Tuesday, February 17, 2009

Scratching the Surface of Status

The greatest burden I have had to encounter in the Jewish community is that of the burden of status. There are three main factors that I have found to be the most defining of ones position, authority, or even reputation. Those are:

-Wealth
-Family Name
-Religious Scholarship

The Jewish community, and especially the orthodox sector, is dominated by these three rungs that manifest themselves within community organizations and also in the minutia of daily life. 

As an orthodox person, especially, a young person, your goal is to fit in as a model member of the community. In your youth this begins by attaining the praise of teachers and rabbi’s and developing a good reputation—a very loaded word I will try to get in to greater depth in the future—the next stage for which the entire notion of the reputation is based upon is the crucial goal of getting a good shiduch. Getting a shiduch, but a good one from “good family” no less is a very crucial. Ones entire status and by extension ones family’s is very much summed up and laid bare by the types of potential shiduch options that are presented to a young man or woman of marrying age, which is usually between 20 and 23. If you have a bad reputation upon entering marriageable age, then forget it, you’re through. No one will want you. No one in the upper echelons of the “Jewish upper class” at least. 

Rich people can essentially do no harm. They are I would say worshipped. A rich mans child will receive more praise and respect than a poor mans child despite behavior or the essential content of that child’s character. Rich people are praised endlessly. If you grew up in an orthodox community (OC) then you know what I’m talking about. This is not to say that if a rich mans child and a poor mans child act up in school that they wont receive the same punishment—they may or may not—but it does mean that sins damaging to ones reputation perpetrated by a rich kid will wash away with far greater ease than a poor kids will, no question. Long after a rich kid has moved into the upper echelons of society the poor one will still be struggling to clear his good name. I am sure that this is not exclusive to the Jewish community, but I am discussing a community, which allegedly maintains itself by the dictates of a merciful and charitable God who has commanded his people to compassionately love and honor the convert, poor and orphaned. Being rich is a guarantee of social success and community worship. Not to mention protection. For example whenever an orthodox Jew steps into the lime light for some infamous reason, like the recent Rubashkin debacle, the community will draw its wagons around the person in question, poo-pooing any attempts at criticizing that person \within the community, not because the person is orthodox, but because he is orthodox and rich—the combo is important. 
Relevant sub factors include: publicized philanthropy, relationship/proximity to religious leaders, and commitment to orthodox “values”, children in orthodox schools, synagogue attendance/displays.

A good family means coming from family with a last name that has maintained or developed a good reputation throughout extended generations or at least many years. This may mean a name that has been made well by virtue of wealthy or scholarship. For example a name like Rockefeller or Kennedy in the non-Jewish world will automatically make an impression if not open a few doors. The Jewish world has names like these two. Being from a good family is a guarantee, like being rich, of at least better chances for community success than those less surnamicaly fortunate. Relevant sub factors include: lineage, extent of lineage/Yihus, important personalities in family history-no matter how far removed, country or city in Europe family is most closely associated with.

Being scholarly is important too. It is really the least of the three. Being very scholarly does carry its advantages. But unlike wealth and having a good name it is of these three the most easily overlooked and nullified by reputation—and most important, it is the one most easily faked, not least of which is because it actually comes with an easily replicated uniform and sometimes a certain haircut. Relevant sub factors include: Yeshivas attended, sectoral association, dress, payot, type of hat/brand and sectoral designation, visibility with synagogues and study halls, extent of public ritual stringency, family name (crucial insofar as a someone who is scholarly and from a good family leads to an enhanced aura of scholarship). 

 Having the three of these is a great thing to posses. These 3 social rungs make one untouchable, regardless to the content of ones character. You can be a literal scoundrel, but with wealth, name, and the appearance of scholarship your community will let you get away with murder.  

Needless to say, being poor, having no family name of relevance, and lacking overt signs of scholarship is nearly akin to being stricken with an infectious disease. You become an untouchable in the Indian caste sense of the word. Being a Ba’al Teshuvah is bad, being a convert is really bad. The only types of potential shiduch matches that will be presented will be those viewed as similarly afflicted, or as Hitler put it, similar types of harmonious bastards. 

Understanding this system, my lack of value in it, its intense prejudice and hypocrisy is what lead me away from black hat life and into an investigation of the broader spectrum of Jewish life. 


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