The Jewish Phenomenon: Seven Keys to the Enduring Wealth of a People

"The farther away you get from the source of your tradition, the less of a contribution you might be expected to make in a place like America. We could lose something precious."

The Seven Keys to Jewish Success

1. Understand that real wealth is portable; it's knowledge
2. Take care of your own and they will take care of you
3. Successful people are professionals and entrepreneurs
4. Develop your verbal confidence
5. Be selectively extravagant but prudently frugal
6. Take pride in individuality: encourage creativity
7. Be psychologically driven to prove something

Unlike many religions, Judaism is more than simply a belief system that anyone can adopt. To become Jewish means enlisting in the tribe. The relationship or covenant is between God and the Jewish people, rather than between God and individual Jews.

Where there is no flour, there is no Bible. Hasidic folk saying Poverty in a man's house is worse than fifty plagues. -The Mishna (a collection of books that outline the detailed laws for daily Jewish living) Poverty causes transgression. -The Talmud (a collection of books of rabbinical commentary on the Old Testament)

The modern history of the Jews began in 70 A.D. when the Romans completed their conquest of Jerusalem, destroyed the temple and forced a great migration of Jews out of the Holy Land, the so-called Diaspora. The Romans renamed their new conquest Palestine. By the time the State of Israel was reestablished nearly two thousand years later in 1948, the descendants of the exiled Jews had spread throughout the world. During the rise of the Roman Empire, Christians and Jews were two of many religious and ethnic groups living within the empire's boundaries. But Emperor Constantine converted to Christianity and decreed in about 300 A.D. that Christianity would be the official religion of the Holy Roman Empire, which covered most of the Western world. Romans compelled all non-Christian groups to convert or die. The Jews resisted and stubbornly maintained their religion, clothing, diet, customs and language, wherever they settled in the world. Consequently, Jews naturally lived in their own distinct communities, and their isolation bred mistrust and suspicion. In times of strife, it was easy for the general population, incited by those in power, to blame Jews for problems ranging from poisoned wells to diseases to economic disasters. Throughout the Middle Ages and on into the fifteenth century, large Jewish communities emerged in Spain, Italy, Germany, France and Eastern Europe, especially Poland and Russia. Governments throughout Europe barred Jews from owning land, so few were farmers.They gravitated to commercial and industrial occupations with trade skills. At the fringe of society and business, Jews were storekeepers, peddlers, artisans, bakers, tailors, small-factory owners and middleman merchants. I)r. Sowell's research found that the historical prejudice against Jewish businessmen has also been experienced by other successful trading groups: "Where middlemen are an ethnically distinct group-the Chinese in Southeast Asia, the east Indians in Uganda, and the Ibos in Nigeria-that ethnic group is hated by the masses who deal with Jews often lived in officially mandated areas that were protected by nobility, kings or Popes for their own gain. Government officials benefited from these communities by levying upon Jews a barrage of special taxes that Jews paid not as citizens, but as Jews: a tax on the right to travel, to pray with others, to marry, to have children, to bury a corpse in the cemetery. In addition, the nobility benefited from the Jews' wealth, commercial skills, international contacts and other technical knowledge.The Biblical injunction against money lending pushed the Jews further away from the mainstream, when they filled the vacuum for this essential service for commerce.

A new flood is foretold. In five days the rain will be incessant, and the world will be wiped out.

• The Dalai Lama addresses the world's Buddhists and says, "Meditate and prepare for your next reincarnation."
• The Pope holds an audience and tells Catholics, "Confess your sins and pray."
• The Chief Rabbi of Israel goes on TV and says, "We have five days to learn to live underwater!"

Make your children truly feel a part of a "chosen people," no matter their heritage.

A parent must begin to provide long-term rewards for positive behaviors at an early age. Rewards can be offered to young children for doing simple household chores, and these can be followed later on by more substantial rewards for good grades.

It is written in the Talmud: "You're only as wealthy as the amount you are able to give."

The word for charity in Hebrew is tzedakah, from the root word zedek meaning "justice" or "righteousness". The word "charity" comes from the Latin word caritas, meaning "love"

In 1543 Luther wrote, "What then shall we Christians do with this damned, rejected race of Jews? ... Since they live among us and we know about their lying and blasphemy and cursing, we cannot tolerate them....

• First, their synagogues should be set on fire....
• Secondly, their homes should likewise be broken down and destroyed ....
• Thirdly, they should be deprived of their prayerbooks....
• Fourthly, their rabbis must be forbidden under threat of death to teach anymore.."

Garvey was very close to the essence of The Jewish Phenomenon when he said, "Wealth is strength, wealth is power, wealth is influence, wealth is justice, is liberty, is real human rights.""

To quote the Jewish proverb, "He who pays has the say."

There were three waves of Jewish immigration before World War II: Spanish Jews before 1700, early German immigrants from 1700 to 1880, and the massive Eastern European migrations from 1881 to 1910.

Halberstam writes in Schmoozing, "If you are less invested materially and psychologically in the status quo the more comfortable you feel to take risks to try something new"

Condo Broker Leona Rosenthal, who later said, "Only the little people pay taxes"

Max Levchin, who immigrated to America as a teenager from Ukraine, had the idea for a better system for online payments called PayPal in 1997. That company he cofounded was sold to eBay in 2002 for $1.5 billion.

To succeed in business or just about any other pursuit, you've got to have chutzpah. Jews do. They even invented the word. Chutzpah-call it "verbal self-confidence" if you like-is the ability to speak up, say your piece, ask questions, make demands. Chutzpah is a Yiddish word that comes from the Hebrew word meaning "audacity."

Spare me from Gentile hands and Jewish tongues, ran a nineteenth-century Yiddish proverb in Eastern Europe.

This study involves individual readings and then group discussions about the stories and the laws. It isn't about memorization and recitation; the discussions are critical reviews, with intensive questioning and debate. Even questions that might be considered heretical are dealt with analytically.

Darwin's theory of evolution: "The plants came before the animals, fish before fowl, fowl before animals, animals before man and woman"

Jewish spending habits can be described as a balance of selective extravagance and prudent frugality.

"Don't step on the dollars to pick up the pennies." Built from Scratch (1999)

Stay Married if You Can; Divorce Is Very Expensive

As a boy, Abraham once waited on an elderly customer who wanted the perfect idol. Abraham asked the man how old he was, and he answered he was seventy. "What a fool you must be," said Abraham. "How can you worship an idol that is so much younger than you are? This idol was made only yesterday!"

When the idols did not partake of the food, Abraham observed: "They have mouths but they do not speak. They have ears but do not hear. They have noses but do not smell. They have hands but do not handle. They have feet but they do not walk."

Abraham answered, "Since the beginning of time, the sun rises in the east and sets in the west. Tomorrow, if it pleases His Majesty, command the sun to rise in the west and set in the east; then I will declare publicly that His Majesty is the Lord of the universe."' Ever since, Jews have questioned authority.

The Bible says that the Jews are the chosen people. "I chose you not because you are more numerous or powerful, and not because you are morally, spiritually or intellectually superior. You are not. I chose you out of my unknowable will" (Deuteronomy 7:7).

Fein goes on to say, "There is God, and then there's the people, no intermediaries getting in the way. "The rabbi is supposed to be a very learned man of the Torah and to offer guidance and wisdom, but he does not have a special divine power.

In the first, he worked out an equation that provided direct evidence that molecules exist.

In the second, Einstein posited a theory that light was really a stream of "quanta", later called photons. When light hits a metal, these "quanta" force atones to release electrons; this is called the "photoelectric effect"

In the next one, he postulated that if you traveled at the speed of light, your velocity is "relative" to the observer; there is no absolute space or time.

In his fourth paper published that same year, Einstein proclaimed what became his most famous idea: the theory of relativity. He stated that mass and energy were different forms of the same thing. The energy of a quantity of matter equals the mass of that matter times the square of the velocity of light: E In 1916 he extended his own theory, proposing "that space was curved in the presence of mass and that gravitation is not a force but merely the result of moving objects following the shortest possible path in curved space" On May 20, 1919, during a total solar eclipse, Einstein proved his theory by correctly calculating that light bends. He measured the actual bending of a beam of light passing through the gravitational field of our sun at 1.75 seconds of an arc, a figure that matched his predicted calculation. The universe was orderly.

At the time, he said, "Today in Germany I am hailed as a German man of science, and in England I am pleasantly represented as a foreign Jew. But if ever my theories are repudiated, the Germans will condemn me as a foreign Jew and the English will dismiss me as a German." He was right. The Nazis eventually outlawed his theories. They forced him to leave the country, took his possessions and confiscated his books. He moved to the U.S. in 1933 and continued his work at Princeton. In 1939 Einstein wrote to President Franklin Roosevelt encouraging him to launch an atomic bomb project because the Germans had already begun one of their own.

Blau identified seven general rules of parenting followed by first- and second-generation Jewish-American mothers. The research for this book confirms that these themes have been passed on to subsequent generations.

• Refrain from corporal punishment; control in nonpunitive ways.
• Allow complete freedom of expression in the home.
• Provide children the best of everything, whenever possible.
• Nurture the strong ego and self-esteem of the child.
• Reduce the impact of peer pressure by maintaining close family relationships and delaying independence from the home.
• Set high standards for educational and professional advancement. As a community, reinforce those high standards.

Jews have been their own very best customers.

In the conservative air of the late 1950s, the Handlers developed the marketing pitch that Barbie would prepare little girls to become proper young ladies by teaching them how to dress and apply makeup. Otherwise, Barbie would have been viewed as risque. Barbie, named for Ruth's daughter, was later joined by her friend Ken, named after Ruth's son. Barbie was born and so was Mattel.

Many people use "killer phrases" to stop new ideas in their tracks:

"When a major medical advance in medicine occurs, it takes about ten years to change the way doctors practice."

A good creative exercise is to think in opposites. If you want to improve something, think about what you would do to really mess things up. It may lead to a new perspective that can be productive!

JEWS BELIEVE THEY CONTROL THEIR OWN DESTINIES

Jews think people can significantly change the outcomes of their lives through their own actions.

The seven "secrets" are very straightforward.

• Get a good education.
• Support your community.
• Be a professional or entrepreneur.
• Speak up.
• Be creative.
• Save your money and selectively enjoy it.
• And above all, be driven to be your own person.