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........

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