The Foundations of American Jewish Liberalism by Kenneth D. Wald (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: The Foundations of American Jewish Liberalism by Kenneth D. Wald Gil Troy Kenneth D. Wald. The Foundations of American Jewish Liberalism. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2019. 255 pp. doi:10.1017/S0364009420000136 Everyone knows that Jews are liberal. Everyone knows that good American Jews fast on Yom Kippur, eat Chinese food on Christmas, and vote Democratic on election day. And everyone knows this liberalism springs straight from the Bible to the pages of the New York Times—or does it? Kenneth Wald is one of those annoying academics who questions our defining clichés. He confirms that Jews are two to three times more likely than other Americans to vote Democratic. But he challenges this commonplace, self-congratulatory, "Judaic" explanation for American Jewish liberalism. Claims that Jewish liberalism reflects Jewish values, historical experiences of emancipation, the natural reaction to being a persecuted minority, or an ongoing sense of "social insecurity" do not apply over time or over space to other polities. Orthodox American Jews and Israelis are passionately Jewish, but often less liberal. Perhaps, Wald suggests, the story of American Jewish liberalism is an American one. Wald is also a rare modern academic who sees methodology as a tool, not as handcuffs. A veteran political scientist at the University of Florida, the author of the now-standard textbook Religion and Politics in the United States, Wald mixes sophisticated data analysis with good political history. The result is an illuminating explanation of American Jewish liberalism. Wald offers ten chapters organized in three parts. Part I, "The Problem(s) of American Jewish Liberalism," explains "Why American Jewish Politics Is Puzzling," while starting to develop the argument, in chapter 3, by asking "How Is America Different?" Having framed an intriguing question, Wald offers his fascinating history of American Jewish politics in part II, "Development of the American Jewish Political Culture." Rather than starting with Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal, or mass eastern European migration in the 1880s, Wald begins at the very beginning. This broader perspective traces "How Jews Fell in Love with the American Regime," from 1776 onward in chapter 4. The next three chapters offer a nice capsule history of Jewish politics, American style, from George Washington's day to the mid-twentieth century. [End Page 462] Wald draws three important conclusions. First, America was different. America did not persecute its Jews. No American prince protected "his" Jews. The Constitution did not merely "tolerate" Jews. Instead, America's "inclusive understanding of citizenship"—for non-Blacks—integrated Jews into the polity as Americans, as equal citizens. This welcome allowed Jews to flourish individually, then communally, while shaping American Jewry's agenda. Having "attributed their success" to this "political climate steeped in classic liberalism," American Jews prioritized "defending the political system that made it possible. They developed a political cultural that reinforced their interpretation of the American Jewish experience, emphasizing above all else the importance of maintaining the principle of equal citizenship in a secular society" (4). This liberal world view preceded the Jews' alliance with the Democratic Party and explains the great American Jewish political anomaly: unlike most groups, Jews do not vote their pocketbooks. The NPR humorist Peter Sagal quips: "What is it about being rich and white that American Jews don't understand?" Jews vote against their class interests because they are voting for something more profound: their equal billing. Jews are acting on "rational self-interest" (31), Wald shows, but a political, existential one, not an economic one. With this inclusivity baked into the Constitution, consecrated by George Washington, American Jews worshiped the Constitution. They protected this political regime—and their expansive version of it—because it respected, accepted, and validated them. "By 1868," Wald writes, "the American Jewish community had come to consider the Constitution as part of the underpinning of Judaism in the United States…. Beyond religious freedom, the Constitution gave Jews equal citizenship and an ownership share in the country" (4). Here, Wald makes another subversive move. Frustrated that most scholars treat American Jews as passive consumers, merely purchasing America's goodies, Wald treats Jews as manufacturers of their destiny—and America's. "The Jewish political culture was the operational link between the...