The GOP's Jewish Slur

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Mark Wilson / Getty Images The Anti-Defamation League is up in arms over two South Carolina Republicans’ revival of an old stereotype. Peter Beinart asks: Is calling Jews thrifty really so offensive?

This week, in an act of vicious anti-Semitism, Edwin O. Merwin Jr. and James S. Ulmer, chairmen of the Bamberg County and Orangeburg County, South Carolina, Republican parties, respectively, co-authored an op-ed in which they accused Jews of taking good care of their money. “Jews who are wealthy,” they wrote, “got that way not by watching dollars but instead by taking care of the pennies and the dollars taking care of themselves.” Then they compounded the offense by suggesting that South Carolina Republican Senator Jim DeMint shares those Hebraic virtues. Local Democrats quickly called their statement “disgusting” and “unconscionable,” and demanded that they resign. Now Merwin and Ulmer are apologizing like their political lives depend on it, which, of course, they do.

Suggesting that Jews have prospered by cheating gentiles would indeed be anti-Semitic. But suggesting that Jews have disproportionately prospered because they’re honest and frugal, which is what Merwin and Ulmer suggested, is the exact opposite.

I share the outrage at this hate crime. In fact, in an act of solidarity, I too hereby apologize. For my entire life, at bar mitzvahs, around Shabbat tables, even while I was supposed to be davening in shul, I too have accused Jews of possessing good economic habits and prospering as a result. (Though, in my defense, I have never gone so far as to suggest that those good habits were shared by the GOP.) Speaking to Jewish audiences, I have repeatedly defamed my people by recounting Milton Himmelfarb’s famous line that “Jews earn like Episcopalians but vote like Puerto Ricans.” The fact that my fellow Jews invariably reacted to this comment with laughter rather than calls to the Anti-Defamation League is a sign, I suppose, of how widely this cancer extends. Some listeners, I am duty-bound to report, even reprimanded me for suggesting that Jews only earn as much as Episcopalians when, in fact, they insisted, we surely earn more.

Given how widespread this form of anti-Semitism has become, even within the Jewish community itself, it is worth asking: What, exactly, did Merwin and Ulmer do wrong? They spread ancient and vicious stereotypes about Jews, of course. But where is the ancient and vicious stereotype? If it’s anti-Semitic to say that Jews have disproportionately prospered in the United States, then let’s condemn Nathan Glazer, Himmelfarb, and all the other sociologists who have studied the question. That Jews have disproportionately prospered in the United States happens to be manifestly true, which raises the question of why. Suggesting that they have done so by cheating gentiles—by prioritizing money over integrity, beauty, or patriotism—would indeed be anti-Semitic. That charge has gotten a lot of Jews killed over the millennia. But suggesting that Jews have disproportionately prospered because they’re honest and frugal, which is what Merwin and Ulmer suggested, is the exact opposite. It is, in fact, the most benign explanation for Jewish economic success. Which is why Jews generally favor it themselves.

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