Try the following word association with your non-Jewish friends. Say “day,” and they’ll say “night.” Say “boy,” and they’ll say “girl.”
Say “Jew,” and in most cases, they’ll say “money.” Not because they’re anti-Semitic, but because that’s what the word “Jew” conjures up for most people. That Jews have money, are good at making money, desire money — and are very generous with their money once they have it.
It was a stereotype reinforced by a picture on the front page of the New York Times business section the day after Rosh Hashanah. It showed nervous Jewish Wall Street traders outside one of the largest synagogues in New York checking their BlackBerrys for the latest market news on one of the holiest days of the Jewish calendar.
Could anyone imagine this happening outside St. Peter’s Basilica at midnight mass — a bunch of Catholics nervously checking market fluctuations, or Protestants outside the National Cathedral on Good Friday, checking to see if their portfolios were up or down?
Many people in the United States see Wall Street as synonymous with Jews. That’s why a wave of anti-Semitism has erupted on the Internet in the wake of Wall Street’s collapse. The suggestion that Wall Street is “Jewish” is another anti-Semitic canard.
Still, many Jews do work on Wall Street, and the recent financial turmoil has forced us all to re-examine what constitutes Jewish security. Jews in the United States have influence well beyond their numbers, because they are financially prosperous and well organized. But is that what we wish to be principally known for?
The collapse of the American financial markets might, paradoxically, have given the American Jewish community a new idea we should embrace. Once, when Jews had no money and no homeland and were the most persecuted people on earth, they found security in their families and communities.
Other nations mastered power and territory. Jews mastered relationships and human connections. We had rock-solid marriages that produced ethical and secure children who went on to form communities of steel.
Crusaders could attack us and Cossacks could assault us, but they could never pry us from one another, bonded as we were by ties of familial strength. Jewish values, emphasizing the sanctity of human life ahead of any and all material objects, were the glue that kept these relationships so sturdy.
I propose that the Jewish community make an effort once again to revitalize our relationships. As I have repeatedly argued, the Western world’s principal problem today is not that it does not know how to make money, but rather that it no longer knows how to sustain a relationship.
Divorce affects about half of all Western families, singles date endlessly without committing and children look to celebrities and sports heroes rather than their parents as their principal source of inspiration.
Men do not know how to respect women, and women do not know how to respect themselves. The crisis in the Western world is not financial, but a crisis of values. Isn’t that what all our financial experts have been saying, that the Wall Street collapse was brought about by greed and material insatiability? A culture that conditions people to believe happiness will come from possessions rather than relationships is bound to collapse.
Why are all these families in America collapsing? What happened to family values? The Jewish community forfeited the conversation about “family values” to our Christian brothers and sisters — too many of whom, unfortunately, turned it into a conversation about abortion and gay marriage. Since these were never the real issues affecting families, the values that men, women and children so desperately need were never injected into the culture.
But the good news is it’s not too late. We Jews can earn our seat at the table by bringing the light of Jewish values, especially as it pertains to mastering relationships, to a world thirsting to know how to start loving again.
Rabbi Shmuley Boteach hosts a daily radio show on mastering relationships on “Oprah and Friends,” on XM satellite radio. His upcoming book, “The Kosher Sutra,” will be published in January.