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THE IMPORTANCE OF YICCHUS - (STATUS)-2
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When Victims Rule. A Critique of Jewish Pre-eminence in America "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:
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
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,
Zalman Schachter was asked why many young Jews in the post-1960s era left Judaism for other faiths like Buddhism. "First," he replied,
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:
"In Germany," notes Joachim Prinz,
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:
Harold Hochschild, Jewish chairman of a mining conglomerate, noted in a private memo in 1940 that
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
A compilation of non-Jewish observers were featured in an article about anti-Semitism in the American Hebrew of 1890, says Marie-Jane Rochelson:
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:
"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
In mid-twentieth century, Judith Kramer and Seymour Levantman noted that
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:
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 predominantly 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 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,
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:
In 1959, apologetic Rabbi Albert Goldman observed that
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,
Here's an observation by Jonathan Rieder in his study about Italians and Jews in a section of Brooklyn:
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
Famous Jewish prostitute Xaviera Hollander notes one of her most memorable Jewish lovers:
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:
"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:
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:
Stephen Bloom notes the ultra-Orthodox community of Postville, Iowa, and its raucous religious effect on the tranquil town:
He also notes, once he is actually 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 religious activity: This was an old fashioned chugging contest. Toast 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:
"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,
The Importance of Yicchus ~ (Status) - Part 1 || The Importance of Yicchus ~ (Status) - Part 2 || Table of Contents
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