The Jews and the Left

Summary

Why did Jews become devoted Democrats, and why did the Democrats turn on them?

For the past 100 years, Jews have famously been at the forefront of every liberal cause in America. They were overrepresented in the Civil Rights Movement, in the Labor movement, the pro-choice movement, and the LGBT movement. If you ask them why they are Democrats, many will say it’s because they are Jews.

And yet, as Batya Ungar-Sargon explains in The Jews and the Left, with its slogans about the destruction of Israel and elevation of antisemitic leaders, the Left has become a no-go zone for Jews unless they are willing to denounce their own people. Now the left has cheers when Zohran Mamdani says there shouldn’t be a Jewish state on this planet, and Bernie Sanders says Israel’s goal in Gaza is “extermination.”

To explore how we got here. Ungar-Sargon takes readers through the long history of Jews in American political life, from George Washington’s praise for the Jews to the forgotten Jewish Founding Father, from the Triangle Shirtwaist fire to the lynching of Leo Frank, from the Civil Rights movement to the shock many Americans felt on October 7th when Hamas wasn’t universally condemned.

Many Jews will insist that antisemitic violence has been more common on the right than on the left. The reality is far more complicated and far more troubling. This book analyzes a uniquely left-wing form of antisemitic hate. The Jews and the Left is a moving historical account of one of the most important alliances in American politics—and its breakdown.