At Home in Utopia

I wonder about Gerald Peary's comment on that this was a period when American Jews defined themselves by their radical politics as opposed to the present in standing strong for Israel, etc. First of all the percentage of Jews who actively identified themselves as radical leftists was a small one, albeit vocal. And that percentage is even smaller nowadays. The politics of the Jewish people as a whole was and is much more varied than what one would think. Ironically Peary asks whether the coop members had any desire or need for a synagogue (shul) in their community.  Of course since they were on the left they wouldn't have a need since we can assume that they were atheists or agnostics. The greater question is why Jewish leftists let their identities as Jews, both personal and as a people, be subsumed for the 'greater cause of proletarian internationalism'. The Jews on the left in this period accepted the dictates of marxism-leninism that there was no such a thing as a Jewish nation, etc.  Why should one oppose a rabbinical ruling who is a Jew, when you let Vladimir Illych Lenin decide who is a Jew?  No other people on this earth are asked to give up who they are, yet there were Jews willingly give their identity up for the glorious cause of universalism, internationalism, etc.  This is what I see as the negative aspect of the lives of the radical Jews, such as in the coops.  The ideals may have been good, etc., but why sacrifice our identities for an ideology defined by others?