If we’re listing individual Jews who in some ways opposed egalitarianism / environmentalism, or associated liberal movements, we can list Leo Strauss who said “In the liberal society there is necessarily a private sphere with which the state’s legislation must not interfere ... [T]he liberal society necessarily makes possible, permits, and even fosters what is called by many people “discrimination”.”
Strauss had other broader objections to modern liberalism, as well.
Picking and choosing Jews and their views in an attempt to determine inherent Jewish traits seems dubious, though.
If it’s claimed that Jewish hereditarians just happen to hold those views but aren’t driven by Jewishness, we can question to what extent Jewish environmentalists are necessarily driven by Jewishness.
Demographically, these woke, or environmentalist proto-woke ideas seems particularly prominent among higher educated groups.
Jews tend to be extremely highly educated and tend to be high in all the correlated demographic traits associated with the spheres in which woke is popular (high income, democrat, etc.).
So by basic demographics, you’d expect them to be generally aligned with egalitarianism/environmentalism, independent of any natural tendency towards them.
Indeed, it seems that the view is most commonly held by the least religious, most secular, and most intermarried, of Jews – those who have the least biological or cultural connection to some hypothetical platonic "Judaism."
That would suggest that rather than the ideas being biologically ingrained in ethnic Jews, or somehow culturally embedded in “Judaism,” they’re just views adopted by certain segments of the population, following the same general demographic patterns as the rest of the population.
Ignoring demographics and imagining that Jews’ behavior is rooted inherently in “Jewish culture” is reminiscent of people who notice that East Asians from disparate countries end up concentrating in similar professions, involving computing and math, and attribute this to their “shared Confucian culture,” while ignoring the fact that they concentrate in the same fields as other high IQ people with no connection to Confucianism, following general demographic patterns.
I haven't read the whole report, so maybe there is something more in there that complicates this picture, but there you go. By the way, 66% of US Jews call themselves Ashkenazi in the same report. Against the backdrop of those combined 94% of respondents who categorised themselves as white, this implies to me that virtually all Ashkenazi Jews in the USA consider themselves white.
"In 19th century America, Jews were generally believed to be a distinct race within a broad category of white people."
"In the early 20th century, as the US industrialized, immigration increased, and Nazism spread from Europe, many Americans became nativist and tried to exclude newer immigrants—who were often poorer than those of the 19th century—from being considered white." This included Jews.
"By the 1930s anti-Jewish racism was at an all-time high, but Jewish American racial identity quickly shifted again. Partially, this was because Jews were an important part of president Franklin D. Roosevelt’s political coalition. As such, he discouraged questioning Jewish racial identity as anything but white."
So, it sounds to me as though the perception of Jews as white is the historical norm, and was called into question mainly during a brief period of extreme nativism, when other European groups were denied the label "white" as well.
Admittedly, the article also says: "In the 21st century, while most Americans believe Jews are white, racial issues linger." As I see it, current PC orthodoxy incentivises people to assume some kind of minority status, which has led some Jews to question whether they should be placed in the stigmatised "white" group. However, you see this with some Italians and white Hispanics, too.
Of course, willingness to call oneself white does not imply having a *strong* white identity. But who does, nowadays? Anyway, one group of Jews does seem to care about whiteness quite a bit. Commenting on American Jews who immigrated from the former Soviet Union, one sociologist writes (https://www.bjpa.org/content/upload/bjpa/94so/94soviet.pdf):
"they . . . have a strong identity as whites and sometimes make disparaging comments regarding blacks and Asians. . . . New York's Soviet Jews strongly supported Bernard Goetz, a white man who shot four black youths demanding money in the subway."
It is also worth noting that Israel has considerably more non-white Jews than the United States, yet Israelis are surely more opposed to, say, mass immigration to Western countries than are American Jews.
If we’re listing individual Jews who in some ways opposed egalitarianism / environmentalism, or associated liberal movements, we can list Leo Strauss who said “In the liberal society there is necessarily a private sphere with which the state’s legislation must not interfere ... [T]he liberal society necessarily makes possible, permits, and even fosters what is called by many people “discrimination”.”
Strauss had other broader objections to modern liberalism, as well.
Picking and choosing Jews and their views in an attempt to determine inherent Jewish traits seems dubious, though.
If it’s claimed that Jewish hereditarians just happen to hold those views but aren’t driven by Jewishness, we can question to what extent Jewish environmentalists are necessarily driven by Jewishness.
Demographically, these woke, or environmentalist proto-woke ideas seems particularly prominent among higher educated groups.
Jews tend to be extremely highly educated and tend to be high in all the correlated demographic traits associated with the spheres in which woke is popular (high income, democrat, etc.).
So by basic demographics, you’d expect them to be generally aligned with egalitarianism/environmentalism, independent of any natural tendency towards them.
Indeed, it seems that the view is most commonly held by the least religious, most secular, and most intermarried, of Jews – those who have the least biological or cultural connection to some hypothetical platonic "Judaism."
That would suggest that rather than the ideas being biologically ingrained in ethnic Jews, or somehow culturally embedded in “Judaism,” they’re just views adopted by certain segments of the population, following the same general demographic patterns as the rest of the population.
Ignoring demographics and imagining that Jews’ behavior is rooted inherently in “Jewish culture” is reminiscent of people who notice that East Asians from disparate countries end up concentrating in similar professions, involving computing and math, and attribute this to their “shared Confucian culture,” while ignoring the fact that they concentrate in the same fields as other high IQ people with no connection to Confucianism, following general demographic patterns.
The problem comes down to whether Jews think of themselves as ‘white’ or part of European civilization. Some do but many do not and act accordingly.
True enough, though I think people probably tend to overstate the self-perceived non-whiteness of Jews. According to Pew (https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2021/05/11/race-ethnicity-heritage-and-immigration-among-u-s-jews/), 92% of US Jews identify as "White, non-Hispanic," and another 2% identify as "Hispanic and White."
I haven't read the whole report, so maybe there is something more in there that complicates this picture, but there you go. By the way, 66% of US Jews call themselves Ashkenazi in the same report. Against the backdrop of those combined 94% of respondents who categorised themselves as white, this implies to me that virtually all Ashkenazi Jews in the USA consider themselves white.
As for American society's perceptions of Jews, Harvard Divinity School notes (https://rpl.hds.harvard.edu/religion-context/case-studies/minority-in-america/racial-identity-us-jews):
"In 19th century America, Jews were generally believed to be a distinct race within a broad category of white people."
"In the early 20th century, as the US industrialized, immigration increased, and Nazism spread from Europe, many Americans became nativist and tried to exclude newer immigrants—who were often poorer than those of the 19th century—from being considered white." This included Jews.
"By the 1930s anti-Jewish racism was at an all-time high, but Jewish American racial identity quickly shifted again. Partially, this was because Jews were an important part of president Franklin D. Roosevelt’s political coalition. As such, he discouraged questioning Jewish racial identity as anything but white."
So, it sounds to me as though the perception of Jews as white is the historical norm, and was called into question mainly during a brief period of extreme nativism, when other European groups were denied the label "white" as well.
Admittedly, the article also says: "In the 21st century, while most Americans believe Jews are white, racial issues linger." As I see it, current PC orthodoxy incentivises people to assume some kind of minority status, which has led some Jews to question whether they should be placed in the stigmatised "white" group. However, you see this with some Italians and white Hispanics, too.
Of course, willingness to call oneself white does not imply having a *strong* white identity. But who does, nowadays? Anyway, one group of Jews does seem to care about whiteness quite a bit. Commenting on American Jews who immigrated from the former Soviet Union, one sociologist writes (https://www.bjpa.org/content/upload/bjpa/94so/94soviet.pdf):
"they . . . have a strong identity as whites and sometimes make disparaging comments regarding blacks and Asians. . . . New York's Soviet Jews strongly supported Bernard Goetz, a white man who shot four black youths demanding money in the subway."
It is also worth noting that Israel has considerably more non-white Jews than the United States, yet Israelis are surely more opposed to, say, mass immigration to Western countries than are American Jews.