Ugly as stereotypes are, they almost have some factual basis with a distinctive cause behind them. Jews used to have the rap of being extremely greedy and materialistic. Such is what my grandparents' generations (Lost and GI) thought of Jews. I did not see that in the Jews that I met. I saw instead sophisticated, cultured, successful, civilized, and largely decent people who no longer had to be greedy and materialistic. Maybe a bit more earthy than I was... the group I am from (basically a Calvinist heritage) is not renowned for sexual frankness. But that is my Boomer generation.
So what is the difference? Did my grandparents see a different group of Jews than I did? Sure. But those were at most one generation away from the "Anatevka" of the hardscrabble shtetl in which economic reality dictated much human behavior -- even whom one married. Grow up in the world of Sholem Aleichem and you too would be extremely greedy and materialistic (marriage is not for love in Fiddler on the Roof -- see below) because such is essential for survival. Suburban America? Not so much.
OK, so the way my Jewish contemporaries are is far more like me (I am not Jewish, but antisemitic bigots on the web often figure that I am Jewish because I am a Nazi-hating, smart liberal with a German-sounding surname) suggests some convergence of economic reality for Jews and probably the typical middle-class person who is about half from English-speaking cultures and about half from Germany and Switzerland. So antisemitic creeps think that I am a Jew. To this I first say "Better a Jew than you". I then say "At least you don't confuse me with your kind, which would really be awful".
Suburban life has a way of homogenizing experiences. That's where the good ethnic restaurants are, and contrary to myth, the best rib places are in the suburbs. Kids and young adults my age typically had college educations in common by age 25, and they shopped in the same mall stores. We tended to want the same sorts of jobs, even if we did not get them. We adopted the same grammar.
......
I find Albion's Seed one of the most telling books of American general history; it relates how institutions and culture in the various regions of America resulted from mass settlement of English, Welsh, Scots-Irish, and German settlers (and to a lesser extent the Dutch and French Huguenots of the short-lived New Netherland and the Swedes and a few Finns in what would become Delaware) in various regions of colonial America. There was New England, in which one of the most renowned universities of the world (Harvard) was established only fifteen years after the Pilgrims almost exclusively from southeastern England landed at Plymouth Rock; New Netherland, under Dutch rule as today a multi-ethnic world (the Dutch were a minority, which may explain why the Dutch hold there was so short), southeastern Pennsylvania and southwestern New Jersey, where the Quakers from the industrial Midlands of England and Wales and German Mennonites (similar religions) established a world of minimal pomp, the very old South from Chesapeake Bay to Georgia in which "Cavalier" settlers from the still-feudal southwest of England established a hierarchical order in which an aristocratic elite needed a peasant class in permanent subjection and could not entice English peasants to take the dangerous trip to a brutal land for no improvement in their lives. The Cavaliers ended up bringing slaves over to take the role of English peasants. Finally, people from the anarchic, intellect-disdaining Borderlands of northern England, southern Scotland, and Northern Ireland brought their disdain for hierarchy and their preference for settling scores with fights to the Backwoods.
Those cultures moved west -- due west.
(OK, you say, what about the large Irish immigration largely to the Eastern seaboard? The Irish Catholics simply took over existing institutions as Yankees moved out to the richer farmlands of the Midwest. In some ways the Irish Catholics of the Northeast are the true heirs of New England Puritans).
Those cultures shape regional attitudes on religion, education, and ethnicity. The Confederacy assumed wrongly that it had the allegiance of the Backwoodsmen who in fact chafed under the rule of plantation owners. Ordinarily armies try to avoid mountainous regions, but the Union Army found eastern Tennessee extremely vulnerable because of a population that had no use for plantation society.
People do not have their cultures because they are stupid. People have their cultures because they are raised in their cultures and cannot really escape the early-child lessons that suggest no viable alternatives.
There's one poster whom I respect for dealing with a horrid disease, being intelligent and erudite, and doing very well despite living in one of the more economically-unforgiving parts of America -- but I thoroughly despise her politics. She has treated me with kindness when I went through some very bad times. I can see myself reciprocating if things go bad for her.
So what is the difference? Did my grandparents see a different group of Jews than I did? Sure. But those were at most one generation away from the "Anatevka" of the hardscrabble shtetl in which economic reality dictated much human behavior -- even whom one married. Grow up in the world of Sholem Aleichem and you too would be extremely greedy and materialistic (marriage is not for love in Fiddler on the Roof -- see below) because such is essential for survival. Suburban America? Not so much.
OK, so the way my Jewish contemporaries are is far more like me (I am not Jewish, but antisemitic bigots on the web often figure that I am Jewish because I am a Nazi-hating, smart liberal with a German-sounding surname) suggests some convergence of economic reality for Jews and probably the typical middle-class person who is about half from English-speaking cultures and about half from Germany and Switzerland. So antisemitic creeps think that I am a Jew. To this I first say "Better a Jew than you". I then say "At least you don't confuse me with your kind, which would really be awful".
Suburban life has a way of homogenizing experiences. That's where the good ethnic restaurants are, and contrary to myth, the best rib places are in the suburbs. Kids and young adults my age typically had college educations in common by age 25, and they shopped in the same mall stores. We tended to want the same sorts of jobs, even if we did not get them. We adopted the same grammar.
......
I find Albion's Seed one of the most telling books of American general history; it relates how institutions and culture in the various regions of America resulted from mass settlement of English, Welsh, Scots-Irish, and German settlers (and to a lesser extent the Dutch and French Huguenots of the short-lived New Netherland and the Swedes and a few Finns in what would become Delaware) in various regions of colonial America. There was New England, in which one of the most renowned universities of the world (Harvard) was established only fifteen years after the Pilgrims almost exclusively from southeastern England landed at Plymouth Rock; New Netherland, under Dutch rule as today a multi-ethnic world (the Dutch were a minority, which may explain why the Dutch hold there was so short), southeastern Pennsylvania and southwestern New Jersey, where the Quakers from the industrial Midlands of England and Wales and German Mennonites (similar religions) established a world of minimal pomp, the very old South from Chesapeake Bay to Georgia in which "Cavalier" settlers from the still-feudal southwest of England established a hierarchical order in which an aristocratic elite needed a peasant class in permanent subjection and could not entice English peasants to take the dangerous trip to a brutal land for no improvement in their lives. The Cavaliers ended up bringing slaves over to take the role of English peasants. Finally, people from the anarchic, intellect-disdaining Borderlands of northern England, southern Scotland, and Northern Ireland brought their disdain for hierarchy and their preference for settling scores with fights to the Backwoods.
Those cultures moved west -- due west.
(OK, you say, what about the large Irish immigration largely to the Eastern seaboard? The Irish Catholics simply took over existing institutions as Yankees moved out to the richer farmlands of the Midwest. In some ways the Irish Catholics of the Northeast are the true heirs of New England Puritans).
Those cultures shape regional attitudes on religion, education, and ethnicity. The Confederacy assumed wrongly that it had the allegiance of the Backwoodsmen who in fact chafed under the rule of plantation owners. Ordinarily armies try to avoid mountainous regions, but the Union Army found eastern Tennessee extremely vulnerable because of a population that had no use for plantation society.
People do not have their cultures because they are stupid. People have their cultures because they are raised in their cultures and cannot really escape the early-child lessons that suggest no viable alternatives.
There's one poster whom I respect for dealing with a horrid disease, being intelligent and erudite, and doing very well despite living in one of the more economically-unforgiving parts of America -- but I thoroughly despise her politics. She has treated me with kindness when I went through some very bad times. I can see myself reciprocating if things go bad for her.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.