Uncomfortable Conversations with a Jew

by Emmanuel Acho

Jews are just over 2 percent of the US population, but they are the target of 63 percent of religion-based attacks.

Another interesting thing to understand about Judaism before we start is that it’s not a missionary religion. Unlike other Abrahamic traditions such as Christianity and Islam, we’re not out there trying to convert people. Traditionally, Judaism makes it really hard to join on purpose because, well, being a Jew isn’t a walk in the park. It includes rules and restrictions, not to mention membership to a group with a long history of ongoing oppression. So, we don’t want to just build numbers; we want people who understand what it means to commit to this crew. Plus, we don’t believe that people have to be Jewish in order to have a connection to God or have a sense of purpose in the world.

Judaism is a religion, a culture, and an ethnicity; it’s a belief system, a tradition, and a bloodline. In one way or another, it can be all those things. Every Jew Jews differently. My dad was a full-on atheist, and he was just as Jewish as the most observant Jew you can find. One is equally Jewish whether they are a devout practitioner of the faith or if they’re a part-timer for the High Holidays. It’s also safe to say that the Jewish community as a whole is a mishmash.

As the comedian Alan King joked, most Jewish holidays go something like this: “They tried to kill us, we won, let’s eat.”

A more appropriate and nuanced concept for understanding how all Jews are related is that of an ethno-religion, which is a vast group of people who do happen to share a distinctive culture, ancestry, belief system, and/or language.

just like not all Nigerian immigrants have multiple advanced degrees, not all Jews are rich. And the fact that some are well-to-do is also a new chapter for us. It’s not like the Jewish people came to America from Europe, or wherever else, swimming in cash. They were mostly dirt-poor refugees escaping generations of persecution. What they did have, though, was thousands of years of culture, tradition, and dedication—not to money, not to global domination, but to the sacredness of education and family values and community. And while it’s true that Jewish people do earn more income relative to people of other religions and ethnic groups, it doesn’t stack up to some glaring disparity—Jews do not control huge amounts of global wealth. A private global wealth firm has estimated the figure at about 1.1 percent. According to that same firm, the wealthiest people on this planet by religion are overwhelmingly Christian, controlling about 55 percent of worldwide wealth.

there is a difference between saying “there is more Jewish representation in X industry than the relative population” and “the Jews control X or Y.” There’s nothing antisemitic about being factual, and of course there are a lot of Jews working in Hollywood. But the jump from representation to control is where you start to dabble in stereotypes and dangerous mythology.

I would also argue that it’s not that we’re taking over, it’s that we’re—duh duh duh—over-contributing.III Meaning relative to our tiny population, we’ve, yes, made huge contributions. Jews are just shy of 0.2 percent of the world’s population and yet they are the recipients of 22 percent of Nobel Prizes, plus we have left our mark in finance, law, medicine, media, literature, music, and the arts. I mean, when Oppenheimer (a Jew) and Barbie (invented by a Jew) swept the box offices in 2023, all I could think was Talk about the gamut of Jewish contributions to our country! But not as part of a worldwide Jewish agenda or at the expense or exclusion of anyone else. That’s something we Jews should be very proud of—but again, we try to hide it because the idea of Jews having too much control has been a very, very convenient reason to kill us.

if you scan the Fortune 500—as in, the people who run the biggest industries in the world—it reads more like an Easter dinner RSVP list than a Passover Seder invite.