Pulpit and Politics: Clergy in American Politics at the Advent of the Millennium

17. American Rabbis

223 The 2000 election was groundbreaking for the Jewish community. Senator Joseph Lieberman (D-CT), an observant Orthodox Jew, was nominated to be the Democratic vice-presidential candidate. In addition , the presidential election events, especially in Florida, highlighted the important and sometimes central role of the Jewish community in American politics. And further, current events in Israel ensured that a core issue of the American Jewish community remained high on the national agenda. All these factors made the 2000 election a perfect time to assess the Jewish religious community’s connection to United States politics. While the central place of American Jews within the Democratic coalition has been long established, and indeed continued in the 2000 election process, the role of rabbis in maintaining that partisan connection has not been explored empirically until now. This chapter, therefore, examines the role of rabbis in sustaining Jewish community alliances within national politics. Three areas of inquiry are analyzed in the study: the theological positions held by rabbis and how those views translate into the political realm; the attitudinal and behavioral connections between rabbis and politics; and how engagement in electoral politics differs for rabbis of the four primary Jewish movements. Chapter 17 American Rabbis Anand E. Sokhey and Paul A. Djupe HISTORICAL BACKGROUND Jews have lived in America since before the nation’s founding and have always participated in politics, making their experience in America different from the history of Jews in other countries. This distinction was noted in a letter from President George Washington to a Rhode Island synagogue in 1790: The government of the United States of America which gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance, requires only that they who live under its protection should demean themselves as good citizens in giving it on all occasions their effectual support. (quoted in Goldberg 1996) While anti-Semitism has run as rampant in America as in any other country, the tools of the state have not served to single out the Jewish community. Moore (1986) suggests that in America, Jews found commonalities with other immigrant populations among whom they lived; these populations also could not aspire to occupy positions of high social status. In the United States, Jews did not suffer a different legal status from other nationalities. The consequence of this status has been twofold, resulting in the evolution of pluralism within the Jewish community but also an attendant fear of community disintegration (Goren 1999). Ginsberg poses the question, “How long can America’s Jews simultaneously lead the United States and resist assimilation by it?” (2001, 27). Indeed, in the long run, political involvement threatens the Jewish ability to remain ethnically and religiously distinct (Moore 1986). And yet, that same desire for divergence ultimately threatens Jewish political power: “[W]hen Jews were the victims of discrimination, there was no problem” (Ginsberg 2001, 27) since anti-Semitism “is the time-honored prejudice imposed on the ‘outsider,’ the ‘stranger group’; it provides some Jews with a tangible referent for their identity” (Blakeslee 2000, 219). Paradoxically, anti-Semitism has united the Jewish community to work hard to secure and promote a vision of racial, ethnic, and religious acceptance and rights within American society. The political agenda of the Jewish community has consisted of three prongs; combating anti-Semitism is at the forefront, accompanied by a concern for the state of Israel, and social welfare (Lipset 1995). Though the motivations of this agenda have been contested, especially by conservatives , most agree that a mixture of concerns drive it (Greenberg and Wald 2001). Anti-Semitism is seen as a civil-rights issue, and Jewish 224 American Rabbis Anand E. Sokhey and Paul A. Djupe 225 organizations have been careful to frame it in that light. Their pursuit of general civil-rights principles (as they apply to most any group) has granted Jewish groups special authority. Thus, while battling antiSemitism may foundationally result from anxiety about personal and national security, the moral force of the Jewish community results from expressing that concern in terms of theological dictates having universal application. The order of importance of the three issues, along with the particular referent, has shifted considerably over time in response to changing national and international political events. Prior to the 1950s, “the primary agenda of the Jewish community was combating anti-Semitism at home and abroad and the corollary of anti-Semitism, discrimination . . .” (Chanes 2001, 100). In the 1960s, elimination of anti...