There is
undoubtedly a serious book to be written about all this, and i n
particular about the waxing and waning influence of organized
Jewry in the political arena. But Jewish Power by J.J.
Goldberg, a contributing editor of the English-language
Israeli magazine, Jerusalem Report, is not it.
To be sure,
Jewish Power contains some of the ingredients which might go
into such a work. For one thing, it ranges widely over its
subject, with chapters on the origins of Jewish "defense"
organizations, the activities of the American Israel Public
Affairs Committee (AIPAC), relations with Israel, the role of
American Jews in the collapse of the USSR, and so on. And
apart from providing a trove of anecdotes on all these
matters, Goldberg also has a thesis and a point of view. But
these, unsupported by facts and conditioned by an instinctive
left-wing bias, prove to be the book's undoing.
The
interests of American Jewry would be served, Goldberg
believes, only if Jewish organizations redoubled their efforts
to advance "a traditional American Jewish message of
compassion," and did so in conjunction with the New Deal
coalition of blacks, trade unionists, intellectuals, and
Protestant church groups.
To judge by
what has happened in American politics in recent years--the
New Deal coalition has drifted sharply to the Left and faded
in strength while the center has shifted to the
Right--Goldberg's is a formula not for Jewish power but for
political irrelevancy. With all the other currents causing
Jewish influence in the United States to dwindle, this is one
formula the community could do without. --This text refers to
an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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