This week in our Torah we learn about one of the most successful Jews of all time – Joseph. Although he was the 11th of 12 brothers, his father Jacob placed him above his older siblings. This, of course, led to disaster as his brothers were consumed by envy and sought to rid themselves of him. Sold as a slave in Egypt, Joseph became the chief steward in the home of Potiphar. In prison in Egypt, the chief jailer put Joseph in charge of all the prisoners. Finally, Pharaoh put Joseph in charge of all of Egypt! Clearly a story of Jewish success we could say.
“Jewish success” was one of the subjects comedian Dave Chapelle broached when he hosted Saturday Night Live a few weeks ago. Most likely many of you knew Chapelle’s monologue caused quite a stir in Jewish circles. His appearance on Saturday Night Live came on the heels of the brou-ha-ha stirred up by the antisemitic comments of Kanye West and the tweet of an antisemitic movie by the basketball player Kyrie Irving. Some commentators thought that Chapelle’s monologue was itself antisemitic. Others considered it a brilliant, bold, courageous social commentary by a great American comedian.
“Early in my career I learned that there were 2 words in the English language that you should never say together in sequence, and those words are “The” and “Jews”…. I never heard anyone do good after they said that.”
“It’s a big deal,” Chappelle continued. “He (Kanye West) had broken the show business rules. You know, the rules of perception. If they’re Black, then it’s a gang. If they’re Italian, it’s a mob, but if they’re Jewish, it’s a coincidence and you should never speak about it.”
Kanye West railed against perceived injustices perpetrated against him by Jews in Hollywood. Chapelle: “I have been to Hollywood… and there are a lot of Jews…like a lot.” Chapelle went on to say that if you visited Hollywood, you might develop the “delusion that Jews run Hollywood. It’s not a crazy thing to think….but it’s a crazy thing to say out loud in a climate like this.”
First, let me say that I do not think any of these comments I just quoted are untrue. There are a lot of Jews in Hollywood. It is no coincidence! In the early part of the twentieth century, Jews found themselves unwelcome in more established American industries. Jews migrated to businesses where there were few or no barriers to entrance. One of these was the motion picture industry. Hollywood was essentially founded and operated by Eastern European Jews in the early years, and the large number of Jews in present day Hollywood is a result of the overwhelming predominance of Jews in the early years.
Jews are proud of the success that we have enjoyed in many areas of American life, and at the same time we are often uncomfortable when that fact is pointed out publicly. Especially, I would say, when a non- Jewish person Jewish brings it up. Undoubtedly Chapelle is joking about antisemitic tropes that have caused much pain to Jews throughout our very long history – the idea, the popular perception even, that Jews somehow use their success to amass power as a group and then abuse that power to gain advantage for their own group at the expense of others in society. Chapelle is also laying bare the unfortunate reality that this is what many people still think, still believe but they dare not say.
Chapelle touches on a source of both pride and wariness in the Jewish community. We are proud that until recently one third of the Supreme Court was Jewish, we are proud that Jews have been successful in many, many professions, in business, in arts, in industry, in journalism, in science, in banking and so on. Jews play an outsized role in many areas of American life. Jews have been awarded 23% of Nobel prizes while comprising .2% of the world population. While comprising 2% of the American population, Jews own one half of NBA teams, one third of NFL teams and are prominent in the leadership of Major League Baseball. What gives?
Why have Jews been so successful? A popular theory posits that in the Middle Ages Jews were prohibited from owning land and participating in craft guilds. Therefore, Jews could not earn their living as farmers or craftsmen. They were thus forced into becoming moneylenders, bankers and financiers because Christians were prohibited from lending money at interest. In other words, Jews were forced to do the “dirty work” of society. In their 2013 book The Chosen Few– a National Jewish Book Award recipient – Maristella Botticini and Zvi Eckstein challenge this idea as they set out to answer this question: why are Jews, a comparatively small group in world’s population, so economically and intellectually accomplished and prominent in Western societies?
Botticini and Eckstein note that with the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem, Judaism evolved from a Jerusalem-centered sacrificial system to a text- based rabbinic tradition. In order to fully participate in Rabbinic Judaism, Jewish men needed to become literate. Thus, Jews as a group developed the skills to read and write, to understand, to conceptualize, whereas other groups remained largely illiterate but for the scholarly class. This mass literacy gave Jews the skill set to abandon low paying agricultural work and move to cities where they could engage in more profitable work in commerce. The authors of this study reject the conventional idea that Jews went into moneylending and commerce because they were excluded from owning land and participating in craft guilds. Rather, they maintain that Jews chose banking and money lending because they had the “key assets” to be successful in these financially rewarding endeavors: These assets included
Capital already accumulated through trade and craftsmanship
The ability to network with fellow Jews who lived in different countries
Literacy, the ability to work with written word as well as numbers, and institutions that could be used to resolve disputes and enforce contracts in the form of rabbinic courts.
Thus, the rabbis and scholars who transformed Judaism from an agrarian, Temple based sacrificial system to a religion of literacy had a profound effect on the destiny of the Jewish people, and the world, to the present time. Our tradition of study of Jewish texts, from Torah to Talmud, our thinking of the meanings of its messages, our openness to listening, to analyzing and to grappling with multiple interpretations of difficult concepts certainly gives us an advantage when it comes to pursuing excellence in academics, science, law and business. Perhaps the importance of this text tradition is best exemplified by a story told about Nobel Laureate Isidor Rabi. Asked to account for how he became a scientist, he replied, “My mother made me a scientist without ever intending it. Every other mother would ask her child after school: ‘So? Did you learn anything today?’ But not my mother. She always asked me a different question. ‘Izzy,’ she would say, ‘did you ask a good question today?’ That difference – asking good questions -made me become a scientist!”
That difference is one of the keys to Jewish success.
Shabbat Shalom