<p>The ignorant masses of the world have, throughout history, needed someone to hate, in order to feel that there was some tangible cause of their misery. Hence the hatred of these mysterious, invisible “Jews”. We need someone to blame. It’s easier to hate someone who isn’t there, looking you in the eye, living in your neighborhood, sitting at the desk next to yours in school. No Jews in your country? Perfect! All the easier to hate them!</p>
<p>It’s the same reason hatred of blacks has lessened after desegregation. It’s a lot harder to deny someone’s humanity when he’s right there, in the flesh.</p>
<p>It’s the same reason that people in big American cities tend only to hate Muslims who blow people up for no reason, rather than Muslims generally, whereas Muslims generally are fair game to many ignorant people in less populated areas who have never met one.</p>
<p>It’s the same reason many of those same people blame “Satan” for the world’s misery. An invisible force, mysterious, undefinable. It’s so much easier to blame Satan than to work at fixing the world’s problems. (Oh, and it’s easy to blame Democrats if you’ve never met one of them, either.)</p>
<p>In that case we should all agree to gang up and hate the Martians. They never do us any good. We never see them at all. They are a completely unproductive and useless minority. Plus they are not protected by any law. They have no lobby in Congress. Colleges do not have a Martian diversity quota they strive to hit. And it’s not un-PC or socially unacceptable to tell Martian jokes. In short, they are the perfect minority for us.</p>
<p>So everyone please give the Jews, Blacks, Gypsies, Hispanics, American Indians, Mormons, Catholics, Asians, Scientologists, etc. a break. Save your hate for the Martians.</p>
<p>Ah, but people in countries without Jews know that Jews do exist somewhere, just as people who blame the world’s ills on Satan “know” that he exists somewhere. But Martians? Why, that’s crazy. Everyone knows there are no Martians.</p>
<p>EDIT: Although, now that you mention it, Martians are pretty stupid. You know how many Martians it takes to screw in a light bulb? Three. One to hold the light bulb, and two to turn the ladder! Ha-ha! Hoo-boy, are those Martians stupid. In fact, I’m starting to think my neighbor is a Martian. He wears this weird little cap and has long, curly sideburns. I’m pretty sure he’s the reason I lost my job and my house is in foreclosure.</p>
<p>Any of you guys old enough to remember the TV series “My Favorite Martian?”</p>
<p>We could go with the anti Martian movement, but then we would come up against being called anti little or anti green! And what about those on the right who wear pointy tinfoil hats???</p>
<p>actually it’s “shepen naches” not shleppen - sorry to be pendantic, but I have to live up to my pseudonym. [Shepen = scoop up (see German schoepfen)]. Oops (oy!): not to say that all mamenyus are necessarily pedantic…but they always do want to shep naches from their kids!</p>
<p>The title of this thread and the tenor of the original post, which talked about the “greediness and wickedness of Jews,” gave me the creeps, too. That’s why I said upthread that I thought the OP was a ■■■■■. I think his intent was to draw out the anti-Semitic loonies. Happily, this thread didn’t have the inflammatory impact he intended it to. While there have been a few antisemitic rants, there’s been far more thoughtful and informative discussion. </p>
<p>Not to mention humor. I just caught myself singing “I’m a Squirrel. Hi” (sotto voce – my husband will think I’m insane) to the tune of Am Yisroel Chai. Definitely worth the ride. Thanks, p3t.</p>
<p>nope cartera45, I’m strictly a Cal alum and only sing in the shower…but speaking of confusing CC monikers, what is the deal with “Kosherz” and “Schmalz”?</p>
<p>Did a little looking back at the OP’s posts to see if OP looked trollish, WJB and mamenyu. He seems to have just joined CC 2 weeks ago, claims he is a 20 (21 in Feb) yr old asian from Evanston (parents own a mom and pop store) who is in HS (20??? In HS???) and applying to top schools, is premed, applied for the Siemans, has a 2300 SAT and 3.81 UW GPA, did research with the former Med Director of Feinberg Med school (NWestern), has co-authored a few papers and referred in this thread to “my local synagogue rabbi” (not sure if that means he attends the shul or just heard the rabbi of a local synagogue speak). Apologies if this sounds a bit like stalking, as that was not the intent. Rather, looking for believability vs ■■■■■. Not sure the 20 yr old HS Sr fits, unless this is a kid who perhaps isn’t originally from here and may have started school late. Who knows. Why would he pick the SN he did?? Perhaps he was adopted by a jewish family? Again, who knows. If (hypothetically) he is a 20 (almost 21) yr old adopted asian jew HS Sr, it might stand to reason that he’d be sensitive to minority issues. If so, then was the purpose of this thread (to question stereotypes) genuine, and why such an inflammatory thread title?? It is puzzling.</p>
I don’t know about this. Do Jews, as a group, share some cultural norms that are different from other groups? We often hear, for example, that Jews care a lot about education, compared to other groups–nobody seems to complain about this as offensive stereotypying, I guess because it’s viewed as positive. If I said (for example) that Episcopalians are more reserved than Pentecostals, is that offensive? Certainly, there are flamboyant Episcopalians and buttoned-down Pentecostals, but anybody familiar with the two denominations would probably agree, in general, with the generalization.</p>
<p>^^We all have heard of the stereotype of the loud and pushy Jew. But is that Jewish stereotype or a New York City stereotype? That trait commonly gets assigned to both groups. So I wonder if the reality behind the repuation is that New Yorkers are pushy and that gets conflated with Jewishness simply because there are, relatively speaking, a lot of Jewish folks in NYC? I don’t know the answer.</p>
<p>Hunt, I agree with the gist of your comment, except I think the post you quoted should say that all people are pushy, opinionated, etc. Whatever norms exist are cultural. There are a few sensible reasons why Jews are seen as more pushy, etc. and just two of these are:</p>
<ol>
<li><p>New York. I’ve met people who think all of New York is Jewish (it’s 10% Jewish) or who think all Jews live in New York. There is a cultural stereotype of New Yorkers and Jews are part of that - along with the other ethnic loudmouth, New York types.</p></li>
<li><p>Visible history. Some of this is regional. Jewish young men came to America speaking no English, strapped goods on their backs and went out peddling goods. Many of them settled in various places along the way, especially in the South, where they found a niche selling to black people. A list of the small Jewish department stores / dry goods stores / hardware stores that used to exist in small towns and cities across the country would be very long. The only contact many people in America had with Jews was as a customer or by knowing the name of a Jewish store. There is an aspect in this of the thing that plagues a minority: that people extrapolate from 1 image to all when they would never dream of doing that to their own “kind.” </p></li>
</ol>
<p>As for Jewish emphasis on education, it’s real because a main way to get noticed in the Jewish community for many centuries was through being a clever scholar. There has always been a competition within the Jewish community to be the most inventive interpreter of Oral Law or Written Law, to come up with the most revealing midrash (a metaphoric story), etc. This partly due to the influence of rabbis in the communities, partly to being clever opening up marriage possibilities, etc. It is, however, a total misconception to believe that Jews universally believe in education. A significant portion of my family has worked in manual trades for generations - and of course were mostly peasants in their original countries. It’s more the percentage of Jews who use the idea of education as a way to further themselves and their Jewish community; in some ways, education is a self-reinforcing good that stands in contrast to the oft-stated notion that Jews don’t drink alcohol. It’s not true; Jews drink but the community norm is opposed so don’t expect your Jewish club to make its rent on its bar tabs. Drinking is seen as a cultural negative so the self-reinforcing message is spread within the community against it. </p>
<p>*This is a source of the tension that grew as separatist movements set themselves apart from non-violence. The white merchants in the South as a general matter left selling to blacks to Jews, which meant the small Jewish population was in relatively close contact with black people but in an often uncomfortable way, as employer and as creditor. And then that was further stirred up by Jews from the North who were far more aggressive about assisting in the Civil Rights Movement.</p>
I agree with this. Growing up in the South, I certainly heard the stereotype of the “New York Jew.” Then I spent several years living in Manhattan, and of course, almost everybody is (relative to other places) pushy and loud. (But on the other hand, I did some shopping on the Lower East Side, and you want to talk about pushy salespeople! Nothing can match that, but that’s a subculture within a subculture.)</p>
<p>Why do people blame the Jews even when there aren’t any? As a Jew, I’d offer two replies, one that many might not like.</p>
<ol>
<li>A lesson of the Torah is that human beings don’t learn unless they are pushed to the wall of their last resort. We needed a new creation of the Flood because the world had become irredeemable. Abraham was required to tie his son Isaac to the altar for sacrifice but in the context that Sarah had been barren for decades and that Isaac was a miracle to begin with. God “hardens” Pharaoh’s heart after each plague until the Passover re-enacts the slaughter in place of Isaac. I could give more examples, but one point is that Abraham didn’t learn by God simply speaking to him, just as Pharaoh didn’t learn after 5 or 7 or 9 plagues and just as Sodom could not learn and just as the world was so past learning that it was flooded out of existence. </li>
</ol>
<p>My point is that it’s easy to blame people for your own faults. And it’s very difficult for people to learn to acknowledge their faults. We don’t learn the important lessons well. We can learn all sorts of clever bits but we don’t learn the important lessons that God tries to teach.</p>
<ol>
<li>From a Jewish perspective, the amount of hatred that emanates from Christianity has abated somewhat but that’s in the relative context of 2000 years of animalistic behavior that not only demonized Jews in print and word but which brutalized them in person. It’s interesting to note as the Muslim world has gained a voice, that a vision of the Crusades has emerged that is explicitly opposed to the idea of a justifiable holy war. From the Jewish perspective, I can sum up the Crusades in two words: mass murder. Each Crusade took on itself to murder as many Jews as possible throughout Europe - and you may wonder why we ended up as far East as we did, because we were running for our lives (and locked ghettos were as much to protect Jews as to protect the Christians from whatever evil the Jews might do). Christian attitudes showed a bare tolerance for Jews but then we saw how that ended when not only the Nazis but all their helpers from Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Poland, Belarus and the Ukraine not only went along with mass murder but formed large parts of the actual execution squads. After 500 years of peace, this is what the Christians did. Not merely those evil Nazis with their weird crypto-Christian ideology, but the Christians of the East. And after the war, you still had them killing Jews.</li>
</ol>
<p>To sum this part up - and please recognize that I’m intentionally putting this in a harsh light - from a Jewish perspective the religion of peace is not what it proclaims to be, as countless Jews throughout history have been murdered in Christ’s name. As I said above, it’s very difficult to learn the important lessons. I’ve read the New Testament dozens of times and I can see what Jesus taught. It isn’t murder. It isn’t blame. There is a vast gulf between Jesus’ ideas and the actuality of Christianity. It is apparently too difficult to learn the basic lessons.</p>
<p>There are people who murder in the name of Buddhism, too. Sadly, human beings will turn any belief system to their own ends. It doesn’t matter what Jesus taught. It only matters what I want at this time, and I will find a way to use Jesus’ words to justify my behavior. Or maybe I won’t bother. After all, I’m saved! What do I have to justify?</p>
<p>There is perhaps no more insufferably condescending belief on Earth than that one is “saved.” Really, you’re saved? You’re one of the 144,000 people who will ascend bodily into heaven and sit at the right hand of God and rule his Earthly paradise for eternity? And I have to accept Christ as my personal savior if I want to be just like you? Well, I’ve got your salvation right here.</p>
<p>Contrast this with the Buddhist bodhisattva, who intentionally does not achieve Nirvana until everyone else is ready to do so, too. That’s a much nicer idea. Of course, there are plenty of Buddhist jerks, too, but again, they’re not following the teaching. They’re just using it to justify whatever it is they want to do.</p>
<p>I also don’t know about the basic premise behind this. I don’t think all cultures are exactly the same. For example, most of the world, and the British themselves, believe that the British tend to display a stiff upper lip, etc. Maybe it’s because of enduring bombings, maybe it’s a trait that has been valued and cultivated over time – not sure. “Tall poppy syndrome” is another example of how a valued trait would influence what behavior is rewarded and what isn’t. Most cultures, ethnic groups, etc. seem to believe that certain characteristics exist within their group. Maybe being opinionated – i.e. not being afraid to think for one’s self and not being afraid to express those thoughts – is more valued among Jewish people than among other groups. But, in general, I think it’s problematic to try to ignore that different groups value different traits and that they reinforce behaviors in their children that are consistent with those values.</p>
I think there’s only one smaller group that thinks only 144,000 people will be saved; and I’m not sure even they’ve held onto that doctrine as their own numbers grew beyond it.</p>
<p>Interesting post about the Episcopalians being more reserved. I remember reading an article which named Christie Todd Whitman as the ultimate WASP. I was sort of insulted by it. It said she (we) were stiffs with no sense of humor, basically. I called my sister and she actually agreed with the article, saying that our family was unusually loud and boisterous compared to other WASP families. I didn’t mean to hijack the thread, it just popped out at me and it struck me as funny that my own sister was fine to buy into a stereotype!</p>
<p>I’m Christian and a lot of Christians also have been killed in the name of Jesus.
I am well aware of the historical atrocites committed in the name of Christ. Not just towards the Jews.
Blacks were enslaved by Christians…
My grandfather is from Lebanon. He left there back in the early 1900’s because he was Christian and they were treated poorly.
There are many Jews who hate Christians.</p>