The Senate Judiciary Committee is charged with the serious ruling-class responsibility — or masquerade as it turns out– of vetting Sonia Sotomayor for the Supreme Court. Given the supremacy of the Democratic Party these days, there are 12 Democrats and only 7 Republicans on the committee; and I count seven of my people among the Democrats: Kohl, Feinstein, Feingold, Cardin, Franken, Schumer and Specter. (Yes I misidentified Specter as a Republican the other day). An eighth senator, Kaufman, has Jewish heritage.
Whatever the standing of the Christian right in the Republican Party (and Frank Rich and I say it has sat down), there are as many Jews on this committee as there are Republicans; and many of these Jews have expressed an identification with Israel. Franken, locked in an election dispute last January, defended Israel's savage actions in Gaza (as did his opponent, Norm Coleman, a former Senator, also Jewish). The fact that non-Jewish politicians express the same sentiments has a lot to do with Jewish power in the Establishment, in political giving, in the media, in thinktanks, in lobbies–and in turn with Jewish identity, which has been constructed in the last 50 years to entail what Dershowitz calls the "secular religion" of supporting a militarist state that treats its minority as second-class citizens and worse.
Back to sociology. These numbers should prompt Jews to reflect: How much power do we have in American society? Is it appropriate to think of ourselves as outsiders, or "a minority"? How significant is anti-Semitism (the basis of the Zionist idea) in America? Do those of us in the media who write about sociological issues have a responsibility to address these issues? (And yes I mean David Brooks, socio-trend-tracker par excellence, who has been to Israel 12 times out of "gooey-eyed" identification, and who can spot a WASP at 1000 meters and write about his drinking habits and other mannerisms.)
And what if those seven Jewish senators all said to their children, in line with Jewish organizational edicts, I don't want you to marry non-Jews? I wonder what Sonia Sotomayor would make of that.
(Notice I haven't said a word about wealth, another important indicator of power in a capitalist society, and of marital attraction, too… some other time.)
