A risky business

Instead of detailing the Jewish ‘money’ stereotype, ADL director Abraham Foxman’s book counters myths about Jewish wealth.

By SETH J. FRANTZMAN
al pacino merchant of venice (photo credit: ASSOCIATED PRESS)
al pacino merchant of venice
(photo credit: ASSOCIATED PRESS)
Jews and Money By Abraham H. Foxman | Palgrave Macmillan | 256 pages | $26
A Google search of the words “Jews and money” reveals a strange list of entries. First is Calvin College’s “German Propaganda archive” with a historical article entitled “Money Is the God of the Jews.” Next is a column at Jewcy.com about “Why Jews make more money and win more Nobel Prizes” by Rabbi Levi Brackman. Other top entries are from the anti-Semitic website Jewwatch.com and a link to a book by Jerry Muller, Capitalism and the Jews.
In his latest book Jews and Money: The Story of a Stereotype, Abraham Foxman, the national director of the Anti-Defamation League, has set out to examine the stereotype that connects Jews to money and its popularity today. His starting point is the story of Aaron Feuerstein, the devout Jew whose knitting company, Malden Mills, was ruined in a fire in 1995. Feuerstein kept his employees on the payroll until he could rebuild. Years later another Jew, Bernard Madoff, admitted to carrying out the most expensive Ponzi scheme in history. Foxman believes that not only was Feuerstein’s Jewishness treated as an “interesting but distinctively secondary theme,” but the media “placed an unusual degree of emphasis on the religious heritage of both the criminal and his victims.”
The evidence seems clear; a New York Times article used the word “Jewish” three times. Similar articles on Robert Allen Stanford, another multimillion-dollar Ponzi schemer arrested at the same time as Madoff, neglected to mention that he was a Southern Baptist. What bothers Foxman is not the media coverage; “it’s easy for all of us – including media professionals who should be especially sensitive to this danger – to fall back on familiar images, themes and stereotypes.”
Any mention of the connection between a financial crook and Judaism riles up the anti- Semites, who exploit the issue and take to the Internet to promote their vile views.
The author points out that it is particularly at times of financial distress that people are encouraged to make anti-Semitic connections to the role of Jews in ruining the financial systems. This was the case in the Great Depression, the 1980s and in 2008. Demagogues like Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and former Malaysian prime minister Mahathir Mohamad have been outspoken, accusing Jews of controlling the world’s finances.
Jews and Money traces the stereotype to early Christianity, where the story of Jesus confronting the money changers became a symbol for the nefarious role of Jews in greedy financial pursuits. Christian Europe banned Jews from many occupations and helped turn some of them into traveling merchants and moneylenders.
Jews became associated with usury, charging interest, in both the Christian and Muslim worlds, where those religions banned such practices. Shakespeare elucidated the stereotype in his description of Shylock. And from there a direct line can be drawn to the Protocols of the Elders of Zion and Henry Ford’s obsession with the “international Jew.” Hitler, of course, was well versed in blaming Germany’s problems on Jewish bankers.
Foxman neglects to mention it, but Karl Marx, Jewish himself, was even influenced by this anti- Semitic canard and so was Hannah Arendt, also Jewish, who blamed the Jews for anti-Semitism in Europe because of their supposed close capitalistic connections to the monarchy and landowners. And here is where Jews and Money breaks down.
There is so much more that could have been discussed about the history of the stereotype and the way in which it made its way around the world. Consider the periodic Cossack and Ukrainian massacres of Jews. Both were caused, partly, by the belief among the peasants that some Jews, who worked for Polish landowners, were the cause of the suffering. Do those ideas currently permeate Ukrainian anti-Semitism? And to what degree to Jews internalize this stereotype? I’ll never forget the day an Israeli Jew informed me that “the Jews control the US media, that’s why they support us.” Rick Sanchez was recently fired by CNN for uttering similar comments.
Foxman’s book instead seeks to counter myths about Jewish wealth. He argues that Jews in the US are sometimes stricken by poverty. Jews don’t hoard money but give generously. Jews don’t dominate business, and the Jewish religion doesn’t emphasize making money.
Next the author sheds his flashlight on the stereotype today, among anti-Semites on the far Right, in far-off places like China, among African-Americans and the Tea Party movement. And far be it from Jews and Money to let us off the hook without skewering Jewish humor and noting South Park’s “risky” portrayals of the stereotype.
The conclusion: “Jews simply have to try to live good lives according to their best virtues.” And this is the problem, the book is neither deep enough to fully capture the history of the stereotype nor serious enough to truly astound the reader. Foxman made a genuine contribution and a worthy attempt to speak truth to nonsense, but it will leave some wanting more.