Windmueller on the Principles of Jewish Political Behavior

This essay is the second in a series of articles unpacking my core ideas. The first framed my thoughts on community, power and technology. This paper addresses my thinking about Jewish political practice and behavior.

Over more than five decades, I have developed a distinctive framework for studying and monitoring Jewish political behavior.  I define Jewish political behavior as the actions undertaken by Jews to advance their collective interests, negotiate with power elites, build alliances and act upon particular and civic commitments in advancing their priorities.

I hold to the thesis that Judaism is a political system, informed by Jewish texts and shaped by the history of the Jewish people.

My work has focused not simply on political ideas but on political systems: how institutions make decisions, leaders acquire legitimacy, advocacy turns ideas into action. and a minority community secures its place in the public square. Jews have operated in political structures that they have both inherited and constructed. This approach has led me to several distinctive conclusions.

Jews Were Political Actors Even Without Power

Jews did not cease to be political actors when they lost sovereignty. Living without territorial authority or reliable access to rulers, they created internal systems of governance, allocated resources, negotiated with power and defended communal autonomy. Politics meant not only possessing state power but managing communal interests under changing conditions.

This history produced a distinctive political culture. Jewish communities learned to read their environments, anticipate threats, identify allies and adjust their behavior. Adaptability became an essential competency. Powerlessness did not mean political passivity: Jewish practice was often indirect, cautious and relational, creating in the process their own form of politics. Living under a wide array of regimes, they invented different ways to advance their concerns. Over the centuries they would accrue insights, and practices that would serve them well in perfecting their political acumen.

Modern Jews Have Moved from the Politics of Survival to Political Agency

The modern Jewish condition represents a profound break. Israel restored Jewish sovereignty, while American democracy gave Jews unprecedented opportunities for political access and influence.

In The Quest for Power (2014), I interpreted this as a transformation in Jewish political psychology. Jews who developed a survival culture now had to learn the responsibilities of a governance culture. Petitioning power is different from possessing authority and accepting responsibility for consequences.

This transition remains incomplete. Jews often continue to understand themselves through vulnerability, persecution and exclusion. Those memories are necessary but cannot provide the only framework for contemporary action. A community with influence must consider not only what it fears, but what it seeks to build and how it uses its agency to build coalitions, access power centers, and acquire political leverage.

I reject both denying Jewish influence from fear of antisemitism and exaggerating it as exceptional. Jewish power must be described accurately: visibility is not domination; access is not command and political achievement is never permanent. At best for a minority power must be understood as selective, episodic, and dispersed.

Jewish Power Is Primarily Organizational and Relational

In America, the most durable form of Jewish power has been organizational. Individual opinions become consequential when institutions aggregate them, mobilize resources and sustain action. No doubt, there have been and will continue to be individual Jews holding political influence and access.

Overall, Jewish organizations convert dispersed concerns into collective action. Jews have developed a consensus-based model in advancing institutional power. Institutions are therefore instruments of political agency, determining which concerns receive attention, and how resources enter public life. Jewish influence is also relational, operating through persuasion, credibility, education, public service and access. Its effectiveness depends on trust within the Jewish community and among civic partners.

Advocacy Is a Discipline Not a Performance

Advocacy is not simply strong opinion. It is the disciplined conversion of communal interests and values into outcomes through research, deliberation, realistic objectives, credible messengers and sustained follow-through.

I have identified several roles within this process: “connectors” bring leaders together; “defenders” protect the community; “advocates” frame Jewish interests; and “exemplars” embody communal values. Relationships without a persuasive case accomplish little; moral language without organization rarely produces change.

This separates advocacy from political theater. A statement may reassure a constituency but ultimately not change policy; social media may generate visibility while damaging relationships. The serious advocate asks not merely, “Did we speak?” but “What changed?”

No single instrument defines power. What matters is the community’s long-term capacity to interpret events, coordinate action and shape the environment in which decisions are made.

Community Relations Joins Self-Interest to Civic Responsibility

My fifth proposition is that community relations is not a secondary activity or a public-relations exercise. It is a central discipline and skill set of minority politics. Jews rarely achieve political objectives alone. Coalition-building expands influence, embeds Jewish concerns in a wider civic framework and creates partners who can be called upon in moments of danger.

Coalitions cannot be merely transactional. Jewish organizations should expect allies to oppose antisemitism; in turn, Jews must defend the rights and dignity of others. This reciprocity is both ethical and strategic and represents a central tenet of how one employs and advances political relationships.

Here, my interpretation joins two enduring impulses in Jewish political life: particularism and universalism. One emphasizes Jewish survival, peoplehood and national interests; the other draws upon prophetic ethics and responsibility for the broader society. I do not regard these as opposing choices. Jewish self-interest and democratic responsibility are interdependent. A community that abandons its particular obligations loses coherence; a community indifferent to the larger society weakens the civic foundations of its own security.

Coalitions are never fixed. Demographic change, polarization and disagreements over Israel continually alter the landscape. Trust and candor undergird such power connections.

Elections Reveal an Adaptive and Fragmenting Jewish Politics

My election writings apply the framework as outlined in my book on contemporary political behavior. I do not treat “the Jewish vote” as a fixed bloc or regard Jewish liberalism as an unchanging condition. The historic Jewish alignment with the Democratic Party emerged from experiences: immigration, urban life, labor, social exclusion, civil rights and the belief that liberal democracy offered minorities their strongest protections. As those perceptions and conditions change, political behavior will likely change as well.

Each election is a diagnostic event, revealing how Jews rank security, Israel, antisemitism, social justice, economic concerns and democratic norms. My analyses of the 2010, 2018, 2020 and 2024 elections, as case examples, have identified the imprint of players, policies, and publics, ultimately producing the resilience of the Democratic majority alongside the presence of distinctive Orthodox, Republican, progressive, immigrant and politically “homeless” constituencies.

The 2024 cycle made this segmentation especially visible. October 7, antisemitism, anti-Zionism, populism, the progressive left and the Trump phenomenon became competing forces. Some voters elevated Israel and Jewish security; others prioritized abortion, democracy, the economy, immigration, climate change or social policy. The result was not one realignment, but a more fractured political marketplace. Based on current projections, with such a destabilizing political environment, this fracturing of the Jewish vote will likely be more pronounced in 2026 and beyond.

Jewish voting is responsive rather than predetermined. Elections are snapshots within a longer process; polls must be read cautiously and the emergence of political shifts tested over time. Fragmentation makes it less credible for any organization to be able to speak for all Jews. Manufactured unanimity undermines legitimacy.

The Politically “Homeless” Jew

My analysis of the politically “homeless” Jew describes a growing condition of estrangement, not a claim that every Jewish voter is abandoning his/her “home” party. Many Jews remain loyal Democrats or Republicans, but increasing numbers feel that neither political home adequately protects their interests or reflects their values.

On parts of the left, anti-Zionism, hostility toward Israel and the exclusion of Zionists from progressive spaces have left some Jews uncertain whether they remain accepted coalition partners. Within the right, conspiratorial antisemitism, Christian nationalism, authoritarian impulses and political extremism create a different but equally serious threat. Candidates may offer strong support for Israel while tolerating rhetoric, movements or allies that endanger democratic pluralism and Jewish security. Others may defend minority rights while minimizing antisemitism or treating Israel alone as illegitimate.

This creates more than electoral discomfort. It disrupts the traditional alliance system of American Jewish politics, intensifies internal Jewish division and forces voters to choose among competing dangers. It can produce party switching, political withdrawal, third-party interest or a more transactional politics organized around one overriding concern. It also complicates advocacy: organizations risk becoming instruments of a party, as they must retain their independence to confront antisemitism and anti-Israel hostility wherever these appear.

Political homelessness may therefore require a new Jewish strategy. No party should be treated as a permanent address, no candidate granted unconditional trust, and no coalition assumed to be secure. Jewish organizations must evaluate allies by consistent standards, invest in relationships across political lines and rebuild a civic center committed to pluralism, Israel’s legitimacy and democratic norms. Jews flourish where constitutional protections and civic trust are strong; they become vulnerable when truth loses authority and minorities are turned into explanations for social disorder.

Defending democracy is not peripheral to Jewish self-interest. When antisemitism becomes merely a partisan weapon, Jews may gain a temporary advantage while losing the broad consensus required for their long-term protection and credibility.

A Theory of Jewish Political Life

Taken together, these ideas form my interpretation of Jewish power and political behavior. Jews are political actors shaped by a history of powerlessness but no longer defined only by it. Their most durable influence is organizational and relational. Advocacy is a strategic discipline, not a performance. Community relations links Jewish self-interest with democratic responsibility. Jewish political behavior is adaptive rather than fixed, and political power is legitimate only when joined to representation, trust and moral accountability.

My distinctive contribution has been to connect Jewish history, political science and the practice of communal leadership—to examine Jewish life as a political system rather than only as a religious or cultural experience. The essential question is not whether Jews should exercise power. It is whether they can use their access and influence wisely to protect Jewish life, strengthen democratic society and act responsibly in history.

In summary, I have laid out the core theoretical principles driving Jewish political behavior: