Stereotypes: 6
Hi Friends!
Welcome to Issue 36 of this newsletter! It’s the sixth week of our Stereotypes series, and this week we focus on the Jewish community. I grew up in a predominantly white, catholic community, and while I had one or two classmates over the years who were Jewish, I never knew anything about Judaism until I went to college, where two of my roommates were Jewish along with many of my classmates. While I had not encountered many Jewish people in my childhood, I still had a lot of ideas about what they might be like—stereotypes—that I learned from television or pop culture or the things I would overhear classmates or teachers say. This is how stereotypes manifest in our subconscious, most often not based in our lived experiences, but on the caricatures we see in the media. Today, about 61% of American adults agree with at least one or more classic anti-Semitic canards, while 1 in 5 believe Jewish-Americans “still talk too much about what happened to them in the Holocaust.” Today, we will continue to unpack these stereotypes while understanding the history and background that’s created these caricatures of the Jewish community in America.
Key Terms
Jewish: Any person whose religion is Judaism. In the broader sense of the term, a Jew is any person belonging to the worldwide group that constitutes, through descent or conversion, a continuation of the ancient Jewish people, who were themselves descendants of the Hebrews of the Bible (Old Testament).
Anti-Semitism: Anti-Semitism is hostility toward or discrimination against Jews as a religious or racial group. The term anti-Semitism was coined in 1879 by the German agitator Wilhelm Marr to designate the anti-Jewish campaigns under way in central Europe at that time. Although the term now has wide currency, it is a misnomer, since it implies a discrimination against all Semites. Arabs and other peoples are also Semites, and yet they are not the targets of anti-Semitism as it is usually understood. Nazi anti-Semitism culminated in the Holocaust.
Zionism: Zionism is a religious and political effort that brought thousands of Jews from around the world back to their ancient homeland in the Middle East and reestablished Israel as the central location for Jewish identity. While some critics call Zionism an aggressive and discriminatory ideology, the Zionist movement has successfully established a Jewish homeland in the nation of Israel.
“Jewface”: “Jewface” is a term that contemporary audiences are unlikely to recognize, aside from its obvious connection to the term “blackface.” It refers to the vaudeville mainstay of the stage Jew, a Yiddish-speaking, large-nosed, bearded caricature, often played by a non-Jewish actor, that sprang into popular circulation after large numbers of Eastern European Jews began immigrating to the United States in the 1880s. Although such a portrayal would provoke outrage from Jews and non-Jews alike in America today, reactions in the turn-of-the-century Jewish community were mixed. Read more about it and Eddy Portnoy, curator of the new exhibit “Jewface: Yiddish Dialect Songs of Tin Pan Alley” at the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research.
Let’s Get Into It
As with every group we have discussed so far, no one group is a monolith. All people have complex backgrounds, beliefs and feelings. But what we are dissecting today are un-truths that you may subconsciously be believing. These archetypes in all communities are offensive because they reduce real people to characters. Let’s dive in and describe some of the most believed stereotypes of the Jewish community in America.
The Greedy, Wealthy Moneylender: One of the most prominent and persistent stereotypes about Jews is that they are greedy and avaricious. They are seen both as relentless in the pursuit of wealth while also as stingy misers. They are imagined to exert control over the world’s financial systems, but are also accused of regularly cheating friends and neighbors. The stereotype of Jewish greed dates back to the Middle Ages. Jews typically had restrictions placed on their economic activity. Sometimes the only option available to earn a living in such circumstances was through high-interest crediting and while Christians were prohibited from moneylending, they often recruited Jews to do this work. This made it easy for leaders to position Jews as a scapegoat and the cause of the common people’s financial woes. Characters like Shylock in The Merchant of Venice reflect this attitude towards Jews being greedy and immoral. Eventually this stereotype worked its way into modern vernacular: “To Jew someone down” became a common expression meaning to bargain for a lower price.
The Jewish Mother: The Jewish Mother is depicted as a “middle-aged woman with a nasal New York accent, who either sweats over a steaming pot of matzah balls while screaming at her kids from across the house. Or, in an updated version, she sits poolside in Florida, jangling her diamonds and guilt-tripping her grown children into calling her more often. She is sacrificing yet demanding, manipulative and tyrannical, devoted and ever-present. She loves her children fiercely, but man, does she nag.” Her predecessor, the Yiddishe Mama, carried little of the negative cultural weight of the Jewish Mother and was celebrated at the turn of the 20th century. The Yiddishe Mama was a sentimentalized figure, a good mother and homemaker, known for her strength and creativity, entrepreneurialism and hard work, domestic miracles and moral force. The Yiddishe Mama reminded Jews of the Old World and was synonymous with nostalgia and longing. But while the Yiddishe Mama and her selfless child-rearing contributed to the success and upward mobility of the American Jewish family, the Jewish mother stereotype became warped as many American Jews rose economically and socially — she was now represented as entitled and overbearing, showy and loud, she became the scapegoat for anxieties around Jewish assimilation and by mid-century, the Jewish mother was primarily identified by negative characteristics, tinged with self-hatred and misogyny.
The JAP (Jewish American Princess): The archetype was forged in the mid-1950s, in concert with the Jewish-American middle-class ascent. The JAP is neither Jewish nor American alone. She makes herself known where these identities collide. As a philosophy, JAP style prioritizes grooming, trepidatious trendiness, and comfort. In any given season, the look is drawn from mainstream fashion trends. “She buys in multiples (almost hysterically in multiples),” wrote Julie Baumgold in a 1971 New York magazine op-ed. “She has safe tastes, choosing an item like shorts when it is peaking.” JAP style is less concerned with capital-F fashion than it is with simply fitting in. JAP is rarely used outside the Jewish world, it is far too acute to be relevant in places where people don’t know many actual Jews. While the Jewish Mother stereotype was designed to absorb the stigmas of the old world, the JAP was designed to absorb the stigmas of the new world. “The JAP was a woman who had overshot the mark, piling on the trappings of the stable middle class like so many diamond tennis bracelets.”
The Jewish Community in Today’s Media
The Anti-Defamation League (ADL), which tracks incidents of anti-Jewish violence and bias, says they saw a 75% increase in anti-Semitism reports to the agency's 25 regional offices after the most recent Israeli-Palestinian conflict. You can read my previous newsletter on the conflict here.
While depictions of Jewish people in the media have improved — with shows like “Unorthodox,” “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel,” “Curb Your Enthusiasm” and “Shtisel” all focusing their attention on Jewish characters making their way through the world, often through a positive lens — there are still displays of these stereotypes shown.
I’ve heard my Jewish friends say they often feel excluded from conversations about discrimination and prejudice in America. That antisemitism is often seen as something separate from the discrimination other marginalized folks encounter. The history of Jews being stigmatized, stripped of their rights, forced into ghettos as early as 1516 Venice, banished from cities and towns, murdered and ostracized is overwhelming. While Jewish Americans make the highest income of all religious groups in America, these stereotypes of greed and avarice are simply not true, and make it easy to ignore the historical discrimination of Jewish people around the world. As with all of these newsletters, take some time to reflect on any implicit biases you may be harboring and continue to learn more.
Next week, I’m talking about the real history of the Black Panther Party and I am EXCITED about this one. See ya there!
