Josephus, before becoming the great Jewish historian of the first century, led Jewish rebels against the Romans in defense of Jerusalem. But after the battle was lost, he surrendered to the Romans and won the favor of Rome, living out the rest of his life there as a successful writer. His story has led many to see him as a traitor to his people and his work as thinly disguised Roman propaganda. William den Hollander argues that this reading is mistaken (free registration required):

In the 1930s, a Republic Jewish judge, observing his coreligionists’ commitment to the Democratic party, quipped, in Yiddish, that Jews have three velt (worlds): di velt (this world), yene velt (the next world), and Roosevelt. Since then, Jewish devotion has attenuated somewhat, although Jews still overwhelming lean Democratic. Most American Jews, however, are unfamiliar with the terms “this world” or “the next world” in any language. Carefully examining a wealth of statistical data, Samuel J. Abrams and Jack Wertheimer argue that the sort of robust Jewish liberalism that characterized U.S. Jewry a few decades ago is in steep decline. Jews, they explain, are undergoing their own version of what political scientists call the “great sort,” whereby politics, religion, and place of residence increasingly align: