Myth: Jews Are Greedy

Know It

One of the most prominent and persistent stereotypes about Jews is that they are greedy and avaricious, hoping to make themselves rich by any means. They are seen both as relentless in the pursuit of wealth and also as stingy misers determined not to let any money slip from their grasp. They are imagined to exert control over the world’s financial systems, but are also accused of regularly cheating friends and neighbors out of a buck.

Antisemitism Uncovered video on the antisemitic trope of greed.

Sometimes the accusation of Jewish greed comes from observations or assumptions about Jewish wealth, perceived as inherently undeserved. While, as of a 2016 Pew research report, American Jews, as a whole, do represent the highest-earning religious group in the United States, more than half of American Jewish households earn less than $99,000 per year, with 31 percent earning less than $49,000.¹Pew Research Center, “How income varies among U.S. religious groups,” Oct. 11, 2016, https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/10/11/how-income-varies-among-u-s-religious-groups/. To demonize the economic privilege of wealthier American Jewish households as “greed” or as a hunger for power is to imply that such wealth is necessarily undeserved, foreclosing the possibility that the household income of Jewish high-earners reflects values of hard work and sincere commitments to the ethical, medical, legal, cultural and other social fields that our societies reward.

Artist unknown, The Way Of The Red Sea Is A Way Of Blood (1944), poster, U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum https://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/irn544978 https://www.middleeasteye.net/discover/jews-money-anti-semitism-hate-myth-was-born-jewish-museum-london

The stereotype of Jewish greed took hold in the Middle Ages, when Jews were frequently associated with money. Jews typically had restrictions placed on their economic activity and were sometimes prohibited from owning land. As described earlier, sometimes the only option available to earn a living in such circumstances was through high-interest crediting, a role for which Christian rulers sometimes recruited Jews, as Christians were prohibited from it. This made for a complicated and tense dynamic between Jews and Christian society that lasted well beyond medieval times. It made it easy for leaders to position Jews as a scapegoat, as the cause of the common people’s financial woes; it also compounded the perception among some Christian theologians of Jews as immoral and devoid of virtue.

Lewis, E.G., Shylock, from Merchant of Venice (1863), watercolor, Folger Shakespeare Library https://teachingshakespeareblog.folger.edu/2016/05/11/recognizing-shylocks-humanity-merchant-venice/

Jews were often made the villains in literature and art of the time, reflecting a widespread depiction of Jews as unscrupulous, money-hungry and working against the interest of the honest citizen. A famous character in literary history is Shylock, the greedy Jewish money lender in Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice. Eventually this stereotype worked its way into modern vernacular: “To Jew someone down” became a common expression meaning to bargain unscrupulously for a lower price.²Ronald J. Berger, “To Be or Not to Be: The Holocaust and Jewish Identity in the Postwar Era,” Humanity & Society 31, no. 1 (2007): 27.

The charge against alleged Jewish greed has continued into the 21st century. In 2006, for example, Ilan Halimi, a 23-year-old Jewish Frenchman was kidnapped, tortured for three weeks and killed by a gang in Paris that was hoping to extract $500,000 in ransom money from his family. They had assumed that, because he was Jewish, he’d be rich. But in fact, Halimi was a cell phone salesman of modest means whose working class North African family belied the stereotype.³Julia Neuberger, Antisemitism: What It Is. What It Isn’t. Why It Matters. (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2019), 126-127.

Some Jews continue to be stereotyped as corrupted by an insatiable appetite for money and are often accused of hoarding wealth that they use to bribe people in power. Some continue to assert the false belief that the Jews pull the strings of the world’s financial markets. There are numerous conspiracies, many centered around the Rothschild family, about Jewish control of the economy and important economic institutions like the U.S. Federal Reserve and the International Monetary Fund. Underpinning such belief is the idea that Jews are hungry for access to money and control over it.⁴ADL, “Jewish ‘Control’ of the Federal Reserve: A Classic Anti-Semitic Myth,” https://www.adl.org/resources/backgrounders/jewish-control-of-the-federal-reserve-a-classic-anti-semitic-myth.

Bohmer, Julius and Delius, H., Die Generalpumpe (c. 1840-1849), lithograph, Rothschild Archive https://www.rothschildarchive.org/exhibitions/rothschild_in_caricature/die_generalpumpe

See It

• “When a J[ew] tries to convince you to fight a complete stranger to the death so they can get rich just say “no.” They’ll call you an anti semite [sic] and scream and cry and say you’re unhinged but it’s the right move. All they do is squeal and lie to try and get you to fight their wars. It’s a crazy fetish they have and I think it comes from horrible parenting and watching pornos from a young age.”
  — Owen Benjamin, Twitter, 10/25/23 ⁵https://www.adl.org/resources/blog/owen-benjamin-what-you-need-know

• Myth of Greed: Coronavirus post from Telegram

• “Jewish people have owned the Black voice…The Jewish community, especially in the music industry, in the entertainment [industry] period, they’ll take one of us, the brightest of us, right, that can really feed a whole village, and they’ll take us and milk us till we die.”– Ye, the artist formerly known as Kanye West, on “Drink Champs,” 10/16/22)
  ⁶Source: https://www.adl.org/resources/blog/ye-kanye-west-what-you-need-know
• “The war in Jewkraine is all about the $$. Follow the money. Us tax payers are funding the rebuilding of infastructure [sic] and real estate for the jews. They bought for pennies on the dollar. They need more land. Israel our greatest ally thanks you once again American patriots.👍👍”
  — GhostEzra, prominent QAnon Telegram Channel 9.24.2022
• “charitable giving is a way for rich people to amass money—power—and then grant it as they see fit personally, enriching their allies, and bypassing much-needed resource redistribution. The concentration of wealth in New England demonstrates the importance of combatting zionism[sic] locally.”
  — The Mapping Project, an anonymous project that alleges to map ties between Jewish institutions and real or perceived injustices like the “colonization of Palestine. “Boston’s Zionist NGO Circuit,” June 2022
• “How/is this legal?! Dirty zionist money [sic] is running rampant through the US political system to the highest levels of govt”
  — Noura Khouri, activist with Al-Awda, an antisemitic organization with a history of supporting terrorism, Dec. 4, 2022
• On September 8, 2017, a Jewish family was kidnapped, assaulted and robbed in Seine-Saint-Denis in France. Convinced that they had money, the assailants told them: “You Jews have money, we have nothing. You Jews are spoiled by the earth, and we are left behind […] You are Jews, you are rich, you have money, we take from you to give to others.”⁷Esther Paolini, “Les juifs vous avez de l’argent”: la séquestration violente d’une famille juive jugée à bobigny,” BFM TV, June 22, 2021, https://www.bfmtv.com/police-justice/proces/les-juifs-vous-avez-de-l-argent-la-sequestration-violente-d-une-famille-juive-jugee-a-bobigny_AN-202106220007.html.
• “It’s all about the Benjamins, baby.” – Congresswoman Ilhan Omar, referencing U.S. aid to Israel, 2019.
• In 2004, clothing and home goods retailer Urban Outfitters, released a T-shirt with the words “Everyone Loves a Jewish Girl” surrounded by images of shopping bags and dollar signs.
• “When we talk about the Jews today, what we’re looking at…People who have just embraced an ideology that is built around the love of money, okay. You say, ‘Well, why are the Jews contrary to all men?’ Because we know that throughout history, they’ve been known for banking. They’ve been known for charging interest and usury and doing predatory lending. That’s one of the reasons why they’ve been contrary to all men.” – Pastor Steven Anderson, pastor and founder of the New Independent Fundamental Baptist (New IFB) movement with an extensive history of antisemitism, bigotry and holocaust denial, July 15, 2015⁸Faithful World Baptist, “1 Thessalonians 2 – Verse by Verse Bible Study,” July 15, 2015, https://www.faithfulwordbaptist.org/transcript_1thess_2.html.

Address It

Staluter, Hans, The Eternal Jew (1937), poster, Galerie Bilderwelt/Bridgeman Images http://www.danwymanbooks.com/Ewige1.jpg

The truth is that Jews, like all other people, exist across the spectrum of socio-economic status. It’s wrong to assume that a high proportion of wealthy Jews signifies Jewish greed, rather than, say, the rewards of disciplined hard work done for the benefit of the wider society. It’s also wrong to assume that their money will be put to nefarious use. Lastly, it’s wrong to assume that all Jews are even wealthy in the first place.

Keeping these truths in mind, we must remember that even when it’s intended as a compliment, statements like “Jews are good with money” or all “Jews are well-off” contribute to a dangerous stereotype.

…

If you are an educator, we invite you to use our lesson plans to examine and analyze each myth and guide learning on its impact of antisemitism on the Jewish community and society at large.