How the Jews became liberals. The "witness" doctrine ; Ghettos ; Poets and exegetes ; Emancipation : phase one ; The enlightenment puzzle ; Haskalah ; Emancipation : phase two ; The second great puzzle ; The golden land ; Jews from Germany ; Anti-Semitism, patrician style ; Jews without money ; Emancipation : the backlash ; "Defilers" of the culture ; Enter FDR ; In Roosevelt's wake : Truman ; From 1852-1968 -- Why the Jews are still liberals. The golden age of Jewish security ; Something new under the Jewish sun ; Nixon and Israel ; Carter : "joining the jackals" ; The 1980 election ; Reagan and Israel ; Anti-"Zionism" ; The case of The nation ; The case of National review ; George H.W. Bush and Israel ; The case of Pat Buchanan ; Clinton, the Religious Right, and the Jews ; George W. Bush and Israel ; 2008 ; As liberal as ever? ; The wrong answers ; The "Torah" of liberalism.
Summary:
In his brilliant and provocative examination of why Jews are liberals, Podhoretz reviews the history of Jewish political attitudes and thoroughly examines the available evidence, demonstrating that all the usual explanations--such as a passion for justice allegedly deriving from the prophets of the Hebrew Bible--are either inadequate or flat-out false. Finally he proposes his own answer to the great puzzle of why most Jews remain as committed to liberalism as ever.
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