We will contribute the stereotype of Jews. That should not be the case. Mr. TBS in his short hand format has laid out the basis of their wealth. My opinion is strictly of American jews.
The jewish people never really had a good life. The ancestors of the modern Jewish person served as slaves to the ancient Egyptians. They were lead by Moses to a “safe place” which is today Israel. Hardly safe, in Israel Jewish combated the ancestors of Islam over the area (yes this is a multi-millennial war) and faced an occupation by Rome. Things didn’t really improve after the whole Jesus incident. Once the Christian’s spiritually conquered Rome, the Jewish population spread out. In Europe they were again persecuted on a regular basis.
In Christian beliefs one can not loan money to another and charge interest. This is known as usury. In fact, the whole idea of working with money for a living was the equivalent of something Mike Rowe might have done back when the world was flat. Society looked down on tax collectors, currency exchangers, and any other types of people that worked with money. Jewish people similarly couldn’t lend money due to their views of usury, with a catch. They couldn’t charge interest to other Jews, but they didn’t have much of a problem charging interest to anyone else. As banking took off in Europe some Jewish folks were there to finance everything from wars to explorations to something called “the new world”. Banking became important to society. Over time Christians came around to the whole charging interest thing as well. Public opinion of Jewish people didn’t really change until after the Holocaust, but the stereotypes remain.
see an overwhelming representation of Jewish people within industries that revolve around the exchange of money. Without doing much research on the matter I am left to speculate as to why they are still involved with money. Jews are tight. They marry eachother, keep traditions close, and keep it in the family. Being so tight creates a powerful social network that even Harvard Business School grads would die for. They employ eachother and help eachother out. This isn’t discriminating against other religions, it’s a classic case of how well networking works. This would account for why they have centralized around certain industries and not much has changed over time.
Today many Jewish people are captains of business. Not only have they dominated finance, but they have some serious representation in technology and entertainment. As a result of rising to such prominent positions within American society Jewish people get much more scrutiny than their relatively small population would normally account for. Depending on how you count they’re about 2% of the population in the US. However thanks to the social network, a strong work ethic, and perhaps a little divine restitution Jewish people as a whole are a successful population. There will be a higher percent of Jewish doctors and Lawyers as well. This is consistent with their focus on education.
This might happen to other immigrant community as well. You see the Gujarati groups networking and cooperating. You also see Koreans groups doing similarly. I am sorry if you are a TB, that trait is missing. You see it to an extent on Telugu groups working well, they control all south Indian Temples, in-spite of TB starting these temples. Even in the IT sector most of the new consultants coming to USA are from Andhra Pradesh.
