A big, bad review
Not of my new book, thankfully (coming out October 13th!), but Leon Wieseltier takes down Norman Podhoretz’s new book “Why Are Jews Liberals?” with gems like:
But this is a dreary book. Its author has a completely axiomatic mind that is quite content to maintain itself in a permanent condition of apocalyptic excitation. His perspective is so settled, so confirmed, that it is a wonder he is not too bored to write. The veracity of everything he believes is so overwhelmingly obvious to him that he no longer troubles to argue for it. Instead there is only bewilderment that others do not see it, too…“Why Are Jews Liberals?†is a potted history followed by a re-potted memoir.
I haven’t read the book (and really don’t intend to), so I can’t comment on the accuracy of this review. I can only add my own brief two-cents in answer to the premise of the book, which is that Jews should be Conservatives because Judaism is historically more aligned with the mission of the Neocon worldview. I wonder what the some of the Communist Jews of Cuba would say to this (if they had access to free expression). I heard many comparisons to the messianic mission of Judaism and the messianic mission of communism. What about the Socialist Kibbutznik’s of Zionism? Or the Rabbi’s who regularly march for human rights/economic rights/environmental rights? I hate arguments that try to reduce Jews and Judaism to one thing or one set of interests. If our history has proven anything, it is that we are a people of infinite variation capable of carrying multiple concerns at the same time and working toward the fulfillment of a more a just and equitable world as we or our texts or our traditions or our God conceives it. Narrowing that to Republican party reduces Jews and Judaism to a political football, punted from one side of the field to the other as the fortunes of this or that nation change. We’ve been there too many times in our history to let Norman Podhoretz shout us back there. As a people we have more important work to do. To quote the end of Wieseltier’s review:
The question of whether liberalism or conservatism does more for the helpless and the downtrodden, for the ones who are not like us, will be endlessly debated, and it is not a Jewish debate; but if the answer is liberalism, then the political history of American Jewry is neither a mystery nor a scandal.
