Why Jews Should Not be Liberals

Why Jews Should Not be Liberals PDF Author: Larry F. Sternberg
Publisher: Pelican Publishing
ISBN: 9781589803831
Category : Conservatism
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
This book makes a powerful argument that the principles of Judaism, its laws, traditions, and commandments, are at odds with the realities of liberalism today. ? back cover.

Why Jews Should Not be Liberals

Why Jews Should Not be Liberals PDF Author: Larry F. Sternberg
Publisher: Pelican Publishing
ISBN: 9781589803831
Category : Conservatism
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
This book makes a powerful argument that the principles of Judaism, its laws, traditions, and commandments, are at odds with the realities of liberalism today. ? back cover.

If I Am Not For Myself

If I Am Not For Myself PDF Author: Ruth R. Wisse
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 0743229614
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 244

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Book Description
For over a century, Jews have been identified with liberalism. Not only have they been a driving force behind the spread of liberal politics; they have also been steadfastly loyal to a doctrine that promised them both safety and political acceptance. Recent evidence suggests that their commitment has not waned. But while Jews continue to stand up for other groups and "vote their conscience", contends Ruth Wisse, the liberal commitment to the Jews is not nearly so strong. Whenever Jews have been attacked - from the trial of Captain Dreyfus to the sustained military and political war against Israel - liberals have been slow to defend Jewish rights and have preferred instead to hold the Jews responsible for the persistence of their enemies. The explanation for this liberal default, Wisse argues, is the survival and success of anti-Semitism. This irrational idea continues to flourish throughout the world, despite the destruction of the fascist and communist regimes that were its deadliest twentieth-century allies. Wisse points out that anti-Semitism's astonishing resilience has put liberals - including liberal Jews - in an impossible position. The only reasonable response to such a doctrine, Wisse insists, is not appeasement or avoidance, but steadfast confrontation and rejection. Yet such opposition is alien to liberal ideas of open-mindedness and strikes many as intolerant. Unwilling to suspend their optimistic view of man as a benevolent and rational being in order to combat a mortal enemy, most liberals - including many Jews - conclude that Jews themselves must be responsible for the continuing wars against them - thus implicitly condoning their sacrifice. Wisse's book, inspired by afriend's emigration to Israel, traces the Jewish romance with liberalism from its discovery by Jewish integrationists and Zionists to the acceptance today by many Jews of a moral equivalence between Zionism and the war against it. She also explores, among the many contradictions of modern Jewish politics, the ambiguous question of Jewish "chosenness", and the Jewish longing for acceptance in a larger human family; the successful Arab war of ideas against Israel; and the dilemma of Jewish writers and intellectuals who wish to transcend their parochializing siege. Above all, she shows how and why anti-Semitism became the twentieth century's most successful ideology and reveals what people in liberal democracies would have to do to prevent it from once again achieving its goal.

Why Are Jews Liberals?

Why Are Jews Liberals? PDF Author: Norman Podhoretz
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0307456250
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 354

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Book Description
From the bestselling author of World War IV, a brilliant investigation of a central question in American politics and culture. During his career as a neoconservative thinker, Norman Podhoretz has been asked no question more often than “Why are so many Jews liberals?” In this provocative book he sets out to solve this puzzle. He first offers a fascinating account of anti-Semitism in the West to show the historical roots of Jewish mistrust of the right. But, Podhoretz argues, since the Six Day War of 1967 Jewish allegiance to the left no longer makes sense, and yet most Jews continue supporting the Democratic Party and the liberal agenda. Reviewing the history of Jewish political attitudes and examining the available evidence, Podhoretz argues against the conventional explanations for Jewish liberalism—finally proposing his own.

Why Are Jews Liberals?

Why Are Jews Liberals? PDF Author: Norman Podhoretz
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0385532121
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 354

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Book Description
From the bestselling author of World War IV, a brilliant investigation of a central question in American politics and culture. During his career as a neoconservative thinker, Norman Podhoretz has been asked no question more often than “Why are so many Jews liberals?” In this provocative book he sets out to solve this puzzle. He first offers a fascinating account of anti-Semitism in the West to show the historical roots of Jewish mistrust of the right. But, Podhoretz argues, since the Six Day War of 1967 Jewish allegiance to the left no longer makes sense, and yet most Jews continue supporting the Democratic Party and the liberal agenda. Reviewing the history of Jewish political attitudes and examining the available evidence, Podhoretz argues against the conventional explanations for Jewish liberalism—finally proposing his own.

Jews, Liberalism, Antisemitism

Jews, Liberalism, Antisemitism PDF Author: Abigail Green
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3030482405
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 429

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Book Description
“This is a timely contribution to some of the most pressing debates facing scholars of Jewish Studies today. It forces us to re-think standard approaches to both antisemitism and liberalism. Its geographic scope offers a model for how scholars can “provincialize” Europe and engage in a transnational approach to Jewish history. The book crackles with intellectual energy; it is truly a pleasure to read.”- Jessica M. Marglin, University of Southern California, USA Green and Levis Sullam have assembled a collection of original, and provocative essays that, in illuminating the historic relationship between Jews and liberalism, transform our understanding of liberalism itself. - Derek Penslar, Harvard University, USA “This book offers a strikingly new account of Liberalism’s relationship to Jews. Previous scholarship stressed that Liberalism had to overcome its abivalence in order to achieve a principled stand on granting Jews rights and equality. This volume asserts, through multiple examples, that Liberalism excluded many groups, including Jews, so that the exclusion of Jews was indeed integral to Liberalism and constitutive for it. This is an important volume, with a challenging argument for the present moment.”- David Sorkin, Yale University, USA The emancipatory promise of liberalism – and its exclusionary qualities – shaped the fate of Jews in many parts of the world during the age of empire. Yet historians have mostly understood the relationship between Jews, liberalism and antisemitism as a European story, defined by the collapse of liberalism and the Holocaust. This volume challenges that perspective by taking a global approach. It takes account of recent historical work that explores issues of race, discrimination and hybrid identities in colonial and postcolonial settings, but which has done so without taking much account of Jews. Individual essays explore how liberalism, citizenship, nationality, gender, religion, race functioned differently in European Jewish heartlands, in the Mediterranean peripheries of Spain and the Ottoman empire, and in the North American Atlantic world.

Lubavitchers as Citizens

Lubavitchers as Citizens PDF Author: Jan Feldman
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 1501721496
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 234

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Book Description
Lubavitchers are active in the civic life of their communities and so should be considered good citizens by advocates of participatory democracy. However, their obviously nonliberal worldview tends to elicit rancor in precisely those quarters. The notion that democratic political institutions require the support of a democratic political culture is pervasive in political theory. Many scholars treat democratic virtues and liberal values as synonymous. As a result, nonliberal groups are viewed with suspicion: if they reject liberal values, they are also seen as rejecting democratic ones. Jan Feldman focuses on a subset of Chassidic Judaism known as Lubavitch, or ChaBad, to explore this assumption.Lubavitchers make an excellent test case, she explains, because they are informed, politically active, and democratic on the one hand, yet embrace nonliberal values on the other. Unlike the Amish or Hutterites, they do not rely on rural isolation for group survival but function remarkably well in secular, urban settings. They embrace rather than withdraw from political life. Although they do not use the state to promote their worldview to a wider audience, their entry into the public realm often generates hostility and fear.Feldman does not claim that liberal values are irrelevant to democracy nor does she argue that all nonliberal groups are equally benign. "What Lubavitchers allow us to investigate," she writes, "is the common assumption that liberal and democratic attitudes are inextricably linked." Through numerous interviews in the centers of Lubavitch life in Montreal, New York, and Washington, D.C., she not only illuminates a group fascinating in its own right but also provides insights into long-held assumptions about the relationship between liberal and democratic values.

The Politics of Nonassimilation

The Politics of Nonassimilation PDF Author: David Verbeeten
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 1609092120
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 371

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Book Description
Over the course of the twentieth century, Eastern European Jews in the United States developed a left-wing political tradition. Their political preferences went against a fairly broad correlation between upward mobility and increased conservatism or Republican partisanship. Many scholars have sought to explain this phenomenon by invoking antisemitism, an early working-class experience, or a desire to integrate into a universal social order. In this original study, David Verbeeten instead focuses on the ways in which left-wing ideologies and movements helped to mediate and preserve Jewish identity in the context of modern tendencies toward bourgeois assimilation and ethnic dissolution. Verbeeten pursues this line of inquiry through case studies that highlight the political activities and aspirations of three "generations" of American Jews. The life of Alexander Bittelman provides a lens to examine the first generation. Born in Ukraine in 1892, Bittelman moved to New York City in 1912 and went on to become a founder of the American Communist Party after World War I. Verbeeten explores the second generation by way of the American Jewish Congress, which came together in 1918 and launched significant campaigns against discrimination within civil society before, during, and especially after World War II. Finally, he considers the third generation in relation to the activist group New Jewish Agenda, which operated from 1980 to 1992 and was known for its advocacy of progressive causes and its criticism of particular Israeli governments and policies. By focusing on individuals and organizations that have not previously been subjects of extensive investigation, Verbeeten contributes original research to the fields of American, Jewish, intellectual, and radical history. His insightful study will appeal to specialists and general readers interested in those areas.

Torn at the Roots

Torn at the Roots PDF Author: Michael E. Staub
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 9780231123747
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 412

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Book Description
In this fascinating history of the genesis of the backlash against Jewish liberalism, Staub recounts the history American Jews who advocated Palestinian statehood, showing how ideology has split the Jewish community.

What is Liberalism?

What is Liberalism? PDF Author: Félix Sardá y Salvany
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Liberalism
Languages : en
Pages : 186

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Book Description


The Foundations of American Jewish Liberalism

The Foundations of American Jewish Liberalism PDF Author: Kenneth D. Wald
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108497896
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 273

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Book Description
Shows how American Jews developed a liberal political culture that has influenced their political priorities from the founding to today.