why am I a stinge?

November 26, 2008 5:38 PM

why is it that Jewish people are very often wealthy?

I am from a half-Jewish (father not mother) family that is fairly upper middle class. My friend and I were talking today and we realised that all the Jewish people we know, all our Jewish friends all come from wealthy or upper middle class families. I know it's a stereotype, but we rarely, if ever, see Jewish poverty, or even lower middle class.

I wondered if it is "old money", but another Jewish friend said most families lost their money in the holocaust. Since coming to "the new world" (Canada, America, Australia) they have made their money.

The funny thing is, I am "very good" with money, as are all my siblings. we are all good at saving etc. We were brought up to be like this I guess, but I know other people who were brought up to be stingy and have rebelled against it as adults. Sometimes it feels like it's "in my blood"!

I'm an Aussie living in Toronto with lots of Jewish friends here. I wonder if anyone has any theories.

posted by beccyjoe to religion & philosophy (41 comments total)

I don't particularly like this question, but my theory is confirmation bias.
posted by kdar at 5:45 PM on November 26, 2008 [5 favorites]

Yes, kdar has it.

As "proof" I'm in Toronto and know lots of Jews as well. All but one of them (a family, really) is middle class or poorer. I know several Jews who are poorer than my poor ass and one who is pretty near homeless.
posted by Manhasset at 5:53 PM on November 26, 2008

fair enough, maybe it's just the way I am seeing it.
posted by beccyjoe at 5:55 PM on November 26, 2008

Um, two questions for you to think about.... how do you know if someone is Jewish? And how do you know somebody is wealthy?
posted by taff at 5:55 PM on November 26, 2008 [1 favorite]

Here's some poor New World Jews for you.
posted by CKmtl at 5:56 PM on November 26, 2008

wow, I stand corrected and enlightened.
posted by beccyjoe at 5:57 PM on November 26, 2008

Class stratification is giving you a false view of things. Most of us tend to associate most closely with people of similar class and educational background. So, while my friends are of various races, ethnicities, genders, etc., we all occupy similar class slots. I could just as easily ask why my Indian friends are all good with money, or my Anglo friends, my black friends, etc.

"If we use a more realistic measure, such as 150 percent of the federal poverty line, as a benchmark, we would find that 20 percent of all Jews, 44 percent of Jewish Russian-speaking households, and 91 percent of elderly Jewish Russian-speaking community live at poverty-level incomes in New York City. (For more information on the Federal Poverty Line and measuring poverty, click here. For more information on Jewish poverty in New York, click here)." cite
posted by rtha at 5:58 PM on November 26, 2008 [6 favorites]

>I don't particularly like this question, but my theory is confirmation bias.

You do realize that you're on the internet and you can, like, research things and stuff?

The Jewish Virtual Library states that:

• Median Jewish income is $50,000 vs $42,000 nationwide average (which presumably includes Jews)
• 19% of all Jewish households are low income ($25,000 or less per year) vs. 29% among all U.S. households.

I have no answer to the actual question.
posted by christonabike at 6:01 PM on November 26, 2008 [3 favorites]

christonabike: 19% may be lower than the US national percentage, but that's hardly a "rarely, if ever" situation.
posted by CKmtl at 6:07 PM on November 26, 2008

my friends, like I say, I stand corrected and enlightened. I note my ignorance and apologise if I offended anyone.
posted by beccyjoe at 6:10 PM on November 26, 2008

Which Jewish people are usually wealthy? The ones in North America? The ones in Israel? The ones in other places?

Also, of your friends, how many aren't upper-middle-class? If you are, it is likely that your social group is, and so the Jews you know, as well as the Christians, Muslims, Buddhists and Jains you know, are UMC. Just speculation, of course -- your social group may be atypically economically diverse.
posted by chesty_a_arthur at 6:11 PM on November 26, 2008

Median Jewish income is $50,000 vs $42,000 nationwide average (which presumably includes Jews)

And the average Asian-American household income was $57,000, while the average white non-hispanic household income was $49,000.

Which again, just goes to show you that the OP's question is flawed. If you attended good universities and have a well-paying professional job, the odds are that the vast majority of your social circle is going to be well-off. If the majority of your social circle is Jewish, then this will easily lead to your confirmation bias. The poor Jewish people you walk past on the street or who work in your local factories don't have handy Stars of David on their sleeves so you can spot them!
posted by modernnomad at 6:17 PM on November 26, 2008

Not to belabor the point... but here's something from your own backyard, though I don't know what year the article's from:

"Proceeds from an upcoming cantorial concert at Adath Israel Congregation will go to UJA Federation's Jewish Poverty Relief Fund to assist Toronto's hungry and vulnerable who are among the city's 20,000 Jewish Torontonians living below the poverty line."
posted by CKmtl at 6:35 PM on November 26, 2008

I don't think it's all confirmation bias, if we're talking about the US. At the risk of being cited by the PC police:

Most Jewish families in the US have been here for many generations, and are not recent immigrants, so they've had time to accumulate wealth. And I'm not 1000% sure of my facts here, but I think many or most of them came because of religious persecution, not for economic opportunity like typical immigrants.
posted by drjimmy11 at 6:36 PM on November 26, 2008

I was just reading an article in Harpers about this very subject. The argument presented was that the Torah teaches humility. This supposedly means that religious Jews will take honest stock of their abilities and opportunities instead of taking greedy chances and risking their business. To an entrepreneur this would be an advantage.
posted by damn dirty ape at 6:47 PM on November 26, 2008

You may find the autobiographical novel Jews Without Money instructive, keeping in mind that the author, "Michael Gold", intended it as Socialist propaganda.

Also understand that in the US and Canada, until the Shoah, there existed a chasm and a mutual distrust between longer established and wealthier German Jews, and newly immigrated Eastern European Jews.

(Indeed, some think that the slur, "kike", was originally used by German Jews in the US, to refer to Eastern European Jews, specifically the itinerant tinkerers who traveled a route or circle (in Yiddish, a kikel) peddling their wares. German American Jews would have largely disdained Yiddish as a language of the less wealthy, less educated Eastern European Jews.)
posted by orthogonality at 7:09 PM on November 26, 2008 [1 favorite]

I think the more likely explanation is cultural: if you emphasize education, education, education and place a premium on brains, you are going to be more successful as a culture than if you see education as unnecessary to life success and smart people as people to bully. In my Jewish family and that of many I know, not going to college simply wasn't considered.

You would bring extraordinary shame on the family by not at minimum getting a BA-- and they don't joke about Jewish mothers wanting their daughters to marry or be doctors for nothing. Jews are overrepresented amongst doctors and scientists and lawyers-- and Nobel prize winners.

The historical emphasis on literacy-- you have to be able to read the Torah-- has got to have helped as well as the intellectual tradition of questioning and being able to argue well.

Some have made a genetic argument about evolutionary selection for finance/math skill during the Middle Ages-- money-lending was one of the only careers open to Jews at the time, as Christians weren't permitted to do it. I don't know if this is really enough time for such selection to occur-- it seems unlikely.

And DrJimmy, you are totally wrong about the immigration thing-- or maybe you define "many" as "more than 2" but remember that minor incident called World War II? How about the Hungarian revolution of 1956 (that's when my Dad and his family came over).
posted by Maias at 7:09 PM on November 26, 2008 [2 favorites]

If we look past the stereotypes, the question of why certain immigrant groups tend to outperform native inhabitants is an interesting one. Asian-Americans are a classic example, but African immigrants to the US have the highest educational attainment of any immigrant group in the US. One theory is that those who manage to get out of their home countries and immigrate to the US have some advantage over their peers, whether it be intelligence, wealth, education, etc. and thus those immigrants which you see here seem to be disproportionately better educated/successful than the natives.

In other cases there might be historical reasons to consider, such as the Jews in medieval Europe occupying the niche role of moneylenders, or the success of overseas Chinese in SE Asia (which, among other reasons, led to the secession of Singapore from Malaysia). I found this on Google Books: Essential Outsiders: Chinese and Jews in the Modern Transformation of Southeast Asia and Central Europe. Looks like it'd be an interesting read.
posted by pravit at 7:30 PM on November 26, 2008

Yes, there are poor Jews and rich Jews, but it is neither inaccurate nor anti-semetic to note that Jews in the West tend to be wealthier than the local population. The data supports it, just as it supports the observation that the Indian diaspora in East Africa and the Chinese diaspora in South-East Asia tend to be wealthy. Especially when we're talking about "old money" types.

I'm guess the reasons might include the tendency of distinct minority groups to help out "their own". You could call it cooperation or nepotism, depending on your perspective. And until schools and universities sprang up all over the world from the 1950s onwards, most knowledge was developed and passed on through guilds and within families. Knowledge is most easily shared within groups that have a common language and perspective.

But probably the greatest reason for certain minorities to be more successful / wealthy than the general population is simply migration patterns, which are often self-selecting for wealth / talent. I.e. only those with the means and ability to uproot themselves, do.

During the Holocaust, wealthy Jews might have had a better chance of buying their way to survival in the West. Wealthy Chinese were probably more successful in fleeing first from the Japanese during WWII and then from Mao's communists. And now immigration policies in most rich countries are deliberately designed to let in only the wealthy and well-educated.

There are plenty of examples all over the world of one distinct "group" enjoying some advantage over another. I don't think it's necessarily offensive to examine if it is the case, and why.
posted by randomstriker at 7:39 PM on November 26, 2008

Jew here. I grew up on welfare in the US. My family has been mostly public school educators since coming to America in the 30s, so there's no deep wealth aside from the pensions that every other kind of public school teacher received.

Oh, and for the record, everytime I hear someone bring up the Jew/wealth "connection", I get pissed enough to drink christian baby blood.
posted by Cat Pie Hurts at 7:54 PM on November 26, 2008 [5 favorites]

And the prize for not reading the comment above which utterly refutes his premise goes to... randomstriker!

Unless he considers making, on average, less than twenty bucks a week more than white gentiles to be a significant sum.
posted by genghis at 7:56 PM on November 26, 2008

I think Maias has one of the best reasons down - there's an emphasis on education in Jewish culture that's been traditionally much more heavy than what's seen in other cultures. However, drjimmy11 was correct in that Jews were more likely to come over for reasons of religious freedom than to escape poverty . . . this was true even of '56 Hungarian Jews, who were - as was the fashion in Communist states around this time - starting to be purged from the upper echelons of the Party. (In Romania, East Germany, etc.) It was a good time to leave, especially if one were Jewish. And it's also true that most Jewish-Americans have roots in America which predate WWII - the number of Jewish people who immigrated to the US after WWII is a small fraction of those who came before.

Also, one of the underpinnings of Jewish theology / philosophy has been the idea of examining faith and belief through questioning. In other words, traditional Jewish culture places an emphasis on an approach looked down upon in other cultures - to start not with "blind faith" but reasoning, debate and a sort of backwards-engineering approach to things. This is something one didn't see as often in Protestantism or Catholicism or today in Islam (I'm sorry to say.) One can imagine how this would have real world advantages. I don't think that it's by chance that many advances and progressive movements of the 20th Century were first championed by Jewish Americans (disproportionately, anyhow) - labor reform (work safety, minimum wage, work hours), women's rights (voting, birth control), social and political ideologies (unionism, socialism and all forms of liberalism) and so on. A largely literate and insular population with an historical "outsider" status can do well, over time, thinking outside the box.

But I still reckon a lot of the original post is just confirmation bias. Donate some time working for any well-known Jewish charity over the holidays, and you'll find that despite the success story of Jewish-Americans as a class, there are still many who could use a little help.
posted by Dee Xtrovert at 8:01 PM on November 26, 2008 [2 favorites]

"I'm an Aussie living in Toronto with lots of Jewish friends here."

Worth noting is that Toronto actually has a long history of Jewish poverty and ghettos. Until ~1918 the neighborhood where City Hall currently is was a large Jewish ghetto. Utter. Abject. Dirt. Poverty. No sewage lines. Little english (most of these were eastern european immigrants). When this slum was razed many migrated north and west, into what became Kensington. Next time you're on Baldwin Street, check out John's Italian Cafe -- that's olde skool yiddish on the front. There are a few other remants of that migration: the two small synagogues in the market, perhaps Mr Rotman's hat shop (I don't know his story), and personally I suspect that crotchety old Mr Gwartzman and his art supply store are the last holdout from that 1918 wave.
posted by slipperywhenwet at 8:26 PM on November 26, 2008 [1 favorite]

I was recently the recipient of a Hebrew Free Loan and though I agree that you're probably imagining a stronger correlation between Judaism and wealth than actually exists, I also think that certain values and traditions in Jewish culture (as demonstrated by the institution that gave me this interest-free loan, for example) have created a safety-net for the community that has allowed us a small statistical advantage in this area.

This tradition of looking out for each other economically grew out of a long-time history of being oppressed outsiders - years and years of having to help each other because local governments wanted to get rid of us or kill us.

As I understand there is also a many centuries long tradition of involvement in trade and commerce within our communities. In some cases, for example in parts of Eastern Europe, Jews were given legal rights to participate in trade and commerce, but were legally restricted in other areas (for example, the right to settle) so you could argue that we were forced into these professions.

I always think its interesting how certain professions become so ethnically stratified. I just started nursing school and there are disproportionate number of Nigerian and Filippino immigrants working in the field in my town anyway. I know there is a back story to that too - fascinating stuff.
posted by serazin at 8:32 PM on November 26, 2008

If you think that all Jews are rich, pay a visit to Brooklyn, specifically the Borough Park area.

I used to live nearby. The nearest branch of my bank was in that neighborhood so I had occasion to walk through there.

I remember vividly the streets filled with pale, skinny kids and adult men in cheap-looking Hasidic garb, shiny synthetic fabrics and plastic shoes. Adult men congregating on the corner during business hours.

I would look at the rundown row homes and think to myself "You just know these people don't have a pot to piss in."

Another anecdote:

When I first moved to New York, I was completely broke. I went to downtown Brooklyn to apply for food stamps. Given the demographics of downtown Brooklyn, I figured that I'd be the only white guy in the waiting room. I was wrong. I was the only English-speaking white guy in the waiting room. The others were all Russians.

The figures on NYC's Jewish poverty cited above seem pretty congruent with my own experiences.
posted by jason's_planet at 9:11 PM on November 26, 2008

Perhaps to start your research as to why Jews have been stereotyped as wealthy, good with money, etc., you might look for information about money lending in medieval Europe, particularly in terms of how the big three religions related to each other. Yes, there are plenty of poor Jews, just like there are plenty of poor everyone, but there are tangible and deeply rooted reasons for this perception that has been a part of Western culture for a very long time.
posted by lampoil at 9:45 PM on November 26, 2008 [1 favorite]

For the answer to your question, Rod Steiger's monologue in Lumet's The Pawnbroker:

> Jesus Ortiz: Say, how come you people come to business so naturally?
> Sol Nazerman: You people? Oh, let's see. Yeah. I see. You want to learn the secret of our success, is that right? Alright -- I'll teach you. First of all, you start off with a period of several thousand years, during which you have nothing to sustain you but a great bearded legend. Oh, my friend, you have no land to call your own, to grow food on or to hunt. You have nothing. You're never in one place long enough to have a geography or an army or a land-myth. All you have is a little brain. A little brain and a great bearded legend to sustain you and convince you that you are special, even in poverty. But this little brain, that's the real key, you see. With this little brain you go out and you buy a piece of cloth and you cut that cloth in two and you go and sell it for a penny more than you paid for it. Then you run right out and buy another piece of cloth, cut it into three pieces and sell it for three pennies profit. But, my friend, during that time you must never succumb to buying an extra piece of bread for the table or a toy for a child, no. You must immediately run out and get yourself a still larger piece cloth and and so you repeat this process over and over and suddenly you discover something. You have no longer any desire, any temptation to dig into the Earth to grow food or to gaze at a limitless land and call it your own, no, no. You just go on and on and on repeating this process over the centuries over and over and suddenly you make a grand discovery. You have a mercantile heritage! You are a merchant. You are known as a usurer, a man with secret resources, a witch, a pawnbroker, a sheenie, a makie and a kike!
posted by thejoshu at 9:59 PM on November 26, 2008 [4 favorites]

well I realised it was a risky question to ask and I did, if you'll look above, note my ignorance and apologise for offending.

but i have received many interesting responses which I thank you all for. I have learned much.

There are plenty of examples all over the world of one distinct "group" enjoying some advantage over another. I don't think it's necessarily offensive to examine if it is the case, and why.

- thanks for the validation, randomstriker

and thanks to those who pointed out that there are many poor Jewish people. I obviously have been very ignorant in that regard.

and thanks to those who mentioned cultural values and practices that foster entrepenuerial skills such as emphasis on education and "questioning". Also the existence of financial institutions offering help to fellow Jews, etc.

All of this makes sense and is interesting.
posted by beccyjoe at 10:07 PM on November 26, 2008

jason's_planet, the poverty you were seeing in Boro Park is likely (to my mind, at least) a special case. There are groups of very-far-right Orthodox Jews, some of whom are Hasidic, who tend to eschew secular education while placing a high value on Jewish learning - to the point that some choose to study Torah/commentaries during the days (for which they earn a small stipend) rather than seeking standard employment. Many of these people also choose to have large families, which of course stretches their budgets even more.

There are definitely poor Jews, and the people you saw probably were pretty poor, but I'm not sure they're really a good example for this argument since it's almost a lifestyle choice for them.
posted by needs more cowbell at 11:03 PM on November 26, 2008

High IQs?
posted by Crotalus at 12:09 AM on November 27, 2008

I remember a few interesting tidbits from a class I took long ago when in college. One of the assigned books was Thomas Sowell's Migrations and Cultures, which had some interesting points about "mercantile minorities." Unfortunately... it was awhile ago, and I can't remember details with much confidence. I would recommend it as a starting point if you're interseted in read a big, thick, square book that gives a thorough treatment the unique socioeconomic history of mercantile minorities.

Now I have no opinion on whether or not Jews are on average more wealthy than non-Jews. I would expect that other factors are much more significant (wealth of ones parents, of course, being the usual suspect, but one that begs the question). However, there are some historically unique things about Jews, if I remember correctly. The Jews in Europe experienced a "demographic revolution" decades before other groups, where by demographic revolution I mean a characteristic dramatic drop in mortality rates that populations experience as they transition into modernity. This is explained by cultural values that protected Jews to some extent from diseases caused by poor sanitation.

But none of this has anything to do with your question. My point is that it's not ridiculous (or racist) to posit that Jewish cultural values have material consequences.
posted by kprincehouse at 12:15 AM on November 27, 2008

In my Jewish upbringing education was above all. Make of that what you will.
posted by sourwookie at 12:33 AM on November 27, 2008

Kprincehouse is right on target. The phenomenon of "mercantile minorities" is the best point of departure to begin to formulate an appropriately nuanced and historically accurate answer to this very complicated question. For perhaps the single best examination of the emergence of Jews as a mercantile minority, take a look at Jonathan Israel's book, European Jewry in the Age of Mercantilism. Another great read is Fritz Stern's Iron and Gold. Although it's a biography of one particular individual, it helps to place this phenomenon in historical context.

I could go on- I have a PhD in this- but instead let me just say that while sentimental explanations, particularly those that are based on tacit or explicit assumptions of the underlying superiority of a group (whether vis a vis its genetics, a la Bell Curve, or its religious tradition, a la the Harpers article) are temptingly low-hanging fruit, they are almost always wrong.
posted by foxy_hedgehog at 3:28 AM on November 27, 2008 [2 favorites]

"Jews and Economic Activity

Three facts predominate when considering the important role of Jews in the Medieval economy. In most places and times, medieval Jews were legally unable to participate in agriculture, the economic activity of the vast majority of both Christian and Muslim populations. There is a lot of evidence that scattered Jewish communities kept in contact with each other. Finally, although credit was essential to economic activity, lending money on interest (usury) was forbidden by Muslim and Christian law [although there were, in practice, many Christian money-lenders]. (Jewish law also forbids usury within the Jewish community, but permits loans to those outside).

The result of these situations was that Jewish economic activity had to focus on professional skills, trading, or credit provision."
posted by Carol Anne at 6:06 AM on November 27, 2008

Jew here. I grew up on welfare in the US. My family has been mostly public school educators since coming to America in the 30s, so there's no deep wealth aside from the pensions that every other kind of public school teacher received.

Oh, and for the record, everytime I hear someone bring up the Jew/wealth "connection", I get pissed enough to drink christian baby blood.

Ditto, on all counts.

taff brought up the question of Jewish identity, which I think is more integral than many realize. While your identifying as Jewish is a-ok by most American denominations/standards, you wouldn't be by Orthodox institutions, including the state of Israel. This might be true of a number of your friends as well. And yet, by having a Jewish-sounding last name, you might be perceived as "more" Jewish than I would be (especially by goyim), particularly if your family seems Jewish--i.e. wealthy or stingy or whatever.
posted by PhoBWanKenobi at 7:26 AM on November 27, 2008

beccyjoe, here's a book you might find interesting on the topic of "mercantile minorities"

Essential Outsiders: Chinese and Jews in the making of Southeast Asia and Central Europe

It compares the experiences of Chinese immigrants in Southeast Asia to those of European Jews and discusses how the Chinese became targets of resentment and prejudice.

There are definitely poor Jews, and the people you saw probably were pretty poor, but I'm not sure they're really a good example for this argument since it's almost a lifestyle choice for them.

A lifestyle choice? I don't know about that. If you've been raised with nothing but that lifestyle and philosophy, have been isolated from any serious relationships with people outside that group who might offer an alternative and face the risk of being shunned by everyone you know and love if you dissent, I don't think you have that much of a choice.

Quitting a corporate job and moving to Vermont to raise goats is a lifestyle choice. This is something a little more intense; the stakes are much higher.
posted by jason's_planet at 8:21 AM on November 27, 2008

If it's true, it might be related to the fact that Jews are so over-represented among Nobel prize winners (Something like 20% of winners are Jewish, I think). Not sure if it's because they're smarter, a cultural thing that values education, or maybe some political/academic thing (i.e. favoritism at top schools), though.
posted by losvedir at 9:31 AM on November 27, 2008

I am in Toronto and know dozens of people of Jewish decent. Only one is wealthy (well, comfortable, he doesn't have a tonne of money). He is also the only one that has been to Isreal. Maybe his god just likes him more.
posted by saucysault at 10:58 AM on November 27, 2008

It's definitely *not* favoritism at top schools-- the Ivies used to have quotas for Jews to keep us *out*. I think that only ended in the 50's. Perhaps there are now lots of "legacy" Jews getting in-- but the "gentleman's C" is a WASP tradition, not ours ;-)

If you look at the numbers, Jews are seriously over-represented amongst Nobelists, scientists in general, mathematicians and doctors-- the over-representation in all of those categories is more than double, sometimes triple or quadruple, our % of the population. We are also over-represented amongst the extremely wealthy.

Freud, Marx, Einstein-- whatever you want to say about negative influences of the views of the first two, for a group that is .2% of the world population, Jews have had a huge intellectual, scientific and cultural impact.

If you want to look at a list on this stuff, this website is kind of interesting-- I came across it when I was looking for the Nobel thing earlier today so I can't vouch for it more than that, but the stuff I knew, they seem to have right. According to this site, 47% of Nobels in economics went to Jews..

So, while wealth is one area where Jews are somewhat over-represented (not a sampling error but that of course doesn't mean there are no poor Jews), the over-representation amongst the wealthy is less striking than the over-representation amongst the intellectuals.

And while genetics could have combined with culture at some point (one can imagine social pressures to marry smart having a selection effect over a long time), I think the cultural explanation probably carries more weight.
posted by Maias at 2:41 PM on November 27, 2008

"Oh, and for the record, everytime I hear someone bring up the Jew/wealth "connection", I get pissed enough to drink christian baby blood."

Not to derail, and I can understand why it is offensive and annoying, but I have had absolutely zero contact with any obvious Jewish culture and I've never met anyone that identifies as Jewish, despite being taught and reading about the religion/the history/the stereotypes. So this thread has been really interesting to me, I feel a little less ignorant and I am glad the question was asked. There's no such thing as a bad question when the end result is knowledge.
posted by saturnine at 6:32 AM on November 28, 2008

An anecdote: My mother grew up on a farm in rural Ontario in the 50's. There was a peddlar who'd travel door to door (which ain't easy when the doors are practically a kilometre apart) selling whatever. The farmers didn't care for his Jewish heritage (to say the least), but it saved the long trip into town, so they bought his wares. Eventually he made enough money to open a store in town, which immediately became--aside from the church--the biggest draw in the area, and still was until the Wal-Mart went in two towns over. Still, though, that Jewish family was never wealthy as much as successful and, relative to the farmers, clean and uncalloused. Unfortunately, given the state of family farming, any success--particularly when it doesn't require toiling in dirt from sunrise to sunset--is enough to keep the embers of resentment aglow even now.

To get to your question though, I'll echo someone above who asked what class of people you normally associate with. If most of the people you know are upper middle class, it would stand to reason that you don't know many poor people *full stop*, let alone poor Jewish people; since Jews of any income are a rather small subset of people, your chances of knowing a poor Jewish person would be rather small indeed.
posted by Sys Rq at 11:47 AM on January 5