What came between the pastrami and rye? [electronic resource] : investigating the weakening of Jewish liberalism /

by Nadel, Lindsay D.

Jews in the twenty-first century no longer exhibit the same intense levels of liberalism as they have historically. This paper posits several explanations for this conservative trend: an intensification of Jewish religious education, a growing conservatism among younger Jews, a growing concern about Israels support in Congress, and the Democratic Partys sympathy for the Palestinians. Using a multivariate least squares regression (OLS), I test these theories using the 2000-01 National Jewish Population Survey (N=4,255). After controlling for socioeconomic variables and a host of other controls, I find that Jewish day schools and the belief that U.S. Jews need to financially support Israel both have a strong positive relationship with conservatism. Age was not a factor in predicting conservatism. Contrary to what scholars have found in the past, this analysis is the first to find that Jewish minority/outsider interests does not predict liberalism; it is the second strongest predictor of conservatism.