[S.T.D.]

A great presentation by Norman Podhoretz that runs about 30 minutes after a series of introductions. There is a lengthy Q&A that follows.

http://jpundit.typepad.com/jci/2009/...-liberals.html

Discussions of Norman Podhoretz's "Why Are Jews Liberals?"

Below is the video of Norman Podhoretz's presentation of his book "Why Are Jews Liberals?" at the Skirball Auditorium.

The introductions are by Doris Wise Montrose (Children of Jewish Holocaust Survivors), Rick Richman (Jewish Current Issues) and David Horowitz (Horowitz Freedom Center), following by Podhoretz's speech and a Q&A session. (Email subscribers can view the video here).

In the December 14 issue of the Weekly Standard, Philip Terzian has an interesting review of "Why Are Jews Liberals?" which concludes as follows: The great value of Podhoretz's study is not so much his enumeration of the many means by which Jews vote against their interests in a variety of bewildering ways--overlooking anti-Semitism on the left, for example, or rationalizing racial quotas--but in his notion that, in a secular environment, liberalism is itself a kind of religious faith which, in America, competes in its particulars with a fractured American Judaism. "To most American Jews," he writes, "liberalism is not .  .  . merely a necessary component of Jewishness: it is the very essence of being a Jew." It is a startling insight, and Podhoretz clings to the hope that American Jews will someday awaken to its implications. They could not do better than to read and debate this brilliant, disarming, engaging work. The December 16 discussion of the book between Norman Podhoretz and Avi Davis at Western Word Radio is also worth listening to at: www.blogtalkradio/com/westernradio/2009/12/16/why-are-jews-liberals.