Jews, the Democrats, and the GOP: Gallup put out a study yesterday of
Jewish political attitudes.
The polling organization looked at 21 separate Gallup surveys from the past year and a half. Of the 408 respondents who identified their religious affiliation as Jewish, exactly half give their political orientation as Democratic. About a third say they are independents, and 17% are Republicans. "The Jewish tilt toward Democratic orientation is the most pronounced shift from the national average of any of the major religious groups in the country.
The party identification of Jews appears to be remarkably stable. An analysis of over 30,000 Gallup Poll interviews conducted from 1992 to 2001 shows almost exactly the same distribution of party identification among the Jewish population as is the case in the most recent year and a half: 50% Democrat, 32% independent, 18% Republican.
Over the last year and a half, GW Bush's approval rose a bit more among Jews (30 % points) than among Protestants (19 % points) and Catholics (24 % points).
Another interesting, but not too surprising, finding: "Americans who identify themselves as Jewish in general score lower on various measures of religiosity than either Protestants of Catholics do."
The
Jewish Week covered reaction to the study:
In a statement, the National Jewish Democratic Council said the Gallup analysis is particularly significant because of a recent Hillel survey of Jewish college freshmen showing that only 9.5 percent of those surveyed consider themselves “conservative or far right.”
“Viewed together, these studies take on the myths that American Jewish adults are moving towards the right, and that Jewish college students are doing likewise,” said NJDC director Ira Forman.
Matthew Brooks, executive director of the Republican Jewish Coalition, downplayed the significance of the Gallup numbers.
“We never expected a realignment of [voter] registration,” he said. “What is clear over the last few election cycles is a realignment of votes. There is undisputable evidence that more and more Jews are voting for Republican candidates across the board.”
There were also some interesting quotes from Marshall Whitman of the Hudson Institute, but I can't give him much creedence, since he recently abandoned the GOP in a whiny Washington Post op-ed announcement.
There is lots more to discuss on this topic, but I don't have the time today. I will try to hit it next week.
Update: Thanks to an amused reader, I fixed the accidental reference to excrement above. Perhaps I should use that spellcheck feature once in a while?
Bad genetic news for us Ashkenazi Jews: The Sep. 20 issue of
Science has data showing that a genetic mutation, most often found in people descended from Ashkenazi Jews, can double or even triple the risk of
colorectal cancer.
"KILL THE JEWS": This one's ugly. Two Jewish patrons of an LA bar were assaulted near the club early Sunday morning by 10 to 15 men in what is being labeled a hate crime. Andrew Sullivan pointed to this
LA Independent story, since the incident has gone unreported by mainstream media.
Breaking News: Israeli tanks roll into Arafat's compound in Ramallah: Israeli tanks entered Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's headquarters compound in the West Bank town of Ramallah on Thursday, Palestinian security officials said, after a suicide bomber blew himself up on a Tel Aviv bus, killing five other people.
The Israeli military had no immediate comment, but military sources, speaking on condition of anonymity, confirmed that an Israeli military operation was underway. The Palestinian officials, also speaking on condition of anonymity, said two guards were injured during the incursion.
An official inside the compound said the Israeli tanks had advanced to the area of a helicopter landing pad outside Arafat's office building. Arafat's office is in a central section of a large building, protected by piles of sandbags.
The incursion came as Israel's Cabinet met in special session to consider a response to the suicide bombing in Tel Aviv, the second such attack in Israel in two days after a six-week lull. (with files from the AP)
Crimean Jews try to rebuild: In spite of an unfavorable demographic situation and the economic challenges of a young market economy, the future for the Jews on Ukraine´s Crimean peninsula... looks better now than it has in the last 80 years.
...
Jewish roots in the Crimea run deep. The first Jews settled here in the second century B.C.E., in what was then the northeastern corner of the Roman Empire, and were active participants in the region´s economic life.
During the medieval era, the area was under Muslim influence. In the late 18th century, the Crimea was incorporated into the Russian Empire.
Throughout most of its history, the area drew significant numbers of Jews from the Mediterranean and Eastern Europe. Its Jewish population was comprised of Ashkenazi and Sephardi Jews as well as Tatar-speaking Crimean Jews, known as Krymchaks.
In the 1930s, the region became a playground for social experiments by Jewish Bolsheviks. Jewish collective farms in the Crimea attracted more settlers than the Soviet-created "Jewish homeland" of Birobidzhan - 86 such farms were created in Crimea by 1941 - but protests from the local population halted plans to settle more Jews in the Crimea.
When Crimea came under German occupation in October 1941, the area had a Jewish population of 60,000 to 70,000. They were murdered by the Nazis and their local collaborators in less than six months. In April 1942, the Crimean Peninsula was declared "Judenfrei" - cleansed of Jews.
But Jews returned immediately after the war, and many Jews from other parts of the Soviet Union moved to the Crimea in the last decades of communism.
Despite ongoing Jewish emigration from the former Soviet Union, the size of the community has stabilized in the last few years at about 20,000, according to Anatoly Gendin, Simferopol´s Jewish leader and chairman of the Association of Jewish Organizations and Communities of Crimea.
New university watch dog on Middle Eastern and Islamic issues: The Middle East Forum has launched
Campus Watch, which will follow the academy's handling of Middle Eastern and Islamic issues.
Update: Stanley Kurtz explains
why it is necessary.
You are cordially invited to
party down in Bagdad. Thursday, November 14, 3:30pm, it says here. I was expecting the official war to start sooner, but
Defective Yeti may know something we don't. (via
Joanne Jacobs.)
Go visit Sgt. Stryker right now. Comments too. (Warning: any beverage you are drinking
will go up your nose.) (via
Daily Pundit.)
Suicide blast in Israel: At least three people were injured when a suicide bomber blew himself up at a bus stop in northern Israel on Wednesday, police and TV reports said. The blast near the Israeli Arab town of Umm el-Fahm was the first suicide attack since Aug. 4.
Israel Radio said the bomber apparently detonated his explosives prematurely when he saw police approaching him.
Witness Mohammed Akbariyeh said he was sitting in a restaurant near the bus stop when the blast went off. “Suddenly, we heard a huge explosion. The ground just flew upward. We ran to the spot. We saw a police car which had been damaged from the rear. One policeman wounded and another man also wounded. The body of the terrorist was simply cut in two,” he told Israel Radio.
There was no claim of responsibility for the attack.
Jews of the frozen north: The JTA looks at the prospects for the Jewish community of
Winnipeg, Manitoba:
At its peak in 1961, Winnipeg’s Jewish community of 19,376 was Canada’s third largest.
Today the community is the country’s eighth largest, with approximately 14,000 Jews.
Jewish leaders here recognize that unless they reverse the trend of young Jews leaving for Vancouver, Calgary and Toronto, this community - rich in Jewish arts, enthusiastic about Jewish education and bold enough to build a showpiece Jewish community campus - will wither.
Anybody know what happened to
WarNow? Bruce? Bruce? Hello? Bruce?
Quick update from the Yehudit corner: What a week. Out to New Jersey to visit terminally ill relative and other family. Friend from Austin in town for 3 days, sleeping on the floor of my studio apartment. Four 9-11 memorial services or concerts.
Minyan every morning (total 3 different shuls) to say the special inserts in the Amidah for the week between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur (although I keep trying to get in the habit of going a few mornings a week the rest of the year). Organizing a pre-Yom Kippur dinner for a loose-knit
havurah I am part of. Temping full-time in a synagogue office, therefore crazy with members getting last-minute tickets, ordering
lulav-etrog sets, reserving space for
Sukkot dinners, plus all the continuing mundanities of running the office of a non-profit organization with a brand-new building.
Then an exhausting Yom Kippur where I stayed in shul for 12 hours straight (different synagogue, same denomination) and cried through most of it - my delayed reaction to the busyness and mourning of the week just past, followed by a break-fast with great food, friends, and a few lively toddlers. Back to work today, dragging. Another friend in town, this time from California (and staying with her elderly aunt, thank God). A field trip with one of my shuls to
Boro Park to buy my own lulav and etrog. Planning how I am going to eat in a sukkah every day of the
chag (after all, that's why I'm in New York!)
Sneak preview of next week: Sukkah-hopping,
Hoshana Rabba (one of my favorite holidays, since it's steeped in "primitive" non-rational agricultural ritual),
Shmini Atzeret (ditto) and
Simchat Torah (which is traditionally the big blow-out street party of the Upper West Side, but was subdued after 9-11 and may be so again this year).
Then, thankfully, an entire Jewish month with no holidays at all.
All of which is to say: blogging may be light till
Cheshvan. But I have plans for: 9-11 stuff that I didn't get to post last week, further thoughts on religious conversion policies, some recommendations for Jewishly-flavored books and music, lots of links to obscure news and blogs, Israel, the Iraq war, and doings here in Manhattan. Speaking of which, one year after the WTC attack, the 1 and the 9 trains are
back on their regular route:
. . . the exodus from the ferry into the reborn subway continued, and practically the only way to tell that this Monday morning was different from almost any before the attack was that everyone seemed almost disturbingly pleased to be on his or her way to work. Angela Brown, a transit worker who helped cut the ribbon when the station reopened on Sunday, reassured a visitor that this, too, would return to normal and make us all feel much better.
The terrorists, in other words, could not stop our subway, and they certainly cannot take away our right to look unhappy when we ride it. "I give it a week," Ms. Brown said.
Stay tuned.
Why are there fewer alcoholics among Jews than other groups? According to the latest study, it is due to
genetics.
Good yom tov: Oy! Not a good Yom Kippur for me, not at all. I cam down with a nasty cold on Saturday night. I made it to Kol Nidre Sunday night, but decided that it was better not to get the whole synagogue infected with whatever was casuing me so much misery yesterday. I spent most of the day in bed. I fasted, but not from cold medication or from lots of tea.
Do I feel cleansed? Well, I passed a lot of fluids... oh, spiritually? I have no idea. Ask me when the cold has finally run its course, and I may be able to manage a more coherent answer.
Email problems: For at least the next little while, our idiotic network servers will be disabled at night and on the weekends. In theory, it should be fixed within the next few days. In practice, please don't email me at night or on the weekend until further notice -- your messages will just bounce. Oh, and don't expect quite as many unique postings on Kesher Talk, since this network server shutdown eliminates the receipt of many of my best e-mail lists.
Football: My Steelers and Redskins both suck. Big heaving black holes of suckdom.
Background on a professional rioter at Concordia: Following up on the
anti-Israel riots at Concordia University last week, Stephen Gordon looks into the background of one of the main instigators,
David Battistuzzi. He appears to be a serial protestor and all-around agitator.
Martin Kramer, a real Middle East expert, has a blog: Recently added to my links list, go
check him out.
