Stereotypes of Jews are generalizations or stereotypes about Jews. Jewish people have been stereotyped for over two millennia throughout Europe and the Western hemisphere as scapegoats for a multitude of societal problems.[1] Antisemitism continued throughout the centuries and reached a climax in the Third Reich during World War II. Jews are still stereotyped as greedy, nit-picky, stingy misers. They have been often shown counting money or collecting diamonds. Early films such as Cohen's Advertising Scheme (1904, silent) stereotyped Jews as "scheming merchants".[2]
Common objects, phrases and traditions used to emphasize or ridicule Jewishness include bagels, playing violin, klezmer, undergoing circumcision, haggling and uttering phrases like mazal tov, shalom, and oy vey. Other Jewish stereotypes are the rabbi, the complaining and guilt-inflicting Jewish mother stereotype, the spoiled and materialistic Jewish-American Princess and the often meek Nice Jewish Boy.
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In caricatures and cartoons, Jews are often depicted having olive brown skin, curly hair, large hook-noses, thick lips, large dark-colored eyes and wearing kippahs.
Jews are commonly caricatured as having large noses[3] and hook noses.[4] Jews also commonly are portrayed as swarthy and hirsute. There is a brown, edible woodland fungus, Auricularia cornea, commonly referred to as "Hairy Jew's ear".[5]
Jews have often been stereotyped as greedy and money-mad. This originates to the Middle Ages, when Jews were forbidden from owning land by the church, and thus many went into money-lending and usury. This led to, through the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, the association of Jews with greedy practices.
Publications like The Protocols of the Elders of Zion and literature such as William Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice and Charles Dickens's Oliver Twist reinforced the stereotype of the crooked Jew.
Some, such as Paul Volcker, suggest that the stereotype has decreased in prevalence in the United States. A telephone poll of 1747 American adults conducted by the Anti-Defamation League in 2009 found that 18% believed that "Jews have too much power in the business world", 13% that "Jews are more willing than others to use shady practices to get what they want", and 12% that "Jews are not just as honest as other businesspeople".
There is not much evidence that Jews have a disproportionate representation in business , although there are a number of notorious Jewish white-collar criminals, such as Bernard Madoff, Bernard Bergman, Jack Abramoff. Some have attributed the seemingly high number of these criminals to the media emphasizing their Jewishness.
Jokes about Jewish attitudes towards money are common, such as: "How do you get 50 Jews into a VW Beetle? Toss in a penny."[6]
Martin Marger writes "A set of distinct and consistent negative stereotypes, some of which can be traced as far back as the Middle Ages in Europe, has been applied to Jews."[7] Antisemitic canards such as the blood libel appeared in the 12th century and were associated with attacks and massacres against Jews.[8]
The portrayal of Jews as historic enemies of Christianity and Christendom constitutes the most damaging anti- Jewish stereotype reflected in the literature of the late tenth through early twelfth centuries. Jews were often depicted as satanic consorts,[9] or as devils themselves and "incarnation[s] of absolute evil."[10] Physically, Jews were portrayed as menacing, hirsute, with boils, warts and other deformities, and sometimes with horns, cloven hoofs and tails.[11] Such imagery was used centuries later in Nazi propaganda of the 1930s and 1940s.[12]
Although Jews had not been particularly associated with moneylending in antiquity, a stereotype of them acting in this capacity was developed beginning in the 11th century. Jonathan Frankel notes that this stereotype, though obviously an exaggeration, had a solid basis in reality. While not all Jews were moneylenders, it does seem to have been true that Jews were disproportionately represented in the trade.[13]
Though many stereotypes of Jews are common in Japan, they are often of a positive nature, relating to intelligence or wealth. There have been a number of books written detailing the similarities between Japanese and Jewish cultures. The Jews and the Japanese: Cultural Traits and Common Values The Jews & the Japanese: the successful outsiders
David Schneder writes "Three large clusters of traits are part of the Jewish stereotype (Wuthnow, 1982). First, Jews are seen as being powerful and manipulative. Second, they are accused of dividing their loyalties between the United States and Israel. A third set of traits concerns Jewish materialistic values, aggressiveness, clannishness."[14]
More recently, benign stereotypes of Jews have been found to be more prevalent than images of an overtly anti-Semitic nature.[15]
Negative stereotypes of Jewish women are widely known and generally accepted in popular culture.[16] Stereotypes of Jewish mothers and Jewish-American Princesses are well-known and pervasive stereotypes of Jewish women.[17]
One literary stereotype is that of the "belle Juive", the beautiful Jewess, a figure that is often associated with temptation. One example of this stereotype is the character of Rebecca in Sir Walter Scott's Ivanhoe. Another example is Miriam in Nathaniel Hawthorne's romance The Marble Faun.
The stereotype of the Jewish mother or wife is a common stereotype and stock character used by Jewish comedians and authors whenever they discuss actual or fictional situations involving their mothers and other mother-like females in their lives. The stereotype generally involves a nagging, overprotective, manipulative, controlling, smothering, and overbearing mother or wife, one who persists in interfering in her children's lives long after they have become adults.[18] Lisa Aronson Fontes describes the stereotype as one of "endless caretaking and boundless self-sacrifice" by a mother who demonstrates her love by "constant overfeeding and unremitting solicitude about every aspect of her children's and husband's welfare[s]".[19] An example of the Jewish mother stereotype is the character Sylvia Fine from TV series The Nanny.
The stereotype of the Jewish-American Princess is a pejorative stereotype of a subtype of Jewish-American female. The term implies materialistic and selfish tendencies, attributed to a pampered or wealthy background. This stereotype of American Jewish women has been portrayed frequently in contemporary US media since the mid-20th century. JAPs are portrayed as used to privilege, materialistic and neurotic.[3] An example of the humorous use of this stereotype appears in the song "Jewish Princess" on the Frank Zappa album Sheik Yerbouti. Female Jewish comedians such as Sarah Silverman have also satirized the stereotype.
According to Machacek and Wilcox, the stereotype of the Jewish-American Princess did not emerge until after World War II and is "peculiar to the U.S. scene".[20] In 1987, the American Jewish Committee held a conference on "Current Stereotypes of Jewish Women" which argued that such jokes "represent a resurgence of sexist and anti-Semitic invective masking a scrim of misogyny.'"[21]
Jewish stereotypes in literature have evolved over the centuries. According to Louis Harap, nearly all European writers prior to the twentieth century projected the Jewish stereotype in their works. Harap cites Gotthold Lessing's Nathan the Wise (1779) as the first time that Jews were portrayed in the arts as "human beings, with human possibilities and characteristics."[22] Harap writes that, the persistence of the Jewish stereotype over the centuries suggests to some that "the treatment of the Jew in literature was completely static and was essentially unaffected by the changes in the Jewish situation in society as that society itself changed." He contrasts the opposing views presented in the two most comprehensive studies of the Jew in English literature, one by Montagu Frank Modder and the other by Edgar Rosenberg. Modder asserts that writers invariably "reflect the attitude of contemporary society in their presentation of the Jewish character, and that the portrayal changes with the economic and social changes of each decade." In opposition to Modder's "historical rationale", Rosenberg warns that such a perspective "is apt to slight the massive durability of a stereotype".[23] Harap suggests that the recurrence of the Jewish stereotype in literature is itself one indicator of the continued presence of anti-Semitism amongst the readers of that literature.[24]
Although Jews were expelled from England in 1290, stereotypes were so ingrained and so durable that they persisted in English society as evidenced by presentations in English literature, drama, and the visual arts during the almost four-hundred-year period when there were virtually no Jews present in the British Isles. Some of the most famous stereotypes come from English literature; these include characters such as Shylock, Fagin and Svengali. Negative stereotypes of Jews were still employed by prominent twentieth-century non-Jewish writers such as Dorothy Richardson, Virginia Woolf, T.S. Eliot, Evelyn Waugh, Graham Greene and James Joyce.[25]
Until the 20th century, the characterization of Jews in American literature was largely based upon the stereotypes employed in English literature.[26] Although Jewish stereotypes first appeared in works by non-Jewish writers, after World War II it was often Jewish American writers themselves who evoked such fixed images. The prevalence of anti-Semitic stereotypes in the works of such authors has sometimes been interpreted an expression of self-hatred; however, Jewish American authors have also used these negative stereotypes in order to refute them.[27]
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