I worked outside today and had the computer off for six hours, and the whole time I worried that people were going to say I was anti-Semitic for this post on Jews and money. I'd talked about the issue on the phone with my friend James North, and he had said, "You're too hard on your people." So when I was working I thought, Maybe he's right… What if my enemies see this? They may seize on it and say I am going in for ethnic stereotype! Then I thought, Maybe Adam Horowitz was so offended he took it down.
I stood up for myself somewhat. I remembered the panel that Yivo did on Jews and money, with Niall Ferguson, where nothing was said. I argued to myself, Would Jews be the most wealthy group in the U.S. if they didn't care about money? I thought of the stuff that Herzl says in his diaries about Jews and money…
On and on it went, then I came inside and opened my email and there was nothing about my post, but this article by Josh Nathan-Kazis, from an issue of New Voices devoted to Jews and money:
One of the many reasons that Newsweek's annual ranking of
the most influential American rabbis is a joke is that the real
influence in the community doesn't rest with anyone on the list, but
rather with their patrons-the hedge fund managers, investment bankers,
alcohol and cigarette moguls, and cosmetics heirs whose philanthropic
purchasing power allows them to dictate the communal agenda. These
captains of industry are often thoroughly decent, well-meaning people.
But their influence shapes our perceptions of wealth, cultivating a
broader spirit of ostentation that makes throwing a Bar Mitzvah a
sacralized pissing match.
So, if Obama is a socialist, what would remain of American Jewish
culture? If being Jewish in America is bound up with being wealthy,
what happens when American Jews don't have money?
…As investment
banks tuck tail, it's easy to see how an American Jewish experience
defined by affluence may not be sustainable… As American Jewry
reorganizes in the face of new economic realities, how can we ensure
that it no longer functions as an extension of Jewish wealth?
At the January 15th YIVO panel, Princeton professor and Dissent
editor Michael Walzer half-jokingly suggested that Jews should
reinstate the sumptuary laws of the medieval European ghettos, the
often self-imposed rules that regulated ostentation within the
community. That's one option.
The alternative is less amusing, but perhaps more levelheaded. We
got this way by ceding leadership to the community's major
philanthropists. If we take it back, we can diminish the influence of
the most affluent on our values and our priorities. The means to such a
coup are unclear. It will require passionate involvement in Jewish
communal politics on the part of a generation of young people who,
understandably, find the community deeply boring and hopelessly lame.
Our challenge is to convince our disillusioned friends that the way to
fight the materialism and ostentation that they find so distasteful is
to care enough to fearlessly challenge the Jewish status quo.
Businessmen, bankers, and big-shot lawyers will always be an
important part of American Jewry, and rightly so. But to allow the
wealthiest to define our community is a dangerous mistake. Let's hope
we can muster the willpower to correct it.
Smart. A reminder that important journalism ought to be done about Jewish values, by openly exploring them. I think this is the whole purpose of the young. They are not burdened by the terrible outmoded taboos and lessons of the old. They get to write stuff fresh.
