Jewish Occupations

Rabbi Melanie Aron

September 4, 2004

There’s a very old joke about a Jewish grandmother proudly showing off some pictures of her grandchildren. How old are they? she’s asked. Well, she says, the doctor is two and the lawyer is 6 months.

There are many stereotypes about Jews and occupations, and I thought since this is Labor Day weekend we might take a look at them. Since we have been talking all summer about American Jewish History on this the 350th anniversary of Jewish life in America, I’d like to use this as an opportunity to talk a little bit about how Jewish occupations changed over time.

In the recent population study of American Jews, about 40% of those interviewed claimed to work in the professional or technical field, as compared with just under 30% of Americans in general. Of course this wasn’t always the case. Through the stages of Jewish immigration Jews have participated in many occupational fields.

Early in American Jewish history, Sephardi Jews were involved in commerce in the big cities of the eastern seaboard. Many had family members living abroad and were involved in moving merchandise across the ocean. Some were slave traders, though as Jews were a minute percentage of the population in colonial America, they were similarly a minute percentage of the slave trade.

The German Jews who came to America in the middle of the 19th century had a different experience. One economist recently identified them as “the foot soldiers of the market revolution.“ America at that time was going through a transition from an agricultural economy where almost everything you consumed came from close to home, to a market economy which brought you goods from faraway places. For those outside of major cities, peddlers were the representatives of this market economy. Carrying dry goods, notions, clothing and jewelry, on their backs they brought the farmer’s wife goods that were highly valued and appreciated. There certainly were non-Jewish peddlers as witnessed by the well known poem about the Yankee peddler, but it was estimated that by the time the 1860 census identified 16,000 peddlers in the country, most were Jewish.

For many Jewish immigrants who arrived in this country in their late teens and early 20’s, peddling was a way to get a start and so for a period of one to five years they would roamed across the country. They could start with a small investment. Philip Heidelbach, for example, later a successful department store owner in Cincinnati, started with $8. After a few years, many peddlers settled in one of the small communities they serviced and opened small stores, so that after the civil war there were, in addition to the 160 communities with at least one synagogue, 1,000 communities where at least one person subscribed to a Jewish newspaper.

The Eastern European immigrants who came in the late-nineteenth century, had a different history. They gravitated toward the big cities, becoming what one economist called “proletarianized” in the process. At the time manufacturing was going through a transition, a production was shifting from small sweatshops to factories, making it easier to organize unions. In 1890, the United Hebrew Trades had 22 different unions include type setters, shirt makers, bakers and even a Yiddish actors union. Of course the largest group of immigrants worked in the garment industry eventually becoming part of the Ladies Garment Workers Union. Jews were part of the struggle for an eight hour day and were also among the elements who saw unionism as part of a greater movement for social reforms.

After World War I, the next generation started moving in one of the two classic economic directions of the second and third generation - business or the professions. The Jews have continued in these directions - and many others - over the last thirty or forty years. Large numbers of Jews have moved towards academia; others have gravitated towards communications and the arts, as newspaper journalists or in television or film. Recently there was a bit of a tiff when House Majority Leader Dick Armey made a comment about Jews seeking “occupations of the heart, jobs in the arts,” rather than “occupations of the brain, in fields like economics, engineering and science”. In addition to being inaccurate, these were fighting words because Jews have often suffered from stereotypes which painted them as non-productive members of the community.

Actually an interesting question to ponder is why Jews who have entered almost every occupation, did not become farmers. We know in Europe, Jews were not allowed to own land, but here in American things were different and Jews could have become farmers. In fact, there were a few highly idealistic and totally unsuccessful efforts, at the turn of the century and even into the 1930’s, to turn Jews into farmers on the east coast and even out here in California. In New Jersey, Baron De Hirsch provided land, tools and training and established a Jewish agricultural college. Members of our congregation grew up in a Jewish farming community in Petaluma which no longer exists today. Why not farming?

Two economist Maristella Botticini of Boston University and Zvi Eckstein of Tel Aviv University have recently written on the subject. They believe this trend goes all the way back to Roman times and argue that even in the second century, Jews were leaving their farms disproportionately to become craftsmen, artisans and merchants. While it is true that in Christian countries Jews were not allowed to own land, there were other groups that didn’t own land, that still remained farmers, working the land of others. In addition, even in Muslim countries where Jews were allowed to own land, they did not remain famers .

Botticini and Eckstein attribute this in part to levels of Jewish literacy which were higher than those among other ethnic groups. This enabled them to enter urban occupations.

I wonder if there aren’t other reasons that kept Jews from becoming farmers, particularly the need for community. Its very hard to practice Judaism when your nearest Jewish neighbor lives miles away. While there were periods during which Jews spread throughout the United States, the more common trend is, after a generation, to move back to areas of high Jewish density. Many small towns today lack the Jewish population to maintain their Temples, as the next generation has chosen to live in larger Jewish communities.

(Closing remarks about the Bar Mitzvah and his family)