About Jewishness

'Dear God, you made many, many poor people.
I realize, of course, that it's no shame to be poor.
But it's no great honor either!
So, what would have been so terrible if I had a small fortune?'

If I were a rich man,Ya ha deedle deedle, bubba bubba deedle deedle dum.
All day long I'd biddy biddy bum.
If I were a wealthy man.
I wouldn't have to work hard.
Ya ha deedle deedle, bubba bubba deedle deedle dum.
If I were a biddy biddy rich,
Yidle-diddle-didle-didle man.

I'd build a big tall house with rooms by the dozen,
Right in the middle of the town.
A fine tin roof with real wooden floors below.
There would be one long staircase just going up,
And one even longer coming down,
And one more leading nowhere, just for show.

I'd fill my yard with chicks and turkeys and geese and ducks
For the town to see and hear.
And each loud 'cheep' and 'swaqwk' and 'honk' and 'quack'
Would land like a trumpet on the ear,
As if to say 'Here lives a wealthy man.'

If I were a rich man,
Ya ha deedle deedle, bubba bubba deedle deedle dum.
All day long I'd biddy biddy bum.
If I were a wealthy man.
I wouldn't have to work hard.
Ya ha deedle deedle, bubba bubba deedle deedle dum.
If I were a biddy biddy rich,
Yidle-diddle-didle-didle man.

I see my wife, my Golde, looking like a rich man's wife
With a proper double-chin.
Supervising meals to her heart's delight.
I see her putting on airs and strutting like a peacock.
Oy, what a happy mood she's in.
Screaming at the servants, day and night.

The most important men in town would come to fawn on me!
They would ask me to advise them,
Like a Solomon the Wise.
'If you please, Reb Tevye...''Pardon me, Reb Tevye...'
Posing problems that would cross a rabbi's eyes!
And it won't make one bit of difference if i answer right or wrong.
When you're rich, they think you really know!

If I were rich, I'd have the time that I lack
To sit in the synagogue and pray.
And maybe have a seat by the Eastern wall.
And I'd discuss the holy books with the learned men, several hours every day.
That would be the sweetest thing of all.

If I were a rich man,
Ya ha deedle deedle, bubba bubba deedle deedle dum.
All day long I'd biddy biddy bum.
If I were a wealthy man.
I wouldn't have to work hard.
Ya ha deedle deedle, bubba bubba deedle deedle dum.
If I were a biddy biddy rich,
Yidle-diddle-didle-didle man.

Jewish poverty
When you think of Jews, you think of New York, you think of media and finance, of bankers, lawyers, philanthropists, doctors, writers, and the mayor. You think of Katz’s deli, the diamond district, etc. "Jewish poverty" seems like an oxymoron; it's so contradicting the traditional stereotypes.
But it's as real as real can be, and it always has been.
The legend of the wealth of the Jews has persisted so obstinately for centuries that there is little wonder that it is still accepted as a fact. It owes its origin to the prominent part they have played as traders in money in the past; whether as moneylenders, money-changers, or financiers; and it has been strengthened in modern times by their predominance in commercial pursuits in Western Europe, and their occasionally high representation on the stock exchanges of the Continent. Two other factors have contibuted to the popular delusion: the fabulous millions of the Rothschilds, which are made to throw a reflected splendour upon the entire race, and the frequent occurrance of moneyed Jews in the plays and novels of nearly every European literature, particularly of English literature. In 1590, when Shakespeare wrote “The Merchant of Venice” Jews had not been there since 1290. Yet myths about them circulated freely and widely.

The Jewish diaspora (the existence of Jews outside Israel) started in the 8th-6th century BCE, almost 3,000 years ago, and ever since Jews have been expelled from the countries they lived in. It's not easy to build a new life in a different country, with a different culture and a different language when your immigrating out of free will, let alone when you were forced to do so, when you had to leave everything behind, with all the traumas caused by the exile. The expulsions always inhabited entire populations of Jews, so they sticked together, within their own culture. Some Jews in the diaspora were able to build a life, to become successful, but many of them couldn't find a proper job, also because there were so many of them and they flooded the labour market, so they were forced to work for less than minimum wages, forced to live in poor Jewish quarters, and it took them usually more than two generations before they assimilated, sometimes only to be expelled once more, to yet another country.
Jewish charity organizations (Tzedakah) have always been there, because it is the duty of Jews to help their fellow-Jews. But nearly all the Jewish poor share a common inability to reach out for help. Pride is a major factor. Proud people who have never depended on others are too ashamed to come forward and ask for assistance. Also, pride will usually not permit Jews to classify themselves as poor, while language barriers also prevent refugees from getting the services to which they are entitled. Another thing is the cost of living. Kosher food is usually more expensive than "regular" food, Jewish schools cost money, and so does the Synagogue. And then there was the problem that religious Jews were often only able to work five days a week, because their Jewishness forbade them to work on the Sabbath, while factories etc. were closed on Sundays. This made them less desirable as labour force in Christian communities.

Report on Immigration of Foreigners, 28 July 1888
(Source: London Metropolitan Police, H (Whitechapel) Division

The (Jewish) Immigrants (from Eastern Europe) are no doubt attracted to the United Kingdom by the propspect of obtaining a better livelihood and enjoying more freedom than they would in other countries.
They are quiet, inoffensive, and industrious, making the most of what they earn and generally abstemious as regards intoxicating liquors it being seldom they are seen the worse for drink in the streets. They have but little regard for cleanliness either in their dwellings or their persons. Upon their arrival here those without money appear to live either upon the charity of persons of their own nationality or by assistance from the various charitable institutions which have been established to meet such cases until they obtain employment or are assisted to emigrate.
They congregate in the poorest parts of Whitechapel and Spitalfields which consist principally of narrow streets and courts and which are very much overcrowded as in many instances more than one family occupy the same room. Their social condition is low...
I cannot learn that there is any system under which these poor people are brought to this country but they are probably more induced to come by the accounts given them by their friends who are here but owing to the circumstances in which, in many cases they arrive, they easily become the victims of designing persons who use them as the means of bringing down wages, they being willing to turn their hands to anything.

One people?
No. Although there are similarities between "native" Jews (the ones that often have lived in a country for generations) and the foreign Jewish "immigrants", like their ethnicity and religion, there are a lot of differences too, usually cultural.
In Amsterdam, from 1618 to 1660, there was mass immigration of poor Jews due to wars in Germany and Eastern Europe. These immigrants were seen to be an embarrassment and threat to the Sephardic Jews of Amsterdam.
Between 1885 and 1914 120,000 Eastern European Jews settled in Great Britain. Their poverty and foreignness drew unwanted attention to them and native-born Jews alike. English Jews believed that East European Jews threatened their own status and well-being. Dissimilarities in the leven of acculturation and assimilation were striking. The native Jews and the immigrants were never an undifferentiated mass.
The native Jews of Amsterdam in the mid-seventeenth century, and of London at the end of the nineteenth century, had similar responses to analogous waves of immigration. These two groups employed comparable mechanisms of self-identification and differentiation. Moreover, these responses and reactions are a prism through which transformations in the societies of the Dutch Republic and Great Britain can be viewed.
Other countries have experienced the same problems between native Jews and their expelled brethren.

Contemporary poverty of Jews
Nowadays 800,000 North American Jews live at or near the poverty line; 266,000 Jews in the former Soviet Union; one third of all Israeli children. There are 24,000 poor Jews in Argentina and an estimated 5,400 in Ethiopia. People praying to return home to Israel, recently divorced or widowed young mothers and fathers, victims of domestic abuse or cancer, Jewish seniors choosing between food and medicine all around the world.
The Metropolitan Council on Jewish Poverty estimates that 244,000 Jewish New Yorkers live in poverty. For the neediest few, there is literally nowhere left for them to turn when they are in need of a hot meal than friends, family, synagogues, and now, a small but growing number of kosher soup kitchens.
These 244,000 poor people represent 15% of the 1.66 million Jewish people in all Jewish households in the New York area.
There are also 104,000 “near poor” living in Jewish households in the eight-county New York area with incomes only marginally above the poverty line, making a total of 348,000 poor and near-poor people in Jewish households in the New York area.
Jewish Poverty has increased substantially in the last decade, while overall poverty levels in the nation have remained essentially stable; this increase is due largely to the influx of refugees from the former Soviet Union during the 1990’s.

There is a growing population of impoverished Jewish elderly, some immigrants, some American born, for whom Social Security no longer covers the rising costs of heat and medicine. These numbers are growing as the Jewish community ages and baby boomers enter the ranks of the AARP. The Jewish poor also include those of working age who are mentally or physically unable to work. Then there are those for whom a tragedy or job loss forces them into sudden poverty. All these are the majority of the faces of Jewish poverty, individuals who live in our cities and our suburbs, who need and deserve our support and assistance.
Jewish poverty represents a distinct and unique phenomena because of its persistent "invisibility." The Jewish poor are a minority among Jews because they are poor, and are a minority among the poor because they are Jews. They lack representation in both communities. This invisibility is a consequence of a convergence of factors regarding societal impressions of Jews in general, mobility patterns within the Jewish community, demographic characteristics of the Jewish poor, their underrepresentation in communal life, and the retrenchment and transformation of public and private social services.

From Babylonia to Bukharian Broadway
Jews from Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Georgia and Chechnya comprise the majority of the population of Queens. According to a New York Times article by Julia Moskin, there are over 40,000 Jews from Uzbekistan, who are known as Bukharian Jews, living in Queens, which is 90-95 percent of the entire community.
“Neither Ashkenazi nor Sephardi (the two major groups of Diaspora Jews),” Moskin writes, “the Bukharians say that their lineage goes directly back to the Babylonian captivity, before 500 B.C.
‘Our people are the ones who did not return to Jerusalem afterward, but remained in Asia,’ said Peter Pinkhasov, a paralegal at a Manhattan law firm who immigrated with his family from Tashkent in 1993.”
The members of this isolated Central Asian Judeo-Persian community now live in Rego Park, Forest Hills and Kew Gardens, Queens, and have established 108th street as “Bukharian Broadway,” a strip packed with kosher restaurants. Bukharian Jews are overwhelmingly uneducated, poor, Orthodox and lacking in English. Their needs are deep, but they are notably absent from most network of local Jewish organizations. Lacking representatives, programs or voices in all major Jewish organizations and media, the Bukharians survive from their own strength of will.
Shelly Goldman of Jews for Racial and Economic Justice (JFREJ), a New York City, membership-based social justice organization, described a phenomenon known as “double migration.” Thousands of individuals and families in New York immigrant communities emigrated from their places of birth (the Soviet Union, Ethiopia, et al), to Israel, and then from Israel to the United States.
“The double culture shock” Goldman said, “makes it especially hard for some immigrants to acclimate to life in New York.”
Finding a job, eating, finding affordable health care, and getting an education can become almost insurmountable obstacles, and though financial help is sometimes available from the established Jewish community, solidarity may be lacking.

Poverty in Israel
In Israel 25 percent of the population is living below the poverty line. Poverty rates in Israel reached a new peak in 2005, although they leveled off in 2006, according to statistics by the National Insurance Institute, the Israeli equivalent of the U.S. Social Security Administration. According to institute findings, one of every four Israelis -- 1.6 million people -- lives below the poverty line. Thirty-five percent of children are living in poverty, leaving Israel with this unhappy distinction: It ranks among Western countries with the greatest percentage of poor children, according to the Insurance Institute. "Children who grow up in poverty are more than likely to live in poverty as adults," said John Gal, an economist at Hebrew University. "They won't have the capacity, human capital and capabilities to be able to get out of poverty, to be mobile in society."
In fact, the Jewish poverty rate in the United States is higher than that in Israel. In Israel 25 percent of the population is considered poor, but about half is not Jewish.

Cost of Jewish (religious) living
The high cost of Jewish living is evident even from so mundane an item as the grocery bill. Families observing the dietary laws must expect to pay a premium for kosher food. Poultry slaughtered according to Jewish ritual law costs 50 to 100 percent more than its nonkosher equivalent, and when it comes to beef, prices rise by many multiples. Monitoring the spending of an observant family in Houston, a recent CNN report noted the high kosher price differential. Among the anecdotes: a brisket purchased at a kosher store was over seven times more expensive than the same cut of beef at the nearest nonkosher supermarket. Even canned and bottled items sold at many supermarkets can cost several-fold more if they bear a kosher certification on their label. Prices routinely surge around the Jewish holidays, with no time more costly than Passover, an eight-day holiday that can set observant Jews back by many hundreds if not thousands of dollars owing to the numerous dietary practices.
Then there are membership fees. Synagogue dues can range from a few hundred dollars to well over $3,000 for the purposes of supporting a staff of professionals and maintaining physical facilities. (Some synagogues set the “suggested dues” for families earning more than $250,000 at $6,000 a year.) In addition, they impose a range of payments to help defray expenses for special programs, school tuition, and building funds. When all was said and done, the Jewish family in Houston featured on CNN expended $3,600 a year at its synagogue, which happens to be Orthodox—the Jewish subgrouping that tends to charge the lowest congregational dues. To this we might add a hidden cost: more traditionally observant Jews must live in easy walking distance of a synagogue because they will not drive on the Sabbath and holidays, precisely the days they are most likely to attend religious services. In a Jewish variation of the first law of real estate—location, location, location—the values of homes near synagogues tend to be more expensive.
Jews often join a local Jewish Community Center where they can partake of cultural and educational programs, arts activities, recreational facilities, and create for themselves and their children a social bond with other Jews. Membership fees covering all these activities can run between $1,000 and $2,500 for a family.
Above and beyond these essentials for Jewish living are contributions in support of charities. Close to home, the local federation of Jewish philanthropy and Jewish educational institutions require support; on the national level, funding is needed by agencies that engage in everything from advocacy to collecting funds for Israeli institutions, sponsoring Jewish religious and cultural life, and aiding Jews abroad. The family monitored by CNN donated $5,000 a year to various charitable causes.
By far the greatest costs for many families are incurred from Jewish education. A considerable minority of families now enrolls its children in the three most expensive forms of Jewish education: day schools meeting five or even six days a week, usually for seven to 10 hours a day; residential summer camps, which run sessions lasting from three to seven or eight weeks; and extended programs in Israel for a summer, semester, or year. Schools with well-appointed facilities and an enriched educational program matched by a panoply of extracurricular activities can cost about as much as prep school—more than $30,000 a year per student. Schools housed in bare facilities with only a limited number of classes devoted to general studies—which cater primarily to the most insular Orthodox—may charge only a few thousand dollars a year. But most day schools charge somewhere between $15,000 and $20,000 a year for each child. Residential summer camps can cost between $650 to more than $800 a week. And trips to Israel range from $7,000 to $9,000 for a summer, to $18,000 for 10 months at a religious school, and even more for programs in which students can earn college credit.
Why do parents spend these sums of money? For the same reason so many American parents expend staggering sums on college tuition: they believe they are getting value for their dollar.
Adding things up, an actively engaged Jewish family that keeps kosher and sends its three school-age children to the most intensive Jewish educational institutions can expect to spend somewhere between $50,000 and $110,000 a year at minimum just to live a Jewish life.