
...But I think he overlooks something when he compares ethnic nationalism with "voting to influence policy in favor of [one's] occupational group...
...He does not examine what is surely of primary importance, the dynamics of change in Jewish political attitudes...
...This conclusion is buttressed by a brief survey of the political behavior of the Jews in the United States from the early days of the Republic, and a more extended study of American Jewish political attitudes since the New Deal...
...policy in the interest of a foreign nation with which he feels a special kinship...
...Thus, they were ardent Jeffersonians and Jacksonians in the first decades of the new nation...
...behavior...
Vol. 39 • October 1956 • No. 44
