NOTES IN RESPONSE TO ANTI-SEMITIC TROPES

Observations for the unknowing

At a time of disturbing anti-Semitism, here's a little education for those who might need it:

For centuries, in most places in the world, Jews were not allowed to own land, or pretty much anything.

They were allowed one job, which was the lowest job on the totem pole in those places: they could be businessmen.

For centuries, as a perpetually persecuted people, Jews developed two habits that helped them survive: 1) get an education (Remember that line from the Gershwin tune, "They can't take that away from me”? It’s something Jews would often tell their children - “Get an education. They can’t take that away from you” - given how in pogroms and so forth anything and everything might be taken away at any time), and 2) prepare your boys to become mature men (Bar Mitzvah) who take care of their families.

Those were habits of survival.

So when anti-Semites say that the power of the Jew is disproportionate to our numbers, the point is that over centuries of persecution we developed as a people some habits that helped us survive and prosper. That is what is disproportionate to our numbers: our ingrained messaging to do things that would increase our chances that we did.

No Jew should ever have to apologize for that...for our ancestors, ourselves, or our children. Today, my blood runs cold hearing anti-Semites repeat horrifying ancient tropes about Jews being a powerful cabal seeking global domination. I hope these few observations will help someone better understand us as a people: that our cultural emphasis on education, hard work, and taking care of family, were lessons born of centuries of persecution.

Our history is not one of “trying to take over.” It is one of trying to survive.