So great is the Jewish "commercial
spirit," so omnipresent, and so much part of Jewish religious teachings
themselves, that, beginning in the 19th century, many Jews socializing into
"civil" Christian society found themselves embarrassed by the crass
behavior that resounded from the Orthodox synagogues. "There were many
modern, acculturated Jews," observes Howard Sachar, "who were increasingly
repelled by the synagogue's cacophony: the nasal singing, the selling of prayers,
the gossiping of women in the gallery, the absence of decorum." [SACHAR,
p. 159]
"In Judaism," says Martin Sklare,
"there is no sharp division between the sacred and secular, and consequently
little development of separate norms in each area. This system conflicts with
the Christian -- and American -- one which distinguishes between the sacred
and profane, defines which situations belong to each category, and provides
for special behavior." [SKLARE]
In other words, in Orthodox Judaism everything
anywhere may be "profaned;" there is no physical sanctuary -- including
a synagogue -- from the ubiquitous prowl of economic exploits (the Sabbath
-- the day of rest -- is, for the religious, the exceptions). Jay Gonen notes
an old joke about Jewish obsession with money even in religious contexts,
circulated not by Gentile anti-Semites, but by Jews in Israel:
"Two Jews, by a miracle, find time
to pause and reflect in front of a holy
site, the Wailing Wall, or the western
wall of the Second Temple. One
of them notices that the other is weeping
profusely over the destruction
of the Second Temple. 'Why are you crying
so much?' he says, 'True,
the Temple has been destroyed, but the
lot is still worth something."
[GONEN, p. 27]
Jewish comedian Joan Rivers explains materialist
and ostentatious Jewish identity this way: "I'm Jewish. If God wanted
me to exercise he would've put diamonds on the floor." [SAPOSNIK, 1998]
One of Jewish comedian Milton Berle's jokes went: "A Jewish youngster
asked the boy next door to play with him. The boy answered, 'My father says
I can't play with you because you're Jewish.' The Jewish lad answered, 'Oh,
that's all right. We won't play for money.'" [BERLE, M., 1996, p. 311]
Or, "The Israelis have just developed a brand-new car. It not only stops
on a dime, it picks it up." [BERLE, M., 1996, p. 305] And: "Why
did the Israelis win the Six-Day War?" "Because the equipment was
rented." [BERLE, M., 1996, p. 305]
Another joke of the same genre circulated in the American Jewish community
runs like this:
"And then there was the Jewish Santa
Claus. He came down the chimney
and said: 'Hi, kids. Want to buy some
presents?'" [BLOOMFIELD, p.
29]
Another joke even addresses manipulation
of anti-materialist notions of respect in the Gentile world towards Jewish
economic advancement:
"A wealthy Boston Brahmin was on
his deathbed. The end was near,
and he asked his three business partners,
a Catholic, a Protestant, and
a Jew, to come to the hospital to discuss
some matters pertaining to his
estate.
'You boys know I have no family,' he
began, 'so I'm dividing my
wealth among the three of you, in three
equal shares. As a sign of your
good friendship, however, I would like each
of you to make a token
gesture after I'm gone, by putting a thousand
dollars into my coffin
before it is lowered into the ground.'
Several days later, the funeral was conducted
according to the wishes
of the deceased. At the appropriate time,
the Catholic friend walked up
to the coffin and placed in it an envelope
containing one thousand
dollars. The Protestant friend came forward
and did likewise. Finally,
the
Jew walked up to the coffin, took out the two envelopes, and
replaced them with a check for three thousand
dollars." [NOVAK/
WALDOKS, 1981, p. 95]
As always in Jewish folklore, Gentiles
are -- to the wily, down-to-earth Jew -- stupid.
William Novak and Moshe Waldoks call the
following joke "a favorite, found in most collections of Jewish humor”:
"A minister, a rabbi, and a priest
were discussing how they made
use of the funds in the collection plate.
The minister said, 'I draw
a line on the floor, and I throw the money
into the air. Everything
that lands to the right of the line is for
God; everything on the left
is for me.'
'That's pretty much what I do,' said
the priest. 'But instead of
a line, I draw a circle. Everything in the
circle is for God; everything
outside the circle I keep for myself.'
'I, too, have a system,' said the rabbi,
'I take the money and throw
it up in the air, and whatever God catches
He can keep." [NOVAK/
WALDOKS, 1981, p. 95]
Such observations about Jewish values are
acceptable, and common, within the
Jewish community itself but, as Jewish scholar Nancy Jo Silberman-Federman
notes, such a joke told from a Gentile would flag him or her as an anti-Semite.
She notes the self-deprecating (and/or exploitive) tone of many Hanukkah cards
sent by Jews to each other:
"[In one case] the front of the card
pictures a Jewish woman hugging
Santa. The copy reads, 'Merry Christmas!
Thank goodness for
Gentiles.' The inside reads, 'Somebody
has to buy retail!' If certain
jokes are told by non-Jews, both the teller
and the joke would be
considered anti-Semitic ... This [celebrating
of such jokes in Jewish
circles] may be seen socially as a mechanism
for in-group solidarity."
[SILBERMAN-FEDERMAN, p. 220]
Whereas in most -- if not all -- other religious
faiths, adherents seek physical refuge from the anchors of materialist concern
while they pray, in Orthodox Judaism, overt pecuniary transactions -- involving
personal egos and status assertion -- are an integral part of the traditional
Jewish religious service itself. Jewish sociologist Martin Sklare calls it
"commercialism in the synagogue." This includes "shenodering,
the pledging of money for the opportunity of participating in the Torah service
... , the holding of auctions during holidays and festival services for the
purpose of 'selling' certain particularly honorific privileges; by stimulating
competitive instincts, large amounts may be pledged; and the Yom Kippur appeal:
fund raising which takes place during Kol
Nidre, a particularly holy service." [SKLARE, p. 363]
To traditional Christian -- and other religious temperaments -- such
vulgarization in a "House of God" inevitably calls to mind the old
Christian story of Jesus becoming outraged at the Israelite money changers
on Temple grounds. [Matt. 21:12-13; Mark 11: 15-17; Luke 19: 45-46] What kind
of religion, non-Jews have found themselves asking through history, is this?
In modern times, of course, to ask such
a question is to attract assault as an "anti-Semite." And, however bizarre, Jewish scholar Sara Horowitz's
comments, post Holocaust, in linking Jesus’ outrage at Jewish money-dealing
in the sacred Temple to the Nazi persecution of Jewry is typical:
"The New Testament [has] multiple
descriptions of Jews defiling the
Temple and Jesus' consequent need to purify
the holy space by throwing
out the Jewish money changers ... Historically,
the image of the Jewish
money changer whose presence defiles sacred
space conflates with Jews
as money lender, with the typing of the
Jew as materialist and avaricious.
Jewish attachment to money over attachment
to God, to nation, or to
other people is repeatedly portrayed in
Nazi propaganda newsreels and
feature films." [HOROWTIZ, p. 125]
But even when the Zionist "father"
of modern Israel, Theodore Herzl, visited (in the late 19th century) the famed
Jerusalem Wailing Wall, the supposed last remaining edifice of the ancient
Temple itself, so revered in Jewish religious tradition and a magnet to Jewish
pilgrims, he could only write with disdain that "we have been to the
Wailing Wall. A deeper emotion refused to come, because that place is pervaded
by a hideous, wretched, speculative beggary." [HERZL, in PATAI, p. 746-747]
Isaac Baer Levinsohn describes the Eastern
European synagogue of the nineteenth century:
"Each ... synagogue abides by ...
only general disorder ... This [person]
jumps while another shouts; this one moans
his loss while another one
complacently smokes ... One has just begun
his prayer as another has
finished it ... this one jokes and pulls
another by the ear. Quarrels and
fisticuffs often ensue about private as
well as public matters ... One
aspires to be the sixth to come up to
the Torah, another seeks the honor
of taking the Torah out of the Ark and
often they quarrel on that
account." [SACHAR, p. 217]
As many Jews, leaving their ghettos and
Orthodox Judaism in the 19th century attuned themselves to surrounding Christian
"civil" society, many became concerned about "embarrassing
solicitations" in the synagogue. One American Conservative Judaism publication
even chastised its community, saying:
"There is no charitable expression
in the English language that can
connote the desecration of a Torah honor
and the degradation of a
House of Worship into a market place
of vulgar vanities and rude
commercialism." [SKLARE, p. 363]
Sklare describes Orthodox religious gatherings:
"The Orthodox shul with the accompanying
multidinous prayers, jams of
people and children, all joined together
in a cacophonous symphony of
loud and sometimes raucous appeals to the
Almighty." [SKLARE, p.
372]
"The Orthodox synagogue," says
James Yaffe, "seemed [to Reform-minded Jews] dirty, shabby, unruly, un-American."
[YAFFE, J., 1968, p. 98] Conversely, even today in America, notes Solomon
Poll,
"the Hasidim [ultra-Orthodox Jews]
noticed the great tendency to
imitate the non-Jews. Jewish weddings had
bridal processions. The
groom was led in by his own parents; the
rabbi also participated in
the bridal procession; ushers attended the
ceremony; the rabbi made
a speech during the ceremony; pictures were
taken -- many times,
movies. All these appeared to the Hasidim
as mockeries and imitation
of the goyim to which they vehemently objected."
[POLL, 1969, p. 41]
Martin Sklare notes that one of the major
affectations in the creation of the modern Conservative Judaism movement was
a change toward "decorum." In Orthodox Judaism, he notes, "should
a worshipper consistently adopt what would generally be considered a reverent
demeanor ... his deportment might well be the subject of intense criticism
... The form of Orthodox worship does seem to be almost unique in its
lack of solemnity." [SKLARE, p. 361] Although, "when I was
a boy," says Earl Shorris, "I was told that the reason why there
was no musical instruments in the synagogue was that we were mourning the
destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem." [SHORRIS, E., 1982, p. 89]
The novelist Herman Wouk wrote with fondness
about his memories of Orthodox synagogue culture brought to America with Jews
from Eastern Europe:
"Calls to the Torah, opening
of the Ark, and so forth, all went
for a price. The auctions were
colorful and exciting enough,
but the mood of prayer naturally
vanished while they went on.
They were often pretty long. During
the reading of the Torah,
moreover, it became the practice
of each man, as he was called
to his aliya, or reading turn,
to announced his contribution
to the synagogue's many charities.
For each announcement
he or his family received a public
blessing by the shamas. Again
this was a process of high economic
value, but not attuned to
the thoughts of the higher world
...
They enabled many tiny congregations
to survive and grow
into majestic congregations and
fashionable temples. With the
prospering of the Jewish community,
these devices of
desperation have gradually given
way to conventional fund
raising.
'Five dollars for the third
reading!' Nor do I want to forget the
historic auction one Yom Kippur
afternoon nearly forty years
ago, in a synagogue in a Bronx
cellar, when my father outbid
men with far more money (though
they were all poor struggling
immigrants) for the reading of the Book of Jonah ... These
auctions are a thing of the past
and it is better so, but they served
a purpose. Children in such synagogues
learned unmistakably
what a precious thing a call to
the Torah was."
[WOUK, p. 123-125]
The value of the Torah would seem to suggest
a price tag. Auctioning off the rights to recite prayers and announcing in
public, each in turn, individuals’ charitable contributions reveals a lot
more about Jewish merchant culture --
and its pressures, struggles for community status, and symbiotic religious
dogma -- than it does anything remotely spiritual. Wouk's fond memories for all the big bills flying around the Torah
in his synagogue (albeit for religious intention) reflect a nakedly material
concern. Such activity reaffirms what the Torah was largely intended as:
recipes, rules, and regulations for Jewish self-advancement in a hostile
political world, or -- as apologists like to frame it -- communal survival
through the centuries. Wouk's childhood memories of high auction recitation
prices confirming the Torah's value are obviously rooted in pride for his
father and his status as an economic victor, as well as a general fascination
with the wheeling and dealing of a street bazaar. Even the synagogue could
function as a forum to celebrate human vanity in one's ability to pay for
something, in this case the right to recite sacred texts. (Synagogue members
have even been sued in recent years for not paying membership dues. In Rockaway,
New York, for example, in 2001 David Slossberg and three others were sued
for back payment by the White Meadow Temple.) [GOLDWERT, M., 1-5-01] "Conspicuous
charity," wrote Judith Kramer and Seymour Levantman about the Jewish
American community in 1961, "is less a matter of religious or ideological
commitment than a conventional social obligation serving as a source of status."
[KRAMER, p. 101]
Anthony Polonsky notes the Jewish tradition
of "ostentatious generosity" in seventeenth century Poland:
"Was this piety on the part
of a few rich individuals shared by all
Jews? To answer this question clearly,
one must study the religious
attitudes of the time. It seems
that participation in services was
motivated more by a desire to shine
in public than by profound
faith. If previously a synagogue
seat was a sign of respectability
in the community, now unfortunately
they were being sold. Indeed,
the practice of buying seats, backed
by a deed of sale became
common." [POLONSKY, p. 59]
For an Eastern European Jewish community
ever fixated upon worldly accomplishment and the hierarchical status of respective
members, even in their most holy religious center "the
prosteh yidh [common Jews] sat at the back
of the synagogue." [ZBOROWSKI, p. 74]
In the late 1950s the American Jewish poet,
d. a. levy, wrote:
My father and i
went to a temple to hear
the services
sat down in time
to hear the haunting
language for just a moment
when someone told us we had to stand
in the
back - we had chosen 'reserved seats'
seats that had been paid for
we left and it was there i completed
my external jewish education [PORTER, p. 126]
As James Yaffe observed in 1968:
"The synagogue charges no admissions
fee to services, except on High
Holy Day, Yom Kippur and Rosh Hoshanah,
when everybody comes
to worship. Then most synagogues require
worshipers to buy
tickets, and many sell reserved seats; the
closer to the altar, the
higher the price ... 'Passing the plate'
is not a custom in the
synagogue. Sometimes a plain white envelope
is left on the
worshiper's seat. Inside he finds a slip
of paper with his name
on it, and a list of suggested contributions,
from twenty dollars
up; he will put a check next to the amount
her prefers, and slip
the piece of paper back into the envelope.
In old-fashioned
Orthodox synagogues the method is often
less decorous; the
rabbi reads out the member's names, and
each man is expected
to call out how much
he intends to give." [YAFFE, J., 1968, p. 154]
Jewish student Silja Talvi complains about this Jewish
tradition of charging steep admission to the most sacred of Jewish holy days
(she blames "capitalism" for this custom, however, and rationalizes
that the high prices are somehow useful in keeping "psychopathic anti-Semites"
out of synagogues):
"It is not a stretch to surmise that many
more established synagogues have
taken their cues from the capitalist economy
that surrounds them, having
arrived at the point of valuing finances about
kehilla [community]. For all
this kvetching about all the lost, unaffiliated
Jews, how many among the
country's mainstream Jewish religious leadership
have stopped to think
about dropping cost-prohibitive barriers to
getting in through the
front door? ... In this regard, Jewish religious
institutions would do well
to take inspiration from the Lubavitchers and
Christian churches alike:
Free admission, fundraising drives and donation
baskets have a certain
logical and friendly appeal, especially for
those unaffiliated, lower-income
Jews who have reason to feel uneasy about spending
close to $100
to be allowed a seat at a temple to spend the
day or evening in prayer.
Non-Jews who have overheard me in conversation
about the fees involved
in obtaining tickets for Jewish holiday services
have expressed confusion
at the very existence of fee schedules and entrance
tickets. The tickets, I
explain, are a necessary and common-sense precaution
for Jewish
institutions that hope to make it more difficult
for psychopathic anti-Semites
to walk through their doors. But why the high
cost, they ask? For once,
I don't have a good answer." [TALVI, S.,
2001]
Convert to Judaism Lydia Kukoffmn explains
the Jewish idea of "paying to pray" like this:
"I remember how put off I was at the thought
of tickets for religious services.
It was so foreign to my way of thinking. Over
the years, however, I have come
to realize that, although I may still resist
the idea of paying to pray, it is the one
time of the year when the temple is able to
assure its continuity, and thereby
its potential for service to its members."
[KUKOFF, L., 1981, p. 84-65]
There are even Jewish jokes about such materialism
in the synagogue:
"It is Yom Kippur. A
man comes to the synagogue in a state of obvious
excitement. The usher is at the door looking
at admission tickets. As the
man tries to walk in, the usher stops him: 'Let's
see your ticket.'
'I don't have a ticket. I
just want to see my brother, Abe Teitelbaum.
I have an important message for him.'
'A likely story. There's always
someone like you, trying to sneak in
in for the High Holy Day services. Forget it,
friend. Try somewhere
else.'
'Honest. I swear to you. I
have to tell my brother something. You'll
see. I'll only be a minute.'
The usher gave him a long
look. 'All right,' he says, 'I'll give you the
benefit of the doubt. You can go in. But don't
let me catch you praying!"
[SILBIGER, S., 2000, p. 44]
Paul Cowan recalls the synagogue
memories of his father (former CBS-TV president Lew Cowan):
"Once, when I was a boy, my father told
me that he recalled the Yom Kippurs
he went to synagogue and watched Jake Cohen
[Lew's father] weep and beat
his breast to atone for his sins. Then, after
services, Lou would walk home
with his parents and the rest of the huge Cohen
clan and listen, appalled,
as they fought over status and money; as they
gossiped cruelly about siblings
who weren't there. That wasn't religion, my
father would tell me angrily. That
was hypocrisy." [COWAN, P., 1982, p. 6]
In 1982, Earl Shorris recalled
his childhood memories of the kinds of men who headed his synagogue:
"We arrived at the synagogue as a family,
three generations led by my grandfather
... My grandfather spoke to his friend Eddie
-- Big Eddie, he called him. They
spoke as members of the board of directors
of the synagogue, important men,
big donors. My grandfather earned his money
from the labor of Italian and Polish
women
who sewed clothing in his factories. Big Eddie sold cheap wine and whiskey
to the poor of the town. We did not approve
of Big Eddie. His diamond ring and
his fat cigar offended us ... [H]is business
offended us. There were fights in front
of his store, stabbings, more than one killing.
There were rumors about him.
Some people said he dealt with criminals. It
as said that he gave so much to
the synagogue to atone for the way he made
his money ... He traded donations
for a position as a director of the synagogue.
My grandfather said Eddie wanted
to be president, that he was willing to donate
a community center if the directors
would elect him president .... [SHORRIS, E.,
1982, p. 3-4] [When Big Eddie
finally strode up at the synagogue to be so
honored, "the man our community
commended
to God" (p.7)] the color of his flesh was as rich and vulgar as his
suit. [Grandfather,] you were so small, so
pale beside him. Jerusalem was
conquered, the Temple was destroyed, and there
was no prophet in all of Israel.
After the service I asked my father why it
had happened. Money, was all he
said. Sometimes you have to do these things,
my grandfather added. A
building doesn't come cheap." [SHORRIS,
E., 1982, p.7]
Jewish pride and concern for status and
material affluence has a long history. There is a Yiddish word for it:
yicchus, which connotes the traditional
Jewish importance of personal and familial prestige, status, and a respected
reputation in the community. This
yicchus could be obtained for parents by
their children's marriage to a spouse of higher standing. But
yicchus could be lost too, for instance,
by stooping to manual labor. [ZBOROWSKI, p. 78]
"In his ghetto community [the Jew]
strove for yicchus," wrote
Harry Golden, "a word which has remained to this day the most important
word in Jewish culture ... [It] is more than a thousand years old ... Yiddish
and Hebrew are filled with words denoting the nuances of community standing."
[CUDDIHY, p. xi]
Originally supposedly rooted in family
genealogies and scholarship, it also grew to reflect upper class occupations,
material affluence, and -- for many -- ostentatious display of ownership.
As Zborowski and Herzog put it:
"Historically, traditionally, ideally,
learning has been and is regarded as
the primary value and wealth as subsidiary
or complementary. Economic
pressures and outside influence have made
of wealth a constant
contender for first place in the value
hierarchy." [ZBOROWSKI, p. 74]
David Koskoff even suggests that the idea
of the marriage bond expressed as expensive jewelry has roots in ancient Jewish
history, where the wedding ring had to be
"large, heavy, and gold. It was expected to be of a specified
value
and fully paid for! Indeed, in the Hebrew
stipulation that the ring
must have a stipulated value, we see, perhaps,
the origins of later
customs which laid down that a wedding ring
must be durable and
of some worth -- not a mere trifle ... The
basic principle survives
today. It is not the thought that counts,
it is the money." [KOSKOFF, p.
273]
In non-religious Jewish circles, the principles
of economic status (and embarrassment) are the same. "Community pressure
can be exerted in many other ways," says Yaffe,
"Some [Jewish] federations publish
a book at the end of each [fund-
raising] campaign, in which the names of
all contributors and the
amounts of their contributions are listed.
In Cleveland this book is
mailed free of charge to every affiliated
member of the Jewish community
...
[YAFFE,
J., 1968, p. 172] ... [At fund-raising dinners] the same thing
goes on ... After the food and the speeches,
the name of each guest is
read out from a stack of cards, and he
is required to stand up and
announce how much he intends to give --
and to hand in his signed
pledge then and there." [YAFFE, J.,
1968, p. 173]
Zalman Schachter was asked why many young
Jews in the post-1960s era left Judaism for other faiths like Buddhism. "First,"
he replied,
"it doesn't feel real if it comes from
their own thing. If you come to
shul on Yom Kippur -- this is the gross
level, yah? -- and you know
you're going to be hit for the United Jewish
Appeal and the building
fund, you can't take your own tradition
seriously." [KAMENETZ, R.,
1994, p. 150]
The above kinds of expression of Jewish
competitive pride, material self-worth, ostentation, and economic centeredness
even at the heart of their religion -- often aggravating anti-Jewish sentiment
in surrounding Gentile populations -- have been widely criticized.
The wealthy Jewish gravitation to ostentation
in Amsterdam (in the 1500s and 1600s) is noted by Jewish scholar Herbert Bloom:
"If we compare [in Amsterdam] the
Sephardic Jews' luxurious and
extravagant lifestyle with the simpler
and more restrained ways of
the average wealthy Dutchman, the contrast
is striking and served
to accentuate the traditional association
between the Jew and money."
[BLOOM, H., p. xvi]
"In Germany," notes Joachim
Prinz,
"forty Marrano ['secret' Jewish] families
paticipated in founding the Bank of Hamburg
in 1619, and by the middle of that century they
were accused of having too
luxurious a life style, as evidenced by their
palatial homes and their ostentatious
funerals and weddings ... Some of the finest
homes in Amsterdam belonged to
newly arrived Marranos." [PRINZ, J., 1973,
p. 127]
Oscar Rank (formerly Rosenfeld), an earlier
Jewish psychoanalyst and follower of Sigmund Freud in the early 1900's, complained
that Jews in Vienna go "out of boredom to the synagogue and reduce it
to a place of business, as if it were a branch of the stock exchange. The
women show off their dresses, or what is beneath them; the men discuss petty
affairs, but not what is beneath them." [KLEIN] Walter Rathenau,
the first Jewish foreign minister of Germany, noted (in 1897) Jewish ostentatious
display in Germany, where he spotted "the curious vision of a completely
alien tribe of people, conspicuously overdressed, of mobile and hot-blooded
gesture. An Asiatic horde here on the sands of Brandenburg!" [GRUNFELD,
F., 1996, p.. 203]
Another Jew, Mordechai Breuer, took a
harsher look at the European synagogue tradition as Jewry looked at itself
during the Enlightenment: "What will the
goyim say? was the question many an Ashkenazi Jew asked himself in
view of the uncouth behavior, noisy commotion, and lack of formal structure
that had established themselves in numerous synagogues." [BREUER, p.
244]
Walter Lippman, a prominent American journalist
of German-Jewish descent, complained about excessive expressions of ostentation
in the Jewish community of New York City in the early decades of the twentieth
century:
"The rich and vulgar and pretentious
Jews of our big cities are perhaps
the greatest misfortune that has ever befallen the Jewish people.
They
are the real fountain of anti-Semitism.
They are everywhere in sight,
and though their vices may be no greater
than those of other jazzy
elements in the population, they are
a thousand times more
conspicuous... When they rush about in super-automobiles,
bejeweled and be-furred and painted
and overbarbered, when
they build themselves French chateaus
and Italian palazzi, they
stir up the latent hatred against crude wealth in the hands
of
shallow people: and that hatred diffuses
itself. They undermine
the natural liberalism of the American
people... The Jew is
conspicuous, and unless in his own conduct
of life he manages
to demonstrate the art of moderate,
clean and generous living,
every failure will magnify itself in
woe upon the heads of the
helpless and unfortunate. " [LIPPMAN,
Quoted in Cuddihy, p. 143]
Harold Hochschild, Jewish chairman of a mining
conglomerate, noted in a private memo in 1940 that
"Anyone who visits restaurants, theatre
or other places of entertainment
in New York especially on Saturday or holiday
nights, who has traveled
on large pleasure-cruise ships, or who has
seen certain types of Jewish
summer hotels or camps near similar Gentile
resorts must admit that
differences in behavior play a strong part
in anti-Semitism ... It may not
be morally wrong for Jewish women to overdress
and overload
themselves with jewelry and makeup, but
these habits are certainly
repugnant to many Gentiles." [HOCHSCHILD,
A., 1986, p. 184]
Even Chaim Weitzmann, a pioneer Zionist
and first President of modern Israel, had deep concern about many American
Jews and their self-created magnetism for anti-Jewish hostility. "He
believed," says Peter Grose, "that the [American] anti-Semitism
of the 1930s and 1940s was partly the Jews own fault." Weitzmann worried
that
"Along
with a new generation of modest and honest workers, there is a
certain part of Jewish bourgeoisie -- rich,
quasi-powerful, loud, vulgar,
pulling a weight far in excess of their
numbers, ostentatious, in the eyes
of the Gentiles they and they alone represent
Jewry, and this is a grave
danger." [GROSE, p. 167]
A compilation
of non-Jewish observers were featured in an article about anti-Semitism in
the American Hebrew of 1890, says Marie-Jane Rochelson:
"Possible reasons cited for the dislike
of Jews included their commercial
'sharpness,' their 'clannishness,' and their
'vulgar' ostentation in dress
and manners. It is hardly surprising that
[prominent Jewish author Israel]
Zangwill's portrait of wealthy, materialistic,
and family-oriented Jews in
'Grandchildren' [a chapter in one of his
books] evoked discomfort
[among Jewish readers]." [ZANGWILL, 1998, p. 26]
The respected Danish-American social crusader,
Jacob Riis, and Lewis Hine, were the foremost photographic chroniclers of
immigrant life in New York City in the late nineteenth and early twentieth
centuries, bringing to public attention the harsh urban conditions of the
new poor and dispossessed from all over the world. Observing the Jewish community,
Riis wrote:
"Money is their God. Life is of
so little value compared with even
the leanest bank account. In no other
spot does life wear so intensely
BALD and materialist an aspect in
Ludlow Street ... Proprieties do
not count on the East Side; nothing
counts that cannot be converted
into hard cash." [RIIS, quoted
in CUDDIHY, p. 140]
"The great mass of American Jews,"
wrote Jewish author Ralph Boas in 1917, "have sunk into a comfortable
materialism ... The sad result is that in prosperity the Jewish self-consciousness
ceases to be religious and becomes merely racial." [BOAS, p. 150] "The
Jew party [was] appalling," [future First Lady] Eleanor [Roosevelt] had
written her mother-in-law in 1918 after an evening with [influential Jewish
mogul/politician] Bernard Baruch, "I never wish to hear money, jewels
or sables mentioned again." [GOODWIN, D.K., 1995, p. 102]
Jews in early 20th century America, notes
sociologist John Higham, were popularly seen as
"the quintessential parvenu -- glittering
with conspicuous and vulgar
jewelry ... attracting attention by clamorous
behavior, and always
forcing his way into society that was above
him. To treat this stereotype
entirely as a scapegoat for somebody else's
psychological frustrations
is to overemphasize the irrational sources
of 'prejudice' and to clothe
the Jews in defensive innocence."
[MACDONALD, p. 49]
In mid-twentieth century, Judith Kramer
and Seymour Levantman noted that
"Lacking occupational variety and
economic yichus (the prestige of
old
and respected family businesses), [second
generation Jewish Americans]
substituted money as the measure of success.
Money, and what it can
buy, has remained the major source of status
stratifying the [Jewish
American] gilded ghetto and justifying
its popular appellation."
[KRAMER, p. 13]
In 1998, apologist Jewish professor Judith
Elkin sought to explain parallel kinds of Jewish ostentation away in Latin
America, explaining that "for tourists unfamiliar with the prevailing
ostentatious lifestyle of the wealthy, the expectation of Jewish wealth may
appear to be borne out on first contact with mercantile and industrial entrepreneurs,
especially in the Caribbean basin ... Actually, a princely lifestyle can be
sustained in Peru, Colombia, Mexico, or Brazil quite cheaply, and a household
with five or six servants may be only middle class in terms of the net financial
worth of the head of household." [ELKIN, p. 156]
Jewish historian Howard Sachar also notes
Jewish communal ostentation in the public
sphere throughout Latin America:
"In Sao Paolo [Brazil], as in Mexico
City or Buenos Aires [Argentina],
a major focus of Jewish identity is a luxurious
sports facility-country
club-community center ... Like its model
in Buenos Aires, it is called
Hebraica ... Not to be outdone, the Jews
of Rio have constructed
their own modern Hebraica building on the
prestigious Rua des
Laranjeiras. A seven-story building, it
is equipped with comparable
facilities." [SACHAR, H., 1985, p.
262]
The sister of Jewish comedian Roseanne Barr
remembers growing up in Salt Lake City and her feelings when she her family
went to the local synagogue: "In a synagogue parking lot filled with
Mercedeses, Lincolns, and Cadillacs, our old Chevy stood out like a sore thumb."
[BARR, p. 3] Barr eventually made
it big in Hollywood where many famous moguls go home at the end of the work
day to nearby Beverly Hills, a famed and wealthy enclave that is largely Jewish.
(According to the local Jewish Federation Council, the 1990s population of
Beverly Hills was 62% Jewish). [HASSE, 1998] Beverly Hills, notes Jewish journalist
Connie Bruck, is "one of the most ostentatious displays of wealth that
exists in this country, a town that spawns every excess that money can by."
[BRUCK, p. 80] This city, adds Janet Steinberg, "is the quintessential
symbol of opulent California life." [STEINBERG, J., 7-15-99, p. 37] As
Jewish professor Barry Shain notes about this lifestyle: "I understand
[President Bill Clinton's sex playmate] Monica Lewinsky [who was raised in
Beverly Hills, and is Jewish] very well. I never knew her personally, but
I went to Beverly Hills High School. I understand her moral life from my experiences
growing up with those wealthy Jewish women. They look upon the world as an
opportunity to amuse themselves." [LUCIER, J., 3-2, 98, p. 12]
There are those who think that Palm Beach,
Florida, is more "decadent" than Beverly Hills. One Washington DC
newspaper declared, for instance, that Palm Beach is "the wealthiest
and most decadent, glamorous and self-indulgent place on earth." Not
surprisingly, the population of metropolitan Palm Beach, too, is over 50 percent
Jewish. [CHAFFEE, K., 12-3-1999, p. C12] "In 1962," noted the Palm
Beach Post in 1999, "only about 3,000 Jewish people lived in the
greater West Palm Beach area. Today, estimates put that number at 100,000."
[HAYES, R., 1-26-99, p. 2B]
The results of this invasion into a once
predomnantly WASP enclave is noted by Jewish author Ronald Kessler who
has written an entire book about Palm Beach, highlighting what he describes
as "anti-Semitism": "I tried to lean over backwards not to
probe too deeply into anti-Semitism on the island. But I soon learned that
I would be missing a big chunk of the story [of Palm Beach] if I skirted a
subject that made me uncomfortable professionally and that was personally
painful." [KESSLER, R., 1999, p. 68] Symbolic perhaps of the changing
elite guard, is the fact that The Social Index Directory, an elitiest
listing of Palm Beach society people, "is now owned by the family of
Robert Gordon, who is Jewish." [KESSLER, R., 1999, p. 9] Although Jews
have their own exclusive country club in Palm Beach (the Palm Beach Country
Club), with 350 members, Kessler assails the non-Jewish community, complaining
that "the [WASP] aristocrats are still in charge [of Palm Beach], the
upper crust intact, the future of WASPdom secure." [KESSLER, R., 1999,
p. 52]
Melvin Urofsky notes the 1940s visit of
eventual Israeli prime minister Golda Meir to Palm Beach:
"At Palm Beach, Florida, she was stunned
at the elegance of the
dinner crowd, their jewels and furs, and
she mentally contrasted the
scene of wealthy men and women vacationing
in their posh resorts
and that of Haganah [the early Israeli army]
soldiers freezing in the
Judean hills. 'These people don't want to
hear about fighting and death
in Palestine,' she thought, but she was
wrong, and before the evening
had ended, they had pledged her $1.5 million,
enough to buy a
winter coat for every soldier in the Haganah."
[UROFSKY, M., 1978,
p. 162]
How about the posh Hamptons enclave for the super-rich
on Long Island, New York? "The placement of the Jewish Community Center
so prominently at the entrance to the town," notes Steven Gaines,
"gave [Jewish real estate baron Evan] Frankel
great satisfaction over the years
and had its desired effect, particularly during
the Jewish High Holidays, when
Woods Lane was line end to end with the luxury
cars of those attending
services. One year, a local man was provoked
to count the number of
German-made cars parked in front of the synagogue
and remark in an
indignant letter to the East Hampton Star that
the Jews must have forgotten
Germans' war crimes." [GAINES, S., 1998,
p. 216]
In 1998 Jewish mogul Ira Rennert made national
news and came under widespread public attack for his plans to build the largest
-- and most ostentatious -- home in America on New York's Long Island. His
63-acre compound would include three separate buildings, 29 bedrooms, 39 bathrooms,
two bowling alleys, a 164-seat cinema, 17 acres of manicured garden, and parking
for 200 cars. The Washington Post likened it all to the "architecture
of egoism." [HARDEN, p. A1] Rennert, also noted the [London) Daily Telegraph, "is
an enthusiastic Zionist and financial backer of Israel's prime minister Benjamin
Netanyahu, which has led to [neighbor] fears [that Rennert's new home is really]
a school or a conference center." [SAPSTED, p. B2]
Another Jewish home builder on Long Island, Barry
Trupin also engendered local wrath for his reconstruction of the Chestertown
House. "What irked everyone," notes Steven Gaines," was the
arrogance of it all -- not just to tamper with a famous old house, but to
tamper with it so badly ... The house was indeed a grotesque creation, part
faux-Normandy castle, part Disneyland on LSD. It was the largest private renovation
project ever undertaken in New York State." [GAINES, S., 1998, p. 220-221]
Plans for the home included a personal zoo, a helicopter landing pad, and
"an indoor barrier reef ... a vast sunken acquarium ... with a twenty-foot
waterfall cascading down chunks of rock imported from Vermont, into a pool
in which guests could not only swim but skin-dive, with hidden underwater
air nozzles. The reef was stocked with 500 species, including lobster, parrot
fish, sea anemones, grouper, and octopus." [GAINES, S., 1998, p. 232]
Another such Jewish mogul is David Saperstein, the
largest stockholder in America's largest radio network, Westwood One. "He's
building a much-touted mansion in an exclusive neighborhood near Beverly Hills,"
noted Mother Jones magazine in 2001, "the 45,000-square-foot extravagance,
dubbed the 'Fleur de Lys,' will include a ballroom to host dinner parties
of 250, according to the Los Angles Times." [MOTHER JONES, 5-3-01] [Note
also, elsewhere in this work, immigrant Jewish Iranian tendencies to mansionize
existing homes, Norman Lear's unique mansion, and Hollywood producer Aaron
Spelling's comparably spectacular, and newsworthy, home ostentation in Los
Angeles].
Chaim Bermant notes the style of Hollywood's
old guard Jewish movie moguls:
"If there was little intrinsically Jewish
in the output of the Hollywood tycoons,
there was something particularly Jewish in their
style. The elder Selznick
once told his son David (producer of Gone
With the Wind): 'Live expensively!
Throw it around! Give it away! Always remember
to live beyond your means.
It gives a man confidence.' This was not, in
fact, far from the principles on
which Hollywood operated, where the very cost
of a film -- 'this multi-
million dollar epic' -- was often used by the
publicity department as a
commendation." [BERMANT, C., 1977, p. 98]
In 1959, apologetic Rabbi Albert Goldman
observed that
"often unable to distinguish between
the real and the apparent, the
substance of worth and the tawdry yet
glittering imitation, their ersatz
values attest to their basic superficialities.
Lacking the understanding
and support of their Hebraic traditions
and group life, some surburban
Jews fall prey to the current cultural
'success system' and, in their own
insecurity, scramble madly after prestige
and power. They believe that
the undiscriminating expenditure of money
alone will assure the
attainment of their life goals."
[GOLDMAN, A., p. 203]
In modern times, suggested Roger Kahn in
1968, "it is only slightly hyperbolic to suggest that when a Jewish businessman
feels threatened he reaches not for a gun or a club, but for a checkbook."
[KAHN, R., p. 181] And Jonathan and Judith Pearl note the common nature of
the modern Jewish bar mitzvah ceremony:
"While scholars debate whether this centrality is part of a historical
continuum or aberration, the fact is that for many American Jews, the focus
of bar mitzvah has shifted from
scholarly achievement to lavish partying ... This focus on extravagance is
all too well known." [PEARL/PEARL p. 16]
"Many people feel that the supreme
Jewish crime is materialism," noted Jewish author James Yaffe in 1968,
"Jews, under the impact of the American
experience, are said to
have become money grubbers and turned away
from the Almighty in
order to worship the Almighty Dollar. It
certainly isn't hard to find
instances which seem to bear this out ...
Spending money to make a
splash to achieve status with friends and
relations, has become a
common game among American Jews. Everyone
makes jokes about
the women at Miami Beach with their mink
coats and their jewelry, the
women on Park Avenue with their wall-to-wall
carpeting and their
expensive furnishings in the style sometimes
known as Brooklyn
Renaissance, the men in their long black
Cadillacs. ('Can your little
boy walk yet, Mrs. Cohen?' 'God forbid
he should ever have to!')
The popularity of these jokes itself is
proof that they correspond to
a reality -- though the people who make
them always insist they refer
to 'those other Jews.' If you want to see
that reality with your own eyes,
spend a day or two at the Concord Hotel
in the Catskills ... Even more
horrible examples of lavishness and vulgarity
are provided by many
wedding and bar mitzvah parties. Extraordinary
things occur." [YAFFE,
J., 1968, p. 270-271]
Here's an observation by Jonathan Rieder
in his study about Italians and Jews in a section of Brooklyn:
"Two Italian women with many Jewish
friends decried the way the ostentatious
show of status debased the meaning of genuine
tradition: 'These fancy weddings
and bar mitzvahs are disgusting,' they complained.
'None of that has anything
to do with tradition. It's better to spend the
money and go to Israel. It's showing
off, keeping up with the Jonses. There's a "Can
you top this?" attitude. It's all
show." [REISER, J., 1985, p. 30]
In 1984 Dov Fisch complained about bar mitzvahs
"with scantily clad go-go girls" and the president of the Monticello
Raceway who defrauded it of nearly $5,000 for his son's bar mitzvah. "Tragically,"
he wrote, "the bar mitzvah syndrome has become a symbol of so much of
what is wrong with American Jewish life today. The one-upmanship knows no
bounds." Hence, a Long Island boy was zoomed to his bar mitzvah by a
motorcycle racer, another arrived home to parade beneath, literally, a "fiddler
on the roof," and a Jewish couple spent $2,000 for a "Car Mitzva"
which commemorated "the thirteenth year of their Rolls Royce." Harvey
Cohen's bar mitzvah was at the rented Orange Bowl football stadium in Miami,
where
"the parents shamelessly invited two
hundred guests to the spectacle,
featuring a sixty-four piece band, bartenders
dressed as referees,
waitresses dressed as cheerleaders, and
pom-pom girls wearing
sweaters with the letter 'H' for Harvey
... [The] electric scoreboard
lit up with the words: 'Happy Birthday Harvey.'"
[FISCH, D., 1984,
p. 224-225]
Famous Jewish prostitute Xaviera Hollander notes
one of her most memorable Jewish lovers:
"Take the case of the obscenely rich young
investment banker with whom I
had formed what is politely termed a relationship.
I had arranged romantic
music, shimmering candlelight, an exquisite
meal and I was wearing the most
seductive perfume. Casanova Cohen, the ardent
lover, rushed into bed.
He gave me a perfunctory kiss and then got down to
business. Literally.
He treated me to a resume of his day's dealings
and then demonstrated his
refinement by cataloguing his cherished possessions
from Rolex to Rolls
Royce. I think that he expected me to be overawed
and could not comprehend
that I found him boring, intellectually, not
physically." [HOLLANDER, X., 2000,
p. 39]
Stephen Bloom notes what happened when a group
of ultra-Orthodox Jews bought a slaughterhouse in Postville, Iowa, in 1987,
and soon began to make their influence felt in the town:
"Generally, newcomers are eager to assimilate
to a new culture. That's why
they came in the first place. But instead of
arriving at the lowest rung of the
economic ladder, these Jews had arrived already
on top. The Jews who
settled in Postville came from cities, and many
brought with them large sums
of money ... Sholom Rubashkin built an enormous
house on Wilson Street
in an area of Postville thta the locals quickly
labeled 'Kosher Hill.' Iowans
were loathe to show such material wealth. 'That Rubashkin
home is a palace,'
Alicia [one of the non-Jewish local people]
said, and no one denied it."
[BLOOM, S., 2001, p. 50]
"In recent years," wrote Gerald
Krefetz in 1982, "some Jews have succumbed to that all-American tendency
to compound braggadocio and vulgarity in touting their ability to make it.
Leaving discretion and taste aside, they boast of their abilities, vanities,
and riches. One observer noted that after generations of oppression, 'it is
not simply that living well is the best revenge but rather that living well
is an obligation.' And telling about it is a compulsion. Jewish leaders, particularly
those of the old school, feel called upon to ask 'followers to avoid ostentatious
display, fearing it might create antagonism.'" [KREFETZ, p. 5]
Such requests generally fall on deaf ears:
materialist "this world" consumption is championed by the Jewish
religious faith itself, after all. Take
the 1996 case of Jewish scholar, Jeffrey Rubin-Dorsky, who laments the fact
that his ex-wife expects him to economically support her enrollment in a religious
school to become a rabbi, and
continue payments on her BMW. (The woman eventually became Orthodox, where
she was forbidden to become a rabbi by sexist Orthodox standards). [RUBIN-DORSKY,
p. 456]
Samuel Heilman notes the concern an Israeli
ultra-Orthodox rabbi had for the materialism of another ultra-Orthodox rabbi
in America:
"'I visited someone in the United
States a few years ago, a ben Torah,"
[said the rabbi]. Stern nodded as he spoke,
as if to imply that I had
caught the drift of his message. 'We got
into his car, a beautiful car.'
He said 'beautiful' as if it were two words:
'beauty full.' 'The car had
everything. Beautiful thick velvet seats,
beautiful radio, lots of room,
even a telephone -- this was before so many
people had telephones
in their cars. So I said to him -- we'll
call him 'Reb [Rabbi] Shmuel --
'Reb Shmuel, this is a beautiful car.'
'And you know what he said to me? He
said to me: 'Reb Moshe,
bist
a na'ar [you're naive]. This is last year's model; I've already
ordered next year's model.'
'Why?' I asked him. 'This is a wonderful
car; you could keep it
still for years.' You know, it was one of
those big Lincolns, a
really gorgeous car.
'And he said to me: 'Reb Moshe, my neighbor
already has a new
model and it's eating me up.'" [HEILMAN,
S., 1992, p. 250]
Still, some embarrassed Jews seek to blame
non-Jewish origins for the ancient Jewish propensity towards materialism and
ostentation. "We [Jews]," says Hillel Levine, "woke up from
the American dream and tried to discover who we really were. For many of us
this now means turning our concerns inward into the Jewish community, because
we are disenchanted with the crass materialism of the larger society. Yet
where can we find inspiration in the multimillion dollar presences of suburbia?"
[LEVINE, p. 185]
Norman Podhoretz recalls taking a fellow
secular Jewish author, Norman Mailer, to an Orthodox synagogue in New York
City:
"He asked me to take him to a synagogue
on Yom Kippur because he
wanted to see the Hassid in the flesh ...
There were wooden benches,
and as common in this kind of setup, these
were young men, students
smoking and dropping cigarettes on the floor.
Orthodox Jews, especially
Hassidic Jews, don't treat synagogues like
a church ... After a short while
Norman announced he'd
had enough." [MANSO, p. 367]
Stephen Bloom notes the ultra-Orthodox community
of Postville, Iowa, and its raucous religious effect on the tranquil town:
"An hour must have passed, and then, as
though on cue, a great roar of voices
erupted from within the shul. The worship had
ended and the men broke into
raucous song. These liturgical melodies were
booming and boisterous, each
lasting twenty to thirty minutes. Soon, the
singing was accomanied by banging.
The men were pounding the metal tables with fists.
They were stamping the
shul's wooden floor with the heels of their
shoes and boots. The collective sound
signaled to me that they must have been drunk
.. I was eavesdropping on some
sort of loud, inebriated religious reverie ...
The sounds shooting out from the
shul's windows and front door were deafening
on this otherwise serene Iowa
night." [BLOOM, S., 2001, p. 36]
He also notes, once he is actualy among these worshipers,
that they "seemed drowned in showmanship -- who could wail loudest, bow
farthest without falling over, read the longest Hebrew passage fastest and
without taking a breath." [BLOOM, S., 2001, p. 203] They also get drunk
as part of their relgious activity: This was an old fashioned chugging contest.
Tast after toast followed ... [BLOOM, S., 2001, p. 206] "Rapturous song,
powerful drink, and overwhelming body heat was the Holy Communion of these
believers. Everything about the day was intense and bodily: the dirty mikveh
[communal bath], drinking, singing, the body odor, the pounding of fists and
feet." [BLOOM, S., 2001, p. 207]
Secular Jew Howard Jacobson wrote in 1993
about his experiences while waiting to see the famous Orthodox Lubavitcher
rabbi, Menachem Schneerson, in New York City. For a decade, the rabbi gave
out a dollar (symbolic charity) to each of those who came to wait in lines
to see him. As Jacobson notes:
"I am taken down -- and I stress
the preposition: down, down, down --
and into the
shul of the Lubavitcher headquarters, where the dollar-
queue will form, and here I behold a sight
which beats even
Areyonga in the Central Australian Desert
for uncouthness, for
outlandishness, for other-worldliness beyond
any imaginings of
other worlds. The
shul teems and shudders with men and boys in
every attitude of Hebraic, and to my eyes
pre-Hebraic, worship ...
And here's the most startling thing of all
-- men and boys begging,
begging in the synagogue, banging for your
money, pulling at your
sleeves for charity --
tsodekeh, tsodekeh -- offering to pray
for you
for money, to pray for your parents for
money, selling you raffle
tickets, shoving them into your pockets,
into your breast pockets --
a
mitzva,
a mitzva -- except that that's not
the most startling thing
of all, because the most startling thing
of all is that they're selling
gold watches down here.
I try to hold on to my nerve. Jesus lost
his sense of humor and
proportion in the temple, and I am determined
not to lose mine."
[JACOBSON, H., 1995, p. 144-145]
"We [Jews]," Jacobson consoles
himself, "believe there's no distinction between the world's business
and the business of the spirit." [JACOBSON, H., 1995,p. 145]
Leaving his momentary personal audience
with the rabbi, "no sooner do you beat back the first wave of beggars
[in the synagogue]," recounts Jacobson,
"than you find yourself waylaid by
tradesmen wanting to sell you
polythene sleeves to store your dollar
in. For two dollars you can
protect the one dollar. Or you can have
it sealed and plasticated,
turned into a place-mat with a date and
a picture of the Rebbe [rabbi]."
[JACOBSON, H., 1995, p. 150]
