MARGINALITY AND LIBERALISM AMONG JEWISH ELITES

Although much has been written about the Jewish proclivity towardliberalism, little has been written about elites who are Jewish.This article extensively compares American elites, both Jewishand non-Jewish, on a wide variety of social, economic, and politicalattitudes. Jewish elites are found to be consistently more liberalthan their non-Jewish counterparts on four different measuresof liberalism. We find small differences between religiouslyliberal and religiously conservative Jews. The differences betweenJewish and non-Jewish elites persisted after controlling fora number of background variables including current occupation.These results are explained as a result of Jewish socializationinto a tradition of marginality which has persisted despitechanging conditions. This conclusion is supported by showingthat parental ideology can partially predict respondents' ideologicalviews.