French Jews Side With Sarkozy

Like the United States, France will choose a president this year. Little more than two months away from the elections, the conservative president, Nicolas Sarkozy, is running behind the Socialist candidate, François Hollande. Several other candidates are polling well: Marine Le Pen of the extreme right-wing Front National hovers at about 20%, followed by the centrist candidate, François Bayrou, and by Jean-Luc Mélenchon, who represents a coalition of parties to the left of the Socialists.

If this were the United States, the Jewish vote would fall heavily on the left side of the spectrum. After all, American Jews have historically voted in overwhelming numbers for Democratic presidential candidates; in 2008, Barack Obama won nearly 80% of the Jewish vote. American Jewry’s attachment to liberalism seems to be one of the constants of politics in our country— even when it seems against that population’s economic interests. In a way, the corollary to the question “What’s wrong with Kansas?” is “What’s wrong with the Upper West Side?”

It is equally tempting to ask “What is wrong with Paris?” A recent article in the newspaper Le Figaro announced that the French-Jewish vote falls mostly toward the right. During the previous election, held in 2007, it appears that a significant number of French Jews, particularly those living in Israel, voted for Sarkozy. According to Jérôme Fourquet, director of the French polling organization IFOP, there remains a “pronounced preference” for the right among French Jews. In fact, after observant Catholics, Jews (observant or not) represent the strongest pillar of support for Sarkozy. More than 40% plan to vote for the UMP, Sarkozy’s party, far outstripping the party’s general support, tottering at a feeble 26%.

Is it possible, then, that “Jewish vote” is, like “French toast,” a phrase that gets lost in translation somewhere over the Atlantic? Not surprising, there is little agreement on the answer. Arthur Goldhammer, a veteran commentator on French politics, thinks the term isn’t really an apt one for describing how French Jews vote.

“Among my French Jewish friends,” he observed, “the range of political attitudes is quite wide, much wider than among my American Jewish friends, all of whom are liberal democrats.” But, he noted, there is a far greater range of options in France. “Apart from the Front National,” he suggested, “there is nothing that is ‘beyond the Pale’ in the way that American Republicans have become for many Jews (although I suppose American neoconservative Jews stand as an exception to this rule).”

Along with the greater variety of political parties, the variety of Jews is also great. As much as half of the French Jewish community, which numbers about 600,000, is Sephardic, and they tend to have their ancestral roots in Muslim countries, North Africa in particular. As a result, their attitude toward the Middle East, not to mention toward French Muslims, differs dramatically from that of their Ashkenazi peers. This is one reason that French and American Jewry seem to come from two different worlds: Quite simply, they do. For Pierre Haski, editor-in-chief of the French online journal Rue89, the difference is telling: American Jews, he notes, “have a very remote relationship with the Arab and Muslim world, even if the dividing line of the Arab-Israeli conflict is the same.”

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