Steven Silbiger - The Jewish Phenomenon: Seven Keys to the Enduring Wealth of a People

Seven Keys to the Enduring Wealth of a People

Revised Edition

Steven Silbiger

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Ywould like to thank John Yow, my editor at Longstreet Press, who immediately saw the potential of the project and made invaluable contributions to the book. I would also like to thank my editors who provided me a greater sensitivity and perspective: John Braun, Helen Gioulis and Rachel Silbiger, my mom.

Comments, questions? E-mail the author at Jewish75@juno.com.

JJteven Spielberg. Ralph Lauren. Sergey Brin. Michael Dell. They're all successful, at the top of their fields. They're all fabulously wealthy. And they're all Jewish. Those three characteristics-successful, wealthy and Jewish-are linked repeatedly in America today. And it is no accident. Jewish Americans are, as a group, the wealthiest ethnic group in America. But the factors that work together to create Jewish wealth, which I identify in this book, can be applied to individuals and groups from any background.

When this book was originally written both The Millionaire Next Door and The Gifts of the Jews shared the Neu, York Times best-seller lists. But despite this obvious interest in wealth, on one hand, and the Jewish people, on the other, the two subjects have not been dealt with together. The Gifts of the Jews confines its discussion to the contributions that Judaism has made to American culture, including monotheism, the Ten Commandments and the Sabbath. But what largely defines Jews in the popular imagination is their economic success and the accomplishments that made it possible. Perhaps Jews and their wealth have not become a focus for discussion because whenever Americans discuss ethnicity and money, the conversation tends to become heated. It does not have to be that way. The extraordinary story of Jewish-American success contains lessons for all of us.

Many authors have written books about business success, trying to find a pattern that we can apply to all business organizations. What makes a company successful? Disney, Coca-Cola, Procter & Gamble, Google ... how have they overcome challenges and become so successful? In examining the phenomenon of Jewish-American success, this book reveals the principles that can be applied to your life. And it is important to note that the wealth created by Jews is much more than just money; it includes advances in the arts, sciences and humanities that made the money possible.

A recent Los Angeles Times article describes the gap that The Jewish Phenomenon bridges. "The easy temptation is just to offer a laundry list of Jews and their achievements-a Hall of Fame of Nobel Prize winners, musicians and artists, a parade of business leaders, movie moguls, educators, journalists and entertainers who have influenced the American scene. Yet in searching for a deeper answer to the question-a theory that might explain the contributions of people as diverse as Howard Stern and Albert Einstein-there's a silence in the literature about Judaism and American life." The seven "keys" described in this book bring the silence to an end.

About half of American Jews marry gentiles, prompting experts to project that the Jewish-American community will shrink to half its size by 2050. This statistic lends urgency to the investigation of Jewish success today. As Rabbi David Wolpe of Sinai Temple, the oldest Conservative Jewish congregation in Los Angeles, explained to the writer for the Los Angeles Times, "The farther away you get from the source of your tradition, the less of a contribution you might be expected to make in a place like America. We could lose something precious."

The Bell Curve, published with a storm of controversy in 1994, went down a slippery slope by examining the genetic IQ component of the success ofJews and other groups-an approach that alienated Jews and Gentiles alike. During the debate over The Bell Curve, the Union of American Hebrew Congregations rightly stated, "As Jews, we know too well how these theories have been used against us ... to justify hatred, discrimination, even murder and genocide."' The Bell Curve's sharp rhetoric and dense statistics serve no useful purpose for two reasons: the science does not pass critical review, and there would be nothing to be learned if success lay in our genetic code at birth. The Jewish Phenomenon takes a positive position, that the Jewish people have been successful because of a combination of factors related to the Jewish religion and culture, and a collective historical experience. These are things that everyone and any group can examine and learn from.

Anti-Semitism has a long history, and it is by no means dead. Throughout that long history, the Jews' success has been decried as the reason for other people's problems. Even President Richard Nixon, in his Watergate paranoia, saw the Jews as his enemies. In the famed "Nixon Basement Tapes," Nixon told chief of staff H. R. Haldeman, "What about the rich Jews? The IRS is full of Jews, Bob. Go after 'em like a son-of-a-bitch! "While institutional antiSemitism has been virtually eliminated in America, on a personal level antiSemitism is very much alive.

Today an isolated anti-Semitic act such as the painting of a Nazi swastika on a synagogue makes front-page news and clergy from all denominations condemn it. The random shooting of three children by a madman at a Jewish community center in Los Angeles in 1999 brought worldwide outrage. But just seventy-five years ago Henry Ford, "Mr. Model T," conducted a propaganda campaign against the "International Jew." Ford believed that the Jews were involved in an international conspiracy to undermine the world economy. He spent millions of dollars investigating and publicizing his suspicions, but he could never uncover any evidence of the twisted plot.

Indeed, even today many Jewish people and the press would rather reserve the subject of their success for private conversations rather than fuel the fires of anti-Semitism.The Bernie Madoff fraud in 2008 showed this when an open discussion of Jewish wealth in America was avoided. Older Jewish Americans, in particular, have downplayed their success and their Judaism in an effort to avoid unwanted attention and possible trouble. But in recent years the Jewish community has become less reluctant to trumpet its accomplishments. In Schmoozing: The Private Conversations of American Jews, younger American Jews expressed the opinion that "we debase ourselves when we hide our achievements out of fear of what the gentiles will think"' In December 1996, the Jewish magazine Moment published a cover story about the Jewish billionaires of the Forbes 400.; Such an article would have been unthinkable a few years before, and even today such reporting draws criticism. In any case, Jews remain much more defensive than the facts warrant. In fact this book's first edition was met with great hostility in the Jewish community and the politically correct press. A recent study by Daniel Yankelovich and his staff revealed that 25 percent of Americans believe Jews have too much power in American business. But 75 percent of Jews think that others think Jews have too much power.'