Alef: The NEXT Conversation

J.A.P. – "Jewish American Princess" or "Just Another Person"?

By Emily Kapit

Somewhere between growing up in the South with a Jewish doctor as a father, having a private school education, going on countless cruises, and owning a second home at the beach, I became somewhat used to the epithets thrown around at my expense:

“Yeah, the Schwartz’s are going on a cruise this year…again.”

Or “Do you think Emily’s parents will invite us down to their house in Hilton Head for Labor Day? Not if it’s around their New Year, of course…”

And, my favorite, “Ohhh…you go to THAT school…makes sense.”

The comments never bothered me very much, as my parents were far from flashy and strove to raise me and my siblings to be the same way. They believed in the importance of working hard; to that end, allowances were small and academic expectations high. Of course, I am the first to argue that they went too far in making us perform extensive lawn work, including pushing a heavy lawn mower up a sizable hill. Though my father claimed it “built character,” I still suspect he took great joy in ensuring that we knew how to get our hands dirty. Even so, those who knew us well understood that, upper-middle class status aside, we were a fairly humble bunch.

So while I occasionally heard comments like those written above, I rarely thought about my parents’ level of affluence and never really believed others cared about it either. Ignorance is bliss, they say, but that blissful shell was broken by the unlikeliest of sources one Sunday afternoon during my early tween years.

One of my closest friends growing up in Winston-Salem was another Jewish girl who was in my Sunday school class at our temple. Since she went to the area public school, we rarely saw each other during the week and would catch up on the weekends. On any given Sunday afternoon, she and I could be found at each others’ houses, dreaming we were back-up singers for New Kids on the Block, pretending to be the 8th and 9th members of The Baby-Sitters Club, and generally just wreaking havoc with early 90s kid culture.

One Sunday, as we were saying goodbye to our Temple Emanuel classmates, and I climbed into the back of her mother’s white-out colored minivan, the topic of conversation somehow turned to interesting acronyms.

“I know one!” I said, volunteering what little information I knew about my dad’s ophthalmology practice. “LASER. My dad told me it stands for ‘light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation.’”

“That’s a good one,” my friend responded, mouthing the words in an attempt to remember the acronym itself. “Know any others?”

“SCUBA, as in scuba diving,” I replied, drawing on the brief lecture we’d received prior to jumping into the warm Caribbean Sea a few months prior for an introductory scuba lesson. “Self-contained underwater breathing apparatus.”

At this point, I noticed my friend’s mother raise her eyebrows at me as she pulled up to a light. My eyes wandered outside, taking in the restaurants, stores, and gas stations that lined the road. At that moment, another acronym popped into my head, the result of a recent Jeopardy! answer that I happened to remember.

“BP! I saw it on TV the other night! It stands for-”

“British Petroleum,” her mother cut me off before the words had a chance to pop out of my own mouth. “Really, is that what they’re teaching you over in that private school of yours?” She spat out the words, “private school,” sounding not only caustic but with a pinch of resent thrown in as well.

The shell to my ignorant world cracked a little at that moment, as I tried to respond in a respectful manner without showing my hurt feelings. I don’t recall my response but do remember thinking about the whole exchange later that evening and in the days that followed. While I was aware of the supposed connection between Jews and money, I was under the impression that non-Jews were the ones who harped on such lame stereotypes; but instead, this thirty-second conversation shed light on a much different landscape for me: Jews criticizing one another for having more or less money and breaking my own belief that Jews stood up for one another whenever possible.

Though I now realize that this was a classic case of keeping up with the Jones—er, Steins, I still find it somewhat unfathomable as to how a group of people who have been targeted for countless reasons for, well, countless generations, would actually turn on one another for the smallest of reasons. The incident in that car so many years ago was my first experience of hearing one Jewish person negatively comment on another’s financial status, though it’s hardly been the last. I wonder if this trend will continue and my own children will also deal with members of the Chosen People choosing to insult one another unnecessarily. If so, I wonder what other stereotypes about Jews we risk perpetuating in addition to people believing there is a connection between Jews and money?

Read more posts from Issue #11: Money, Greed, & Guilt.

Photo by Refracted Moments™, licensed under Creative Commons.

Tags: class, jewish, Money, stereotype, wealth

Posted by Sarah, Wednesday, April 14th, 2010, 2:51 pm, Money Greed and Guilt.