JEWS, POLITICS, AND THE 2018 MIDTERM ELECTIONS: New Program Announced In The History Matters Series

When Franklin Delano Roosevelt was elected president, his popularity with American Jews inspired this Yiddish joke from a Jewish Republican judge: The Jews now had three velten (worlds), the judge quipped. Di velt (this world), yene velt (the world to come), and Roosevelt. Although the Democratic party has won the majority of American-Jewish votes since the 1920's, the critical issues that motivate Jewish voters, like all voters, also reflect the political climate and a range of priorities. Today, as the country grows increasingly polarized, are Jewish voters becoming more starkly divided as well? Are ideological schisms, gender differences, and generational divisions shaking up the Jewish political landscape too? What can we glean from historical voting trends? And with Jews making up only 2% of the population, why so much interest in the Jewish vote anyway?

As we approach the much-anticipated 2018 midterm elections, veteran New York Times journalist Clyde Haberman sits down with an all-star panel for a candid conversation - and more than one opinion. Rabbi Jill Jacobs (Executive Director, T'ruah), Jeff Jacoby (Op-Ed columnist, The Boston Globe), Julian Zelizer (Princeton University Professor of History & Public Affairs and CNN Political Analyst) and Halie Soifer (Executive Director, Jewish Democratic Council of America) join Mr. Haberman at the Center for Jewish History on October 25th at 7:00 pm, for a spirited discussion about the Jewish vote, past and present, and how this year's elections could shape the future.

Center for Jewish History | 15 West 16th Street between 5th and 6th Avenues | Directions. Tickets: $15 general; $10 CJH/Partner members, seniors, students; ticket link here or call 800-838-3006

About the Speakers:

Clyde Haberman first worked at The New York Times as a copy boy in 1964, then as a campus correspondent at City College of New York. After reporting for The New York Post, he returned to the Times in 1977 and went on to become a Metro reporter, City Hall Bureau Chief and, from 1982 to 1995, a foreign correspondent based successively in Tokyo, Rome and Jerusalem. From 1995-2011, Mr. Haberman wrote the highly acclaimed column, NYC, and since 2014 he has written a regular Times column accompanying Retro Report, a series of video documentaries exploring major news stories of the past and their continuing resonance. He is the writer and editor of The Times of the Seventies: The Culture, Politics, and Personalities That Shaped the Decade (Black Dog & Leventhal, 2013). In 2009, Mr. Haberman was part of a Times team that won the Pulitzer Prize for Breaking News, awarded for coverage of the prostitution scandal that led to Gov. Eliot Spitzer's resignation, and he was inducted into the New York Press Club's Hall of Fame in 2015.

Rabbi Jill Jacobs is the Executive Director of T'ruah: The Rabbinic Call for Human Rights, which mobilizes more than 2,000 rabbis and cantors and tens of thousands of American Jews to protect human rights in North America and Israel. Widely regarded as a leading voice on Jewish social justice, she has written about Jewish perspectives on social justice and human rights for more than two dozen publications. Rabbi Jacobs has been named three times to the Forward's list of 50 influential American Jews, to Newsweek's list of the 50 Most Influential Rabbis in America every year since 2009, and to the Jerusalem Post's 2013 list of "Women to Watch."She holds rabbinic ordination and an MA in Talmud from the Jewish Theological Seminary and is the author of Where Justice Dwells: A Hands-On Guide to Doing Social Justice in Your Jewish Community (Jewish Lights, 2011) and There Shall Be No Needy: Pursuing Social Justice through Jewish Law and Tradition (Jewish Lights, 2009).

Jeff Jacoby is an award-winning Op-Ed columnist for The Boston Globe, and a nationally recognized conservative voice. In 1994, the Globe recruited him from the Boston Herald, where he had been chief editorial writer since 1987. A native of Cleveland, Mr. Jacoby is the son of a Holocaust survivor and the product of a Jewish day-school education. Graduating from Boston University Law School in 1983, he briefly practiced law at the national firm of Baker & Hostetler, and was later an assistant to Dr. John Silber, the president of Boston University. In 1999, Jeff Jacoby became the first recipient of the Breindel Prize, a major award for excellence in opinion journalism. He has been recognized by the Institute for Justice with the Thomas Paine Award, which honors journalists "who dedicate their work to the preservation and championing of individual liberty." In 2009, he was presented with the Ben Hecht Award for Outstanding Journalism on the Middle East and was included in the "Forward 50," a list of the 50 most influential American Jews, in 2014.

A seasoned congressional aide, Obama administration alum and foreign policy expert, Halie Soifer is the first executive director of the Jewish Democratic Council of America and oversees the Jewish Electorate Institute, founded to examine Jewish voting patterns through a nonpartisan lens. Soifer has a long record working on issues of importance to the Jewish community and of concern to Jewish voters. For the past 16 years, she has served in various national security roles supporting Democrats in the U.S. Senate, House, and Executive Branch. Most recently, she served as national security advisor to Senator Kamala Harris (CA), where she advised the senator on matters related to foreign policy, defense, veterans and cybersecurity. In her positions on Capitol Hill and at the U.S. Mission to the United Nations, Soifer served as a liaison to the Jewish community and organizations, and worked extensively on national security issues, including those related to Israel. Ms. Soifer received her master's degree from the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) in Middle East Studies and international economics.

Julian E. Zelizer is the Malcolm Stevenson Forbes, Class of 1941 Professor of History and Public Affairs at Princeton University and a CNN Political Analyst. This year, Professor Zelizer is the Distinguished Senior Fellow at the New York Historical Society where he is working on a biography of Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel for the Jewish Lives series at Yale University. He is the author and editor of 19 books on American politics and he has published over 800 op-eds. This January Norton will publish his new book, Fault Lines: The History of Divided America Since 1974, co-authored with Kevin Kruse. He is also working on as Pirate Politics: Newt Gingrich, the Speaker Wright Scandal and the Origins of Our Polarized Times to be published by Penguin Press. Zelizer authors a popular weekly column for CNN.Com and is a regular contributor to The Atlantic. His last book, The Fierce Urgency of Now: Lyndon Johnson, Congress, and the Battle for the Great Society was just awarded the D.B. Hardeman Prize for Best Book on Congress.

About the Center for Jewish History

Illuminating history, culture, and heritage, the Center for Jewish History in New York City provides a collaborative home for five partner organizations: American Jewish Historical Society, American Sephardi Federation, Leo Baeck Institute, Yeshiva University Museum, and YIVO Institute for Jewish Research. The partners' archives comprise the world's largest and most comprehensive archive of the modern Jewish experience outside of Israel. The collections span a thousand years, with more than 5 miles of archival documents (in dozens of languages and alphabet systems), more than 500,000 volumes, as well as thousands of artworks, textiles, ritual objects, recordings, films, and photographs. The Center for Jewish History is also home to the Lillian Goldman Reading Room, Ackman & Ziff Family Genealogy Institute, the David Berg Rare Book Room and the Collection Management & Conservation Wing. Our public programs create opportunities for diverse audiences to explore the rich historical and cultural material that lives within the Center's walls. The Center is a Smithsonian Affiliate, and is a partner of the Google Cultural Institute.