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Jewish Success in America

To quote Dr. Stephen M. Steinlight:

The American-Jewish community has attained success and acceptance beyond their forebear's fondest dreams. Though only a small minority within the United States, American Jews are influential far beyond their miniscule percentage of the population. Not only are they, per capita, among the wealthiest and best educated of Americans, but they also hold significant political power as well as cultural influence. Nearly half the money spent in the presidential primaries in the Democratic Party comes from Jewish contributors, and in recent years Jewish presence at the highest levels of government has become routine.

A majority of the cabinet members in the Clinton administration were Jews, and while there are none in the Bush cabinet, Jewish political advisors play key roles in national security, foreign, and military affairs. Had Al Gore become President, an Orthodox Jew would have been a heart-beat away from the nation's highest office. In the upcoming Presidential election, if Senator Kerry wins, he will be the first chief executive with Jewish roots. Jews are concentrated in states with the highest votes in the Electoral College, and they vote at a higher rate than any other group of Americans, amortizing their otherwise limited demographic presence.

To repeat some of the well-known indicators of the Jewish community's success, ten per-cent of the Unites States Senate is Jewish. Currently, the majority of the presidents at Ivy League universities are Jews, and faculties and student bodies at elite colleges and universities are typically 30-40 percent Jewish, often constituting a plurality at these institutions.

Jews continue to form a high percentage of the membership in the learned professions (law, medicine, academia, scientific research) and among the chattering classes, i.e., among writers, journalists, and publishers of some of the nation's leading national newspapers and periodicals, and as creators and disseminators of both high and popular culture.

Though not necessarily representing Jewish interests or values, American Jews play the predominant role in Hollywood (nearly 70 percent of movie and TV producers and directors are Jewish), and thus shape much of the popular imagery central to the national life. Jews also hold key positions within many leading financial institutions in the country, especially within investment banking and the brokerage industry.

The principal cause, as well as a symptom of these successes, anti-Semitism has fallen to historic lows among the white Christians that still form America's dominant cultural group; indeed what was once a significant factor in mainstream American life is now, at most, a peripheral phenomenon. A recent ADL study found that only some 12 percent of white Christian Americans hold anti-Semitic attitudes; this represents a 50-percent drop over just the past 30 years. Indeed, one of the leading factors contributing to the crisis in Jewish continuity is the fact that our neighbors like us, are prepared and often eager to marry us and have children with us.

It's important to emphasize this as Jews often find it hard to hear good news, even as their leadership is often capable of suppressing bad news, at least when it comes from politically correct quarters. Among the more significant examples of the "bad news" is that survey research has consistently shown high levels of anti-Semitism among Latinos, with percentages in the neighborhood of 47 percent holding hostile attitudes towards Jews. Moreover, this finding has remained stubbornly constant. It is cited in the major survey of inter-group attitudes Taking America's Pulse conducted by the National Conference of Christians and Jews in 1992 and again in a recent study sponsored by the ADL.

Extract from: High Noon to Midnight Does Current Immigration Policy Doom American Jewry?
Full text is at http://www.cis.org/articles/2004/back404.html

Is it any wonder that despite the large Jewish presence among universities we have a hotbed of anti-Israel hatred? Pro-Israel speakers are shouted down and conservatives displaying anything on campus face riots? Yet leftist Jews cheer on radical Muslims. Leftism is simply a religion for the dysfunctional atheists searching for a religion without G-d.

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