Elyana Heigham[Type here] [Type here] [Type here]

KOSHER TRASH: THE

OTHERING OF THE MODERN
JEWISH WORKING-CLASS
Deconstructing mainstream Jewish Identity

Elyana Heigham
i6170356
Crucial Differences in the 21st Century
Philip Post
14/12/2017
Word Count: 3142
Elyana Heigham i6170356

Introduction:

In the United States, there has been a resurgence of anti-Semitic sentiment associated with the rise
of the Alt right and Neo-Nazi movements. Anti-Semitic sentiment is manifested in caricatures of
greedy Jewish bankers and a Jewish elite with plans for world domination that controls Hollywood
and politics. The Ex. KKK member and former Louisiana Senator David Duke even has an entire
section of his personal website dedicated to “Jewish Supremacy” and the caricature of the Jewish
elite (Slattery, 2017). While these stereotypes are insidious in their anti-Semitism, they also
harmful because they perpetrate the belief that Jews are all well-off as a result of being “good with
money” (Stabin, 2016). Not only are the middle-class and upper-class Jews threatened by these
stereotypes, the lower-class Jews are too. This paper seeks to illustrate how the the Jewish
working-class becomes marginalized and made socially invisible inside and outside of the modern-
day Jewish community. The research question is justified by the association with the collective
American Jewish identity with the middle-class values and experiences of education and attending
a religious institution; the exclusion of the lower-class from these Jewish experiences makes them
invisible within both the Jewish and non-Jewish communities in America.
The argument of this paper will first define the details of the collective mainstream Jewish
identity that is based upon being middle class. Then, how the mainstream Jewish identity is used
to appeal to assimilation of the Jewish community into modern American society will be explained.
Further, a parallel will be drawn between the use of Jewish identity within Jewish assimilation and
identity politics. The parallel will revolve around the homogenization of narrative and the
exclusion of experiences outside of a central narrative. Then, how the identity marginalizes the
Jews of the working-class by preventing their entry into the Jewish community will be explored.
Finally, the effects of the invisibility of working-class Jews on the perception of non-Jewish people
on the Jewish working class will be observed.

Deconstructing Jewish Identity

Jewish identity serves as a challenge within the Jewish community in that the Jews are not
always visibly distinguishable from their Christian counterparts. However, Jews have historically
been treated as different from their Gentile counterparts and have seen exclusion from society in
both Europe and America. The Jews are an ethnic minority whose identity is “constructed out of

2
Elyana Heigham i6170356

the material of language, religion, culture, appearance, ancestry, or regionality” (Nagel, 1994,
152-153). Jews are not only white or only black or only Asian (Greenebaum, 1999, p. 50). The
ambiguity as to whether or not Jews are a race arises because they are not as distinguishable as
Black people or Asian people are. As a result, new, non-visual boundaries must be constructed in
order to outline Jewish identity. These new boundaries revolve around class as a means of
creating Jewish identity. While Jews may be seen as “lacking class”, what they really lack are
visible class divisions (Greenebaum, 1999, p. 53). The consequences of the lack of vision class
divisions is a homogenization of Jewish class. The erasure of class lines within Judaism brings
about a “prevailing belief that all Jews are middle class” (Harrison, 1994).
Although Jews today are seen as being “predominantly upper middle class, in terms of
values, aesthetics, wealth, and occupation”, there is a theme of working-class roots (Alpen, 1992,
p.68). Across the majority of American Jews, there is the knowledge of Ashkenazic ancestors
working in sweatshops and living a working class life-style (Stabin, 2016). The history of Jews
working minimum wage in sweatshops is seen as just that: history (Stabin, 2016). However,
poverty is still a reality within Judaism and though the upper-middle class may constitute a large
chunk of the Jewish population, the entire Jewish population in America is not only upper-
middle-class. Recent estimates place as many as 44% of American Jews as making incomes at or
above $100,000 per year (Masci, 2016). However, there is still an addition 64% of Jews in the
US who make less. However, the thought of a working-class Jewish population is far outside of
the minds of both Jews and Gentiles.
This comes as a result of the upper-middle-class status of the Jewish mainstream being
reflected in the common experiences associated with American Jewish identity. Such common
experiences include going to temple and receiving an education. Going to temple requires money
for a membership and higher education in the US requires large sums of money for tuition. Thus,
Judaism and Jewish values become further connected to the possession of money and being
middle-class, excluding the working-class.
Jewish Assimilation
The exclusion of the working-class within the Jewish population serves a purpose of unifying the
American Jews as a means towards assimilation into American society. The singularity of the
mainstream Jewish identity creates a basis for a shared experience and caters to American
Christian society by aligning itself with it (Greenebaum, 1999, p.44). Not only are those who are

3
Elyana Heigham i6170356

Jewish raised with aspiration towards the upper middle class and professional success, so are the
majority of Americans. By reflecting these aspirations within a Jewish identity centered around
these values, the American Jews attempt to mark their similarity to the Gentile majority.
As a singular identity, the Jewish shared identity is meant to “speak more powerfully than
the pleas of a few isolated voices” (Crenshaw, 2005, p.61). That is to say, the more Jews who
embody the Jewish identity associated with middle class, the greater chance Jews have in being
integrated into American society. The more Jews that show themselves to be like Gentiles, the
closer the Jewish and non-Jewish worlds become. In this sense, Jewish identity becomes
homogenized in the quest for Jewish assimilation in a similar way to the homogenization of
experiences within identity politics. The class-based template of Jewish identity appeals to pre-
existing “structures of domination” as a means of making Jewish assimilation into Gentile
society more effective (Crenshaw, 2005, p. 61). It is far more likely for Jews to be welcomed
into society if they reaffirm its structure within their individual discourse. To do so is to further
align the Jewish world with the Gentile world, creating grounds for assimilation based on
similarity. However, Jews cannot merely be the same as Gentiles; they must be more useful to
American society. The need for Jews to not only exist within American society but to serve it
arises from the age old “Jewish Question”.
Answering the ‘Jewish Question’
Jewish individuals experience a double standard of not only needing to be middle class but of
needing to be successful within mainstream careers in areas such as law and medicine (Harrison
1994). The double standard arises from the Jewish Question. Essentially, the Jewish Question
asks the place that Jews have in mainstream European and American Society, if they have a
place at all. For a great deal of time, Jews existed outside of the rest of European society so their
inclusion in it needed to serve a purpose. As put by the French Honoreré Gabriel Mirabeau is
“are there ways of making the Jews more useful…in France?” (Judaken, 2017, p.562), although
the question can apply to any nation. Mirabeau’s point is that, in the eyes of non-Jews, Jews need
to be an asset to society in order to exist within it. The response of Jews to the skepticism is
shown within the class-associations of Jewish identity and the connected matter of Jewish
professional success. Those that are middle class are viewed as being beneficial to society which
provides the basis for their acceptance. Further, Jewish identity shows Jews working in careers to
serve their society. Thus arises the importance of Jewish professional success to Jewish identity

4
Elyana Heigham i6170356

and Jewish assimilation in America. The modern occupations of Jews as doctors or lawyers
display Jewish people as being beyond the contaminant of money and money-lending (Judaken,
2017, p.566). Jewish success in ‘noble’ careers can be seen as reactionary to a long history of
Jews being seen as sinister enemies of society. To portray themselves as being not enemies but
friends of society, the Jews further appeal to the Gentiles. However, Jewish success is dependent
on being middle class – to become a doctor or lawyer requires both a university education and
law school or medical school after that, both of which require a decent sum of money for tuition
(these are hackneyed examples, for sure, yet they illustrate Jews as serving society). As a result,
Jewish upper and middle class association puts the Jews in a position of power and independence
in society. Their wealth serves as an asset to the society and thus gives them a place within it.

Jewish Working Class Marginalization and Invalidation in Jewish Identity

While Jewish wealth and success is the ‘right’ answer to the Jewish Question, Jewish poverty is
the ‘wrong’ answer. The stigmas around poverty in America today depict those in poverty and on
welfare as ‘freeloaders’ who are abusing social benefits (Gertler, 1992, p.64). Gertler talks about
prejudice against those on welfare in scholarly settings in the United States, describing listening
as she heard her fellow students “deriding welfare bums” as being lazy, useless, and a burden to
society (Gertler, 1992, p. 64). If the basis of Jewish assimilation in the United States is on the
usefulness of Jews to society, to acknowledge working-class Jews in mainstream Jewish identity
would be to destroy the basis of Jewish assimilation and acceptance. As a result, Jewish identity
becomes homogenized to encompass the upper and middle classes, leaving those in lower classes
wondering if they are even Jewish at all. While the Jewish upper class is given a place within
society, the Jewish working-class is denied a place in both society and mainstream Judaism.
Thus the Jewish working-class is made invisible in mainstream society and Judaism which
causes an incommensurability of identity, as being Jewish is seen as not be working-class and
vice-versa (Stabin, 2016). As a result, both the oppression of Jews and the oppression of the
middle class “are interlocking…(creating)…the ‘matrix of domination’” which subjugates and
alienates the working-class Jews (Greenebaum, 1999, p.44). In addition, the prevalence of upper-
middle-class experiences within Jewish experience isolates working-class Jews from the general
Jewish population on the social platforms of both the temple and the university.

5
Elyana Heigham i6170356

The Temple and Social Exchange

One of the basic practices of Judaism is to attend a temple. However, those who wish to attend a
Temple must pay an annual fee. While there are attempts to make the costs of membership equal
by having each member pay an equal percentage of their income per year, inequality occurs at
incomes below the poverty line. While 3% of annual income may not seem like much to a person
living a comfortable middle-class lifestyle, 3% could be the difference between survival and
death for a working class Jewish family (Stabin 2016). The temple as a platform for Jewish
exchange isolates the working-class Jew from the Jewish community because “they (don’t) have
the money to get involved” (Alpen, 1992, p. 67). Not only is money required to practice Jewish
faith, it is also required to become a part of the Jewish community. Beyond being a house of
worship, the temple serves as a platform for Jews to socialize and interact. Thus, to be excluded
from the temple means to be excluded from that community. Thus, the working-class Jews are
already put outside of both the community and the faith, leading to feelings of isolation and
alienation. As a result, these Jews are made invisible to those within mainstream Judaism
because they have no platform to interact with the community on.
Education
Education also holds great importance within modern American Judaism, originating from “two
interwoven traditions of scholarship and learning among early modern Jews” (Shear, p. 522).
While Judaism calls for the study of the Torah, biblical study has expanded to encompass both
science and philosophy (Shear, 2017, p. 523). In the modern day, attending a university is seen
as the ultimate source of education. As a result, attending college is seen as a perquisite to being
a Jewish adult in America (Gertler, 1992, p. 64). Yet, attending college is not purely a result of
intellectual competence; it is also the result of financial competence. While scholarships can be
offered to low-income students straight out of high school, those going to college later on in life
have a harder time making money and time for education. In Gertler’s introduction, she discusses
the difficultly of attending college while having children and being on welfare. She reflects on
having to use “college loan money to buy clothes for (her) children” and the pressures of
parenthood and poverty causing her to turn in less-than-satisfactory work (1992, p.64). When
going to university is so financially difficult, low-income Jews are not able to receive higher
education. When this happens, the working-class Jew does not only fail in the fulfilling of Jewish
values, they also are unable to participate in Jewish community. Like temple, college in the

6
Elyana Heigham i6170356

United States encompasses a social experience with other Jews and non-Jews. By not being able
to engage socially with university students, working-class Jews become socially isolated from
mainstream American society.
An Artificial Middle Class
Finally, the gap that mainstream Jewish identity has forged between mainstream Judaism and the
working-class pressures the working-class to ‘fake’ a middle-class life. Jan Goodman speaks
about growing up as a working class Jew and knowing that he was poor, although he “still lived
a middle-class existence…(with) a middle class mentality although we didn’t have the money”
(Schultz, 2002, p.133). Thus working-class Jews that seek to be members of the Jewish
community are forced to occupy a liminal state “in between middle-class identity and actual
poverty” (Schultz, 2002, p.138). Parents are encouraged to hide their low-income jobs from
members of their communities; the shame of being working class becomes not only a matter of
being excluded from mainstream Gentile society, but mainstream Jewish society as well
(Schultz, 2002, p. 133). The children of working class Jews are encouraged to ‘fake’ middle-
class by having “middle-class hobbies” like going to the museum or reading literature (Harrison
1994). The consequences of the basing of Jewish identity on being middle class goes beyond the
erasure those of lower-class by the Jewish community; it also promotes the self-erasure of the
working-class Jew through the feigning of being middle-class. Those of lower class are
encouraged to hide their identities or risked being marked as the ‘other’ and excluded from
Judaism.
Thus the marginalization of lower class Jews within Judaism is unique in that it is based
on invisibility rather than prejudice. Instead of tension arising due to class divisions within
Jewish society, the divisions are ignored completely and class is never discussed (Greenebaum,
1999, p.53). Not only does this serve to be challenging for working class when trying to maintain
their Jewish identity, it also marks their oppression within Judaism as unimportant.
A Reactionary to Mainstream Jewish Identity in the Gentile Community
The ignorance towards working-class experiences in the Jewish community manifests in the
perception of the Jewish community by the American Gentile population. Further, the exclusion
of working-class Jews from Judaism insinuates that their identity as Jewish is not determined by
the individual, but by other members of the Jewish and non-Jewish communities. Beyond those
on welfare being tabooed or the history of antisemitism in America, Jews of the working-class

7
Elyana Heigham i6170356

experience a third oppression from the Gentile community: the erasure of their identity. From her
experiences talking about her class with the Gentile community, Pescha Gertler describes feeling
that whether or not she was a member of the working class “had little to do with (her)” (Gertler,
1992, p.64). As a result, the working-class Jew does not feel power over their own identity.
Instead, a sense of being out of place is created by a “gentile model for working class
that…simply does not hold in a Jewish environment” (Gertler, 1992, p.64). Mainstream non-
Jewish society tells the working-class that they cannot be Jewish and the Jewish that they cannot
be working-class.
In her talk “From the Back of the Room: The Jewish Working Class”, Tova Stabin explains her
trouble with placing herself within the Gentile society. While she felt that she could not be seen
as Jewish because she was not middle class, she felt that she could not be seen as working class
either. Stabin talks about stereotypes of the working class eating spam and how these stereotypes
can not apply those who keep kosher, a dietary restriction in Judaism that involves not eating
pork. Stabin says she “wasn’t white trash (so she must be) kosher trash”, something seemingly
imaginary (2016). Her personal experience reflects of the difficulty that working-class Jews have
within society. As a result of trouble with self-determination, the Jewish working-class is seen
as impossible and the Jews who are members of the working class are not able to identify
themselves as such. The erasure of working-class Jewish identity makes mainstream culture
naïve to the oppression that this community faces and prevents the formation of the community
of the Jewish working-class. Both the Jewish and non-Jewish worlds are not for the Jewish
working class, so where are they supposed to exist?
Conclusion
To perpetrate the view of all Jews as being upper class is to encourage the oppression that Jews
face on the basis of class. Similar the feminist and homosexual identity, Jewish identity only
seems to be able to encompass one facet of oppression. In the context of Judaism, this facet is
ethnicity. Thus, Jewish identity needs to be reconsidered in order to encompass other realms of
disadvantage present in the Jewish community, accepting others based on difference instead of
on similarity.
This paper began asking the question how the Jewish working-class is discriminated
against by both those within and outside of Judaism. Within Judaism, the working class is
discriminated against because Jewish identity is portrayed as being middle class. By neglecting

8
Elyana Heigham i6170356

to address the dimensions of class within the Jewish community, middle-class Jews make it seem
that one can not simultaneously be lower class and Jewish. The exclusion of classes that are not
middle class from the Jewish community is an inequality within Judaism. Although the Jews are
a minority group that has historically experienced inequality, they also perpetrate it. In this sense,
mainstream Judaism is damaging because it negates the Jewish identities of the Jewish working-
class and forces them outside of the Jewish narrative. The invisibility of the working-class within
Judaism is manifested in the outside, non-Jewish Society as well. The research question is
justified in that it makes the invisible Jewish working-class visible and observes the oppression
of class in an oppressed ethnic group. Thus, my research question is justified as the
marginalization and invisibility of working-class Jews within American Jewish and Gentile
society shows oppression within oppressed groups and analyzes the effects of the double-
marginalization through an intersectional framework.

9
Elyana Heigham i6170356

Bibliography
Alpen, R. (1992). Jews, Class and Education. Bridges, 3(1), 67-69. Retrieved from
http://www.jstor.org.offcampus.lib.washington.edu/stable/40357549

Crenshaw, K. (2005). Intersectionality and identity politics: learning from violence against
women of color. In: W. Kolmar & F. Bartkowski (eds), Feminist theory. A reader (pp. 533-542).
New York: McGraw-Hill.

Gertler, P. (1992). Journal Notes: Exploring the Possibility of an Essay on Class, Poverty,
etc. Bridges, 3(1), 63-66. Retrieved from
http://www.jstor.org.offcampus.lib.washington.edu/stable/40357548

Greenebaum, J. (1999). Placing Jewish Women into the Intersectionality of Race, Class and
Gender. Race, Gender & Class, 6(4), 41-60. Retrieved from
http://www.jstor.org.offcampus.lib.washington.edu/stable/41674909

Harrison, D. (1994, Mar 25). Blue-collar jews uncover pain of invisibility, elitism. Jewish
Bulletin of Northern California Retrieved from
https://search.proquest.com/docview/367722986?accountid=14784

Judaken, J. (2017). Antisemitism and the Jewish Question. In M. Hart & T. Michels (Eds.), The
Cambridge History of Judaism (The Cambridge History of Judaism, pp. 529-558). Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press. doi:10.1017/9781139019828.021

Masci, D. (2016, October 11). How income varies among U.S. religious groups. Retrieved
December 14, 2017, from http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/10/11/how-income-varies-
among-u-s-religious-groups/

Schultz, D. L. (2002). PART II: SEEKING THE LEGACY: 4: Uncovering Family Legacies.
In Going South: Jewish Women in the Civil Rights Movement (pp. 129-159). New York, New S.,

10
Elyana Heigham i6170356

Shear, A. (2017). Science, Medicine, and Jewish Philosophy. In J. Karp & A. Sutcliffe
(Eds.), The Cambridge History of Judaism (The Cambridge History of Judaism, pp. 522-549).
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. doi:10.1017/9781139017169.021

Slattery, D. P., & Striker, E. (2017, November 02). David Duke. Retrieved December 10, 2017,
from https://davidduke.com/
York: New York University Press.

Stabin, T. (2017, December 9). From the Back of the Room: The Jewish Working Class. Speech
presented at ELI Talks. Retrieved December 9, 2017, from https://elitalks.org/back-room-jewish-
working-class

Van Rahden, T. (1995). American Jewish History, 83(4), 507-511. Retrieved from
http://www.jstor.org.offcampus.lib.washington.edu/stable/23885608

11