Reform DC chief says Orthodox/ GOP affinity will be short lived

David Saperstein, one of the capitol's most respected liberal voices, makes the case that the frum communty will not stay with Bush. He concludes that Israel will come between the new friendship.

What's in a name?

Uri Heilman scoops some discussions at the American Jewish Committee on their search for a new identity.

I am not sure that the issue is an identity crisis as much as it is a mission crisis. AJC was founded as the outlet for the German Jewish elite. They were so elitist that they forced other Jews to start competing organizations. Now, no one can tell the difference between the alphabetic mishmash that they spawned.

AJC could have sat tight and watched the whole Alon Pinkas fiasco blow up at the AJCongress. Now everyone will question what it is that they do as well.

The Jewish left awakens!

Does it strike anyone as a conflict that the head of the JCPA, Hannah Rosenthal, is a former Clinton staffer and Democratic party Activist? Is the Jewish establishment ready to become an arm of the Dems in Washington? Are they leading us off the cliff?

Ori Nir chronicles in the Forward.

The secularists seem angry yet again...

...About religion in public square. Can you imagine that O'Reilly had the chutzpah to tell someone if he did not want to hear about Christmas then he should "go to Israel." He could also have said go to Saudi Arabia. But wait! They don't allow Jews there.

Good thing that they do here and the Jews, like Krauthammer says in WaPo, should learn to appreciate all that America has to offer.

Was Savitsky Right?

Egads!!! Haaretz reports that Nefesh b'Nefesh found that North American immigrants to Israel in recent years are better educated, wealthier and more successful than those of past generations.

Is everyone still offended?

Why do the Jews keep calling the President polarizing because of religion?

Nathan Diamant asks in Haaretz

Foxman strikes at Scalia

Abe Foxman writes a piece in the New York Sun taking issue with Justice Scalia's eloquent address back in November at New York's Shearith Israel

Orthodox Grassroots Grow Strong at the Agudah Convention

Orthodox Grassroots Grow Strong
BINYAMIN JOLKOVSKY


STAMFORD, Conn. — Standing below a banner proclaiming “Keepers of a sacred trust” Rabbi Shmuel Bloom, executive vice president of the Orthodox grassroots umbrella group Agudath Israel of America, faced a crowd of nearly 2,000 men, women, and children of varying ages gathered here for the group’s annual convention. He declared, “We have an unprecedented opportunity today to have a true impact on the American political scene. Almost 70% of Orthodox Jews, compared to 23% Conservative and 15% Reform Jews, cast their votes for President Bush.” His organization, he added, has done a “wonderful job establishing and promoting a special relationship with the administration.”
It was more than an applause line or mere triumphalism. To those in the audience — and others in 15 cities across North America connected via a Webcast — it was a call to continuing arms.
If they missed the rabbi’s first reference, there was another: “The time has come for Agudath Israel to stand up and take its rightful place at the helm of the Jewish community. And to stand there proudly and without compromise as the bearer of the Torah’s message, as the movement whose members care about all Jews throughout the world.”
The fervently Orthodox and chasidic communities are often portrayed as insular. But they are realizing they’ve become a power to be reckoned with, and they are beginning lay the groundwork to make sure their newly found status becomes permanent.
Walking the halls of the Westin hotel here, one passed the usual luminaries — long-bearded rabbis and their stylish but modestly dressed wives, noted authors, educators, and lecturers. But this year, there were other “stars”: Grassroots activists, previously unknown, appeared to be everywhere. There were yeshiva educators who organized the Jewish get-out-the-vote drive in the battleground states of Florida and Ohio, the small-business entrepreneur who spearheaded voter registration in Israel. The convention was for many of them the place to meet for a toast after an against-the-odds success.
But there’s a long way from ambition to actuality, as became evident from one roundtable forum, “Culture Climate Control: Can We Affect the Moral Tenor of the World Around Us?”There, activists debated a strategy of seeing their goal realized.
The first step, proposed Michael Landau, the chairman of the Council of Orthodox Jewish Organizations on Manhattan’s West Side,is to draw attention to the distinction between observant Jews and their more secular co-religionists.
“It is important to make sure the American majority knows we are part of that majority. That Orthodox Jews are not like the rest of the Jews, and we are very much in line with the moral majority of America,” he said. “We must begin to redefine ourselves internally within the Jewish community and make sure our voice is better heard.”
One model proposed was to emulate evangelicals. “We can be perceived, if we really make clear the things we profess to believe, as a faith community, not unlike that of the Christian faith community,”argued Michael Fragin,an executive assistant to Governor Pataki. “We are here as the oldest faith community in the entire world, the oldest monotheistic religion in the world. We are the religion that gave birth to all others and gave birth to society. And somehow we are outside that debate.” By “we” he meant Orthodox Jews.
On a personal level, Mr. Fragin said he feels “ashamed” when confronted by Christian co-workers wondering why the Jews are “always on the other side.”
Secular Jews, he said, “time and time again have shown that they are interested in removing any vestiges of God and faith in many cases from the public debate and society.”
Religious Jews, he asserted, must step forward and change that.
Agudath Israel has, of course, long made coalitions with other religions over secular and sociological issues. And it has always remained nonpartisan.The reason, Rabbi Avi Shafran, one of the group’s officials, observed, was because it is not prudent for Orthodox Jews to be “constrained by consistency.”There are times, he said, “when we should and must argue there should be a separation of church and state and there are times when we shouldn’t. That may not always be a pretty thing to hear and say, but it’s a reality. In the end, what must concern us is the welfare of our children and what the Torah demands of us. It’s as simple as that, though it’s not a simple equation.”

Will Jewish politics ever be the same?

Eve Kessler of the Forward looks at some changes within the Jewish political firmament. We are a little bit surprised at her dig at Tevi Troy. Tevi was pretty accessible to most groups.

US Jewish leaders welcome haredi participation

hmmm. Are the haredim ready for organized Jewish life? Are they willing to have their views confrom to the consensus of a community that they are largely at odds with? Rabbi Bloom's idea that the frum will soon be the majority is long off.

Heilman brings some interesting quotes but does not really get inot the heart of the issue here. The Jewish community, unfortunately, has become for now bifurcated into two groups. Those that are hopelessly captive of the Democratic Party and those that are less petrified of the "insidious and evil religious right".

DEMOCRATIC PARTY’S LOCK ON JEWISH VOTERS IS LOOSENED

From the New York Sun

DEMOCRATIC PARTY’S LOCK ON JEWISH VOTERS IS LOOSENED
BUSH RECEIVES 24% OF VOTES FROM JEWS; ATTRIBUTED TO HIS SUPPORT OF ISRAEL AND A POLITICAL SHIFT AMONG AMERICANS
By RODERICK BOYD Staff Reporter of the Sun


Although the Kerry-Edwards ticket won support from more than three in four Jewish voters in last month’s presidential election, the Democratic Party’s historical lock on the nation’s 4 million Jewish voters has loosened. Moreover, those analysts said the 24% support President Bush received from Jewish voters probably stemmed not only from his aggressive support for Israel but also from a broad political shift within the American Jewish community.
The voting patterns of several heavily Jewish neighborhoods in New York offer a case in point.
The 45th Assembly district, comprising Flatbush and Brighton Beach in Brooklyn, cas

t 16,120 votes for Mr. Bush and 12,633 for Senator Kerry, according to the city’s Board of Elections. In 2000, then-Governor Bush got just 8,615 votes out of more than 30,000.
The 48th Assembly district, comprising heavily Orthodox Boro Park, cast 18,036 votes for Mr. Bush versus 7,847 for Senator Kerry. In 2000, Vice President Gore took the district, 15,616 to 10,001.
Brooklyn was not the only area where the incumbent made inroads among Jewish voters. A senior Democratic strategist, based at Los Angeles who spoke to The New York Sun on condition of anonymity, said his research into the electoral precincts of Beverly Hills, with a Jewish population of nearly 40%, indicated that Mr. Bush got 42% of the vote, up from 20% in 2000. At the adjoining areas of Beverlywood and Pico/Robertson, which also have substantial Jewish populations and are considered liberal strongholds, Mr. Bush’s backing likewise roughly doubled, to nearly one-third. In the San Fernando Valley, the community of Encino, where approximately 26% of registered voters are Jewish, gave 38% of the vote to Mr. Bush, after giving him just 26% in 2000.
The strategist said the sense he got from conversations with Democratic organizers in those communities was that “a lot of Jews were very concerned about pulling out of Iraq,” which he said played to Mr. Bush’s image of resolve and determination. “A lot of Jews, especially the large population of Iranian Jews in Beverly Hills, are sensitive to threats of Islamic fundamentalist terror,” the strategist said.
To one Hollywood-based former liberal, the novelist and screenwriter Roger L. Simon, the data confirm something he had heard alluded to at various Hollywood functions. “There were whispers that more people than you realized thought President Bush, despite all his other weaknesses, was on the right track with the war on terror,” Mr. Simon said. “But you didn’t hear it said in public,that’s for damn sure.”His own public support for the president has cost him “more than a few” long-term friendships, Mr. Simon said. His blog, RogerLSimon.com, initially carried the news of the sharp increase in support for Mr. Bush in Beverly Hills.
The reason for this electoral aboutface among some American Jews is the credibility of the Bush Doctrine as a way of preserving national security, according to the executive director of the National Republican Jewish Coalition, Matt Brooks. He said New York’s Jewish community, with its close ties to Israel and its proximity to Ground Zero in Lower Manhattan, has “an unusually clear sense of what America is up against.”
Mr. Brooks predicted that the 2008 and 2012 elections will see Jewish voters return to the 30%-40% range of support for Republican presidential candidates that President Reagan received in 1984, with 39%, and Vice President Bush received in 1988, with 35%.
Should the former presidential candidate Howard Dean be elected chairman of the Democratic National Committee, however, Mr. Brooks predicted the backlash by centrist Jewish Democrats could tip the scales in the Republicans’ favor. Mr. Brooks said Dr. Dean’s “hard left” take on national-security issues and history of controversial statements about Israel would hurt the party’s outreach and fund-raising efforts.
Those assessments are not necessarily shared in Democratic circles.
For example, the deputy executive director of the National Jewish Democratic Council, David Harris, said Mr. Bush got more Jewish votes because he got more votes from almost every ethnic group. “More Americans voted for the man this time, and Jews were simply a part of that, no less or no more than in other groups,” he said.
Mr.Harris said the Republican Party’s talk of competing equally for the Jewish vote is at least premature. “They have a lot of work to do to simply get back to the vote levels they had in the 1970s and 1980s,” he said. Mr. Harris said it is unrealistic to assume that Democrats will continue to get more than 80% of the Jewish vote, as they did in the 1992, 1996, and 2000 presidential elections. On average, since 1972, Mr. Harris said, 27% of Jews have voted Republican. He said, however, that for the Republicans to crack 30% again, “There would have to be a really, really sharp difference in tone and style.”
“Tone and style” are code words for “Christian fundamentalism,” a Democratic strategist in New York, Hank Sheinkopf, said. While Mr. Bush’s highprofile discussions of his evangelical faith worry many Jews, he said, the number of voters alienated by the practice is probably dropping as the percentage of Jews fully assimilated into American culture rises.
Mr. Sheinkopf, who is president of Sheinkopf Communications and a veteran of dozens of New York and national elections, said that absent a strong centrist leader such as President Clinton, the modern Democratic Party offers many Jewish voters less than ever before.
“The left is dead to the Jews, if not in direct opposition to Israel,” he said. “Liberalism as a domestic agenda is nearly dead.A nonthreatening Republican can make gradual inroads with Jewish voters for the foreseeable future.”
The best opportunities for Republicans to pick up votes within the Jewish community, according to a project director for the Republican pollster Luntz Research Company, Ben Clarke, are with men between the ages of 18 and 49, and with religious Jews. Mr. Clarke said that in a survey of 484 Jewish voters taken by his company on Election Day, 39% of the men said they voted for Mr. Bush. He said this was nearly twice as high as the levels of women voting for the GOP ticket. In addition, according to Mr. Clarke, 40% of the Jews who said they attend synagogue once a week voted for Mr. Bush, and 69% of the voters who identified themselves as Orthodox chose Mr.Bush.

Another day another poll on the Jewish Vote

Zogby Poll: Kerry 75%, Bush 24% Among Jews

Senator John Kerry garnered 75% and President Bush 24% of a sample of 1,095 Jewish voters taken recently through and interactive survey at the Web site of pollster John Zogby, Zogby told the Forward in a telephone interview December 9.

“Those numbers are consistent with what we’ve seen and done all year," Zogby said.

Zogby was eager to debunk an inaccurate statistic attributed to his firm that has begun appearing on Jewish blogs. Those blogs cite a paper posted at his firm's Web site that gives 64% as the percentage of the Jewish vote garnered by Kerry; the blogs extrapolated from that figure to give Bush 36% of the Jewish vote.

Zogby said Kerry figure cited in the paper came from a sub-sample of 38 Jewish voters in his first telephone survey post election of 1,000 voters. Such small sub-samples are not considered valid. Bush got 24% of those 38 folks and “for reasons we’re not sure ‘Nader and Other’ got 10%,” according to Zogby.

Why the Dems lost Ohio

Seems obvious. Kerry got fewer votes. Some Myths and Facts from WaPo

The Establishment Strikes Back

It was only a matter of time before the the Jews hit back at the insults of Alon Pinkas. This has the makings of a great feud should he ever get his new job.

Haredim on the march

at least he points to Kiddush Hashem as being the ultimate goal