Batya Ungar-Sargon explains why so many American Jews became Dems — and why some now feel politically homeless
Batya Ungar-Sargon argues in her new book that American Jews' alliance with the left was shaped by history, not identity, and Oct. 7 was a wake-up call.
American Jews were considered to be a reliable Democratic voting bloc for nearly a century. However, in recent years, some have started questioning whether the political party they long supported still has room for them.
In an interview with Fox News Digital discussing her new book, "The Jews and the Left," political commentator and author Batya Ungar-Sargon argued that the relationship between American Jews and the political left was shaped by specific historical moments, rather than being an inherent feature of Jewish identity.
"The question I think I get asked the most when I travel by non-Jews is people will look at me and with real pain in their eyes, they will say to me, 'But why are the Jews Democrats?' And this wasn't always the case," Ungar-Sargon said.
"This has been true for about a hundred years — Jews have overwhelmingly voted for Democrats — but before that, there was this very rich 250-year history of American Jewish life that was not Democrat, it was not left, it was not necessarily identified with that side of the political spectrum."
She said that while many Jews now see themselves as members of an immigrant community or oppressed minority, their perception is not necessarily a reflection of reality. Ungar-Sargon pointed out that Jews were viewed as "founding partners" of the U.S. and that they represented many of the values that the country was built on, namely religious liberty.
As more Jewish immigrants came to the U.S., many went into the garment trade because they weren't usually required to speak English, Ungar-Sargon said. However, many of these immigrant workers would be exploited by their bosses, who were often also Jewish immigrants who had been in the country slightly longer than their employees. This was the beginning of the American labor rights movement in which Jews played a central role.
"They built this idea that if you work hard, you should be treated with dignity. This kind of grew out of this massive Jewish proletariat. The problem was, Jews didn't stay working-class," she told Fox News Digital. "They would save a little bit of money, take advantages of the capitalism of this great nation, and pretty soon they would find themselves the employers."
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In the decades that followed, Jews were searching for a political movement that respected labor rights and capitalism, something they saw in President Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal, according to Ungar-Sargon.
American Jews later became deeply involved in the civil rights movement. Ungar-Sargon said that Jewish Americans "felt deeply connected to the Black struggle for equality." She noted that the famous march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge came just 20 years after the liberation of Auschwitz, making the moment particularly poignant for a community still grappling with recent memories of the Holocaust.
"Dr. King's movement was famously filled with Jews. If you talk to civil rights activists, they'll tell you that the point at which it dawned on the Black activists that they were working with that, all of the White people they knew were Jews, actually," she said.
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In 1967, Israel pulled off a major victory in the Six-Day War, defeating surrounding Arab countries in a matter of days and capturing East Jerusalem and the Old City. Ungar-Sargon noted in her book that this was a terrifying time for American Jews, who waited with bated breath to see what would happen to Israel. The war also marked a turning point in how the left viewed Israel, she argued, no longer seeing it as a homeland for a historically persecuted people, but as an oppressive colonial power.
Around the same time, in the 1960s, she said, the left began moving toward an ideology centered on power, identity and victimhood. She said that questions of right and wrong were increasingly viewed as ones about power.
"These ideas started to percolate in the university, and at that point, the Democratic Party really started to get onto this course where it was on a collision course with Jews," she said.
Ungar-Sargon added that the ideas that began the conflict between the left and the Jews would likely now be classified as the "building blocks of wokeness, which portrays Jews and Whites as evil oppressors and people of color as victims and oppressed, and thus people who have no moral responsibilities."
The shift became almost impossible for Jews to ignore after Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, according to Ungar-Sargon, who called it a "wake-up call."
"A lot of Jews marched in the civil rights movement, saw themselves as good members in good standing of the left, and when they finally needed help, when they needed support, when they need it to be shown that their humanity was being recognized, they looked left and right and all of their allies had fled," she told Fox News Digital.
As Israel's war with Hamas intensified, so did many Jews' connection with their Judaism. At the same time, there was a noticeable rift between American Jews and the left.
"I think for a lot of Jews who had this knee-jerk sense of themselves as Democrats, as leftists, as liberals, to see the degree to which the left was siding with Hamas, and siding with our enemies, siding with the marauding, mass raping, mass murdering, baby kidnappers, it was a real wake-up call," she said.
The left's reaction to Oct. 7, according to Ungar-Sargon, highlighted a tension that had been building for decades. Jews who had long held their liberal views as an integral part of the Jewish identity suddenly found themselves at odds with those who they once saw as political allies.
"So many American Jews felt that their liberal values were an inherent part of what it meant to be a Jew. Today, being a Democrat and a Jew means there's a conflict at the center of your identity because the two things that matter most to you — being a leftist and being Jewish, having a connection with Israel — are now inherently in a fundamental conflict with each other," she said.
Despite the growing tension between Jews and the left, Ungar-Sargon said she is not arguing that Jews should become Republicans. Instead, she wants American Jews to invest their time and energy not into a specific party, but rather into a country that has given them so much.
"I want Jews to be a little bit more committed to America and a little less committed to one side of the political aisle," she said.
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