For millennia, the talmud has trained Jews to give when needed and to give without attribution and without necessarily knowing who directly benefits. To the extent that giving is an element of the Jewish DNA, it is due to dozens of generations learning and teaching this as a fundamental requirement of a righteous Jew. Jewish law requires that Jewish communities establish quasi-formal means of providing assistance primarily within the Jewish community. But there is also a requirement to not ignore the needs of the surrounding non-Jewish community.

Religious Jews today continue to practise tzedakah, well, religiously, as they’ve been taught from childhood. Secular Jews, however, descend from this system of giving but without the talmud, the understanding of the form of giving has been modified. But the definition of community has changed. For the secular Jew, community means the town, the state, and the nation. Jewish law specifies that institutions be established to assist members of the Jewish community. But with a stronger identification with the larger community, this gene in the secular Jew’s DNA is expressed through pushing for state programs and safety nets.

As a liberal member of the Orthodox community who was raised an atheist, I am able to see both sides and to understand why my religious friends tend towards Republican policies that I find heartless and distasteful.

Wow. What a lie. It’s like calling the sky green, and reversing black and white. Liberals have no respect for the individual and they expect no self-accountability. If they did, they wouldn’t advocate stealing money from people that amass wealth through their own labor and giving it to people who refuse to work. Liberals wouldn’t advocate for big government that gives faceless bureaucrats the power to tell people how to live their lives.

I do not believe many Jews are liberal outr of any ill will, it is something “culturally automatic” for many. Of course, I believe it is a crazy option because it makes many non Jews feel many jews do not really root for America (the movies, the writers, the reporters, the professors, in which so many jews are prominent are relentless social critics of the US. Of course they are right in much their criticism but I believe often go overboard; for example Maomi Klein or Noam Chomsky, btu their hiperskilled articulate discourse has a profound effect on millions and saps their confidence in the US as a society. Many of the hipercirtics are not Jews (Ralph Nader, John Moore, etc).

The end problem the hiperarticulate liberals cause is they sap the faith of millions in their society. Eventually this leads to a crisis, social, industrial, economic. If the crisis is deep enough social order will break and the fascist demagogues will sprout like mushrooms.

I fear the US may be entering the phase of loss of sel confidence and economic crisis, what happens next I have no idea but thgings could get much worse.

My suggestion; that liberal, Jews or not, hold back their social criticism, tne satire, the questioning and discrediting of traditional values.

What family could carry on together if many of its members are hipercritical of the parents, their customs, etc. ? No family can survive that. What Synagogue or Church or socia

JEWA ARE LIBERAL BECAUSE THEY HAVE BECOME GODLESS. JUST LIKE IN THE TIME OF MOSES, WHEN MOSES CAME DOWN WITH THE TEN COMMANDMENTS THE JEWS WERE FORNICATING IN THE STREETS AND WORSHIPPING THE GOLDEN CALF. THEY HAVE TURNED THEIR BACKS ON ALMIGHTY GOD (AS USUAL) AND NOW SOCIALISM/LIBERALISM IS THEIR RELIGION. HOW SAD, THEY WILL BE HURT AND DESTROYED AGAIN, THEY NEVER LEARN.

Ann has a point. I see the jews as being used. I see it in their religion and their life. I see the literature of religions as they should be looked at, information of social value. Not religious.

This struck me this morning, the Holocaust would not have been possible, at least not on such a scale, were it not for the machinations of a central government that instituted it and controlled it.

The articles above explain much that I didn’t know about why many Jewish people, whom I admire as a group, are so liberal. Is it kind of like “Catholic Guilt”? The feeling that “well I grew up with a religious background, but now I’m not particularly religious but I feel we must do good for them and that is my penance”. “Doing Good for them” being defined as…”taking someone else’s money and giving it to others because I’m too selfish to give my own”.