Trudie Pert: The “High Cost of Jewish Living,” the feature article in the March, 2010, issue of Commentary Magazine, demonstrates how easily Jews will turn their backs on long held politically ensconced beliefs when it is to their advantage.
According to the author, Jack Wertheimer, the economic downturn has been rough on all but the wealthiest Jews. In NYC alone, it is estimated that 350,000 of the 1.4 million Jews live at or below subsistence levels. Synagogues and Jewish relief agencies have been overwhelmed with increases in demand for aid, while contributions to these organizations have steadily fallen. At the same time, philanthropic agencies, often depending on the contributions of a very few wealthy benefactors, have seen their budgets drastically cut.
Why is the cost of Jewish living so high? For one thing, the cost of eating only Kosher food, especially meat, can double the grocery bill. Prices rise during holidays like Passover, when grocery bills can increase hundreds to thousands of dollars. For a middle class family synagogue membership will run into the thousands, as will membership in social organizations like the nationwide Jewish Community Centers.
However, the largest expenditures, and the area where contributions are lowest, are those for Jewish pre-college education. Ever more families have withdrawn their children from inferior public schools and placed them into Jewish day schools. Depending on their quality these charge between $15,000 to $30,000 per year. Add to that residential summer camps, at $650 to $800 per week, and the obligatory trip to Israel, the result is that many Jewish parents are over-extended.
Whenever possible, however, they continue to make the expenditures, because they believe that only a thoroughly Jewish education will “increase the chances of children learning the skills necessary ….to identify strongly with other Jews…and retain their heritage in a society that exerts enormous assimilatory pressures.” According to Wertheimer, the affordability of high quality and total immersion Jewish education is essential for another important reason: the majority of Jewish leaders and activists have been formed by Jewish-only education. Though Orthodox Jews often have lower incomes, they have continued to provide an education for their young because they pool their contributions, whether they have children or not. It is the middle class that has been most affected by the economic downturn, and for whom Jewish education has become prohibitively expensive.
Wertheimer proposes two solutions to solve the problem of the high cost of Jewish education. Both involve federal aid and the redefining of the previously strong wall separating church and state.
Among Wertheimer’s suggestions for direct federal aid to Jewish schools are the following:
- vouchers to include middle class families
- tax credits for individuals and corporate contributions
- a change in the tax laws so that families could deduct tuition on their federal returns.
- direct subsidies for tuition in Jewish day schools
- using public school teachers to teach general subjects in Jewish day schools at taxpayer expense
The second solution which Jack Wertheimer proposes uses as a model the federal “Teach for America” program. Wertheimer calls for the creation of a Jewish Teach for America. This he envisions as serving a double purpose. Not only would it provide government-subsidized Jewish teachers for the national web of Jewish day schools, it would also strengthen the Jewish identity of the volunteers.
Wertheimer’s politically expedient proposal to substantially increase the amount and type of Federal aid to Jewish schools is quite surprising considering the decades long Jewish effort to build a strong wall separating church and state, and public and parochial schools. His proposals should be closely considered and perhaps emulated by Whites, both devout and merely “cultural” Christians, who are also interested in preventing the assimilation of their children into the multi-cultural cesspool of public education and in establishing their separate cultural identity beginning in primary school.
Trudie Pert is a pen name. Her most recent article for TOO is Birthright Israel. Email her.
Facing the Future as a Minority
Unbelievable. First they bring in all kinds of immigrants and destroy our public schools and our nation and now they want us to pay for their educations and help them become stronger tribally.
Sarah Jessica Parker was thrilled to learn that one of her ancestors was involved in the Salem Witch trials because it showed that her family goes back in this nation and made her “American”. But she was very upset that perhaps her ancestor was an accuser.
What is the difference between the American aberration of the witch trials and the ADL’s hate crime laws. Or the monkey trial and the people who are put on trial and imprisoned for “denying history”? There are always double standards for Jews.
All along we have put up with Jews persecuting Christians and demanding a separation of church and state and now they want us to pay for their educations.
How any one can put up with Jews is beyond me. We already pay to make the food Kosher so now we have to pay more?!
Jews are showing that diversity doesn’t work. They do nothing but cause trouble.
Look in the dictionary under parasite and you’ll find the Jew. Students are protesting across the nation over tuition costs but Jews expect us to pay their way. In all the suffering Americans are going thru Israel still gets its billions. I **** Jews. May they burn in hell.
What a terrible travesty that Jews should be under such economic duress, and suffering so. Perhaps the Christian Zionist rapture crowd can come to their rescue with several billion Zogbuck$ in cash subsidies, to help out their guiding lights? Don’t worry about the ‘separation of synagogue and state’, the best Congress that money can buy will see to it that the ‘special relationship’ continues, and is fully funded.
Trudie, Kevin, et al.
“His proposals should be closely considered and perhaps emulated by Whites, both devout and merely “cultural” Christians”
For any of this to fly, which it to say, to begin to see yourself as an ethne and to work as an ethne, you [we] need to give yourselves [ourselves] an identifiable name.
I’m sorry, but a lot of the people that contribute to this site are gullible. They casually use words like ‘white,’ ‘European,’ and ‘Caucasian’ when all of these words have been ruthlessly targeted with a campaign to make them nonviable as a medium for ethnic identification.
Either you need to pick one of these terms and tirelessly excavate it from the discourse, devotedly polish it, and then ruthlessly defend it, or you need to create another one, and give it currency. Just pick a word from Western history — or try to rehabilitate one and go with it. Do you notice how ruthlessly Muslims guard their ‘identity words’ and symbols. What about Hispanics? (Latinos?)
I have already discussed the problems with using any of the above words, and I don’t have a good replacement. With ‘White’ you have to spend you time explaining how Jews are different from post-Christendom ancestral European (Lunatic, Crazy, Conspiratorialist) and how ‘White’ means something more than ‘skin color’ (racist, where race = color). European is becoming meaningless, as Europe is becoming just as multiracial as American, and Caucasian ends up including a great deal of people you don’t want, and is of course ‘racist’ (where race= biology). (Jews are not running into the problem with ‘Semite,’ or course, they just change with the game). On all fronts you have been robbed of a collective identity. You have been muted, and in being muted you are, in aggregate, but a dumb beast, cattle.
My suggestion is that someone consider the situation, weigh the costs and benefits of different terms, and decide what term to invest in. ‘White’ is used here, but my guess is that, choice of words, has not been really thought out. Or has it? Is the the best word available to convey what we mean by Ancestral European? Nothing more mythohistoric could be thought of? If this is it, we then need to go about defending and defining this term. Words are alchemical. Solve et Coagula.
If not, in addition to using ‘white’ as a proxy, given it’s expediency, something else has to be developed for those who seek to be more than just a mass of voices.
This is disgusting and outrageous. Ashkenazi Jews are the wealthiest ethnic group in the USA, with nearly 50% of individual Jews making over $100,000 a year which is MUCH more than the vast majority of White FAMILIES…and they claim they need even more support of big gub’mint?! – “They also made more money than the average US citizen (46 percent of Jews in the US make more than $100,000 a year)” – http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/Flash.aspx/148845
Just goes to show that many Jews are still communists at heart. Israel itself is the biggest welfare project in American history, with American taxpayers and the Jewish-dominated FED and Treasury pouring many billions per year in to that nation, not to mention the unknown billions in donations/remittances sent to Israel by American Jews (like the way Hispanics send remittances back to their countries in Latin America).
Idea to raise money – at Facebook they make billions of dollars by selling Avatars. There are no manufacturing costs. The TOO sites could provide space for WN to have blogs, post video etc. Bloggers would pay yearly costs for the blog and $$ for the Avatar which could be universal and follow them around the web and link back to the TOO sites or to the A3P site.
@Lesacre On the program “Who do you think you are” about ancestry, Sarah Jessica Parker found out that her roots go back in America to the Salem witch trials. You should watch this program. She kept saying about how now she feels “American”. She did not feel that before since she is Jewish. American means white European. We should call ourselves Americans. Others are hyphenated Americans.
Organized American Jewry just received the biggest welfare package in modern history with all of the recent federal government bailouts of banks, insurance companies, etc…with those bailouts and big gub’mint welfare programs, Jewish businesspeople, bankers, CEOs, etc living all over the USA got hundreds of billions of dollars after they ran dozens of financial companies in to the ground and almost took the entire U.S. economy down with them.
Few people know that the U.S. government is subsidizing the rapid growth of the Jewish population in Israel as well as America, especially amongst the most Orthodox Jews (who are the most ethnocentric and outright racist, not to mention entirely non-assimilable).
Guess which town in the entire USA has the highest rate of welfare usage and assistance? The town of Kiryas Joel, NY, which is composed entirely of Hasidic Jews. The Jews there regularly have 7-10 children each family paid for courtesy of the American taxpayer.
God’s Chosen People are welfare-leeches even more than the Blacks and Hispanics!
Ms. Pert seems to be unaware that taxpayers, at least in New York State, already pay for totally sectarian Jewish schools in communities in several counties north of Westchester. The best-known such community is Kiryas Joel, but it is actually one of many places where non-Jews cannot buy property–indeed, cannot live at all–and are actively encouraged to move through fast or suffer the consequences.
In addition, while a large number of the residents of these communities are Orthodox Jews who work in such largely goy-free occupations as the diamond and real-estate rackets (their sable hats and expensive albeit ugly clothing confirm their wealth), in several of them a clear majority of the residents receive welfare payments and food stamps. Both of the state’s senators have made it perfectly clear, to Jew and chump alike, that this situation will change over their dead bodies.
Jews are big on separating church and state, but synagogue and state, not so much.
The article in commentary is not even about debating these things with Americans. It just appeals to Jews with its arguments. I guess when they make up their minds we’ll find out how much its going to cost us.
Arizona already has a school tuition tax credit.
can i translate in Russian and post on my blog? )
Yes, that’s fine. Kevin M, Editor