THE RANGE OF AMERICAN JEWRY

American Jews, like any other group, resist easy classification and generalizations. They are fragmented by differences of class and religion, geography and background, education and lifestyle. In many ways, an Orthodox Jew may inhabit a world apart from a Reform Jew; a Jew from Germany may have less in common with a Jew from Eastern Europe than with non-Jews. Yet Jews are united on many issues. Fundamental is education. No other ethnic group sends so many of its sons and daughters to college. While only one-fourth of the general population that is 25 or older has had some college training, a 1971 Jewish study found 54% of Jews in that age range had gone to college. By 1985 it is estimated that half of all Jews under 65 will be college graduates. The zeal for education has produced higher earnings. The same study showed that in that year, the median income for Jewish households was $12,630, compared with $10,285 for the rest of the population; 14% of Jewish-American families made $25,000 or more a year, while only 10% were at the $4,000 poverty line or below.

Jews constitute only 3% of the population, or slightly less than 6 million people. Yet, partly because so many areas of corporate America have, in the past at least, been closed preserves of Gentile power, Jews are represented far beyond their numbers in the professions: law, science, teaching, medicine, including dentistry and psychiatry. In a survey to determine the nation's top 70 intellectuals, the quarterly Public Interest produced a list that was half Jewish.

Jews serve in top positions in a national Administration of either party. At present three members of President Ford's Cabinet are of Jewish origin: Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, Secretary of Defense James Schlesinger (who converted to Lutheranism as a young man) and Attorney General Edward Levi. Alan Greenspan, chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, is also Jewish, as is Arthur Burns, chairman of the Federal Reserve. Certain areas of Government employ an abundance of Jewish Americans, particularly the Departments of Justice, Labor, and Health. Education and Welfare.

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In grass-roots political life, too, Jews play a vital role. A history of persecution has convinced them that safety lies in an open democratic society, and they are among the most politically active. Says Robert Strauss, national chairman of the Democratic Party: "Because of its background, the Jewish community feels that it must take a keener interest in democracy than anyone else. Jews feel they have a bigger stake in democracy than anyone else." So Jews tend to vote more conscientiously than other people. In his recently published Jews and American Politics, Stephen Isaacs estimates that Jews, who make up 14% of the population in New York State, cast between 16% and 20% of the vote in general elections. In statewide primaries, they account for one vote out of every four. In New York City, they produce one-half of the primary vote though they are one-fifth of the citizenry.

Both parties ardently court Jewish voters, but their vote usually goes to the more liberal and hence Democratic candidate. Jews have a "religio-cultural obsession with the egalitarian ideal," writes Isaacs. A heritage of oppression and exclusion has given them an abiding sympathy for the underdog: society's outcasts and poverty-stricken. If everybody does well, they reason quite cogently, so do Jews. In the 1968 presidential election, the Democratic candidate Hubert Humphrey won 85% of the Jewish vote. Despite untold expenditures and tireless proselytizing, Richard Nixon was able to boost the Republican vote among Jews to only 35% in 1972. But that was enough of a shift to suggest an ongoing trend. Jews, like other Americans, are veering to the right in their politics, in the view of many observers, with less emphasis on Utopian or reformist goals for society as a whole and more stress on Jewish community problems.

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Jews and blacks, formerly united in civil rights struggles, have now gone their separate ways, partly because of the growth of black militancy, partly because of clashes between blacks and Jews over schools and housing in the North. At the moment, their relations could be described as a standoff. But liberalism remains the Jews' dominant political creed. "What we are seeing is really a conservatizing of their liberalism," says Literary Critic Irving Howe. "The last thing suburban Jews have when they have lost their religion and their ethnicity is the liberal tradition."

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Jews do not run for political office in great numbers. There are three U.S. Senators who are Jewish: Democrats Abraham Ribicoff from Connecticut and Richard Stone from Florida and New York Republican Jacob Javits. In the House, there are 20 Jewish Americans: 17 Democrats and three Republicans. Two state Governors are Jewish: Pennsylvania's Milton Shapp and Maryland's Marvin Mandel, both Democrats. Jews are far more in evidence in support roles. They serve as strategists like Political Analyst Ben Wattenberg, who tested the presidential winds for Senator Henry Jackson in 1972; media consultants like David Garth, who has promoted such successful candidates as Illinois Governor Dan Walker and California Senator John Tunney; and above all as fund raisers.

Some people worry that American Jewry may be disappearing because of its successful assimilalion in America. Traditionally, Jewish families have had fewer children than other ethnic groups. As the U.S. birth rate approaches zero, The size of Ihe Jewish household--3.1 persons--is close to the national average. Jews also tend to marry outside their faith at a high rate; almost one-third of all Jewish marriages are mixed. There has been some slippage in religious observance. It is estimated that 53.1% of Jewish households are not affiliated with a synagogue. Bui given the importance of Jews in American life and a 5,000-year devotion to creed and culture, there is no reason to predicl a decline in their influence and contribution.

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