Michael Wolff tells a weird story about American Apparel boss, Dov Charney:
Dov Charney has used a photographic approach that might be characterized as underage retro porn as American Apparel’s branding theme. Charney, who often takes the pictures himself, recently approached my daughter in Union Square Park in New York and gave her his business card in case she ever wanted to model for him.
Charney's Jewish. I need to tie this into my issues. Yesterday I had a discussion with my wife about the attitude in her culture, privileged WASPdom, towards rich people. She spoke of a guy she'd grown up with as a "loser." But he made a jillion dollars in telemarketing, I said. "He's still a loser, he's always been a loser," she said. "Do your sisters agree with you?" "Absolutely," she said. Neither she nor her sisters would have dated him.
I felt that my cultural inscription is different; and it struck me that there was too much prestige in Jewish culture for the rich. Maybe it was because we knew so few rich people, but when I was growing up, any rich person was revered. "Hank Greenberg married Gimbel's daughter!" Jacob Blaustein, of Standard Oil and the American Jewish Committee--oh my god! In The Joys of Yiddish, Leo Rosten says that yiches, or prestige, attaches to the wealthy--though he emphasizes they must serve the community. And yes, this blog is all about different Jewish values; but I believe that Bernie Madoff's march to the sea was accomplished only because so many Jews took this ridiculous but rich nebbish so seriously. Franz Kafka said the same thing in denouncing the culture of the synagogue in a famous passage from his letter to his father:
[To] the religious material that was handed on to me.. may be added at most the outstretched hand pointing to "the sons of the millionaire Fuchs," who attended the synagogue with their father on the High Holy Days. How one could do anything better with that material than get rid of it as fast as possible, I could not understand; precisely the getting rid of it seemed to me to be the devoutest action.
I feel the same way about Charney. No prestige. Rich guys can be losers, too.
Of course. There's a basic difference between having money and having class. I live and work in the Silicon Valley area, where there are lots of nouveau-riche high-tech and venture-capital millionaires. Most, for all their money, are still just geeks and vulgarians, possibly educated in technology and finance but seemingly in nothing else.
In traditional Ashkenazi culture, as I understand it, rich men married their daughters to the most gifted (and impecunious) Talmud scholars. This created a genetic mix that I imagine was worthy of respect.
Evangelical Christianity hopped right on board with the Prosperity Gospel which imposed a biblical imprimatur on the culture of greed..
"It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God." In the happy event that this is true, rich guys are by definition losers.
The disappearance of the textile industries hurt South Texas a lot. Those were good jobs for a lot people. I admire Charney for his determination to make high-quality clothing in the US, and he really has a gift for aesthetics and vintage styles. Probably need to stop by AA and pick up some more vintage '70s briefs and t-shirts sometime. He does have a somewhat strange personal interest in his models, but I can tolerate a lot from a businessman who actually *makes* something worthwhile and creates good jobs!
RE: "Franz Kafka said the same thing in denouncing the culture of the synagogue in a famous passage from his letter to his father…" MY COMMENT: Regifter! That's just old, recycled Kafka that you have used on us before. Give us some new stuff and perhaps I'll think about calling the dogs off. Just because I resigned as your Most Devoted Acolyte in order to sign up with R. Silverstein does not mean that I have to put up with this kind of shabby treatment from you. Let's be reasonable, Phil.
"I felt that my cultural inscription is different; and it struck me that there was too much prestige in Jewish culture for the rich." Yep, it's only Jews that give too much prestige to the rich. If it was a cross cultural trait we would have people like Donald Trump having TV shows, but we know that will never happen.
Both of his parents died at Long Island Jewish Medical Center, New Hyde Park, NY. His daughter converted to Judaism last October.
I wonder what Mondo Weiss means by "Jewish culture" in this instance. Ashkenazi Jews? Sephardic Jews? Ethiopian Jews? Orthodox or Conservative or Reform or Reconstructionist Jews? or any Jews who do not pay homage to his doctrinaire anti-Zionist perspective. I wonder whether Mondo Weiss has ever read Max Weber's sociological classic: The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. I wonder whether Mondo Weiss had ever heard that in the Talmud, it is said again and again in ways large and small that ethical behavior in business is imperative for Jews. I wonder whether Mondo Weiss knows that during the Spanish Inquisition it was afflulent Jews who were frequently target for persecution – because guess what – affluent Catholics and Catholic Church officials coveted their property and wealth. Finally, I wonder whether Mondo Weiss cares about any of this because he is so eager to demonstrate how superior he is compared to the majority of Jews who, as far as he is concerned, simply do not live up to his stringent criteria.
Also, Kafka is Czech and was generally ambivalent about Judaism. He's probably not the best person to quote. Though he would probably have written a wonderful story about an ape named Madoff called, "The Pyramid."