Thank you for another excellent article! This one deals with one of the aspects of antisemitism I find most annoying. My father's family came to the USA near the beginning of the 20th century. They were, as DNA tests proved much later, descended from Middle Eastern and African Jews and had never assimilated into Europe but instead stayed with other peasants from similar backgrounds. to escape pogroms, they came to the huge Jewish ghetto in Cleveland where they found a sponsor. His parents worked in sweatshops and during the Great Depression they and their children often went hungry. They slept on the floor of a two room cold water walkup. The children wore rags and tied newspapers on their feet to keep warm. When he volunteered for the Army during WWII he had his first pair of real shoes and his first set of new clothing. He couldn't get over how wonderful it was to be warm in winter and to have enough to eat. (this seemed to impress him more than being a paratrooper did.) After the war, he and my mother settled in the Jim Crow South where dark skinned Jews were considered "colored" and treated very badly. It was hard for him to find work because of his "black" appearance and because he had left school in the 7th grade to work in a factory to help his family. We mostly ate food we grew in our little garden and my mother made our clothing. Almost everything else we needed came from charity stores. I had my first job for wages at age 12. I put myself through college working two jobs and never getting more than 5 hours sleep a night. When I became a college professor I had my first social relationships with middle class people, prior to that I had only known them as people whose houses I cleaned or whom I waited on in restaurants and stores. But I had to hear every day about how privileged Jews are and how I had advantages because all Jews are wealthy. There are hundreds of thousands of Jews who came from poverty like me!
Fascinating article and the comment above is fascinating as well. Thank you, Pat, for providing such insight and sensitivity. And thank you, Carol, for providing your story.
Jews were seriously poor when they arrived in the US en masse in the 1880’s and for the next several decades. According to police records at the time, Jews made up the majority of the prison population and prostitutes in the tri-state area from about 1890 to 1920 or so, until the Great Migration from the South. The Kosher Nostra existed for a reason, desperate poverty and defense against the Italian and Irish gangs. It just so happened that Meyer Lansky and Lucky Luciano decided one day to work together and the modern American mafia was born.
Because of entangled theological mess Christianity has with Judaism, Jews have had this supernatural aura to them -- and it could be philo-Semitic or anti-Semitic. Then throw in usury and the use of court Jews by Christian nobility as advisors -- since they could not pose a political threat -- and the Christian peasantry scratched their heads wondering if the Jews were running everything.
There's a lot more to the story, but it's a basic backdrop of the reality of Jewish life and the perception of them. And this continues to some extent today, although Russian Jewish gangsters have replaced the old Murder Inc. types.
Pat, your conclusion at the end is hilarious - a nice twist to an otherwise very serious discussion. On the sources of Jewish success and pursuit of knowledge, aside from the talmudic tradition, the answer sadly lies in centuries of persecution. To put it simply, you have to be a head above "local" peers to simply be treated equally. So, on an apples to apples basis, Jews are overachievers. This was also the lived experience of my family in USSR.
Thank you for another excellent article! This one deals with one of the aspects of antisemitism I find most annoying. My father's family came to the USA near the beginning of the 20th century. They were, as DNA tests proved much later, descended from Middle Eastern and African Jews and had never assimilated into Europe but instead stayed with other peasants from similar backgrounds. to escape pogroms, they came to the huge Jewish ghetto in Cleveland where they found a sponsor. His parents worked in sweatshops and during the Great Depression they and their children often went hungry. They slept on the floor of a two room cold water walkup. The children wore rags and tied newspapers on their feet to keep warm. When he volunteered for the Army during WWII he had his first pair of real shoes and his first set of new clothing. He couldn't get over how wonderful it was to be warm in winter and to have enough to eat. (this seemed to impress him more than being a paratrooper did.) After the war, he and my mother settled in the Jim Crow South where dark skinned Jews were considered "colored" and treated very badly. It was hard for him to find work because of his "black" appearance and because he had left school in the 7th grade to work in a factory to help his family. We mostly ate food we grew in our little garden and my mother made our clothing. Almost everything else we needed came from charity stores. I had my first job for wages at age 12. I put myself through college working two jobs and never getting more than 5 hours sleep a night. When I became a college professor I had my first social relationships with middle class people, prior to that I had only known them as people whose houses I cleaned or whom I waited on in restaurants and stores. But I had to hear every day about how privileged Jews are and how I had advantages because all Jews are wealthy. There are hundreds of thousands of Jews who came from poverty like me!
Fascinating article and the comment above is fascinating as well. Thank you, Pat, for providing such insight and sensitivity. And thank you, Carol, for providing your story.
Jews were seriously poor when they arrived in the US en masse in the 1880’s and for the next several decades. According to police records at the time, Jews made up the majority of the prison population and prostitutes in the tri-state area from about 1890 to 1920 or so, until the Great Migration from the South. The Kosher Nostra existed for a reason, desperate poverty and defense against the Italian and Irish gangs. It just so happened that Meyer Lansky and Lucky Luciano decided one day to work together and the modern American mafia was born.
Because of entangled theological mess Christianity has with Judaism, Jews have had this supernatural aura to them -- and it could be philo-Semitic or anti-Semitic. Then throw in usury and the use of court Jews by Christian nobility as advisors -- since they could not pose a political threat -- and the Christian peasantry scratched their heads wondering if the Jews were running everything.
There's a lot more to the story, but it's a basic backdrop of the reality of Jewish life and the perception of them. And this continues to some extent today, although Russian Jewish gangsters have replaced the old Murder Inc. types.
I'm glad that someone other than me is (very) worried.
Pat, your conclusion at the end is hilarious - a nice twist to an otherwise very serious discussion. On the sources of Jewish success and pursuit of knowledge, aside from the talmudic tradition, the answer sadly lies in centuries of persecution. To put it simply, you have to be a head above "local" peers to simply be treated equally. So, on an apples to apples basis, Jews are overachievers. This was also the lived experience of my family in USSR.