Bleeding Fiction

My friend Doug has a friend who has been trying to convince him that, in Doug's words, "all Jews should be Republicans." To that end, this friend recently sent Doug a link to this opinion column, which appeared in the Seattle Times on August ninth. The column discusses three black leaders, Al Sharpton, Cynthia McKinney and Earl Hilliard, their history of anti-semitism and the fact that, despite this, they are still embraced by the Democratic party.

I'm not about to excuse anything that any of the three people above may have done or said. I don't know about McKinney or Hillard, but I know that Sharpton has seen a revolving door of Democratic approval over the years. If he was "almost as fixed a presence at Kerry's side the night of his acceptance speech as were the nominee's wife and vice presidential candidate John Edwards," there have still been other times when no Democrat of any standing would be in the same room as him, when Congressmen and Senators would literally cross the street to avoid bumping into him. I cannot confirm, but I strongly suspect, that those were the times when he "incited anti-Jewish violence in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn...and in Harlem." (1991 and 1995, respectively.)

But let's get one thing straight here: the Democratic party is playing politics, and politics is a cut-throat game. Not everyone is going to agree with each other, even when they stand on the same side, and, yes, sometimes you're going to have to have some distasteful bedfellows in order to get ahead in the game and make things better. Put another way: you go with who's going to get you the votes.

Don't think for a second that the Republicans aren't playing the same game. They count Jerry Falwell in their ranks, remember. And look, too, to the speeches at the Republican National Convention, where "our friend Israel" came up as a phrase quite a bit. Were they trying to appeal to American Jews by reminding them of their ties to the Jews in Israel? If so, it's dirty pool. They juxtapose mention of "our friend Israel" with Bush's tearful speech about September 11th and the horrible terrorists (read: Arabs) who attacked our towers and constant mention of the war in Iraq? That's the worst sort of heart-string tugging - trying to appeal to the voters who might be the most worried about any Arab military build-up.

It's also tremendously flawed logic. The United States, under the helm of Bush, invaded a soverign nation under nothing but the flimsiest pretenses and brought down the ruling government. Now we get reports about Iran's underhandedness. Are they next? And what's the rest of the Arab world supposed to think? Hussein may not have made fast friends with his neighbors, true, but Iran's government is far more of a political fixture in the region. How can we defend Israel, how can we negotiate on their behalf, when the people we're negotiating with don't trust a word that comes out of our mouths?

It was bad enough before, but now it'll be ten times worse. You can see it in the news right now; the "roadmap to peace" is falling apart, and Bush can't do anything more than shake his head and frown disapprovingly. It's getting to be, he's making it so, that our only option is to negotiate with a show of power, to impose our will through force of arms. How does that make us right? How does that make us just? How does that help Israel, help the Jews, help the world? If for no other reason than this war, American Jews must NOT be Republicans.

But there are other reasons. Judaism is as much, perhaps more, a social structure as it is a religion. It's a question of culture and community (it's also, and I digress a little to say this, about the only way in which I'll confess to any semblance of Judaism in my own life). The laws of Judaism, the moral invectives that Judaism imposes on its adherents, are those that strengthen the community. You could interpret that as applying solely to the Jewish community; that's certainly happened in the past, partly by choice of the Jewish community, and partly not (witness: the Jewish ghetto's of Prague and Warsaw). But Jews have an obligation to extend their sense of community to those outside of their covenant. At least, that's what I always figured our rabbi meant at Passover when he was talked about Abraham and his descendants being "a light unto other nations" and such.

In other words, the community has a responsibility to care for those in it, and that is something that's institutional in Judaism. The Democratic party is, supposedly, the party of "big government," the party that endorses social reform bills and public works projects, the party that supports stronger medicare and medicad and welfare and wants to institutionalize public care, perhaps because they recognize that, organized and together, people will make more of an impact than alone (or, more pessimistically, because they don't think most individuals will be willing to help). Put differently, it's the party that believes the community has the responsibility to care for those in it.

There you have it. I've made the best argument I could, but I'm not an expert. There are folks around here who, I'm sure, know more about this than I do. So, those with an opinion, those with some knowledge, should chime in. Tell me where I'm wrong, support me where I'm right. Give Doug a solid argument. Give him something to tell his friend.