The Jewish right is a collection of Jewish political factions characterized by their strong support of social conservatism. Similar to the Christian right in morals and ideology, the Jewish right advocates for strict adherence to Jewish halakhic law, and often justifies its stances by using the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh) and the Talmud. Medieval Jewish philosopher Maimonides saw kingship as ideal, viewing the commandment in Deuteronomy to appoint a king as justification for this. When Enlightenment philosopher Baruch Spinoza argued for the separation of church and state, he was excommunicated from the Jewish community of Amsterdam, which subscribed to conservative and medieval ideas.
During the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Jewish emancipation brought about the inclusion of Jews in national politics, with many Jews favoring liberalism, socialist and labor movements founded by the Jewish left, Zionist movements, autonomist movements, territorialist movements, and anarchist movements. In the 21st century, however, European Jewish political ideologies began to shift. As Jews were typically a part of Britain's middle class, they tended to vote for the Conservative Party, with 69% of Jews voting for the Conservatives as of a 2015 poll. In France, Jews had a pronounced preference for right-wing parties, with Jews representing the strongest pillar of support for The Republicans leader Nicolas Sarkozy after observant Catholics.
In the United States, many of the early Jewish immigrants were conservative, with some Jews owning or trading slaves. Most southern Jews supported slavery or even advocated for its expansion, and most northern Jews sympathized with the south and shunned abolitionism. However, New York's Jews shifted from being pro-southern, pro-slavery, and anti-Lincoln to leaning towards the Republican Party and emancipation during the American Civil War. As a wave of Eastern European Jewish immigration began in the 1880s, liberal or left-wing Jews became the majority, and, for most of the 20th century since 1936, most Jews were aligned with the Democratic Party. Many Jewish leftists argued that the Tanakh's support for hospitality for "the stranger", the principle of redistribution of wealth in the Biblical idea of Jubilee, and the recurring theme of prophets challenging authority justified their views on social justice. At the end of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st century, the Republicans began to woo Jews away from the Democrats, causing increased Jewish support for political conservatism. This was caused by the Republican Party's strong support for Israel, as well as for "Judeo-Christian ethics".