Why It Is an Important Question
It always is risky to validate the ruminations of a woman who has spent the last decade traipsing from seminar to seminar proclaiming that she and her fellow ladies are victims of mean, nasty white guys. But let us take a chance because the issue is important. Ms. Brooks’s vexation is not uncommon among sincere liberals — including Jewishly disconnected Jews. The fascinating question merits deeper reflection than Our Ms. Brooks was willing to invest. Probably through no fault of hers as an outsider, Ms. Brooks views the Jewish community as a monolith. Isn’t that odd for a law professor who is supposed to be smarter than her students? Obviously, the little lady never has been to my synagogue. Had she ever cracked a single volume on Judaism, she would quickly have learned about the immense stratification of the community.
Pick a Number
Let us establish context before proceeding. There are 1.2 billion Muslims on earth and 14 million Jews. Mainly today, Jews come in four shades — Black, White, Gray and Pretty Gray. Black would be the religious Jews, the Orthodox community. They are by far the tiniest segment, both in this country and Israel, the two main homes of the Jewish people. As strong adherents of tradition, religious Jews skewer heavily toward the Republican Party. However, within the Orthodox community, there are more rival layers of belief than there are layers of crust beneath this earth. In my row alone in my synagogue, I can name three separate forms of belief/commitment among the men. The color White would denote secular Jews, probably the largest grouping. They can’t be bothered to look up a synagogue, even one day a year. Practically without exception, the Whites are Democrats. Then it becomes more complicated, more dense. The third grouping we shall call Gray. The Grays are religiously liberal Jews who have affiliated with Reform and Conservative synagogues. Their world is as separate from the Orthodox universe as Moscow is from Culver City. Some Grays take their religion seriously. Many, arguably most, do not, and we shall label them Pretty Grays. The Pretty Grays affiliate with a synagogue more for recreational than religious purposes. Their primary orientation, though, is secular. Religiously liberal Jews — whether Gray or Pretty Gray — overwhelmingly identify as Democrats for the same reason Orthodox Jews are attracted to the Republican Party.
To Refine a Point
Since summer began, we have been praying in three synagogues. Ninety-five percent of members at two probably are Republicans. At the third and largest, it may be 65-35 Republican, or it may be closer to 55-45. One more layer, yet undiscussed, perhaps is the most crucial. The cultural concept of landsman is an incredibly powerful sense of bonding among fellow Jews that we must be born with. The unshakable sense of loyalty Jews feel for each other is the strongest I ever have encountered in any culture. Historically, it trumps all rivalries between and among Jews. Its colloquially crude equivalent is called circling the wagons.
Postscript
You can see that it would be easier to describe the distinctions between royal blue and navy blue to a group of people born blind than it would be to characterize with clarity the competing dimensions of the Jewish people. What, then, are we to make of Ms. Brooks? In view of the foregoing, it seems to me this is the most logical conclusion. The unfortunate combination of Ms. Brooks’s incendiary language and her towering ignorance of the Jewish community no doubt upset her readers — those who agreed and those who disagreed. This was her apparent goal. But not one reader came away better educated or better informed, which should have been her objective.
