Were I the editor of this timely and thought-provoking book, I would have suggested that one short word be added to the title—thus changing it to Why Are Jews Still Liberals? After all, as Norman Podhoretz himself acknowledges, during most of their history on these shores American Jews had the best of reasons to support the forces of political liberalism. Millions of poor and previously oppressed European Jews began arriving in America in the late nineteenth century, believing fervently, almost religiously, that this liberal republic would become their “goldene medine” (golden land)—and it was the big-city Democratic machines that welcomed Jewish support and inclusion. The Democrats stood for Jewish-friendly policies such as opening up the professions and the universities and pushing for expansive immigration policies. Republicans and conservatives were tainted by association with the country’s nativist and isolationist movements and even with outright anti-Semitism. And then there was the Jews’ almost messianic attachment to Franklin Roosevelt because of the New Deal and the victory over Nazism. It’s a political legacy that has become almost embedded in the Jewish DNA.

Even Norman Podhoretz’s own life story reflects this natural embrace of liberalism and the Democratic Party by the Jews. He recalls growing up in the Brownsville section of Brooklyn in the 1930s and 1940s and never meeting a Republican until he was in high school. As a teenager, he wrote an impassioned eulogy for FDRand even supported Henry Wallace in the 1948 election (though he