Damian Thompson Damian Thompson

‘Jews Got Money’ – challenging anti-Semitism and a Jewish taboo

The other day someone tweeted at me the words ‘J£w$ Got Mon€¥’. And I was just about to tweet back: ‘Get stuffed, you anti-Semitic scum’. But I clicked on the link and realised I’d got the wrong end of the stick. The tweet came from Sasha Andreas, who’s made a documentary about poor Jews, mostly in New York. It features leaders of Jewish charities talking about a subject so sensitive that their own community is nervous about it – understandably. The words ‘Jews’ and ‘money’ are usually joined together by anti-Semites. Also, New York Jews are the wealthiest Jewish diaspora in history. ‘Poor Jews’ is assumed to be an oxymoron.

It isn’t. The Hebrew Free Burial Association has the heartbreaking job of organising religious funerals and burials for Jews who ‘meet their ends in a hospital, nursing home, lonely apartment or even on the street’.

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