With some Americans re-evaluating their values and priorities post 9/11, one can’t help but wonder if this re-evaluation process has reached the political values of the Jewish community that has traditionally voted democrat.

This was the subject of a lecture last week given last week by David Luchins, professor of political science at Touro College and a former assistant on Jewish affairs to former New York Sen. Daniel Moynihan of New York.

Luchins’s response? “No.”

Jewish voters are still voting mostly for democratic candidates. While there might be Jews in certain parts of the country or in certain sects who do vote Republican, he said he believes that most Jewish voters are still loyal to their party.

Luchins said his belief is based on statistics and his experience as a political consultant to Moynihan and other candidates and his work for Democrats for Richard Nixon. For instance, Luchins said that when a controversy in Florida arose over whether it was a pagan group’s right to ritualistically sacrifice goats and chickens, the Jewish community largely supported the group’s right to do so.

Luchins said that the Jewish voters seem to identify with the values of the Democratic Party leaders. An example of this is a poll conducted during the Clinton scandal that said “81 percent of Jewish voters identified with the Clintons’ values.”

He said that the Jewish community supported this group’s rights because they believed the group should be permitted to slaughter animals if that was their religious practice. Also, if the group lost its freedom to religious practices the Jewish people could potentially loose their religious freedom as well to eat kosher food. He believes that the community is willing to tolerate many things because it ensures that everyone will have equal rights.

Luchins said that the principles of gun control and abortion are other issues that the Jewish community believes are important, and that they vote for democrats because such candidates identify with and support these issues.

When asked about Joseph Lieberman, the only Jewish candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination, Luchins said that he liked Lieberman and would like to see a Jewish man become president but doesn’t believe that it will happen this year. He said that he is unsure who will be the nominee mostly because this depends on the various state primaries. Luchins said he thought Wesley Clark had a good chance of winning the Democratic nomination.

“I’ve been wrong before,” Luchins said. He explained that Lieberman stood the best chance of winning on the East coast, but that he might be out of the race before the primary reached that area.