I'm glad to hear that your neighbors are conservative. It baffles me to no end to hear that something like over 80% of Jews vote for Dems. Doesn't make sense considering their background.
It's also not true.
Their political awakening came in the Great Depression and late 1920s as poor immigrants, in the context of labour strikes and the New Deal and country club anti-Semitism.
Combine with that a long lived populace (Jews are generally speaking long-lived), a respect for elders, a tendency to be fairly insular and run in their own circles and to be notoriously stubborn and focussed on tradition, combine that with the idea that most American Jews are, have traditionally been and are descended from mostly urbanites, tend to be highly educated (and much of that in the liberal arts, which is not so misleadingly named), have a religious and moral obligation to help the poor (and providing that, since many of them are now secular, or Reform, they misunderstand that religious/moral obligation), and it becomes clear.
Also consider the Jews who would be, historically, more likely to be conservative are either not poltiically active, or moved to Israel. Orthodox traditionally have not voted in such high numbers as more secular Jews. Politically conservative secular Jews are historically rare in America, although they have a steady presence in America since pre-Revolutionary times, and many immigrated to Israel.
What has changed is that the Soviet Jews know first hand how bad socialism can be. The Orthodox Jews are more likely to vote these days, and they're just as anti-abortion and anti-gay marriage as Christian evangelicals. Young Jews, like yours truly, are less likely to accept the voting traditions of the past three generations as gospel, and look for themselves what party suits their interests best. And many generally find those to be the Republicans. I think something like 59% of Jews under 30 voted for Bush in 2000. Even if it wasn't that high, it was a much more conservatively skewed sample than the Jewish population as a whole.
These kinds of things, especially with the Jewish community, do not change overnight. They begin as a trickle and only gradually increase, until a tipping point is reached, at which point things begin changing rapidly.
"It baffles me to no end to hear that something like over 80% of Jews vote for Dems"
These stats are for American Jews. French Jews vote 80-20 the other way....for the Right.