Menahem-Mendl on Wall Street

Sholom Aleichem on Financial Meltdown

by Joachim Martillo (ThorsProvoni@aol.com)

 

In Did Financial Deregulation Serve the Neocons' Hidden Agenda? Philip Weiss asks some interesting questions about the connection between the Neocon ascendance in Washington, DC, and the speculative culture that brought so many Neocon-supporters hundreds of millions or billions of dollars of wealth.

Not only have a large group of economic oligarchs helped the Neocons tremendously in a political system where wealth has probably the largest voice, but the oligarchs and their Neocon intelligentsia have in process of formulating the ideological framework to mobilize the new rightwing Zionist wealth developed congruent speculative mentalities that thrived in and cultivated financial or political bubbles.

 

Such speculative bubbles are not new in Jewish history. In a discussion of Spanish Jews in the Netherlands in the 17th and 18th centuries, Simon Schama writes in The Embarrassment of Riches, An Interpretation of Dutch culture in the Golden Age, on pp.590.

Conversely Jews were thought to be disproportionately represented in high risk areas of the economy, in illicit speculation in commodity futures, or the infamous "trading in the wind" on doubtfully generated stock issues. The opprobrium ensuing from the collapse of these ventures, while not at all a recurrence of the medieval usury syndrome, could still rebound on the Jews and reinforce their reputation for dubious behavior. Jewish sterotypes [sic], for example, feature all too prominently in one of Bernard Picart's most widely disseminated satirical prints on the windhandel of 1720.

The above says less about modern American Jewish Wall Street culture than one might think because Schama is discussing Ibero-Berber (i.e. Spanish) Jews in the Netherlands while Wall Street is dominated by Eastern European ethnic Ashkenazi (i.e. Polish) Jews. In terms of culture the two groups are about as similar as Spanish and Polish Catholics, but they do share a common political economic heritage of Medieval Judaism, whose main commercial activities tended toward trade both in high margin goods, luxury items and slaves and also in the financing and banking activities that sustained such trade. (See Les origines des juifs actuels and The Origins of Modern Jewry.)

 

Among bankers and finance professionals, temptation of quick-rich schemes is always strong, and a small fraction of bankers will always give in to it. Because Dutch Spanish Jews were disproportionately represented in Dutch finance, Dutch Spanish Jewish involvement in questionable finance activities also seemed disproportionate, but in that situation dubious speculation was a tendency. In modern Wall Street over the last 30-40 years a culture of questionable speculation has developed, and the roots of this culture is fairly easily traceable to the historical financial behavior of Eastern European ethnic Ashkenazim, who represented the vast majority of the Eastern European entrepreneurial class during the 19th century.

 

As the ethnic Ashkenazi population grew while the traditional Jewish management, hospitality and mercantile sectors of the economy diminished, many ethnic Ashkenazim resisted falling into the worker or proletarian classes by attempting to move into finance. The author Sholem (Shalom, Sholom) Aleichem describes the culture of the Yiddish luftmenschen in finance in a series of fictional letters that were written between 1892 and 1909 and that constitute The Adventures of Menahem-Mendl. Menahem-Mendl successively tries his hand at currency trading, stock speculation, commodities, writing, and finally arranging marriages.

 

The excerpt below sounds very modern with the qualification that Menahem-Mendl is for the most part a nebbich and a shlimazl, who keeps getting taken and losing all his money. The profiteers, who exploit him, are all there but concealed in Menahem-Mendel's misuse of finance jargon, which does not always come across in the translation from Yiddish to English.

 

Note that emigration to Palestine is primarily a way of escaping creditors if flight to America is not possible. Sholom Aleichem was in fact an extremist Zionist, who emigrated to the USA, but he was fairly honest in his depiction of Yiddish culture. In this collection he does not even mention the pogroms that loom so large in the consciousness of modern American Jews.

 

Eastern European ethnic Ashkenazi immigrants to the USA brought the speculative financial culture with them, and it has been evolving ever since -- historically much to the distress of the German American Jews ("Our Crowd"), who dominated Jewish finance on Wall Street until the 1970s.

 

Yehupetz is Kiev. In Fiddler on the Roof Karilevka became Anatevka.

 

 

The Adventures of Menahem-Mendl

by Sholom Aleichem

(pp. 89-91)

 

Menahem-Mendle from Yehupetz to his wife, Sheineh-Sheindl, in Kasrilevka

To my dear, wise, and modest helpmeet, Sheineh-Sheindl, long may she live!

 

Firstly, I am come to inform you that I am, by the grace of God, well and in good cheer. May the Lord, blessed be His name, grant that we always hear from one another none but the best, the most comforting, and the happiest of tidings -- amen.

 

And Secondly, I want you to know that I am no longer a speculator. I spit on speculation -- may all Jews avoid it like the plague! It wore me out like a fever, it made me old and gray. What we endured here is no joke. It's all over with Yehupetz; the exchange is upside down; there's darkness everywhere -- it's like after a war -- even worse, perish the thought, than it was in Odessa! Every­body is done for and panic-stricken. People have taken to bankruptcy, and me in the middle. Every day, another de­faulter. Bankruptcy has become very much in fashion. And what's more, the important bankers, the big shots, have started to make themselves scarce. In the van was the banker through whom we all used to handle with Petersburg and Warsaw. One bright morning I came to his office where I was stuck with some Maltzevs and several Putilov shares for which he was to get a small "difference" from me. I started asking around where he might be, our fine lord. So they tell me he departed, God rest his soul­ -- he's already in America! In short, there started a hue and cry, there was a rush to the iron safe, but nothing was found in it except a bottle of ink and an old worn-out coin -- with a hole in it, besides…. Another banker left a collection of Jewish calendars in his safe beginning with the year 1873 up to the present day, and he himself made off to Palestine. A third one -- and a very big banker indeed -- did not default but was simply plucked to the tune of several millions in a single week and was left with nothing but his good name. Only Brodsky somehow managed to scramble out of the mess by a miracle.

 

So I thought it over and came to the conclusion that if it isn't in the books, no amount of brains will do any good. At any rate, it's lucky I took a look around on time and managed to throw myself into a new job -- and a most respectable job, too. That is to say, I have now become a broker-simply a broker, in fact, a broker right here in Yehupetz on the stock exchange. There are as many brokers in Yehupetz, knock on wood, as stars in the sky -- so why should I be any worse than they? Haven't I also got hands and feet and a nose and eyes, just like any other Jew? Char­acters as wellborn as I are aplenty here -- and yet none con­siders himself too good to take his cane in hand and start on brokerage. Is it such a difficult science, come to think of it? As long as you know how to tell a lie and, on top of it, possess a good stock of impudence, anybody can become a broker. Quite to the contrary, the more lies and the greater impudence, the better the broker! Believe me, in Ye­hupetz there are some brokers who in your Kasrilevka would be good only as servants or coachmen -- they hardly know how to sign their names, and yet you can see for yourself -- as your mother says, "If it were the will of God, you'd shoot fire from a rod…." All you have to do is' put on a white shirt and a nice hat and start creeping, snooping, sniffing, eavesdropping -- a jump here, a bounce there, and: "My commission, if you please!" Commission in brokers' language is hush money. And oh, how sweet is commission money! You earn it without a headache, without a pain in your stomach. Why, only yesterday, I picked up a fifty in commission, and may you and I know a pain and an ache, if I know what I got it for! I made several tons of sugar with ease -- easier than smoking a cigarette. That is to say, the sugar was made by other people -- I simply found myself in the middle of the deal. In short, with God's help, I made a fifty! And, please God, in about a year's time, I'll get back on my feet again and become what I used to be, because with us in Yehupetz, money plays first fiddle. A human be­ing is not worth a straw -- his origins, his ancestry, have no value at all. You may be anything and nothing -- so long as you have money! And since I'm very busy and pressed for time, I must cut this short. Please God, in my next letter, I'll write you everything in detail. For the time being, may the Lord grant health and success. Greet the children, God bless them, and give my kindest greetings to your father and mother, to old and young, to big and small.

From me, your husband, Menahem-Mendl.

Just remembered! Please write me what's new at home. Has it been raining? How are the beets getting on, and are there many beetles? Let me know as soon as possible because this is very important for me!

 

As above.

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