Every once in a while I do a post about how many Jews there are in American public life, trying to get more comfortable with talking about it. It's fascinating on any number of levels, and no one talks about it, except anti-Semites and the Jewish press, with quiet pride. What does it mean to our politics? And what does it mean to Establishment culture?
My latest experience of that presence was watching a lot of political TV last night. Here's my rundown of Jewish people in important places: Arlen Specter. Jeff Greenfield (on Obama's 100 days). Adam Cohen, author and Greenfield source. Ari Fleischer, ditto. Later, on Hardball: Howard Fineman and Andrea Mitchell on Specter. A three-cushion shot there. This morning, Mara Liasson on NPR. Oh and I hear Jon Stewart was talking about Jane Harman last night. And of course today Laura Rozen at Foreign Policy is reporting on Harman and Lanny Davis, and rabbi's son Jeremy Bash becoming Panetta's chief of staff.
The cultural significance of this presence is huge. Jewish intelligence, Jewish critical thinking, Jewish bookish tradition, aspiring Jewish family life in the 1960s–all play a role in this. I come out of this world. I'm remembering that I once saw Greenfield and his father at Three Arrows, a leftleaning communal resort in Putnam County, New York, that my late grandfather was also a member of. I guess that Greenfield has that leftish inheritance, just as Wolf Blitzer has his Zionist inheritance. But that's political, I'm talking right now of the cultural aspect.
I find it all a little incestuous. I don't think anyone can truly deny that Jews don't have some affinity toward other Jews in professional life. In his great book, Yuri Slezkine talks about Jewish kinship networks, and prestige, and nepotism, in the 19th century, in ways that anticipate the social cohesion and snobberies of the neocon dynastic families. For a long time, I got work from Jewish guys I'd met in college. (Hope to keep that kinship network going!) And it's no accident that my partner on this site is Adam Horowitz (though both of us are universalist Jews).
I'm not diving into this issue all the way today. Haven't got the brain cells. I am attempting a mental exercise here, though, so I can try to think more clearly about the world the Jews made in the U.S. Last night my wife and I were talking about a friend who half-ruined a fancy party by criticizing the movie the party was held to celebrate, in front of one of the producers. My wife said that it seemed to her kind of Jewish. She meant the unbridled critical faculty, which god knows I've ruined many a party with. She'd never do that. Breeding. What's that word mean?
