The Future of Jewish Politics in America

American Jews are defined by apparent paradoxes. The religious group most beloved by fellow Americans, they also suffer the most bias-motivated violence—by a lot—and face increasing hostility from grievance-driven factions across the political spectrum. Orthodox Jews are fecund, intra-marrying and holding fast to traditional practices; liberal denominations have seen birth rates crater and intermarriage rates skyrocket as they secularize. Still, the number of non-Orthodox Jews has remained steady, because secular Jews often embrace a more expansive definition of who qualifies as Jewish.

The future of American Jewry may thus take on a strikingly binary shape: on one side, a bloc of highly traditional, observant Jews with large families; on the other, a bloc of “Jews of no religion,” born to one or two marginally attached Jewish parents who still see themselves as the Jewish mainstream. Demographers and sociologists will have a field day parsing the tensions. So will political observers.

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What will American Jewish politics look like? To simplify the question is to invite complication. If Jews were to break from their history of what Irving Kristol called their “political stupidity” and begin to vote in their own interests, what would that look like? And what, exactly, are those interests, especially as American Jewry grows ever more divided?

Jews whose ethnoreligious identity shapes their politics often describe that relationship in abstract terms. Liberal Jews say their politics are guided by the values of justice, equality, and human dignity. Orthodox Jews tend to focus more concretely on what will be “good for the Jews”—keeping them safe, free, and prosperous. Both camps have developed theories linking their values to the broader good of the United States.

Both groups are also highly responsive to external events. Liberal Jews often adopt progressive views on justice and equality with a kind of pietistic zeal, while Orthodox Jews react with equal fervor to perceived threats to their way of life. Jewish politics, in other words, can be deeply reactive.

To the extent that American Jews are shifting right—expansive definitions of who qualifies as Jewish make the available statistics imprecise—it stems in part from the aftermath of October 7, 2023. The rallies on American campuses and city streets celebrating the bloodshed and calling for more, all in familiar leftist language, jolted many liberal Jews from their adherence to progressive notions of justice. When a Black Lives Matter chapter posted its support for Hamas with an image of a paraglider descending into Israel to murder Jewish families, it became a grim symbol of that awakening.

This has opened the door to a broad rethinking, but not to a retreat from reactive communal politics. The future of American Jewish political behavior may thus return to its original paradox: we are loved and hated—but by whom, and why? What is it that people love and hate about us? And which sentiment is likely to endure?

Hardly any explanation is needed for why Jews are hated; historically, Jews have been hated for any reason, at any time. What is remarkable is Americans’ enduring affinity for Jews, which can be traced to several factors. Jews have contributed enormously to the arts, sciences, culture, and social movements that later gained wide acceptance. They have served as mentors of American pluralism and upward mobility in a nation that prides itself on both. On the whole, Jews are highly educated, high-earning, law-abiding people. American Christians, meantime, have taken an unusually warm stance toward Jews, seeing in their “elder brothers in faith” kinship rather than enmity. Jews are funny and largely nonthreatening—a perfect match for America’s you-do-you liberalism.

These conditions are hardly unshakable, however. The American Left is in thrall to the view that success is evidence of exploitation, making Jews’ flourishing in the face of hardship a source of suspicion rather than admiration. Occasionally, this manifests in members of groups that suspect they have been exploited lashing out against Jews. They loved the harmless Jews in Conservative and Reform synagogues, not the retrograde Orthodox, the ones who believe in Jewish sovereignty in Israel, or “greedy Jewish landlords.”

The Right has developed its own growing fixation with Jews, centered on claims that Israel controls the U.S. government, that Jews place communal interests above national ones, and on the revival of old conspiracy theories about Jewish cabals. Christians, too, are not as uniformly pro-Jewish as they were even five years ago. Many have watched Jews in positions of influence—the judiciary, teachers’ unions, and elsewhere—use their authority to advance novel or frivolous social causes that, in their view, erode the nation’s moral fabric. Such perceptions do little to dispel age-old suspicions of Jewish perfidy.

We are heading toward a worrisome collision of demographic and political-cultural trends. Orthodox Jews are growing in number, unsettling leftists who see traditional Jews as emblematic of the hierarchies they reject and troubling rightists who view men in black hats as clannish and subversive. Meanwhile, Jews from liberal denominations grow louder in their effort to compete with the Orthodox for the mantle of authentic Jewishness—providing fodder for the nationalist Right’s narrative of rootless Jewish cosmopolitanism.

A striking imbalance emerges here. American Jews may be shifting rightward politically, yet the increased presence of traditional, largely Zionist Jews in right-wing political movements may not just sustain left-wing disdain for Jews outside their movement; it may hasten the Right alienating its Jews. There are, at least in theory, identifiable right-wing reasons to distrust Jews of all kinds, no matter what they profess. Even prominent right-wing Orthodox Jews like Ben Shapiro are regular targets of internecine attacks due to suspicions that they are pulling Americans away from their Christian roots and using any accumulated power to put Israel’s interests above America’s. Left-wingers, meantime, will readily embrace anyone who claims a Jewish identity and professes the proper progressive shibboleths. If American Jewish politics are reactive—and if the external forces now shaping Jewish attitudes persist—a snapback may well be coming. Tucker Carlson’s repeated attempts to sanitize conspiracy theorists, united by their distaste for Jews—even and especially right-wing Jews—is a mere preview.

Those who hope to sustain American Jews’ apparent rightward shift will need to do more than remind them that President Trump has arguably been more supportive of Jews than any of his predecessors. They will have to rein in the cultural Right’s penchant for grievance and conspiracism—while pointing out, without hypocrisy, that the Left has no answer to its own antisocial elements.

They must also advance a politics that speaks to both growing Orthodox families and disaffected liberals: one that highlights the natural affinity between American culture and the Jews who helped build it, between the free-market economy and the Jews who have thrived within it, and that reaffirms the equal protection of all who live in this “almost chosen nation.”

Tal Fortgang is a legal policy fellow and adviser to the president at the Manhattan Institute.

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