Jewish Economies (Volume 1)

Development and Migration in America and Beyond: The Economic Life of American Jewry

Simon Kuznets

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781351510998
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Jewish Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

Nobel Laureate Simon Kuznets, famous as the founder of modern empirical economics, pioneered the quantitative study of the economic history of the Jews. Yet until now his most important work on the subject was unpublished. These volumes bring to the public, for the first time, the most important work written on Jewish economic history since that of Werner Sombart a century ago.In the first volume, Kuznets uses extensive, original data to trace trends in the economic life of American Jews. He measures quantitatively for the first time the legendary economic success of American Jews and discusses the foundations of these achievements. Tracing their distinctive concentration in the professions, he exposes the causes of the extreme inequalities in American Jewish economic life. The immigrant origin of nearly all American Jews offers a unique case study in the process of assimilation that made American Jewry the ultimate American success story. This offers an ideal prelude to the second forthcoming volume, Comparative Perspectives on Jewish Migration.The volume's editors also provide a unique perspective on Kuznets' work. In the introduction, Weyl shows that many of Kuznets' most influential ideas, were inspired by his study of the economic history of the Jews. Through careful analysis of shared themes, and dozens of hours of detailed interviews, Lo and Weyl reveal a new dimension of Kuznets' thought to historical inquiry.

1

Economic Structure and Life of the Jews

Simon Kuznets

This is a preliminary draft of a paper, prepared at the request of Professor Louis Finkelstein, Chancellor of the Jewish Theological Seminary; for possible inclusion in a new edition of a two volume reference work, The Jews, of which Professor Finkelstein is the editor.

—Simon Kuznets, April 1956

Economic Structure and Life of the Jews

I. Introductory Analysis

1. Dispersion and Community

The economic structure and life of any group, within a given historical epoch, is largely a matter of its natural and social environment. The dispersion of Jews among numerous societies with different historical and institutional backgrounds suggests wide differences in economic structure and life among the many communities that comprise world Jewry. A question arises whether there is any common repeatedly observed feature of the economic life of the Jews that may serve as a general guide. In other words, what social and spiritual characteristics are common among the groups that are recognized as belonging to the world community of Jews?

Consider the nature of the dispersion for some recent years. For 1939, when the population of Jews was perhaps at its peak, about 16.6 million, Dr. Arthur Ruppin provides estimates for over 75 countries, most of them sovereign states, ranging from Poland to Paraguay, from the United States to the U.S.S.R., from Austria to Algeria.¹ Even if we count only those communities with 10,000 or more Jews, we are still confronted with 42 states. If we set the lower limit at 100,000, we find 17 such large Jewish communities—again in countries widely dispersed and with markedly different historical and social backgrounds. Even the three largest communities—each with more than a million Jews, in Poland, U.S.S.R., and the United States—lived in countries that differed sharply in level of economic performance and in social and political structure.

For 1954 the picture of wide dispersion is similar.² Total Jewish population of the world was estimated to be 11.9 million. Thirty-two communities in that many separate states and territories, comprised 10,000 or more Jews; 14 communities comprised 100,000 or more Jews; and the three largest communities, each with over a million Jews, were in the United States, the U.S.S.R., and Israel. Over a century ago there was the same wide dispersion even though the world population of Jews was only 3.3 million (in 1825) and only one country had a Jewish population of over a million.³

By what common characteristic do we identify these communities as Jewish? While no full answer to this question can be given here, four points can be made. (a) These communities possess a common history from original ancestry in Palestine to a chain of generations through the Diaspora to the present. (b) They share the same religion, not shared with others, and participate in a religiously colored community life. (c) They have a feeling of belonging to one group, and each is more responsive to the fate of the others than it is to the fate of most other population groups. (d) Finally, they have a feeling of distinctiveness from the neighboring population, often intensified by a discriminatory policy or attitude on the part of the non-Jewish groups.

Clearly, this list of characteristics is not exhaustive in the course of some two thousand years of Jewish and world history; they have led to and been accompanied by other demographic, social, and economic factors. Nor do these characteristics provide an infallible method for classifying individuals or groups as Jews. And yet some such characteristics are indispensable for identifying the groups that constitute Jews. Without such identification, how can we count them or study their economic life and structure?

If belonging and distinctiveness, associated with a common history and religion, are the identifying characteristics, it follows that the resulting groups recognized as Jews exclude many descendants of the Jews of ancient Israel and Judea and include some non-descendants. The exclusion implies that the group always tends towards cohesion and distinctiveness even though not every individual member fully recognizes or shares in the feeling of belonging. In a sense, the group is cohesive and distinctive because that is the way we define it.⁴ We would not find such distinctiveness and cohesion if we defined Jews as descendants of ancient Israelites. But this is neither tautology nor circular reasoning: Jews are recognized in the real world—by either internally originated or externally imposed feeling of belonging to a distinctive group. The definition thus corresponds broadly to the identification in real life; and from it other characteristics can be deduced. It is to these, more directly relevant to the economic structure and life of the Jews as a minority group, that we now turn.

2. Minority Status

We are interested here in the economics of modern Jewry, within an historical background largely of the last seventy-five years to give us the minimum perspective necessary. For this purpose the most relevant characteristic of the communities that we recognize as Jews is their minority status. With the single exception of Israel since independence, in every country with a sovereign government or some similar mechanism for making broad independent and authoritative social decisions, the distinctive Jewish group constitutes much less than the majority of the total population.

While minority status is a familiar and obvious feature of the Jewish world community, some of its specific characteristics should be singled out. A brief discussion of these will go far to suggest and explain some common characteristics of economic structure of modern Jewry. Four points are presented: (a) prevalence of minority status; (b) size of minority; (c) prospects of permanency of minority status; (d) recent origin.

(a) It need not be stressed that, except in Israel, the Jewish population is a minority within each country of residence throughout the world. Indeed, even today, the overwhelming proportion of Jewish world population—10.4 out of 11.9 million—has minority status; and as recently as 1939 this was true of all world Jewry. It follows that the economics of the Jews must be the economics of minority groups, which strive for cohesion and distinctiveness within larger population masses.

(b) The Jewish minorities may be quite large in absolute numbers—in a few cases they are larger than the total population of many independent states. The present Jewish population of the United States, estimated at 5.2 million, is much larger than the total population of several independent states in Europe (Denmark, Norway, Finland, Switzerland); and of several independent countries in Latin America and Asia, and of some semiindependent territories in Africa. But in all cases, again with the single exception of independent Israel, even these large Jewish communities are small minorities in the total populations of their countries of residence. And it is the level of the percentage fraction that is important. In not a single country in 1954 does the share of the Jewish population exceed 4 percent of the total. The two absolutely large Jewish communities outside of Israel, in the United States and the U.S.S.R., account for only 3.3% and 1.0% respectively of the total populations in these two countries. The percentage shares were somewhat higher in the 1930’s, when the large Jewish groups of some smaller Eastern European countries were still alive. But even then the highest percentage share, outside of Palestine and some freak political units like Tangier, was somewhat less than 10 percent (in Poland). This small minority status is significant—particularly for those few Jewish communities that managed to reach large absolute numbers and that are, therefore, of most importance for our discussion. Within an economic system of a country, a minority group tending towards cohesion and distinctiveness is likely to perform one set of functions if its proportion in total population is less than 10 percent; and another, if its share is as high as 20 to 30 percent.

(c) If only because the shares of Jewish populations in the totals are so low, little expectation is entertained, either by Jews or by non-Jews, that the former will ever become a majority, or even a large minority. Even in Israel, a majority of Jews was attained partly by setting boundaries to promote that end, partly because of the accidents of war and the reaction of the resident Arab population. In all other countries, neither the demographic patterns of natural increase among Jews compared with those for non-Jews, nor the prospects of addition by immigration (even if unrestricted) suggest a rise in the level of the share of the Jewish population beyond that of a small minority. In other words, the small minority status is more or less permanent and, therefore, a matter of some importance in the long term adjustment which the minority group is likely to make in the economic field.

(d) Within the last century, the Jewish minorities, where they are of large absolute size, are mostly of recent origin—recent in respect both of the history of the countries of residence and of the history of the Jews. In many countries Jews have, of course, been living since times immemorial, and are, therefore, among the oldest residents. This is true of many Jewish communities as a whole, i.e. including all their members, particularly where such communities are numerically small and the countries have been too isolated and backward to attract Jewish immigrants. It is also true of some groups within the larger Jewish communities—e.g. the ancestors of some members of the Jewish community in the United States settled in this country in the 17th century. But where the Jewish community has been fairly large within the recent century, the greater proportion of its members represents relatively recent migration into the country. This is true of the United States, with the large bulk of Jewish immigration occurring after 1880, as well as of other large Jewish communities in Canada, Argentina, and Brazil. It is true of Eastern Europe, where the Jewish population migrated largely at the end of the Middle Ages and where much of the territorial expansion of the Jews within the boundaries of Tsarist Russia occurred during the 19th century (out of the area of the original Kingdom of Poland). It is true of the Near East where the Jews migrated after the expulsion from Spain.

“Recent” is a relative term, and the migrations at the end of the Middle Ages may seem like old history to us today. We use the term “recent” here to suggest that, for the more populous Jewish communities, the bulk of the Jewish minority arrived after the economy of the country of destination had developed to a point where much of it was already manned by the resident majority; and where, therefore, the economic choices available to the recently arrived minority were necessarily limited by established interests. The term also indicates that these major Jewish migrations have been of recent occurrence relative to the long stretch of Jewish history. And while a full demonstration of the recent origin of Jewish minorities, particularly true of the countries of large Jewish population, would require much more detailed documentation and discussion than can be given here, the common and well known facts of Jewish and world history speak clearly for it.

3. The Economics of a Small Minority

Economic and social life is subject to a logic of its own, even if it is not as simple, or as hard and fast, as that of relations in the physical world. The characteristics of a permanent small minority of relatively recent origin that strives toward cohesion, in and of themselves imply consequences for its economic structure, dynamics, and life. We first formulate these consequences broadly; and then consider the more specific features to be added to this framework because of the particular historical conditions of the Jewish minorities in recent times.

(a) The economic structure of a small, cohesive minority—its industrial distribution, its occupational structure, its distribution by economic status—is likely to differ substantially from that of the majority, and hence from that of a country’s total population. It will be more concentrated in some sectors, and less in others.

The validity of this general statement can be clearly perceived if we ask the inverse: how likely is a small minority of a country’s population to reproduce, with fair similarity, the full range of the economic structure of the total population? The case is prima facie against it, if only because the small numbers of the minority can hardly attain the greater diversity of the much larger total population. But it is particularly unlikely since we assume a desire for cohesion on the part of the minority. This desire would naturally be translated in economic relations, into a desire for proximity and close links at many levels. The minority, rather than be dispersed and diffused along the full range of the economic structure of total population, would tend to be concentrated in selected industrial sectors; in selected occupations; and in selected classes of economic status.

If this consequence is recognized as an indispensable condition of the minority’s survival as a cohesive unit, much of the popular discussion about lack of “normality” loses point in application, say, to the Jewish minority. If the economic structure of a country’s total population is “normal” then, almost by definition, the economic structure of a small and permanent minority must be abnormal. To put it strongly, unless the economic structure is continuously “abnormal,” the minority will not long survive as a distinctive group. It would be more appropriate to describe the narrower range of industry, occupation, and status distributions as “normal” for distinctive small minorities; and an economic structure similar to that of the country’s total population as abnormal.

(b) The statements under (a) are true of any distinctive minor...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Preface
• Introduction: Simon Kuznets, Cautious Empiricist of the Eastern European Jewish Diaspora
• Editor’s Note
• 1. Economic Structure and Life of the Jews
• 2. Economic Structure of U.S. Jewry: Recent Trends
• 3. Economic Growth of U.S. Jewry
• Appendix
• Index