As a Jew, I've wondered that many times myself. In 1964, at age 16, I mortified my mother when I walked out Temple during Yom Kippur services, when the rabbi ( reformed) devoted his High Holy Day sermon as to why Jews should NOT vote for Barry Goldwater..
Some of the authors reference WW II, and how FDR lead this country to defeat the Nazis. Yet it's hardly ever mentioned that the same FDR marched thousand of Japanese-Americans off to camps, and more importantly, he probably condemend several hundred thousand Jews to death when he refused to allow entry into the US before the war.
The war in Europe also raised many unanswered questions. Everyone knew that millions were disappearing into the camps, yet the Jews continued to march docily onto the trains. If they had charged the guards en masse, killed thousands of them, it might have been different. Yet at the same time, the story fo the Warsaw ghetto uprising is magnificent..incredible heroism in the face of overwhelmng odds..go figure..
Good lord. Where was this?
Though Goldwater was a Jew he voted against the 1964 Civil Rights Act citing constitutional states rights and the individual rights of business owners to choose who they traded with. Goldwater became an attractive figure to southern “Dixiecrats” including the Ku Klux Klan who had a history of persecuting Jews as well as blacks, Catholics and immigrants.
Jews are so prevalent in the arts, professions and the intelligentsia it is difficult for a Jew to openly dissent from the political fashions of his academic peers even though his personal belief system may be in opposition. This may seem dishonest but we are—as you know personally—talking about a group of people who have survived by their wits every day since before Moses. If Jews have learned anything over the millenniums it's that periods of peace and prosperity can overnight transform into persecution and even extermination at the hands of a fickle and brutal majority.
When Hitler first took power, Democrats in Congress (led by Senator Wagner from New York) tried to liberalize immigration laws to permit Jews fleeing the Nazis to enter the U.S. The Republicans in Congress fiercely fought, and ultimately defeated, the proposal. A lot of American Jewish antipathy to Republicans stems from that era. When I grew up in the 1950s and 60s, I still heard older relatives talking about it.
The lesson of Rabbi Chanina in Pirkei Avot became the dominant political motif: “If not for the government, people would eat each other alive.”
then modern Jews need to examine the context of the state and status of "government" when Rabbi Chanina made his observation (1st century "Palestine").
Some say that what the Rabbbi actually said was:
“For if not for fear of it, a person would swallow his fellow live.” http://blog.thefoundationstone.org/tag/pirkei-avot/
And in the commentary about that it is said:
That the Rabbi believed the Jewish Monarchy and the Roman Government provided a stability without which would have been a much more hazardous chaos. "There is still more danger from other people who would 'swallow us alive,' than from the Roman government." http://blog.thefoundationstone.org/tag/pirkei-avot/
So, in the context of the government of his day, what was the Rabbi really talking about? Was he talking about the government as the solution-provider for daily life? No. He was simply talking about THE RULE OF LAW.
That is a great thing, but IT DOES NOT PREDICATE EITHER A LOVE OF GOVERNMENT ITSELF, AS THE ALL-KNOWING SOLUTION PROVIDER, AND IT DOES NOT PREDICATE AGREEMENT WITH GOVERNMENT RUN SOCIALISM EITHER