The power of Jewish nepotism

On 1 August 2003, Adam Bellow said this in The Forward:

“Most Jews would probably tell you that they find the very idea of nepotism abhorrent and unfair.

After all, haven’t Jews been at the forefront of the liberal revolution, insisting on equality of rights and opportunity not just for themselves but for other minority groups? Haven’t Jews championed the principle of merit, supported affirmative action, attacked the idea of restrictive quotas and legacy admissions?… All true. But at the same time, like other immigrant groups, Jews have relied first and foremost on familial resources to adapt, survive and prosper in America…

During the 1920s and 1930s a group of hard-nosed Jewish entrepreneurs turned a patch of desert near Los Angeles into the Hollywood movie industry. Entertainment juggernaut Paramount Pictures, founded in 1919 by Adolph Zukor, was financed by an enormous loan from the Jewish Wall Street firm of Kuhn, Loeb & Co., thanks to the intervention of Otto Kahn, brother of Zukor’s partner Felix Kahn. THE STUDIOS WERE FAMED FOR THEIR NEPOTISM.

Jewish families also went into the media business, founding Random House, Knopf, Simon & Schuster and other distinguished publishing houses. And the Sulzberger-Ochs clan has owned and run The New York Times since 1896...

Speaking at a recent seminar on Jewish women in television at New York’s Jewish Museum, Terri Minsky, creator of the hit series ‘Lizzie McGuire,’ unapologetically remarked: ‘I got into TV the way I thought all Jewish people did, I had an uncle in the business'...

How can we square this long record of familial and ethnic nepotism with the public insistence of Jews on equal opportunity and merit?…

THE WHOLE HISTORY OF AMERICAN JEWRY IS A TRIBUTE TO THE POWER OF JEWISH NEPOTISM. INDEED, NEPOTISM HAS BEEN A POSITIVE AND WHOLESOME FORCE IN JEWISH LIFE FOR THOUSANDS OF YEARS.”

One law for them.

Another for us.