YDA Jewish Caucus

From the AJC Report:

Longitudinal General Social Survey data dispel the contention that there has been a rightward drift in Jewish political attitudes and values (Smith, 2005). In fact, a close perusal of the data reveals that, in areas where Jewish attitudes have not held steady over the course of the past thirty years, they have actually grown more liberal. For example, a decreasing proportion of Jews believe that premarital sex and homosexual sex is “always wrong,” and an increasing proportion believe in the “right to commit suicide if a person has an incurable disease.” Regarding sex roles, there has been a substantial increase in the percentage of Jewish respondents who disagree with the statement “a wife should first help a husband’s career” (from 62 percent during 1972-80, to 70 percent during 1981-90, to 88 percent during 1991-2002).

Jewish students also appear to be more politically liberal than other students, and correspondingly espouse more progressive attitudes regarding sex, drugs, abortion, gender roles, and homosexuality. This corresponds with Greenberg’s finding that Gen Y, overall, is more likely to call itself liberal than older generations. Sax (2002) found that political orientation was one of the variables that maximally distinguished between the Jewish and non-Jewish students— 51 percent of Jews as compared to 25 percent of non-Jews identify themselves as “liberal.”

Read the whole report at http://www.ajc.org/atf/cf/{42D75369-D582-4380-8395-D25925B85EAF}/YoungJewishAdultsUS_102006.pdf

(Boston Globe) IT IS BETTER to be a half-formed and rough idea than a brilliant cliché. Such preference for the imperfect new defines America. As we celebrate the birth of our nation, can we put words on the reason we love it? Let me try.

Because Europeans measured what they found here against what they had left behind, newness was the main note of the settled land. In the beginning, religiously enflamed politics had made life intolerable in the old country, a story that achieved its master form with the coming to Virginia and Massachusetts of the English dissidents.

Read more at http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2006/07/03/what_we_love_about_america/

(Forward) Conservative pundit — and controversy magnet — Ann Coulter made waves last week when excerpts from her new book, “Godless: The Church of Liberalism,” revealed a withering attack on 9/11 widows. “I’ve never seen people enjoying their husbands’ death so much,” she said.

Overlooked, however, is a peculiar bit of classification that Coulter makes in a footnote on her book’s third page, where, with a stroke of the pen, she converts the world’s Jews into Christians. “Throughout this book,” she writes, “I often refer to Christians and Christianity because I am a Christian and I have a fairly good idea of what they believe, but the term is intended to include anyone who subscribes to the Bible of the God of Abraham, including Jews and others.”

Available from http://www.forward.com/articles/7986