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/

Why Jews Migrated to Germany Long Ago and Later Left

 Nadene Goldfoot

             

Depiction of German Jew of long ago, forced to dress like this.

    "The Jewish hat, also known as the Jewish cap, Judenhut (German) ("horned skullcap"), was a cone-shaped pointed hat, often white or yellow, worn by Jews in Medieval Europe. Initially worn by choice (I question that), its wearing was enforced in some places in Europe after the 1215 Fourth Council of the Lateran for adult male Jews to wear while outside a ghetto to distinguish them from others."  it was their badge of shame, like wearing the star of David during WWII. .

  Like the Phrygian cap that it often resembles, the hat may have originated in pre-Islamic Persia, as a similar hat was worn by Babylonian Jews.

We have to go back to Roman days to find out that there were Jewish soldiers in the Roman garrisons of Germany.  The Romans had taken Jews alive in 70 CE as slaves and may have used them as fodder in their army.  We believe this from archeological finds that demonstrate their presence.

By 1096, the German Crusade massacred Jews in European towns.  The Jewish community in Jerusalem was massacred by the Crusaders by 1099. 

However, by 321 CE, Roman Emperor Constantine issued regulations which indicate the existence of an organized Jewish community with rabbis and elders at Cologne.  It's probable that Jews were settled elsewhere on the Rhineland at that time.  They enjoyed some civil liberties, but were restricted regarding the dissemination of their culture, the keeping of non-Jewish slaves, and the holding of office under the government. They were considered more as 2nd class citizens, just as they were in Arab states.  Being Jewish made you different to others.  

In the 8th and 9th centuries, the Carolingian royal house  adopted a pro-Jewish policy!  They encouraged the settlement of Jews in its dominions because they needed them to develop trade.  New Jewish communities began to be created in the principal commercial centers.

By the 9th century, Jews were living in Augsburg and Metz.

In the 10th century, Jews were living in Worms, Mainz, Magdeburg, Ratisbon, etc.  The dense settlement was in the Rhineland that took in Mainz, Speyer, Worms, Cologne, etc.

By the 11th century, this is where an intense intellectual life developed under Franco-Jewish influence.  Conditions were generally not unfavorable, though the persecution recorded in 1012 was probably not unique.          

                                Anti-Semitic Acts Started

 However, in 1096, the Crusaders massacred the Jews throughout the Rhineland and the adjacent areas.  The moral atmosphere changed, and at all times of unrest or excitement in Germany, the Jews were attacked.  

The religious fervor against Jews caused Europe to react along against Jews which drove Jews out of trading and forced them increasingly into the profession of moneylending.  

The uptake on this was that as they were driven out of one area, another could receive them.  Germany figures preeminently in Jewish history as the land of martyrdom where expulsion was resorted to only locally and sporadically in order to complete the work of extermination.  This is when Jews moved into Eastern Europe's countries of Poland, Lithuania, etc. Jews were living in Poland from the 9th century on.  The 1st Jew could have been from the West like Germany,, Bohemia, et, or the South such as the kingdom of Kiev or the Byzantine Empire.  They must have been reinforced by the Khazar elements.  They no doubt were traders who in the Dark Ages helped to open up the area to civilizing influences.  The first Polish charter for Jews was granted in 905.  

In 1298, massacres of Jews happened, inspired by a knight named RINDFLEISCH, called the Rindfleisch Massacres.  The attacks took place on the Jews throughout Franconia and the surrounding regions after a Ritual Murder accusation at Rottingen..  They were instigated and led by this Bavarian noble, Rindfleisch.  146 communities were annihilated.                                    

Massacres of Jews happened again in 1336 at the time of the Black Death where Jews were accused of deliberately propagating.  People acted against Jews with complete barbarism.  Ove 350 localities of Jews suffered, and over 200 Jewish communities were utterly wiped out.                                     

By the 14th century in the 2nd half of it, the Jewish survivors were kept perpetually impoverished by cancelling debts due to them.  Those were the businessmen who suffered.  The Jewish intellectual life kept going in Germany throughout the Middle Ages by centering mainly on talmudic study.  Lithuania was home to Jews in 1495, after the 1492 expulsion of Jews in Spain.  Karaites were already there by 1321 with a community established by 1398.  

Toward the close of the Middle Ages most of the larger German cities banished the Jews after the beginning of the 16th century.  The only communities of importance left were Frankfort-on-Main and Worms.                             

As European commerce grew in the late Middle Ages, some Jews became prominent in trade, banking, and moneylending, and Jews’ economic and cultural successes tended to arouse the envy of the populace. This economic resentment, allied with traditional religious prejudice, prompted the forced expulsion of Jews from several countries and regions, including England (1290), France (14th century), Germany (1350s), Portugal (1496), Provence (1512), and the Papal States (1569). Intensifying persecution in Spain culminated in 1492 in the forced expulsion of that country’s large and long-established Jewish population. Only Jews who had converted to Christianity were allowed to remain, and those suspected of continuing to practice Judaism faced persecution in the Spanish Inquisition. As a result of these mass expulsions, the centres of Jewish life shifted from western Europe and Germany to Turkey and then to Poland and Russia.                           

The Protestant Reformation seemed to offer some amelioration in the Jewish position, but Luther ultimately reverted to the traditional German anti-Semitic standard.  

          pictured is Rabbi Wertheimer , a Court Jew

The 17th century saw after the 30 Years War the creation of many competitive states emerging.  Many hired Jews as factors, military purveyors, financial advisers, etc. and gave them privileged positions as Court Jews.  Of course they attracted other Jews and communities were formed.  The Jews of Hamburg were important after a Marrano colony was established there (Spanish hidden Jews) .  A few of our ancestors were court Jews Wertheimer, above  being one.  

Resource:

The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia

https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/jewish-clothing-in-the-middle-ages/

Europe Found Court Jews Extremely Valuable: They Could Add and Subtract!

Nadene Goldfoot                                                          

Obama's administrative official thinks that Netanyahu is chickenshit, without any value.  This must go for all of Israelis and smacks of anti-Semitism.  This is because Netanyahu isn't bending and going along with all this administration wants to do with Israel.  Imagine that!  Not allowing the USA to have their way with Israel.  A democratic country that makes their own necessary decisions and who knows their enemy better than any nation across the waters.

At one time in Germany, some German rulers recognized that though Jews were to be despised as a group, they did have their valuable uses.  This happened as early as the Protestant Reformation of 1517.  The states of the Holy Roman Empire needed men with financial skills, and these skills were found among the Jewish people.  There wasn't any schooling going on in Europe evidently that could handle such things.

The princes of the countries created the "Court Jew."  He was supposed to keep his master supplied with money, but his duties were more than that.  He was in charge of supplies for the army of the prince.  He was used as a messenger in diplomatic and military missions.  He might even serve as one of the leading political advisers of the prince.  It was a demanding task.

By the middle of the 17th century, almost every one of Germany's 300 principalities was served by a Court Jew, even places with no Jews living amongst them.  It was a good job.  The court Jew  gained privileges and wealth.  He was free from oppressive laws like the limits on the number of allowable Jewish marriages to silly requirements that Jews buy specified amounts from a royal porcelain factory.  He could live where he liked and was allowed to enter the ranks of the nobility.  Retaining their religion meant being 2nd class citizens not only in Muslim lands, but eastern Europe as well until the Court Jews were given a good deal.

Being Jewish, it wasn't all that great because he was never truly accepted by the nobles.  Even though he usually urged the causes of his fellow Jews to help relieve their suffering, he was not accepted in the ghetto society of the Jewish masses as a rule.  So his position made his life quite lonely.  As long as he could please his lord and as long as his lord was able to protect him, is was a fairly good life.
                                                                         

Dangers came along for our 30th cousin, Joseph ben Issachar Susskind Oppenheimer, aka Joseph Suss Oppenheimer,  who was born about in 1698 and died in 1738 in Germany.  He had personal charm and financial connections which brought him power and wealth.  He served as the state counselor to the Duke of Wuerttemberg, Carl Alexander as his finance minister in 1732 for 4 years.  He was able to consolidate the duchy's finances and free its ruler from dependence on grants from the estates.  He used modern financial methods but this aroused much opposition from those uneducated and far-sighted while was very pleasing to his Duke.
                                                                           

Then the Duke died in 1737. Joseph was accused of embezzling state finances, and was arrested and charged with treason on the very day the Duke had died.  After an unfair trial, he was hanged at Stuttgart, nominally for having sexual relations with Christian women.  He refused to save his life by accepting baptism.  His body was publicly displayed in an iron cage-an example to any Jews of the risks of entering public life.

The Duke's own people knew little about math, but had the opinion that he was cheating them simply because he was Jewish.  A novel has been written about him by Lion Feuchtwanger called Jew Suss.
                                                                           

An earlier Samuel Oppenheimer born in 1630 and died in 1703 was a philanthropist and also another Court Jew.  He was the first Jew to settle in Vienna after the 1670 expulsion.  This Samuel was Leopold I's agent and financier and helped him finance his wars with the Turks and the War of the Spanish succession.  Leopold I was the King of Germany as well as the Holy Roman Emperor from 1658 to 1705.  .
                                                                           

Then in 1697 he was accused of conspiring to murder his rival and his nephew, Rabbi  Samson Wertheimer (1658-1724) and was imprisoned until vindicated.  Oppenheimer  continued to support the poor, Jewish scholars and Judah Hasid's movement to settle in Palestine.  They probably found refuge in Safed in the northern Galilee.  It is Rabbi Samson Wertheimer who my family finds we share segments of our chromosomes.   Oppenheimer and Wertheimer were German Jewish families that intermarried, so I know that Oppenheimer never murdered his kinsman.  They worked together.

Rabbi Samson Wertheimer was born in 1658 and died in 1724 and was another financier who was born in Worms, Germany.  He went to Vienna in 1684 to join the bank of his uncle,  Samuel Oppenheimer, the man accused of murdering him,  and soon became the court banker.  Together with his son Wolf, they lent large sums to the emperor.  In 1719 Carl VI appointed him chief rabbi of Hungary with judicial authority.  He used his connections to help out Jewish communities and was able to the publication of an anti-Semitic book called Entdecktes Judentum.  

"Generally, Court Jews were agents who arranged transfers of credit rather than possessors of vast capital in their own right; through their far-reaching commercial relationships and their organizing skill, they were able to provide funds more swiftly than most Christian bankers. Because of their specialization in the money business, they were able to furnish the silver for the mints more easily and could better act as army purveyors, once more because of their ability to organize and their network of family relationships. With their entrepreneurial spirit, they contributed in part to the process of industrialization within the frame of mercantilist policies." (1) 

There is much value in having good relations with Israel.  Number one is that it is the only Democratic country in the Middle East.  This tiny state has produced much in the line of medicines that it shares with the world.  It has created  the Iron Dome which stops missiles that they have a relationship with the USA today.  Israelis have much to offer about fighting terrorism that they have learned.  The only thing it does have is that oil is not under its soil, but it has found natural gas in the Leventine Basin and the Tamar gas field, and is sharing already with Jordan.

Resource:  : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leopold_I,_Holy_Roman_Emperor
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leviathan_gas_field
http://online.wsj.com/articles/israel-plans-to-sell-natural-gas-to-jordan-1409750217
The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia
My People, Abba Eban's History of the Jews Vulume I.
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/judaica/ejud_0002_0005_0_04679.html (1)
Update:  http://www.algemeiner.com/2014/10/29/white-house-distances-itself-from-chickenshit-insult-leveled-at-netanyahu-stops-short-of-apology/