32 Friday, May 9, 1986 THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS POLITICS In Search Of A New Jewish Political Consensus ". . a careful analysis of ,imerican Judaism and public philosophy [and} at the same time a thoughtful critique of romantic utopianism. It deserves serious attention," Jenne .1. Kirkpatrick, ons-:::fotiAmerican Jews * * * * * * * * * * * * * lurray Friedman Foreword by Michael Novak icking their wounds in this era of conserva- vative political ascen- dancy, many Ameri- can liberals — Jews pro- minently among them — seem honestly perplexed over their rejection by the Ameri- can electorate. Some liberal candidates today concede, at the very least, a need to find new tactics to fight their good fight. New liberal for- mulations surface almost dai- ly for the achievement of sweeping social objectives within a context fiscal re- sponsibility, a quaint coupl- ing, arousing surprise not too different from earlier bemuse- merit over the alliance of tra- ditional conservatives like Ronald Reagan and formerly liberal Jewish intellectuals of the neo-conservative stripe. Once again, the old saw about politics making strange bed- fellows comes to mind. American Jews, who figure among the most consistently liberal liberals in this nation, even sacrificing what many experts perceive as their col- lective self interest in their voting patterns, are also en- gaged in this uncomfortable self scrutiny. Murray Fried- man, a regional official of the American Jewish Committee, suggests that organized American Jewry has mistak- enly equated the liberal agen- da with the cause of social justice, as if the two were in- herently identical. This, ac- cording to Friedman, is no longer the case in the 1980s. The Utopian Dilemma: American Judaism and Pub- lic Policy (Washington: Eth- ics and Public Policy Center, 1985) is Friedman's effort to nudge the organized Ameri- can Jewish community away from its traditionally left- leaning loyalties. He sug- gests that the principal error of contemporary American liberal political thinking — and therefore the thinking of Murray Friedman's new book, The Utopian Dilemma, exposes the stale rigidities of Jewish positions in light of emerging political parties, BY ELSA SOLENDER Special to The Jewish News most mainstream Jewish or- ganizations — is the tenden- cy to assess issues in "ideal- istic" or "utopian" terms, rather than in harshly realis- tic terms. If politics is under- stood as the art of the possi- ble, then realistic options, not merely •clesirable alternatives, must be weighed in making political choices and pro- moting political programs. Liberals haven't been dealing with the world as it exists, but rather as they wish it ex- isted, Friedman believes. In bald terms, what Friedman is politely advocating is a more pragmatic approach by Jew- ish organizations to replace continued adherence to what critics of liberals used to derisively label "fuzzy- headed" (overly idealistic) or "knee-jerk" (dogmatic or doc- trinaire) liberalism. The author constructs a strong case demonstrating the consistent, almost slavish liberal ideological posture of the organized American Jew- ish community. He quotes ex- tensively from the public statements of the Jewish ad- vocacy groups clustered un- der the umbrella of the Na- tional Jewish Community Relations Advisory Council. He presents excerpts from speeches of some of the Jew- ish leaders, and he cites statements of the consti- tuents of the Synagogue Council of America, which he regards as the most represen- tative body of Jewish reli- gious interests. Friedman also identifies the groups — including those on the Orthodox right and the Reform left — which have deviated significantly from the mainstream consensus on various matters. Among the issues covered are race rela- tions, educational policies, crime, welfare, Israel, the Viet Nam war and human rights overseas. Friedman's extensive evi- dence of a liberal tilt in mainstream Jewish advocacy groups on most crucial mat- ters is certainly convincing, and his method is probably as judicious as any that could be devised. But the results don't make for lively or particular- ly stimulating reading. The language of officialdom rare- ly sparkles. Friedman himself complains that NCJRAC and its constituents have tended to serve up little more than rehashes of old-line liberal slogans. Posing alternative strate- gies for dealing with present day political exigencies, Friedman quotes enthusiasti- cally from the arguments of such celebrated Jewish neo- conservative thinkers as Irv- ing Kristol, Nathan Glazer, Midge Decter, Norman Pod- horetz and others of the "Commentary crowd" (While the American Jewish Com- mittee, for which Friedman works, also sponsors Corn-