From: Jonathan Gottfried To: Paul Gottfried Subject: Jews do not conspire with Buddhists and Wiccans against Christians
Dad,
In my initial email, I wrote: “To ask whether Jews should vote Republican is to assume that American Jewry is a monolith of homogenous interests. I’m not sure that such a political creature does or should exist.” You struck a similar chord in your last email when you wrote: “[T]he Jews I grew up among did not have to reinforce their collective identity by fantasizing about or exaggerating a white Christian danger to their group. Their strong ethnic identity allowed them to function collectively without reference to a convenient adversary.”
We agree that Jews are grappling with how to define themselves. You write that the Jews of your childhood had a strong ethnic identity, and you suggest that Jews now need to imagine a Christian enemy in order to maintain their communal identity. In your other emails, you suggest that this phobia of Christians has drawn Jews into the Democratic Party’s fold, as if the Democratic Party were the best means of subverting any Christian agenda.
This country has had 43 presidents, both Democratic and Republican; yet—whether Episcopalian, Baptist, Quaker, Catholic, Unitarian, or some other denomination—each one has been Christian, even if he has not practiced. Both parties have an overwhelming majority of Christian voters. So it’s not as if Jews are conspiring with Zoroastrians, Buddhists, and Wiccans in order to drive Christian politicians into the Potomac. On the contrary, those Jews who vote Democrat share political viewpoints with Christian Democrats; and I’m not willing to claim that Bill Clinton, despite his peccadilloes, was somehow less “Christian” than Bush fils, with his trumped-up reasons for spilling American and Iraqi blood.
So when you suggest that Jews vote Democrat in order to vent their hostility towards Christians, you are referring to a particular type of Christian. It’s the type that supports one constitu
tional amendment against gay marriage, a second constitutional amendment in support of school prayer, a third constitutional amendment against flag-burning, and a fourth constitutional amendment outlawing abortion. And it’s the type of Christian who places a 5,000-pound granite monument of the Ten Commandments in a courthouse in order to proclaim the law of God, the type who dons sackcloth and ashes when an instructor in a public school teaches “evilution.”
To the extent that Jews are opposed to any expression of Christianity, it is to an ostentatious religiosity that would rewrite the Constitution in order to accommodate biblical zealotry. Opposition to this form of Christianity is fortunately shared by many Christians and other non-Jews in this country.
Of course, I am not being fair to you. I understand that you do not support the Constitutional amendments referred to above; nor do many Christian (or other) Republicans. Yet my point is that—with the exception of a fundamentalist fringe among the Republicans—I see no reason why the Republicans should be considered more “Christian” than the Democrats. And so if the only reason for Jews to vote Republican is to overcome their irrational fear of Christians, then I’m afraid that I’m left where I began: wondering whether or not Jews across this vast country share a core of beliefs that would drive them to vote for a single political party.
While I may not have found an answer and although we don't agree as to whether Jews should vote Republican, you have, as usual, forced me to reexamine my assumptions and taught me a thing or two in the process. And for that I am, as always, grateful.
Jonathan