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  • Quest for Inclusion: Jews and Liberalism in Modern America
  • Benny Kraut
Quest for Inclusion: Jews and Liberalism in Modern America, by Marc Dollinger. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000. 296 pp. $35.00.

This book seeks to chronicle American Jewish liberalism between 1933 and 1975, as both political ideal and political strategy. It examines Jewish reactions to critical American historical episodes and social, cultural, and political trends during this period: the New Deal; 1930s antisemitism at home and abroad; American foreign policy in the 1930s and 1940s; Cold War anti-communism of the 1950s; and the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s.

Dollinger’s overarching thesis is simple enough. Jews helped shape and promote an outlook of political liberalism whose message of tolerance, pluralism, and civic equality promoted their own social inclusion; and Jews used liberal politics to move from the margins of America to its mainstream. But, Dollinger observes, the much- heralded Jewish liberalism consistently played second fiddle to the ultimate socio- political goal of inclusion, a phenomenon he calls “the politics of acculturation.” Hence, whenever liberal idealism was consonant with government actions, Jews stood at the vanguard advocating liberalism as public policy. When, however, liberal social positions stood in opposition to or outside government or societal consensus, thus threatening Jewish social status and ethnic communal needs, Jews abandoned liberalism. His book abounds with dramatic, historical illustrations of this observation.

The exemplar of the former situation can best be seen in the Jews’ reaction to and involvement with FDR and his New Deal social reforms. Not only did Jews help craft many of the president’s social welfare policies, but their wholehearted support of government policy gained them access to political power, as well as social recognition and financial support for their communal agencies. In every respect, the new liberalism of government intervention was a boon for them, and reflected the quintessential era when liberal idealism and Jewish political strategy meshed so uniformly and successfully. Indeed, no one reading Dollinger’s chapter on FDR and the Jews can ever again really wonder why Jews were so disarmed by FDR and had such difficulties confronting him during the Holocaust.

On the other hand, “the politics of acculturation” and the desire to avoid social marginalization guided Jewish responses to a whole host of issues. For example, whereas liberalism demanded repudiation of Japanese relocation and internment, Jewish self-interest to be part of the national wartime consensus dictated Jewish acquiescence and support of these harsh measures. Similarly, after World War II, Jews found it critical to be identified with anti-communism; they abandoned the liberal principles of ensuring all humans civil rights, and jumped on board the anti-Rosenberg bandwagon in the 1950s in order to stand shoulder to shoulder with other Americans in the national cause. Finally, during the heyday of the Civil Rights Movement, American Jews aligned [End Page 135] themselves with the consensus of their respective regions, South or North, and generally articulated the views of the white majorities within them.

Dollinger is also correct in arguing that Jews consistently tried to formulate a vision of America congenial to their own interests (although he might have shown awareness of this trend from the earliest days of American Jewish history). His discussion of the different American Jewish organizations and their discrete understandings of the needs of American Jews that led them to opposing or nuanced conceptions of both America and of the Jewish role in it is illuminating. Hence he notes that in the decades under consideration, the ideal of cultural pluralism, initially articulated by Horace Kallen, became increasingly favored as the Jewish metaphor for American social reality and incorporated as liberalism’s ideal. And yet, at key crisis points, such as the fight over domestic antisemitism in the 1930s and the struggle against Hitlerism in the 30s and 40s, Jews had to jettison this rhetoric in favor of a more universalistic posture to galvanize support for their objectives. Liberalism’s appeal for tolerance, minority rights, and cultural pluralism—so effective in the 1930s—potentially marginalized Jews during the war and had to be discarded. Again, liberal politics did not always serve Jewish interests.

Dollinger’s book...

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