More than 200 professors of Jewish studies have joined to form the latest Jews-for-Obama group, reports The Jewish Daily Forward. But the Republican Jewish Coalition poo-poos the new alliance’s potential impact. Jews won’t listen to eggheads, reasons RJC executive director Matt Brooks. “[T]hese elites in many regards just speak for themselves,” he explained to The Forward.
Brooks hits the nail on the head (if you’ll permit a workingman’s metaphor those ivory tower types probably wouldn’t understand): Anyone knows that, say, Jewish seniors in Florida wouldn’t hold much truck with woolly-headed, four-eyed academics. Jews’ disdain for the university sort is legend.
No, as Brooks implies, undecided Jewish voters are much more likely to take political guidance from “real” Americans like Moshe the Plumber and all his buddies at the Nuremberg Sarah Palin rallies. You’ve probably seen them on YouTube—they’re the ones going nuts and shouting “Trotskyist!” when talk turns to Obama’s tax plan.
Granted, no matter whose bubbe or zayde they are, few oldsters worried about Obama are likely to be swayed by comedian Sarah Silverman’s “Great Schlep”, a stunt my (strongly pro-Obama) father found patently insulting. And certainly the Obama campaign would gladly sacrifice a chunk of its record-breaking cash haul (at least, as much as the McCain campaign spent on Sarah Palin’s make-up artist) to anyone who could divine exactly how to reach those elusive Jewish holdouts. But I sense Brooks doesn’t have the answer, either.
Photo by Mike Licht.
—Mandy Katz
