Reagan and the Jews

Editorial

The Reagan years saw a paradigm shift in the relationship between Jews and the nature of politics in America.

Prior to Reagan's first presidential election victory in 1980, American Jews were most likely to vote Democratic - presumably a holdover from those in the Depression-generation electorate who held Republican President Herbert Hoover responsible for that terrible period in American history.

Reagan tallied 39 percent of the Jewish vote when he defeated incumbent President Jimmy Carter in 1980. In 1984, when Reagan defeated Walter Mondale, who had been Carter's vice president, he garnered 31 percent of the Jewish vote.

The eight years of the Reagan presidency, 1981-1989, saw Jews' political influence rise, and the new bipartisan political power helped assure support for two issues vitally important to Jews: a more secure Israel and freedom for Jews in the Soviet Union.

Marshall Breger, Reagan's liaison to the Jewish community from 1983 to 1985, believes historians will regard the Reagan era as the years when the "Jewish community ... tried the Republican Party on for size." Today Republican Jews play increasingly important roles as office holders, policymakers and influential constituents.

In what was perhaps his greatest impact on the Jewish community, Reagan pressed for freedom for Soviet Jews at every meeting he had with Soviet officials, including former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev. Reagan was committed to the demise of communism, and freedom for Jews in the Soviet Union was an integral part of his fight against the "evil empire." He helped to bring the Iron Curtain down.

The Reagan administration's relationship with Israel was less unequivocal. The president and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin didn't get along very well, apparently a matter more of personalities clashing than of dislike. The president's informality and Begin's reserve were often at odds.

Reagan angered Israel and many American Jews when he approved the sale of AWACS radar aircraft to Saudi Arabia in the first year of his presidency, and again in 1985 when he visited the Bitburg cemetery in West Berlin, burial ground for several Nazi SS guards. But overall, U.S.-Israeli relations prospered during the Reagan presidency.

Reagan's death on June 5 provides an occasion to consider with the benefit of historical distance the important legacy he leaves behind.

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