Jewish Billionaires - Six Out Of The Top Ten, A Stinging Reproach To A One In A Million, Mediocre Jew

Laurie Finkelstein was an average student when he was supposed to be in the top tier if not the valedictorian of his class, not too much of an energetic ambition given the fact that he was the only Jew in the class; but he struggled at the things Jews were supposed to be good at - math and science - and muddled through Latin, French, and History. 

 

'What's the problem?' asked his father when his report card came in the mail.  'Did I get Irma Carlson’s child?', a particularly stinging comment because Irma was the town dimwit, the assistant librarian at the New Brighton Public Library, moved from shelving because the Dewey Decimal System was too much of a challenge for her to checkout, an equal challenge until bar codes came in and all she had to do was swipe. 

Mrs. Carlson was also the town tart, known to entertain men from the bank and the various downtown stores.  The Zackin brothers, twin managers of the downtown pharmacy known for its off-license sale of condoms (Connecticut was still a blue law state in those days) and a few extra Valiums tossed in at no extra charge for the shaky women of the West End, were her frequent visitors, and her son, Herbie, as dumb as he was, could have been the offspring of any one of a number of men. 

Laurie knew his father was joking, but he got the message.  Jews did not flounder in the middle, but were always at the top, the most talented, the most gifted, the most likely to succeed; and here he was with the great unwashed. 

 

'I expect more from you at the next marking period', his father told him, 'and no funny business or Miss Nancys'  This in reference to Nancy Blythe, seductive, alluring, precociously pubescent daughter of the country club champion whose sleeveless blouses were a distraction not only to his son, but to all the boys in Mr. Linder's civics class, a young girl who had asked them out to the woods behind the school, one by one, the only laggard being Laurie who, thank God, still didn't know what was what, the only thing that kept his head above water. 

When the next report card showed little improvement and a censure from the Principal, 'I don't know but what Laurie is not applying himself', a thinly veiled reference to the well-known fact that Jews were simply smarter than everyone else and that middle of the pack meant lack of application and discipline. 

'There's such a thing as the bell curve', Laurie said to his father.  'Even among us (the Jews) there have to be asymptotes and a big middle', to which his father retorted, 'The bell curve does not apply to us'. 

And so it was that Laurie struggled with quadratic equations and Jewish expectations.  When a Latino - Juan Valdez - moved ahead of him in the school academic rankings, he was ashamed, beaten, and discouraged.  'What can I do?'

Behind him the great Jewish genius of mathematics, science, philosophy, and music, Maimonides, Einstein, Heifetz, Perlman, Bernstein, and the Father of the Atomic Bomb, Robert Oppenheimer lurked. They were his models, the men to whose genius he aspired, and with work, insight, and discipline, he too would discover the workings of the universe. 

 

He had a way with numbers, was a whiz at balance sheets, projections, and abstract calculations.  He was, although he hated to admit it in the current era's resurgence of anti-Semitism, a Shylock.  With little training in accountancy, he could figure and finagle just like the Merchant of Venice, Bernie Madoff, and the historic Jewish shysters of history. 

Now, to be fair, such underhanded financial chicanery was not just Jewish. Rudy Kurniawan, the Indonesian wine swindler was not Jewish, nor was Jeffery Skilling, mastermind of the great Enron scam, or a hundred more Ivy League traders on the street; but the Jews ever since their days of usury before being exiled by Isabella, had known how to make a buck.  It was a proud profession, money lending, and the fact that many slipped their traces and went black was understandable.  Once you knew how money worked, you took advantage of that knowledge. 

'I refuse to capitulate to that prejudice', Laurie said, determined to be as goy as Parkington Phelps, scion of the Boston, Biarritz, and Park Avenue Phelps, a blonde, blue-eyed wonder and Wall Street investment banker to the rich and well-to-do; but he was a natural at hedging bets and taking calculated risks. 

He understood venality, greed, and the desire of all to make money and make it quickly but he could not take the final step, the Bernie Madoff step, the step into untold riches at someone else's expense.  His mind told him not to worry, the world was full of takers, but his heart beat with a Christian rhythm. 'What is wrong with me?. 

'How do you think Zuckerberg, Sergei Brin, and Larry Page got to be so successful?' said Laurie's father.' Hanging out at the diner, fondling girls?  No, the Torah, bar mitzvah, drive, singularity of purpose, native intelligence and an enabling environment.  You have all that and you are still pulling down five figures, a teller for Christ's sake'. 

 

His closest friend, Benny, was son of the real estate magnate who turned Plainville into a go-to town for the upper class and made millions from government contracts and the favors they enabled from contractors, city officials, and country club investors, and was headed into the business,

'What's with you?', he asked his friend.  'A goy gofer, bank teller soda jerk, a nowhere man, a klutz...Why don't you come in with me?'

The offer was appealing.  After all he was nearing forty and by that time Zuckerberg was a millionaire many times over, so what was he doing still at the bank?

The worst of it all was the image of the Jewish bell curve - thousands of geniuses clustered at the far asymptote while he, as Jewish as they, huddled under the great bulge.  Of all things - heresy, infidelity, dishonor, cowardice - this failure to live up to a 5000 year history was the worst, a despicable floundering in goy mediocrity. 

 

A Catholic priest saw him sitting disconsolately on a park bench in Farragut Square, not far from the White House, and sensing his despondency and emotional angst, asked him if he was all right. 

Laurie looked up at the young priest, smiled, and then laughed.  It has come to this, he thought, one of Jesus's lepers, in need of spiritual support and salvation.  'Fuck it', he said, 'I'm a Jew.'