Jewish Choices, Jewish Voices: Power

Introduction: Power

xi Introduction: Power Forms of Power “Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” Not so!—the Jewish tradition would say. Power is not in and of itself corrupting, any more than anything else in life is. It all depends on how those who have it use it. The truth, though, is that historically Jews did not have very much power in the terms in which it is usually measured—namely, militarily and politically. Jews ruled themselves only three times during their history: from Moses (1250 B.C.E.) to the fall of the First Temple (586 B.C.E.) and with it the first Jewish commonwealth; the period of the Maccabees (165–64 B.C.E.); and finally in the modern state of Israel (1948 on). Even during those times, the Jewish state was anything but a world power. If we look at the political influence of Jews, the picture is more mixed, for in some places and times Jews had considerable influence on the ruling powers. That is especially true in modern America, where, as of this writing, two of the nine Supreme Court justices are Jewish, the House of Representatives has some thirty Jewish members, and the Senate has thirteen, even though we constitute less than 2 percent of the U.S. population . That does not take into account all of the Jews who are now serving or who have served in government positions—from police officers on the street to cabinet secretaries. If we mean economic power, the picture is even more mixed. Although the vast majority of Jews in most times and places were poor, some Jews at some times in history accumulated great wealth and enjoyed the power that came with those resources. Because Christian rulers during the Middle Ages and early modern period generally forbade Jews from owning farms and engaging in agriculture, which was considered honorable, Jews were forced to earn a living in trade and banking, both of which were considered morally shady. The result, though, is that Jews sometimes had money to lend to others. Non-Jews then often resented the power that Jews had, as depicted famously by Shakespeare’s characterization of Shylock in The Merchant of Venice. As middle managers for Christian landowners, Jews were often the brunt of the anger of peasants, leading to many pogroms. Ultimately, anti-Semitic tracts, especially the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, depicted Jews as engaged in a worldwide conspiracy to rule the world. To this day, you sometimes hear, even in America, xii Jewish Choices, Jewish Voices: POWER claims that Jews run the federal government, especially in regard to American policy toward the Middle East, as well as the world of entertainment and the media. Jews certainly play important roles in those arenas beyond what our numbers would suggest, but we are far from running either Washington or Hollywood. Jews are also involved in the businesses that they have created—sometimes very successful businesses, like Home Depot, Dell Computers, Ben and Jerry’s, Victoria’s Secret, and Seagrams— and are active in large, multinational corporations; but we have far less economic power than anti-Semites would lead people to believe. The vast majority of the wealth of America is still in the hands of Christians, and white Anglo-Saxon Protestant Christians at that. Intellectual power is another matter. Here Jews have indeed excelled, both in times past and in contemporary times. Furthermore, the fields in which Jews have set the pace run the gamut from medicine and the biological sciences to the physical sciences, sociology and psychology (two fields largely created and populated by Jewish professionals), philosophy , political science, law, literature, music, art, drama, film, television, and technology. Jews constitute far more than 2 percent of the professorships in American universities, especially the most prestigious ones; and we have won Nobel Prizes far more than would ever be expected. The number of Jews in the legal and medical professions also goes beyond their percentage of the population, although the percentage of Jews in medical schools has recently declined appreciably. Even in the world of finance, still primarily the reserve of white Anglo-Saxon Protestants, Jews have taken increasingly significant roles in such fields as accounting and financial planning and management, including a U.S. secretary of the treasury. Finally, if Judaism has done nothing else, it has given the world an immense reservoir of spiritual and moral power. Christians and Muslims , adherents of Judaism’s two daughter religions, make up more...