| Submit your comments on this article |
| Home Front: Culture Wars |
| The newest Jewish immigrants vote Republican. |
| 2005-09-11 |
| From the Weekend Edition of the Wall Street Journal. Registration required, so given here complete. Also, to be fair I must note that I believe it was the American Jewish Committee that succored my mother and her family when they arrived penniless in New York in 1946, and for which my grandmother worked until senility forced her into a retirement home when she was well into her 70s. Final comment: I realize that Jews make up a little under 2% of the U.S. population; However, when even one of the most Liberal-leaning groups in the U.S. starts trending conservative, that to me indicates the Democratic Party is totally screwed! ;-) Pity Larry Lowenthal. His job as executive director of the Boston branch of the American Jewish Committee (AJC) includes finding and training leaders from among the 700,000 Russian Jews who have immigrated to the U.S. in the last 30 years. Mr. Lowenthal has fared well: Today there are Russians helping to guide a number of major Jewish organizations, like the one called Boston for Israel. But now these immigrants turn out to be . . . oh no! Republicans! To judge by his public statements and writings, Mr. Lowenthal's idea of a faithful Jew is someone who opposes the nomination of Judge John Roberts to the U.S. Supreme Court, supports gay rights, abortion and euthanasia, and demands a strong separation of church and state. After all, as Mr. Lowenthal concluded approvingly in a July op-ed for the Jewish Advocate, Jews are "the most liberal" and "the least religious people in America." Imagine his consternation when an avalanche of emails from Russian Jews began to pour in to the Web site of the Jewish Russian Telegraph, a daily blog, in response to his article. About 100 people wrote to say that Mr. Lowenthal needed to stop making "outrageous statements" on behalf of people whom he doesn't represent. Alex Koifman, who arrived in the U.S. from Belarus in 1978, and whom Mr. Lowenthal trained for his position as a board member at the Boston AJC, criticized his old teacher for overstepping his bounds, saying: "Since when are these concerns [abortion, gay rights, and church-state separation] concerns that are specific to the Jewish community? These are the Left's concerns." This was only the most recent in the Boston area's Russian Jewish population's battles with the so-called Jewish leadership. Last fall, Mr. Lowenthal came down hard on the Hasidic community in Wellesley for putting up a menorah display on public property. The Russian Jews wrote scores of emails to the AJC and Russian-language media in response, suggesting that the display was actually a triumph of religious freedom. In August, Mr. Lowenthal found himself in hot water again. During an interview with the Boston public radio station, he showered praise on the leaders of the Islamic Society of Boston. When Russian Jews learned that the society was distributing Arabic-language pamphlets with the words of Dr. Yusuf Abdullah al-Qaradawi, a cleric who condones suicide bombings, they were outraged. The Telegraph editor wrote an article contrasting Mr. Lowenthal's intolerance toward their community with his embrace of the local Muslims. Mr. Lowenthal finally became so exasperated by these conflicts that he emailed Jim Kaufman, the immediate past president of the local AJC: "I am sorry we ever started up with the Russians." Unfortunately, his confessional somehow fell into Russian hands, and Mr. Koifman published it in the Telegraph. All these incidents have led a few dozen Russian Jews, who refer to themselves as "the new Boston Minutemen," to demand Mr. Lowenthal's resignation. He delivered an abject public apology for his email but didn't take back previous statements about what Jews should stand for. To its great credit, the AJC has offered enormous help to Jews in the former Soviet Union and to new Russian Jewish immigrants. David Harris, the organization's national executive director, explains: "We could not have a higher priority than reigniting the flame of Jewish pride and identity in this vast [Russian] Jewish community and rebuilding bridges [to them]." But the leaders created by the AJC's training programs are unlikely to fall into lockstep with much of the current American Jewish leadership. What explains the differences? Some of the Russians are very observant, and Orthodox Jews do tend to vote more conservatively. But most of the recent immigrants lead secular lives. Their sympathy toward Republicans is more a result of their experience in Russia. Sept. 11 reminded them of Islamist attacks in their homeland; they liked President Bush's personal strength in response to Islamic fundamentalism, which seemed to them like Ronald Reagan's stand against communism. And they are not put off by the president's faith. In an AJC survey, Russians rated evangelical Christians as the least anti-Semitic of various ethnic and religious groups, something no one else in the Jewish community did. These attitudes manifested themselves in the 2004 election. According to an AJC exit poll of Russian Jews in several states, over 75% said that they had voted for Mr. Bush, compared with only 19% of the general Jewish population. These conflicts between Russian and American-born Jews are occurring outside Boston as well. In Los Angeles, for instance, Russian Jews were shouted down when they tried to hand out pro-Bush pamphlets at a reading by a popular Russian-Jewish poet. The Russian Jews are fighting an uphill battle in their attempt to challenge the Jewish community's loyalty to the Democratic Party. But, as Larry Lowenthal can attest, they won't give up easily. Mr. Carnes is senior news writer for Christianity Today. |
| Posted by:trailing wife |
| #5 True, Tony. But in the end, Soros has only one vote, just the same as I. |
| Posted by: trailing wife 2005-09-11 21:19 |
| #4 I find this story very encouraging, seems that lightbulbs are going on all over the place. The hard left is the enemy of civilisation, and will ally itself with whomever it feels it has to do achieve its goal. Good for you Mr Koifman! As to donations - the trouble is, you only need one Soros to make up for an awful lot of people donating smaller amounts. |
| Posted by: Tony (UK) 2005-09-11 06:46 |
| #3 What will be interesting is if the left alienates the Jewish donors who normally provide about 20-30 % of the Democratic party funding. |
| Posted by: mhw 2005-09-11 00:57 |
| #2 I think more and more American Jews agree with their Russian counterparts. I know this one does. And yes, it's very bad news for the Dems. We will soon see the Left become even more openly anti-semetic. |
| Posted by: Scooter McGruder 2005-09-11 00:25 |
| #1 Russian Jewish immigrants are opposed to a party that allies itself with the Palestinians, Jihadis (or "freedom fighters" according to Michael Mooron) in Iraq, the Euro anti-semitic left, and Cindy Sheehan. Hmmm, go figure ... |
| Posted by: DMFD 2005-09-11 00:09 |