Evan Sayet
The question I am asked more than any other – besides what happened to the once seemingly reasonable Bill Maher – is: Why do Jews support the Democrat Party? The answer is easy – but not short. Here goes:
To be called a Jew –even to call yourself a Jew – is different than any other religion. To be called a Christian, you have to believe something. You have to believe that Jesus Christ is your Lord and Savior. If you believe that, you’re a Christian. If you don’t believe that, you’re not a Christian. If you do believe that, then there are certain rites and rituals, practices and behaviors that tend to follow. To be called a Muslim you have to believe something. You have to believe that the Koran is the final testament of God and Muhammad his perfect messenger. If you believe that, you’re a Muslim. If you don’t believe that then you’re not a Muslim. If you do believe this then there are certain rites and rituals, practices and behaviors that tend to follow. But, to be called a Jew you don’t have to believe anything. To be called a Jew, all you have to do is plop out of a Jewish womb. Because these Jews – I’ll call them here “The Plopping Jews” – do not believe anything particularly Jewish. Indeed, there’s absolutely no reason to expect them to vote in a way that reflects Jewish values and beliefs. Since a Jewish person’s Judaism is not of his own choosing or a reflection of his beliefs, his Jewishness is nothing more than an accident of his birth. Therefore, to expect him to choose to support Jewish causes is actually a form of bigotry. People’s behaviors are predicated on their beliefs, not on the circumstances of their birth.
In fact, not only is there no reason to expect the Plopping Jew to support Jewish causes, one might even argue that the folks who Dennis Prager calls “Non-Jewish Jews” and are more generally known as “Secular Jews” (note that it is almost unheard of for someone to call themselves or be called “Secular Christians” or “Secular Muslims”) are less likely to support Jewish causes and to be antipathetic to Israel and other Jewish issues than are others since we can assume, having been born to a Jewish mother, they were at least exposed to Judaism and chose to reject it. Put simply, the Plopping Jew is more likely to be an anti-Semite than your average American.
Sadly, in an America that has been successfully secularized by the Left, the Plopping Jews make up the vast majority of the people who are identified as “Jewish” and thus a major part of the explanation as to why so many “Jews” vote for the party that is, as we shall see, patently Jew-hating.
Now we get to the rest of the people who are called Jews. These Jews differ from the Plopping Jew in that they have made at least some personal decision to be Jewish. These Jews are typically divided into three categories, in ascending order of their belief and practice of Judaism there are the Reform Jews, the Conservative Jews and the Orthodox Jews.
The Reform Jew – sadly the majority of the remaining minority of all “Jews” – are not really Jewish either. In fact, while the Plopping Jew has done nothing Jewish in his life, the Reform Jew has done only one thing Jewish in his life – he joined a synagogue. But the Reform Jew didn’t join a synagogue to better learn and practice the rites and rituals, convictions and values of Judaism; he joined a synagogue because it was his local recreation center. Basically, it was more affordable than the country club and, while more costly than the YMCA, he didn’t have to worry about getting naked in front of strangers. Put simply, the Reform Jew is a Plopping Jew with a somewhat better social calendar.
Since there is nothing Jewish about the reform Jew that is Jewish, again, it would be unreasonable to expect his policies to reflect Jewish values. In fact, the Reform Jew, like the Plopping Jew, has rejected Jewish values and, as the name of the movement suggests, he doesn’t even like Judaism, which is why he seeks to “re-form” it to his liking.
The remaining Jews are the Jewish Jews – those whose beliefs and practices reflect a mature choice to be Jewish and to learn and better practice Judaism. These Jews comprise only a small percentage of the people who are identified in polls and elsewhere as “Jewish” and, not surprisingly, they are far more likely to embrace the policies of the Republican Party and the conservative movement. As the name of their movement reflects, the Conservative Jews like Judaism and rather than seek to re-form it around their beliefs, they seek to conserve the values and the practices of Judaism. The difference between the Conservative Jew and the Orthodox Jew – the latter’s commitment to the Jewish faith leading them to support the Republican/conservative movement as surely as the Plopping Jews rejection of Judaism leads them to support the party of Jew-haters – is that the Conservative Jew seeks to bring his Judaism into his daily life while the Orthodox Jew seeks to make Judaism his daily life.
Put simply, the more Jewish is the person, the more they reject the policies of the Democrat Party. This should not be the least bit surprising as Modern Liberalism – the dominant ideology of today’s Democrat Party – is the very antithesis of Judaism.
The great gift of the Jews was a concept virtually unknown to humanity prior to the advent of Judaism – justice. Prior to the advent of Judaism, reward and punishment were typically predicated on the whim and the will of the powerful. Step on the Pharaoh’s toe and it might cost you your life. The oft-misunderstood (one presumes often intentionally) “An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth,” far from being a call for vengeance was, in reality, exactly its opposite, it was – for one of the first times in human history – an insistence that the punishment must not exceed the crime and that, not matter who the person “wronged” or the wrong-doer might be, the consequences must be meted out fairly.
But the Modern Liberal rejects the concept of justice (in fact he rejects the concept of right and wrong, good and evil, better and worse, truth and lies and all other such ideas central to the pursuit of the just.) So self-evident is the Modern Liberal’s antipathy for justice that he himself admits that his quest isn’t for justice but rather some modified version of it which is why he inserts the modifier “social” prior to the word “justice” in explaining his agenda.
The Modern Liberal’s definition of “Social Justice” is that the evil and failed should be rewarded and the good and successful must be punished. After all, if all men are created equal, then something must have happened to the rapist to turn him from good into evil and therefore he is the victim (in fact, the great Thomas Sowell argues that, to those with this “vision” the criminal is twice victimized, “first by the special circumstances that provoked his crime and then by those who lust to see him punished.”) Similarly, those who are good and decent and hard-working should enjoy no special rewards for their efforts because clearly they had the advantage of good parents and a good upbringing and thus they had an unfair advantage. Justice demands that the good and hard-working be rewarded and the evil and the lazy be punished (if only by the withholding of the rewards of doing the right things.) Modern Liberalism demands that the good and hardworking be punished as the recipients of an unfair advantage and that the evil and the lazy be rewarded, their acts of evil and their failure all the proof the Modern Liberal needs that somehow they have been victimized by forces out of their control.
Obviously, these two beliefs are diametrically opposed and mutually exclusive. Just as obviously, those who more fully embrace Judaism’s quest for justice are more assuredly supportive of the Republican Party and the conservative movement while those who are least Jewish (even if they call themselves Jews) are more likely to fall into the camp of the Democrats and support the non-Jewish concept of “Social Justice” where good and right is punished and evil, failure and wrong championed.
Evan Sayet is a satirist, lecturer and writer.
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