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Oct

10

Newsweek on Palin turning off Jews


I’ve heard it from several Jewish voters I know: they were for Hillary, then they were for McCain, but when he chose Palin, they just couldn’t support him.  From me, it’s anecdotal. But now Newsweek has more on this (hattip to co-Ruckus rouser, Jeralyn from Talk Left). The themes in the Newsweek piece echo nearly all the ones I’ve written about in regard to what is going on in the Jewish community nation-wide: Obama has been working his tail off, Palin totally freaks us out and Biden is the best thing since electronic shabbos goys.

On Obama’s hard work:

Obama has worked strenuously to combat Jewish misgivings about his candidacy. His campaign has highlighted the prominent role Jews played in his rise in Illinoispolitics. And he has appeared before numerous Jewish groups, including the American Israel Public Affairs Committee in Washington, D.C., in June, when he declared Israel’s security “sacrosanct” and “non-negotiable.” The speech was well received and earned him a sort of “hechsher,” says Wald—the certification from a rabbi that food is kosher. In Florida, Obama has dispatched well-regarded Jewish surrogates like U.S. Reps. Robert Wexler and Debbie Wasserman Schultz, who have been making an emphatic case for the Democratic nominee. The Republicans “are wrong on funding and improving education, they are wrong on health care and wrong on civil rights and civil liberties,” says Wasserman Schultz. “Barack Obama supports all our values, not just some of them.”

I’ll be attending one such event on Sunday with Ambassador Dennis Ross, Senator Carl Levin of Michigan, Ohio Lt. Gov Lee Fisher and Congresswoman Jane Harman of California.

On Palin:

Many Florida Jews who had previously been open to McCain appear to share the couple’s aversion to Palin, according to political scientists, polling data and anecdotal reporting. “She stands for all the wrong things in the eyes of the Jewish community,” says Kenneth Wald, a professor at the University of Florida. Among the examples he cites: Palin seems to disdain intellectualism, she’s a vociferous opponent of gun control and she attended a fundamentalist church that hosted Jews for Jesus, which seeks to convert Jews to Christianity. (Palin apparently sat through a speech by a leader of the group in which he said terrorist attacks on Israel were punishment for Israelis’ failure to accept Jesus as the Messiah.) An American Jewish Committee poll taken in the weeks after Palin was picked found that 54 percent of respondents disapproved of her selection, compared to 37 percent who approved. And that was before the onslaught of withering criticism of her interviews with CBS’s Katie Couric.

And, about Joe Biden:

Biden is one of the reasons Hannah Handler Hostyk, an Orthodox Jew who lives in Hollywood, Fla., is planning to vote for the Democratic presidential ticket—a first for her. But Palin was the deciding factor. “I was shocked,” she says. “I watched some of the speeches at the [Republican] convention and some of the debates. Each time, I was more and more appalled.” Hostyk finds a number of Palin’s traits disturbing: her hard-line position on abortion, her extreme religiosity and her apparent ignorance on economic and foreign-policy matters. “Basically, on every issue, Sarah Palin is not coming from where I’m coming from,” says Hostyk. In the aftermath of the Palin pick, “Obama and Biden became the perfect ticket.” If enough Florida Jews share such sentiments, they may help propel that ticket all the way to the White House.

The article even cites The Great Shlep and Sarah Silverman’s pro-Obama video for the event as factors.

I think that this rejection of Palin is, in part, because of how unwise it is to campaign in front of groups of Jewish people who are in between the holiday of Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur and yet, in their campaign events, commit nearly every sin we for which we ask forgiveness while fasting (which was just yesterday).  Seriously – if we have to say we’re sorry for all these things and try not to do them next year, why on Earth would we think it’s okay, so close to the holiday, to be persuaded to vote for someone who is committing all these sins.  Take a look at the Ashamnu which we recited like, a zillion times yesterday (okay, the reference says five but it really feels like more) and you can see – we did some bad stuff, even if we don’t know it.  Here are just a few examples:

We have spoken with “two mouths” — we have been hypocritical. We can confront our fear of rejection, and the dishonesty that we use to “cover ourselves.” Who are we afraid of? Why? Should we not be more willing to tackle the reality that confronts us?

We have made things crooked. This includes all forms of dishonest rationalizations. Our hunger for decency sometimes is satiable through false justifications. We must remember that even a murderer invariably justifies himself at the time he commits the crime. We must rise above the false self-pity that at times lets us slip into situational ethics.

We have sinned intentionally. The classical example is lying, in which case there is always full awareness of the factuality of the sin. How could we learn to bring God back into our consciousness when we are blinded by stress and fear?

And perhaps most applicable this election cycle:

We have become desensitized to dishonesty. Dishonesty feels “normal” to us. When we live in a time and place where lying is “normal,” we can endeavor to envision our spiritual heroes in our shoes.

There’s even a version for George Bush which came out a few years ago, tailor-made just for his sins.

In short, Jews are as diverse as any group, and get turned off by antics and tactics that don’t reflect kind, moral and ethical choices without excusing the behavior by saying, “but it’s politics.”  A big fat feh on that, if you ask me.

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By Jill Miller Zimon at 10:37 pm October 10th, 2008 in Politics 

Comments

One Response to “Newsweek on Palin turning off Jews”

  1. 1 Sandy on October 11th, 2008 10:32 am

    Another example of the kind of politicking Jews don’t like — McCain implying that members of another group are not decent family men:

    http://www.blogher.com/obamas-family-man

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