How Should American Jews Vote?

There are half as many Mormons as Jews in this country. Why don’t people write about the Mormon vote at least half as much as they do about the Jewish vote? Because, conventional wisdom says, the Mormons are tucked away in the intermountain West—Utah, Idaho, Arizona. Who cares what happens out there? But the Jews are spread out in the large and important states of New York, Illinois, California, Florida, and the like, states which choose Presidents.

Perhaps so. But perhaps the Jewish vote has become an obsession, something made up by journalists to occupy people in search of the curious. For Jewish Americans form “the Jewish vote” in particular when provoked or afraid. Otherwise, they melt into a variety of other “votes” of which, individually, they form a part: the union vote, the white middle-class urban vote, the upper-class liberal vote, the intellectual vote, and the like. To be sure, the stated condition —fear, provocation—turns up more commonly than one might expect, lending substance to talk about the Jewish vote. For the walk to the polling place takes a long detour through history. Jews are Jewish by reason of their memories.

There are half as many Mormons as Jews in this country. Why don’t people write about the Mormon vote at least half as much as they do about the Jewish vote? Because, conventional wisdom says, the Mormons are tucked away in the intermountain West—Utah, Idaho, Arizona. Who cares what happens out there? But the Jews are spread out in the large and important states of New York, Illinois, California, Florida, and the like, states which choose Presidents.

Perhaps so. But perhaps the Jewish vote has become an obsession, something made up by journalists to occupy people in search of the curious. For Jewish Americans form “the Jewish vote” in particular when provoked or afraid. Otherwise, they melt into a variety of other “votes” of which, individually, they form a part: the union vote, the white middle-class urban vote, the upper-class liberal vote, the intellectual vote, and the like. To be sure, the stated condition —fear, provocation—turns up more commonly than one might expect, lending substance to talk about the Jewish vote. For the walk to the polling place takes a long detour through history. Jews are Jewish by reason of their memories.