The Social Strata of the World's Jews: Good to Know With Disparity in Israel's Call to Orthodoxy in Government

 Nadene Goldfoot

                                         My Dad, Morris/Maurice Goldfoot and myself, who went into boxing at the Neighborhood House to make some money as a young man.  He then worked for the kosher butcher and wound up with his own Silver Falls Meat Packing Co later in life.. He had to sell newspapers on the streets of Portland at age 4 with his 6 year old brother.  Their father had been in a horse and wagon accident and was killed in 1912, and was the breadwinner of the family.   He survived, but had to drop out of high school, just finishing his junior year.  He had been the team's baseball pitcher, too.  

Rabbi Samson Wertheimer, a family that shares DNA with us, as

does his relatives the Oppenheimers.  

My ancestors that I have discovered by DNA testing and research have turned out to be the famous and well heeled Court Jews of the early 1700s of Vienna who managed to  loan kings money when they needed it. This led to being connected to many well-known Rabbis of the period.  This was a small group. Somehow we managed to be sharing some of their genes.  

 My father, ava sholem, would have passed out had he known his heritage.  Dad was a 1st generation immigrant born in Portland, Oregon in 1908. He lost his father when he was 4 years old because he was thrown out of his horse and wagon from being frightened and had hit his head and died.  No financial aid in those days, and he and his sibnlings;  6, 4, and 2 year olds were left with a young mother who only spoke Yiddish and had no skills.  She went to work plucking chickens.  

Our grandfather, Nathan Abraham Goldfus/Goldfoot was among the Ashkenazi Jews of Lithuania and anti-Semitism who had left the old country for England, which led to Ireland, then Canada and the USA for him, while his cousin went to South Africa instead of the USA.  They were poor people, had been living in shtetls, like on Fiddler on the Roof-type small village communities.  That was in about 1890 and they kept on coming to the states until about 1924 when the door closed on Jews.                    

“AMERICA OF THE MELTING POT COMES TO END,” the New York Times headline blared in late April 1924. The opinion piece that followed, penned by Senator David Reed of Pennsylvania, claimed recent immigrants from southern and Eastern European countries had failed to satisfactorily assimilate and championed his recently passed legislation to severely restrict immigration to the United States. He proudly proclaimed, “The racial composition of America at the present time thus is made permanent.”

Little did Americans realize that 1933 would be the year that became so anti-Semitic for Jews in Germany and by 1939 Germany would be entering Poland with WWII.  The window of entering the states before 1933 had been closed for 9 years.

Jews weren't the only people hurt and frightened by the 1924 cut-off of immigration for their group.  The Japanese were also affected.  Then remember how they retaliated and bombed Pearl Harbor with their list of complaints.  

The 1924 Johnson-Reed Act, which Congress had overwhelmingly passed just weeks before and which President Coolidge would sign into law the following month, marked the start of a dark chapter in the nation’s immigration history. It drastically cut the total number of immigrants allowed in each year and effectively cut off all immigration from Asia. It made permanent strict quotas—defined as “two percent of the total number of people of each nationality in the United States as of the 1890 national census”—in order to favor immigrants from northern and Western Europe and preserve the homogeneity of the nation. The new system also required immigrants to apply for and receive visas before arriving and established the U.S. Border Patrol.  It they could only see into the future and see what's going on in 2023, 99 years later.  

Biden meets with Mexico's President 1/9/23  President Biden met with Mexico’s President Andrés Manuel López Obrador as he faces mounting pressure over his handling of the growing migrant crisis. NBC News’ Gabe Gutierrez has more details on the criticism Biden is facing from lawmakers on both sides.  In September 22 the report was that Border Patrol Logs 8,000 Migrants are Entering US Each Day.

Werner Oster immigrated from Germany in May 1939, one of the last Jews to get out since their door was also closing.  My great uncle was asked to be his sponsor, so he did that and got him a job with my father who was just starting his own business of wholesale meats.  Werner's father had a meat business of making sausages, etc and Werner had worked with him.  Werner married my father's youngest sister, Ann.  My father wound up being responsible for Werner and keeping him in that job.  Luckily, they had all this in common.                                    

President Lyndon B. Johnson signs the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 on Liberty Island in New York.   Harbor. CORBIS/Corbis via Getty Images  At least 70% of the Jewish population have been Democrats.  

The social strata was that the first immigrants to the USA were Sephardic Jews working for the Dutch Trading Co that really helped New York City get its start.  They did very well and were the top of the social strata.  There were the German Jews who came over who were becoming the Reformed Jews and they were business people.  Then by the late 1800s, along came the poor Ashkenazis of eastern Europe who were orthodox. Some of those orthodox changed to Conservative Jews.  Each group, depending on the synagogue and language they spoke decided the social circle that they would be living with.   

I see all this past showing up today when Israel has a new government led by Bibi Netanyahu who has formed a government by accepting small groups of orthodox Jewish politicians.  American Jews are going crazy, falling over their heels in the anguish of  being first to condemn Netanyahu's government.  I wish they would have the decency to wait and see how Netanyahu will handle his new people.  He has laid down his standards.  I had seen how King David was good for Israel in his day.  Solomon was so wise, but not wise enough with such high taxes.  He had his faults.  I believe Bibi will also be outstanding and I trust his abilities.  It just shows how far our American Jews have strayed from what Judaism is all about.  It's they who have turned into Hellenistic Jews, not the Israelis.  

It's important to realize that American Jews and Israeli Jews live under difference circumstances while sharing the same religion.  They are practicing in different circumstances so it's going to seem to be slightly different.  If one remembers, we've gone through this before with the Pharisees and the Sadducees  and the Pharisees came out the winners then.  From that decision, we had our Judaism.  

Our Jewish Democrats have  been quiet while seeing the squad grow with another member.  They are people who are against Israel.  Too bad they're not stronger than the squad and knew more facts to show how wrong the squad has been and still is.  Almost everyone has been speaking out lately except our Democratic Jews, and the Jewish Broadcasting Service (JBS) has been doing much to bring this to mind.  It wouldn't hurt if they used the programs of this service for some education.    

Resource:

https://goldfoot_genealogy.blogspot.com/2015/07/were-from-court-jews-of-vienna.html

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/1924-law-slammed-door-immigrants-and-politicians-who-pushed-it-back-open-180974910/