“Marginality and Liberalism Among Jewish Elites”, 1989-09 ():
Although much has been written about the Jewish proclivity toward liberalism, little has been written about elites who are Jewish. This article extensively compares American elites, both Jewish and non-Jewish, on a wide variety of social, economic, and political attitudes.
Jewish elites are found to be consistently more liberal than their non-Jewish counterparts on 4 different measures of liberalism. We find small differences between religiously liberal and religiously conservative Jews.
The differences between Jewish and non-Jewish elites persisted after controlling for a number of background variables including current occupation. These results are explained as a result of Jewish socialization into a tradition of marginality which has persisted despite changing conditions.
This conclusion is supported by showing that parental ideology can partially predict respondents’ ideological views.