Is there any truth behind the stereotype that Jews are materialistic?

Great Debates
21

Further to what Brian Ekers said about barring Jews from most professions, don’t forget that many Jew in Europe lived in segregated communities and could be expelled or attacked at any time, as happened quite often.
When you’re living on the edge, you tend not to acquire large, bulky posessions which are hard to carry with you when you’re ordered to leave the country. Gold and diamonds are small, compact, easily concealable, readily transportable, and retain their value wherever you may go.

So it’s a circular argument; discrimination leads to the ghetto and Jewish involvement in banking and diamonds, which leads to further discrimination of Jews as money-grubbing and greedy “outsiders” who won’t integrate, which leads to more discrimination, and so on…

At least, that’s the argument I remember reading.

22

Reminds me of a joke from the old Soviet Union - where Jews were not held in high regard:

There’s a rumor that a certain butcher shop will have meat on Wednesday. So at 5 AM, the queue begins to form outside. At 5:30, the butcher emerges to announce, “There will not be enough meat for everyone - you Jews, leave the line!”

At 7 AM, the butcher emerges again: “There will be less meat still. Those that are not members of the Party must leave the line!”

At 9:30, another announcement: “There will be still less. All those without young children to feed must leave the line.”

Finally, at noon: “I am sorry. There will be no meat after all. Go home.”

One man in line turns to his neighbor: “You see? The damn Jews, they get the best of everything!”

  • Rick
23

There is a serious sociology underpining this, that some of you may not want to hear. However, there is a notion of “national culture”, the initial research was done by a Dutch sociologist named Geert Hofstede. He posited that there were certain “dimensions” to cultures – not that there was a right and wrong, mind, but that different cultures taught different basic beliefs.

As a simple one, think of a continuum – at one end is individualism, at the other end is collectivism. And we have some method of measuring how individualistic or collectivistic each person is (questionnaire, mostly). Yes, there’s a situational element, that changes slightly based on the particulars. And yes, we’re talking about a large number of people, so you get data points from any culture at various points on the continuum. However, when you amass enough data points, you find a sort of bell shaped curve for each national culture. And the bell-shaped curve for Japan (say) is far more to the collectivist side, while the bell-shaped curve for the US (say) is far more to the individualist side. Thus, one can talk about normative behavior (that is, the median of the bell-curve) in Japan being more group-focused than in the U.S. … while remember that you can find individuals at the extremes of the bell curve in either culture who are not near median in their responses.

Got it? So, one of Hofstede’s dimensions is extrinsic vs intrinsic – that is, materialistic (assertive, competitive) vs nurturance (cooperative, environmental).

On this scale, Japan comes out as the most materialistic country, Sweden the most intrinsically focused. The US is fairly materialistic. Hofstede did not test religious or racial groups, he tested for nationality, and on that scale, Israel comes out near centrist.

So, I’m guessing that a sociological answer to your question might be that Americans tend to be materialistic, and you just notice Jews for some reason.

24

IMO what you were observing (as Eva Luna alluded to) is less the aspect of Jews being intrinsically materialistic showoffs, and more the aspect that Jews and Jewish culture in the US is overwhelmingly urban-centric in origin and behavior. In this respect people coming from these urban-centric perspectives and backgrounds (even if a generation or two removed) are a lot more comfortable about showing off the “bling” than the more homogenized group of wealthy, white non-Jews you were observing at the other locations.

25

No, he says that he sees alot of americans. Even wealthy americans don’t show off their wealth as much as people in that Jewish neighborhood.

26

*Is there any truth behind the stereotype that Jews are materialistic. *

Oh sure. And Muslims are terrorists, American are loud, Britons are stiff, French are obnoxious and Dutch tight-fisted. :rolleyes:

27

While I’m not sure that Dex’s answer is a complete explanation, the problem with Kid’s testimony is that it is anecdotal and subject to the errors of self-selecting memory.

It is possible that he actually saw more Jewish people with ostentatious displays. (I will not assert that he did not.)

However, it is also possible that while the neighborhood might have been largely Jewish, the culture of ostentatious display was connected to the neighborhood, itself, and had nothing to do with the religious or cultural heritage of any individual.

And, just as many people will swear that their departments (fire, police, ER, etc.) get busier at the full moon, despite a lot of statistical evidence that such is not the case, and just as people will remember street lights coming on or winking out just as they pass, the memories of who wore how much jewelry could be influenced by any number of unconscious triggers.

I doubt that Kid has any axe to grind and suspect that his was an honest question. I merely point out that without an actual objective study, it is possible that the discussion is based on a misleading impression rather than hard numbers.

28

I’ll be happy to answer the Kid’s question about materialism. But I’ll first need $50 up front.

29

You won’t get it from me!

30

In the movie The Pawnbroker, Rod Seiger’s character explains that Jews often found themselves as landless refugees, and so had to become entrepunuers in order to survive. So placing a premium on developing business skills became part of the culture and lent itself both to support for educatoin and the professions, as well as the more ostentaion displays of wealth. The latter may be compared–in a very broad context–to the emphasis on sports among Western males or beauty among women. Its how people measure themselves and grab their little bit of glory within their cultural mileiu.
Gum:

You forgot the most important one, that Swedish chicks like sex. :wink:

31

This is totally anecdotal, but then, so is most of this thread so far.

Regarding paying to go to High Holy Days services, at one point, I was seriously considering converting to Judaism (I didn’t, for reasons that I have no intention of going into here, but my experience was 100% positive.) During this period, I went to temple on one of the High Holidays, explained that I had no ticket, and asked if I might stay in the lobby and listen to the services. After waiting long enough to be sure that I would not be doing someone else out of a seat, the rabbi’s wife graciously invited me into the sanctuary. It was an altogether beautiful experience.

For what it’s worth, my understanding is that one of the reasons for temple memberships in general (as opposed to High Holiday tickets in particular) is that, since observant Jews are not permitted to engage in monetary transactions on the Sabbath, passing the plate as many Christian denominations do is not an option. Makes sense to me.

Brace yourself for rampant speculation to follow.

Regarding displays of wealth by Jews, my only contribution is based on both my general impression from going to Jewish museums, reading books, etc, and on a conversation which I had with a Jewish friend once. Essentially, since Jews from the Middle Ages on down were subject to harrassment, arrest, expulsion, etc. (for "etc., read “slaughter”) at a moment’s notice, (and perhaps because Jews in some places and some times were forbidden to own property), it was considered a good idea to keep assets in a portable form in case it became necessary to flee at a moment’s notice.

Although showing off wealth under those circumstances would have been a** truly **bad idea, keeping something handy to bribe people with in order to stay alive would certainly not have been. I can see where this might have evolved into a desire to accumulate gold or jewels (concentrated wealth in a portable form which was a universal medium of exchange). This habit could easily outlive its original purpose and, in a safer environment like the U.S., evolve into a tendency (among people who could afford it) to wear more jewelery than the average bear. What better way to celebrate your survival against the odds than to show what had previously been hidden?

I hope this interpretation is not offensive to anyone. It most certainly is not intended to be.

It would be interesting, as well, to know how diamond cutting evolved into a Jewish pursuit (as in N.Y.C.'s diamond district), and whether that has any bearing on the subject at hand.

32

Right- how about “do Blacks love Watermelon?” :dubious:

33

The question should be “do Jews like watermelon as much as Blacks do?” or “who wears more Bling, Jewish women or Black rappers?” :smiley:

34

Just had a thought about Jews, bling, and materialism. As most of the regulars know, I’m Jewish. And so are my grandparents. Grandmom is about the thriftiest shopper a person could imagine; she has been known to bring cans of tuna from NJ to Chicago for us “because they were on sale,” and is immensely proud of the bargains she finds.

She is also fond of the bling-bling and wears it frequently. However, my grandparents spent their career as antique dealers, and carried a large proportion of their stock in jewelry. Most of Grandmom’s bling was in the process of being rotated through the stock; she’d wear something for a while, then sell it when they found the right customer who offered the right price, then she and Grandpop would buy something else and lather, rinse, repeat. (She also has a fabulous sense of style, and always knew just how to wear something to really bring out its finer qualities; whenever they did antique shows here, I would witness her sell at least a couple of pieces off her own body. She’d just smile, put away the check, and then put on something else out of the display case.)

So yes, there are probably some Jews who are materialistic. But sometimes looks can deceive. Grandmom may have been wearing a stunning pair of antique emerald drop eariings worth $10k, but they really weren’t “hers” in any real sense of the word, and $10k was a very significant proportion of the family annual income. And she was probably wearing the $10k earrings with a $15 dress, marked down from $100 at TJ Maxx, which she’d worn for 5 years. And she was probably eating a sandwich she schlepped to Chicago in a cooler from NJ, made from tuna which was $0.20 off on sale, to avoid spending $5 on one at the antique show concession stand. It’s all about priorities.

35

Just for some balance here, it’s worth remembering that early American and British Protestants didn’t have any moral qualms about worldly success. The early founders and benefactors of Harvard were rich Puritans. It seems that just about every religion comes to a point where worldly success is not only condoned, but encouraged as a means of strengthening the sect.

36

Orthodox Jew here.

Just to correct something said above: Jews aren’t prohibited from lending money among themselves, just from charging interest.

About whether monetary success shows G-d’s blessing and therefore righteousness: not necessarily. What happens to you in life does not definitively reflect whot kind of person you are; part of the payback for both good and bad deeds comes in life, and part comes after death, in proportions to be decided by G-d. In fact, there is an idea that if you NEVER enounter any difficulties or problems in your life, watch out, because all your merit is getting used up. Such a life implies that G-d would rather reward you temporarily in this world than eternally in the next. Obviously, there are a lot of complex issues regarding reward and punishment in Judaism, and this probably isn’t the best place to go into them all. Also, I’m not the most well-informed person on the subject. But this idea does exist. This is not to say, however, that if you see a successful Jewish person they must be generally evil and that G-d wants them to have no merit left when they die. G-d uses discretion in distributing reward, and it’s entirely impossible to tell the spiritual level of the person by the amount of visible reward.

As for the main point of the OP: In my experience, materialism in the Jewish community is less a global issue and more a communal issue. Certain communities are known to be richer and more materialistic, and some are known to be less. Of course those reputations would be stereotypes in and of themselves, and IMO any stereotype should be taken with several pounds of rock salt.

37

What, no Kosher salt? ;j