The Political Side of American Jewry: Democrats or Republicans?

 Nadene Goldfoot                                             

Franklin Delano Roosevelt , b: January 30, 1882  d: April 12, 1945. He died of a cerebral hemorrhage while sitting for a portrait.  He had had poor health, including bronchitis, heart problems.  Most of his adult life was spent as an invalid from having polio.  He was only 63 when he died.  

In 1938 he created the Evian Conference and talked about the plight of Jews in Germany.  By 1944 he set up a War Refugee Board to rescue survivors of Nazism.  He had shown sympathy for Zionism but one meeting with King Ibn Saud of Saudi Arabia, and he changed his attitude toward Jews.  Many outstanding Jews happened to be connected to his New Deal, such as Bernard Baruch, Henry Morgenthaugh Jr., and Felix Frankfurter.  On the other hand, Eleanor Roosevelt (1884-1962), his wife and distant cousin, was a patron of Youth Aliyah.   

The Evian Conference had 32 nations called because of Germany's attacking and the inadequacy of the League of Nations and voluntary bodies to takle the problem.  Only the Dominican Republic offered to accept sizable numbers of refugees, and an Inter-Geovernmental Committee for Refugees was established and continued to operate until the outbreak of WWII.  

• Before Jews came to the land of America, they were 2nd class citizens of other countries ever since they lost their own land of Judea in 70 CE.  That's over 2,000 years of actually being homeless without having a chance for their people to have a say in how they should be governed.  Much of the population had been under Russia's Czarina, Catherine II., confined to certain areas, forcibly taken into the army and placed on the front lines because they were Jews.  Because they were Jews, they had been kicked out of countries, such as Germany, and England where they were expelled for  a 365 year period from 1290 to 1655.  

They saw a chance to live a free life in America. The political parties from George Washington's day onward were that of the Federalist, Democratic Republican, Democrat, Whig, Republican, Democratic Union, and just Democrats, Republicans and Independents.  

Along came World War I and Thomas Woodrow Wilson was our 28th president from 1913 to 1921.  He was a Democrat.

Along came WWII  and Franklin Delano Roosevelt was our 32nd president from 1933 to 1945.  He was president from the time I was born on...when he died it was like my father had died.  Our whole grade school was in shock.  He was a Democrat, and not only that, but was from New York, which would have had the largest population of Jews of the USA.  Jews were led to believe that it was Roosevelt who let them come into the US, and they owed him their lives.  

The big immigration of Jews from Europe took place at the turn of the century and afterwards, with the door closing on them with new immigration laws of entrance in 1921 and again in 1924 allowing only a few Jews from eastern Europe. This was at a most precarious period as Europe was stoking up for anti-Semitism that would start by 1930 and just grow worse and worse till the Holocaust took place.  Russian Jews had been suffering from pogroms, which my own grandmother had suffered from.  Luckily, my paternal grandparents immigrated to the USA just before 1900.  

Since then, Jews have remained loyal Democrats, regardless.  It's become like your religion, hard to get a Democrat to let go of his party.  

Not so the USA Population as a whole:   our 33rd Truman Democrat;  34th Eisenhower of New York, Republican;  35th Kennedy Democrat;  36th Johnson Democrat;  37th Nixon Republican;  38th Ford Republican;  39th Carter Democrat (and very anti Israel) from Georgia;  40th Reagan Republican;  41st GHW Bush Republican;  42nd Clinton Democrat;  43rd GWB Bush (son) Republican;  44th Obama II Democrat;  45th Trump Republican;   46th Biden Democrat.  

Since Franklin Delano Roosevelt of New York, a Democrat, we have had 7 Democrats and 7 Republicans.  Is Trump going to run this time for the Republican Party or on the Independent ticket?  Another?  Who would run on the Democrat ticket?  What criteria will most Jews be using for their vote?

Jews are a very small minority population in the USA, about 2,4%.  Yet our people are leaders and very vocal and mostly quite well educated.  

Our country has grown in population by 7% in the last 10 years, going from 309,327,143 in 2010, to.....331,893,745 in 2021.  Even with  1,04 million COVID deaths, we've had immigration and natural procreation.  By 2020, our USA population was 329.5 million.  

Our Jewish population in the USA in 2020  was 7.6 million , made up of 4.9 million Jewish adults  whose religion is Jewish, and 1.2 million Jews  who claim no religion (atheists ?), and 1.6 million children.  Our choice of political party will be as different from each other as our religious views.  It depends on our presidential criteria and what they think is important either to repair or to continue. 

 

Resource: 

The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woodrow_Wilson

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franklin_Delano_Roosevelt