Setting aside the grotesque picture of the Jewish community painted in the article (we hate Sarah Palin because we kill our disabled?), Rubin never actually establishes that Jews hate Sarah Palin more than the general population. The only statistic she cites is that 57 percent of Jews have an unfavorable view of Sarah Palin, compared to 34 percent with a favorable view. Given that 78 percent of American Jews voted for Barack Obama, that doesn’t strike me as some over-the-top hating. And she never compares that with opinion polls of the population at large.
I have no doubt that lots of Jews strongly dislike and even hate Sarah Palin. My grandfather, who had a very low opinion of Obama and was planning to vote for McCain, changed his mind at the last minute because he couldn’t bear the thought of Palin being a heartbeat away. I also have no doubt that Jews, statistically speaking, fall into demographic groups that tend to strongly dislike or even hate Sarah Palin.
However, my pro-life, war-supporting, tax-hating, Republican-voting evangelical Christian in-laws … also hate Sarah Palin. Just saying.

I’m a Jew that hates Palin with a vengeance. I hate her because she’s a malignant, narcissistic sociopath. How do I know this? Close, personal, traumatic experience with two such sociopaths. Kind of like being on the receiving end of two very charming wife beaters, I now recognize them a mile away. And the ones I tangled with were very smart. Palin has the added nastiness of being highly ignorant.

This statement is not even close to correct.
>>>>> Palin is all about church, while Jews generally believe in the separation between church and state. <<<<<
Where in her career as Mayor, or as Governor of Alaska did Palin support the establishment of a state church?
Governor Palin has clearly respected the separation of Church and State in her official acts.

This surely must be sarcasm…and someone forgot to mention it. Palin will be the next president & she will save America from Islamofascism. That is if its not too late.

There is no reason to really “hate” Sarah Palin. You may think she’s unworthy of certain office or position, you may disagree with her beliefs and positions, but as for how “Jews” feel about her, this is ridiculous. Sarah Palin is extremely pro-Israel and seems to respect Jews as a whole. Don’t needlessly insult and demonize the hand that is- if not feeding you- at least being respectful and non-hateful toward you. Not all Jews are shrill leftists who feel divorced from all “Middle-American” values.

Voted for the disaster Obama = Opinion Zero
My entire life I have heard the Orthodox & conservative jews that reform & liberal jews are non-jews or Jew-hating-Jews.
I never thought much of the comment until the Nov 08 election.
We have a MUSLIM President (in islam when your father is Muslim you are muslim, regardless of conversion, in Judaism it is your mother) who despises Israel, protect terrorists and is a racist.
The Orthodox are correct & yes most liberal jews are jew-hating-jews. They despise Israel and I hear it all the time.
Cory, the jew from Miami – Sarah Palin 2012

Moshe Dyan was one tough SOB, he ate sand for breakfast. Dont spill your urban Jewish BS/MA on me. I’ve got my degrees but like my immigrant parents would say, Americans are “Shokolad” or chocolate in Russian, Soft and sweet, not tough as nails.
Trust me, Sarah Palin would wilt under the gaze of Golda Meir!!
There are plenty of outdoorsy, tough as nails Jews, we just prefer to laugh at folks like you who lay claim to their softer, order takeout side.
Double bagels to you!
Shalom
~j

The premise of this post is interesting; its execution is not. Speaking as a Jew who is none too fond of Sarah Palin, I found the tone sneering and the article simplistic.
For example,
+The first paragraph is a hostile condemnation of Sarah Palin that I thought could be handled in a classier manner by staying away from personal attacks on the woman reading the Sarah Palin book on the train.
+”Jennifer Rubin points out that Palin is pro-life, while many Jews are not. ” I tend to disagree with this. I would argue that Judaism prohibits abortion of the ground of birth defects and that Reform and Orthodox Jews tend to more specifically frown on abortion and have more in common with Palin in that way.
+Palin is a huntin’ hockey mom living at the very edge of Alaska, where, perched on her couch, she can see Russia, while Jews populate the big cities and slaughter goats with intentionality instead of hunting. She attended multiple universities on the way to earning but one degree, while Jews are generally urban, educated, Blue State dwellers.
All of these are just assertions unless they are backed up with data. The image of the Jew as New York hipster in North America is, I think, inaccurate given the myriad of Jewish populations that exist throughout the continent and don’t fit any of these criteria yet are still Jews and key voting demographics. I would like to see some more research on this because this posit is shaky.
+But when it comes down to it, at least for me, there is a visceral reaction to a woman in a position of influence who is just not smart.
The post should have started with this. It would have made for a much stronger argument and made the post more cohesive, and it is only this sentence that makes me understand why the author hates Sarah Palin so much.
That having been said, the post is thick on sneer and opinion but a little too low on acutal links and research for me to consider it a valid explanation for why Jews don’t like Sarah Palin.

While I have a problem with the thought that as a Jew I should davka have a problem with Sarah Palin, but my problem with Sarah Palin does reflect my status as a Jew, a woman and an American.
My issues with Ms. Palin are not that she isn’t smart, because I believe she is *very* smart nor that she considers herself Christian nor that she handles a rifle like Annie Oakley. Whatever.
My issues are that she is a demagogue who runs/hides at the least provocation and then speaks in a version of Newspeak that would make Orwell cringe to justify her behavior. I have a problem with the fact that she is ill-educated, proud of it and has no desire to grow/learn as a leader. I have a problem with the fact that she is a loudmouth fire-brand who ducks and covers and whines “did I do that?” when she’s caught. I have a problem with the self-centered self-*un*awareness that led her to truly believe that she was the best candidate for the position of Vice President (IIRC, her reaction was not “let me make sure I am qualified” but an unqualified, “hell, yeah”).
As a Jew, I have a problem with the above. As a Jew, I expect my leaders to both educate themselves and to be proud of such education and to encourage others to equally educate themselves. As a Jew, I expect my leaders to speak honestly and with moderation and to recognize when their language is inflammatory and potentially damaging. As a Jew, I expect that my leaders will take the time to engage in self-reflection and remorse, not victimize themselves and pawn off their self-created issues onto others.

cantorpenny, your post just affirms everything Jennifer Rubin wrote in her Commentary piece linked above.
I’m not sure that specifically Jews hate Palin more than the average leftist. I think the leftist hatred of Palin is a remarkable sociological/psychological phenomenon and I’d love to see more study and analysis of it.
SBB, what’s your basis for claiming something like this: “Jewish law states that any pregnancy that will cause harm, emotionally or physically, is a pregnancy that can be terminated. End of story.” ??? That notion is contradicted by your own links!
“is that genetic testing prevents bringing suffering into the world.” Fine. Presumably then you support the abortion of genetically impaired babies. That’s a fairly widespread secularist position and a major point of contention with non-leftists.
Religious folks tend not to believe that a genetically imperfect baby ipso facto warrants abortion. There are actually millions of people who would view it as the fulfillment of their mission on this planet to adopt and love such a child. I think that difference is a factor in Palinphobia, since it gets close to the core of what people are willing to sacrifice for their moral commitments.
“Palin is all about church, while Jews generally believe in the separation between church and state.”
According to that idea, people who are “all about church” want the establishment of a federal religion. Do you really believe that? Do Jews who are “all about synagogue” also want the establishment of a federal religion?
The mention of “separation of church and state” has become hot recently but most people who talk about it have little understanding of its origins.

My original comment was deleted. I’m not sure why.
But anyway, having a different culture than someone else is a a pretty shallow reason to hate them. Having a different opinion than someone else, especially on issues that leave many people divided, is a pretty shallow reason to hate someone. And “hate” is an awful strong word, really. Dislike, maybe?

Ruby K — please. You hate Sarah Palin because she’s right wing, a religious Christian and has some sex appeal. And that last one is something that few right wingers have been blessed/burdened with recently. It comes as a shock.
And if ANY non-Jew was loudly talking about why he/she “hates” a Jewish politician — or spoke about any Jewish politician in the terms you use for Sarah Palin — they would be suspected (if not accused) of antisemitism.
Like I said….. Leftist hatred of Sarah Palin is a phenomenon that deserves more research.

Eric: How would you do said research? Clearly it’s not by asking people on the left, because when they articulate the reasons for their feelings, like Ruby K just did, you just dismiss them. Telling people what they really feel, and why, is a huge pet peeve of mine, and it really detracts from debates. I don’t appreciate you doing it here.

Why Jews like me hate Jews like you.
Because you supported Barack Obama, who is the most anti-Israel President in our nation’s history. Obama was best friends with Rashid Khalidi, who helped him write his first book. Khalidi is a rabidly anti-Semetic Arab allied with Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood. Obama in his Cairo speech said Israel is the home for Jews because of the Holocaust, omitting any Biblical reference, and ignoring the decades of pre-war Zionism (on purpose to suit his Muslim allies). He then chastized Israelis for their treatment of Arabs who call themselves “Palestinians”. Yet you and “Jews” like you support him.
Because you support Obama even though his Godfather George Soros created JStreet to divide Jews and neuter AIPAC, and Obama has elevated JStreet in an attempt to marginalize pro-Israel Jewish interests. Obama has even appointed Hannah Rosenthal of JStreet as his “Anti-Semetism Czar”…truly the fox guarding the henhouse.
Because you support abortion on demand, intermarriage, and “a la carte” Judiasm, which means whatever you want it to mean. Because you are a Jew-In-Name-Only (JINO). Because you, like most stupid JINOs are likely anti-gun, even though Hitler’s first act as Chancellor was to disarm the population so Jews could not fight back. Because you like most stupid JINOs are paranoid about Evangenical Christians–by far the best friends Jews and Israel have on this Earth. Yet JINO fools say “they only love Israel because they believe when Jesus comes back Jews will all convert!!!” So what? Do YOU believe that? Who cares? So you would rather support B. Hussein Obama and his Muslim buddies who want to BEHEAD Jews like Daniel Pearl rather than convert them?
Because, due to all the above, Sarah Palin is more observant of the Torah than you are, and thus is MORE JEWISH than you are.

Um. Quite apart from how anyone feels about Sarah Palin or her politics, I can’t imagine how this post made it onto this site. The lack of thought that appears to have gone into this screed is embarrassing. The voting patterns of American Jews is an interesting sociological question, and of course anyone is welcome to air their views on a particular public figure. But instead of anything substantive or thoughtful (or witty or self-deprecating or anything), we get inanities like “Palin is all about church” or “Jews tend to be hard-working.” (As well as the long-past-funny “I threw up a little in my mouth.”) This reads like it was written by a high school freshman trying desperately to be intelligent.
I’m no fan of Sarah Palin, and I haven’t read her book (though I make it a practice to read books before criticizing them; perhaps this poster should do the same). But this post makes me embarrassed for this (generally intelligent, generally thoughtful) site. Seriously.

Wow. I don’t know what to think of this post.
On the one hand, I am also “privileged” to reside in a Blue state. As the first person in my family to earn a University degree I carry no small amount of bragging rights to my education. And I am blessed to be part of a loving, active Jewish community that has embraced me and my spouse as just another part of their extended family.
But I didn’t grow up privileged, or connected to Jewish community or to a strong sense of Zionism. I was in some ways what I would call a “white trash Jew”. I spent my adolescence in a semi-rural suburb east of Portland, OR where my sister and I were the only two Jewish kids in our high school. My parents could not afford synagogue membership, Hebrew school or Jewish camp. My camping trips were taken with the Girl Scouts, where I actually learned how to pitch a tent, fish, backpack, hike, swim, provide primitive first aid and thrive in the outdoors. Marching band and drum corps were letter sports and I excelled at them. I was an occasional guest at various friends’ church services, where the priest would learn I was a Jew and wish me a very happy Passover and ask where we got our Matzohs (we had to drive twenty miles across town into the rich westside suburbs to find any). And in the summer my sister and I made spending money by babysitting, delivering papers, picking berries, clearing brush, and helping a neighbor clean out his horse stalls. Bored Saturday nights were sometimes spent sneaking pop and beer from the refrigerator parked outside a neighbor’s house, watching Portland Wrestling and making fun of how obviously faked it was.
We grew up with a combination of our parents’ liberal leanings and our own strange sense of political independence — imagine a social liberal mixed with a fiscal conservative and a touch of libertarianism and you have someone like me. I am too sad and angry about the homeless army vet who froze to death in a downtown doorway last month, and too stressed about my spouse who hasn’t found a full-time job for over TWO YEARS, to worry about what goes on in Israel — a place I can’t afford to visit anyway. For me, and for lots of Jewish Americans, it is all about what is happening RIGHT NOW, where we live; and about how hard it remains to make a living and get our kids a decent public education in this toilet of an economy.
And while Sarah Pailn and I don’t necessarily see eye to eye on a great many things, I GET her. I GET why she struck a chord in the hearts of so many Americans — especially those who, like me, had to earn their way through college (it took me twenty years to finish my degree) and whose jobs today barely pay enough to make rent each month. The big draw about Sarah Palin has as much to do with working peoples’ hatred of the class system that ALREADY exists in this country as with Palin’s decidedly ordinary roots.
If your BS and MA are all that’s keeping you warm at night, perhaps you ought to toss another log on the fire while you enjoy the safety of your insular, east-coast-centric privilege. Your post reeks of classism and snobbery in a way that doesn’t make any Jew look good, or even merely decent.

Without getting into everyone’s arguments, it seems that most comments ignore the author’s use of Pareene’s title, and Rubin’s hyperbole.

I may be wrong on this, but my understanding of “snark” is that it’s supposed to be both a)reasonably intelligent, or at least intelligible, and b)funny. This post was emphatically neither of those. If this poster feels the need to bring her particular brand of “snark-tastic” writing to the internet, maybe she could do it someplace else.
Most jewschool readers aren’t kids trying to see how clever (or not) we can be – we’re adults trying to live in and engage with the world around us. Which means, make the sarcasm funny, okay?

Jews hate Sarah Palin because she is the archetypical “White American”. Jews fear a loath White Christian culture.