What’s left?

Thanksgiving dinner has long been the battleground of fundamental differences for extended families collecting after another year of ever further polarized drift. For decades, the American Jew was exempt; Jewish communities were religiously and politically defined, and therefore homogenous. Besides the occasionally seen orthodox, the Jews near the nexus of American culture have long been overwhelmingly Democratic. Since Truman’s welcoming of Jewish refugees in the wake of the Holocaust, votes have consistently gone upward of 80% blue—at some times the most uniform of any major ethnic group. At most Turkey Day gatherings from Beverly Hills to Brooklyn, the divides of age and experience have dwarfed any of politics or conscience. Not anymore. Two factors have contributed to this assimilation into the culture of brokenness:

Foremost, America is at yet another peak of polarization in the continuing Trump era, though distinctly diminished from Civil War and Covid-era heights, and no one is excepted. Personal and lifestyle choices are waved as banners of affiliation to one ideological regime or another, to the exclusion of any other purpose. These badges are bought and sold by a mountingly sensitive body politic as the cultural context shifts beneath our feet. A few years ago, the newest Tesla was likely driven by an overpaid progressive product manager to and from the Menlo Park office of a nonsensical startup. Now, it’s more likely a blinged Miami status symbol paraded down Collins Ave by a gym-supplemented cryptobro to the soundtrack of The Tucker Carlson Show. Brazen examples come in the form of moments of political opportunism and their cultural consequences. In August, RFK Jr.’s endorsement auction played out as it did. By nightfall, it had led to the widespread identification of (previously culturally liberal) natural medicine with the rightwing raw milk skepticism of this week’s modernity. Even the relatively homogenous American Jewry is no exception; families share an increasingly schismatic and fractured world with less and less in common. The glue of religion shrinks in American life for the 6th decade in a row. News, social media, diet, housing, and transportation come in red or blue packaging, and one must choose.

Simultaneously, the shock of October 7th washed throughout the Jewish world and continues to reverberate. An outpouring of grief, prayer, and virulent anger has resulted in the highest levels of political and religious engagement among American Jews in generations. Prominent figures in business, entertainment, and government used their positions to advocate for the Jewish future in a burst of energy that has largely yet to subside. But the times are the times, and two polarized visions have emerged. In one, an old, tired, and zionist Joe Biden has worked against the odds to thread the narrow path of diplomacy for an increasingly isolated and pyrrhic Israel. On the other, Biden’s work was to slow down Israel’s just retribution and derail its future security to appease his party’s loudest, leftest elements. In this view, Trump, while perhaps distasteful, offers steadfast support and a mandate for war to its true conclusion: the destruction of the enemy. Therefore, for the first time since the Second World War, America’s powerful and popular Jews did not stand uniformly behind the blue banner. Once stalwartly liberal, New York’s financiers split. It is difficult to overstate the significance of such emblematically leftwing characters as Bill Ackman moving to the right alongside entire precincts of Brooklyn’s densely Jewish neighborhoods. The dust is yet to settle, and estimates vary widely, but it is clear that Jewish Americans are more invested in and divided by politics than before the attack.

Some statistical analyses might discredit such a confident claim. One might point to an NBC News exit poll suggesting wide margins for Kamala Harris among Jewish voters. But these sources fail in two places. First, they do not control or correct for sampling biases and voter shyness, an effect most strongly observed in supporters of Trump far-flung from his traditional base—like Jews. Second, they fail to properly weigh the power of rich and influential Jews’ endorsements and money, even if the premise is accepted that the Jewish electorate itself was not broadly swayed. When considering the broader rightward shift documented in almost every minority group this election cycle, that premise dissolves. Other exit polls, as well as the sum of election results from heavily Jewish precincts, plainly show what anyone in the community could easily tell you: in the wake of that Black Shabbat, polarization has—finally—come for the Jews.

Historically, religion and cultural memory have worked to maintain shared identity in the face of hotly contested diverging futures. But ideologies adapt, too. The Holocaust itself has split into metaphors of oppression for the Jewish left and security for the Jewish right. New strains of progressive Judaism capture the desires of the young and compassionate to engage in ancient religion without forcing its old, conservative wisdom. New existential urgency in Israel’s physical security captures the minds and wallets of the old and wealthy—allowing them to forget the immemorial duty of the Jew to the stranger. America is a land of competition and optimization, and Judaism has never been battle-tested in such conditions. Quickly, it seems, we will share neither religion nor politics. What’s left?

-Ephraim Shalunov