Norman Podhoretz -- Why Are Jews Liberals?

Norman Podhoretz's extraordinary new book -- "Why Are Jews Liberals?" -- is being published today.  The book is an important event in American Jewish intellectual history, for reasons I have tried to describe in "Challenging the Torah of Liberalism" in today's American Thinker. 

Commentary has a very valuable symposium on the book in its September issue.  (Update:  Tablet Magazine has published its own symposium, with Ruth R. Wise, Morris Dickstein, Jonah Goldberg, Todd Gitlin, and Ron Radosh.  Seth Lipsky reviews the book in "The Long Goodbye").

Those in the Los Angeles area will have a chance to hear Podhoretz speak on his book on Monday, September 14, at the Skirball Cultural Center, at 7 p.m.  The invitation is set forth below. 

The event will be a sell-out, so those who want to attend should purchase their tickets today.  Call 818-704-0523 or email info@cjhsla.org:

Comments

[norman ravitch]

The really important questions is not Why are Jews liberal. The important question is Why are Jews Jews?

Don't expect an answer from Podhoretz, who is little more than a thug.

[Jane]

I never write on these, but, the posted remarks seem really mean spirited. I watched a presentation by Mr. Podhoretz; he was thoughtful with intellectual integrity. Good humour also. I'll buy his work, but then, I am a Christian that believes in the Judaeo-Christian ethic & that we share Mose's first five books, the Torah/Pentateuch. Golda Meir was from my state, good.

[Winski]

Podhoretz is indeed a thug. Listening to him review this book on C-Span2's book review was a great reason for answering his question posed by his own work. "Why are Jews Liberals" poses a simple question..Podhoretz has a simple answer in his own words.

Podhoretz believes Jews are liberals because they have been brainwashed to believe what liberals are saying. He believes that liberals have steered Jews away from the fundamental Jews as a race were built on and has jaded the Jews with a belief system today that is really non-Jewish.

Podhoretz believes liberal jews are stammering fools that need to be shunned and demonized at every turn and thru re-education need to be steered back to the natural fit of jews with the religious right.

This is an amazingly ugly perspective, (also outwardly in this forum calling for Israel to bomb Iran immediately) and view of the world. Since we are trying to re-build the nation after the disastrous last 8-10 years of folly under Bush and his Klan. Podhoretz, classifying Bush as a character straight out of central casting (his words), was used to play to the needs and fears of the religious zealot community as a phony but classic bait for the NeoNuts out there that think Podhoretz is a prophet. He is a demagogue, needs to be excised from the population, probably as the test inmate of the future Gitmo, because left to continue to spew his extreme rhetoric in combo with loons that we already have today in other media outlets, is EXTREMELY combustible.

[cheap ed hardy]

I am a Christian that believes in the Judaeo-Christian ethic & that we share Mose's first five books, the Torah/Pentateuch. Golda Meir was from my state, good.

[Air Jordans]

So funny, I think.*