A Moment in American Jewish History: Jews in the Democratic and Republican Parties

Rabbi Melanie Aron

July 31, 2004

This fall we will be celebrating the 350th anniversary of American Jewish life. As a warm up, this summer I’ve been speaking about important moments in American Jewish history. At the July family service, we talked about the first Jewish Sunday School in the world and around July 4th we looked at George Washington’s famous assurances to the Jewish community of Newport Rhode Island and why the president was confused by three separate delegations congratulating him on his presidency and claiming to speak for the American Jewish community. We also looked at the challenge of identifying the oldest synagogue in America. There are five different claimants for that honor, depending on the criteria you use.

This being the Shabbat following the Democratic convention, I thought I would talk a little bit about Jews in the Democratic Party.

I mentioned the topic to someone and he joked with me. What will you do the week after the Republican National Convention? After all Jews are such traditional supporters of the Democratic party; a sermon on Jewish Republicans would be awfully short.

Actually, were we sitting here in 1904 instead of 2004, the shoe would have been on the other foot.

From 1860 until the election of Franklin Delenor Roosevelt in 1932, Jews overwhelmingly voted Republican. Until 1860 the ability to identify a Jewish vote is limited but the sense is that the original American Jewish Sephardic community was politically Conservative.

There are several explanations for the strong Jewish support for Abraham Lincoln.

Some scholars trace Lincoln’s popularity in the Jewish community to his having spoken out against anti-semitism while in the Illinois state legislature. He identified those who spoke out against Catholics, Negroes and Jews, as the Know Nothing Party and worked against them.

Other historians attribute Lincoln’s popularity among Jews to the work of two of his supporters, one, Sigmund Kaufmann, was the publisher of prominent German language newspapers, which reached the community of German Jewish immigrants who had begun arriving in the United States in the 1830’s, and the other ,Moses Aaron Dropsie of Philadelphia, was a prominent member of the established Jewish community. Lincoln was actually first nominated by a Jewish delegate to the 1860 Republican National Convetion, Lewis Dembitz of Louisville Kentucky, an important mid-century Jewish community.

Once elected Lincoln was a good friend of the Jewish community. He was the first president to appoint a Jew to a European diplomatic post and most importantly, when Anti-Semitism reared its head during his administration, he responded forcefully. Some of you may recall the incident in which General Grant singled out Jewish peddlers and banned them from the front. Lincoln overturned this order writing: “To condemn a class of people is to condemn the good with the bad. I do not like to hear an entire class or nationality condemned on account of a few sinners.”

The Republicans were identified through the late 19th century with progressive ideas and through the election of Teddy Roosevelt maintained significant Jewish support. Things began to change with the election of Woodrow Wilson. Wilson’s internationalist and idealistic ideas appealed to many American Jews and as president, his nomination of Louis Brandeis to the Supreme Court, his support of the Balfour declaration, and his condemnation of anti-Semitism both at home and abroad, won him lasting Jewish loyalty.

Between World War I and World War II the Jewish vote was in flux. Establishment Jewish leaders remained loyal Republicans, while the new immigrants from Eastern Europe began to find their way to the Democratic Party. Warren Harding was the last Republican candidate to win a plurality of the Jewish vote, but the estimates of the Jewish vote in that election are quite revealing. Harding received 43% of the Jewish vote, the Democrat James Cox received 19% of the Jewish vote, and the Socialist candidate Eugene V. Debs received an estimated 38%. The Depression shifted the weight of the Jewish vote such that between 1928 and 1948, Al Smith, Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman each won at least 75% of the Jewish vote and at times FDR won 90% of the Jewish vote.

Many social scientist wonder about the future of the Jewish vote. Will Jews, in the words of sociologist Milton Himmelfarb, continue to “earn like Episcopalians and vote like Puerto Ricans?” How will concerns about Israel weigh in comparison with the American Jewish community’s discomfort with those in the right wing of the Republican party who seek to make America a “Christian nation.” Stay tuned for an exciting fall, as history continues to unfold.