Absolute Jewish Pseudo-Scholarship: Jews and Money

Sometimes you come across an article that masquerades as scholarship but just completely reeks of arbitrary opinion. I came upon just such a case today entitles "Jewish Theology and Economic Theory" emanating from a "Think Tank" in Jerusalem. The authors are described as follows, "Corinne Sauer is co-founder and director of the Jerusalem Institute for Market Studies, an economic policy think-tank located in Israel. Robert M. Sauer is chair of the Department of Economics at the University of Southampton in the United Kingdom and founding president of the Jerusalem Institute for Market Studies."

Now the thesis of this article is that Jews are economically liberal even thought they ought to be conservative.

What makes me say that this is pseudo-scholarship par excellence? The complete lack of nuance regarding varieties of Jews across history and geography. The utter absence of metrics or any indication that the authors did any original work to support their thesis. The lack of a coherent and distinguishable thesis. I could go on. But you have here a very nice Op-Ed piece presented as if it were a scholarly essay under the imprimatur of an institute named for an esteemed intellectual.

Jewish Theology and Economic Theory
by Corinne Sauer and Robert M. Sauer

The late Milton Himmelfarb, a social commentator and longtime student of the American Jewish community, definitively summed up the Jewish political paradox with his famous aphorism: “Jews earn like Episcopalians and vote like Puerto Ricans.” American Jews, it seems, tenaciously refuse to link their higher income levels with more conservative, or economically liberal (in the European sense), political positions. Recent data indicate that American Jews earn per capita almost twice as much as non-Jews. Yet, they are between 33 percent and 50 percent less likely than American Catholics and Protestants to identify themselves as supporters of the free market.

Why is it that American Jews suffer from (or perhaps enjoy) a particularly acute case of champagne socialism? The most popular answer to this difficult question involves the impact of Judaism on the belief system of American Jews, as well as Judaism’s emphasis on aggressively pursuing social justice.

The conventional wisdom is that Judaism motivates Jews to be highly educated and to succeed professionally but to fervently support relatively collectivist social policies and other forms of aggressive government intervention for shaping an ideal society. In our view, however, the fundamental problem with the so-called standard answer is that it is not at all true that Judaism is a set of principles that endorses income redistribution and other progressive social programs. In fact, our research shows the opposite: Judaism is a system of thought that more naturally aligns itself with the basic principles of economic liberalism. Jewish economic theory does not explain the widespread distaste amongst Jews for a free market political agenda.

A simple analysis of the political preferences of American and Israeli Jews suggests that there is a statistical basis for claiming that Jews have a strong distaste for economic liberalism. This is quite a paradox because it is also well-known that Jews have benefited a great deal over the centuries from the operation of free markets and competitive capitalism.

There's more to this article at the site.

What do I think about Jews and economics? There obviously are large numbers of economically left-wing and liberal Jews who come from poor backgrounds and a smaller number of wealthy economically conservative Jews. The economics of Jews has little or nothing to do with the theology of Judaism.

To make any other case requires a whole lot more work than these pseudo-scholarly authors are willing to invest.