Are American Jews Turning to the Right?

The question persists. In both Jewish organizational and nonorganizational circles— Left, Right and Center, secularist and religious—there are tentative discussions, occasionally elated but mostly troubled: Has the traditional American Jewish commitment to liberalism been weakened in recent years? Are the Jews becoming more conservative as they grow more affluent? Or is it those Jews who are not affluent that become more conservative? And if such trends exist, what are we to make of them?

There has always been a small number of conservative Jewish intellectuals in America. A few write for the National Review; a few others, at the Jewish Theological Seminary, have been trying to work out a coherent conservativ...