Democrats and Jews and Jewish Democrats

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I am a life long Democrat and a religious Jew. I have upon occasion, voted for Republicans or Independents, but in the main, I have stayed loyal to the party of FDR, Harry Truman, JFK, LBJ and Bill Clinton. I have done so out of a profound belief that Democrats best personify all the values that we, as a people, have come to stand for throughout the Diaspora, and since the founding of the State of Israel.

My parents were survivors of the Shoah. They came to America with their shattered lives and lost families, met, married and gave birth to my sister and myself. As soon as they arrived they became Democrats, because that is where immigrants, refugees and survivors found a welcoming political home in post war America. There never was a day when they did not bless this country for giving them the freedom to practice their religion without fear. For most of my life the thought of being anything but a Democrat was as anathema to me as converting to another religion.

The two seemed to belong together. Jews became Democrats because there was no other moral choice. Democrats believed in what Maimonides taught, “Anticipate charity by preventing poverty“ and “Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.”

Despite the horrors of pogroms, world wars and anti Semitism that never seemed to die, we still believed “All the evils that men cause to each other because of certain desires, or opinions or religious principles, are rooted in ignorance. [All hatred would come to an end] when the earth was flooded with the knowledge of G-d.” And we believed that the Democratic Party believed this also. It made perfect sense…to be a good Jew and a good Democrat were hand in glove with one another.

We fought on the battlefield of civil rights and social justice as good Jews and good Democrats. In our minds the Democratic party had come to stand for “Tikkun olam.” Their goal, like ours, was also a just society in which humanity could “repair the world.“

We also believed that the other guys were the enemy of all of the above, that they were anti-Semites, that they were the people who established all the quotas in the colleges and country clubs and charities, that they hated immigrants.

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