I can’t stand the expression “self-hating Jews.”
This is a term some Jews use to describe fellow Jews who constantly criticize their own people and Israel.
The problem is that it’s not accurate.
Jews who routinely criticize their people don’t hate themselves. If anything, they love themselves. They see what they’re doing as engaging in that great and noble Jewish value of self-correction.
The deepest love, after all, is tough love.
Of course, that tough love can easily go overboard. If the world is already bashing Israel, for example, tough love can turn into piling on. That doesn’t take away from its inherent value. In the Jewish tradition, self-criticism is not just a right but an obligation.
Indeed, the current Israeli government has earned more than its fair share of criticism, and it gets plenty of it inside Israel itself. The point is, we can all agree there is something uniquely valuable and credible about loyal members of a group taking on their own.
So, why do we so rarely see Democratic Jews criticize their political party? If it’s good for their people, why not for their party?
For starters, Democratic Jews have skin in the game.
Criticizing their party is too close to home.
It would mean helping the hated “other team.”
It would mean alienating their social circles.
Perhaps most importantly, it would mean betraying the identity that has defined most American Jews since the days of FDR: being a member of the Democratic party.
That’s why, even when something about their party drives them nuts, they tend to keep their mouths shut.
Democrats “have alienated their own voters over many years by stifling competition and dissent within the party,” Mara Gay writes in The New York Times. “From the Democratic National Committee’s attempted undermining of Bernie Sanders’s 2016 presidential bid to the White House staff’s efforts in 2024 to hide President Joe Biden’s obvious signs of aging from voters.”
A few years ago, when things associated with their party like “defund the police” and “open borders” were exasperating Jewish Democrats, I asked a few of them if they’d write about it for the Journal.
I never got a yes.
Taking on their party publicly was simply a bridge too far.
It wouldn’t be so bad if liberal Jews didn’t make such a big deal of the importance of criticizing your own. But they do. Remember, liberal Jews who are so reluctant to publicly take on their party are the same Jews who’d jump at a chance to publish a critical piece on Israel… because, you know, Jewish values and all that.
If these self-loving Jews should dislike anything about themselves, I’d like to suggest their hypocrisy.
And I say this with all the tough love in the world.
