Is it Good for the Jews to be a Federally Designated Minority?

One of the people my wife and I respect immensely is our friend Samantha Ettus.  An author and an influencer, Samantha had a substantial following going into Oct. 7, focusing on women’s issues. After Oct. 7, her focus shifted completely. She became a consistent, articulate and forthright advocate for the Jewish people and the state of Israel. When her house burned down in the LA fires, she got a lot of responses from people who said that she wished that she were in the house at that time.  She is a Jewish hero.

Samantha launched the “Jewsletter” – to which we recommend that everyone subscribe.  A consistent feature of the Jewsletter is “Good Jewish News” – which she chronicles every week. In last week’s email, she enumerated, as ever, some good news: Columbia suspended a student who disrupted a class on Israeli history, Nova Festival survivor Yuval Raphael would represent Israel at Eurovision and the American airlines were resuming flights to Israel.

But what caught my eye was another item: “For the first time, Jewish owned businesses will be classified as ‘minority enterprises,’ making them eligible for federal programs, grants and loans.”  We are now considered a “minority” by the Minority Business Development Agency, which is a division of the United States Commerce Department. This status was granted in a ceremony attended by President Biden’s Deputy Secretary of Commerce, and applauded by an incoming Trump Administration commerce official.

I was familiar with these programs because I addressed them in my forthcoming book “God Was Right: How Modern Social Science Proves the Torah is True.” They are in the chapter on diversity. This chapter, which is the longest in the book, covers the Torah’s very rich and nuanced theory of diversity – which is completely at odds with the notion of “diversity” that is prevalent in modern American parlance, policy and institutions.

For now: these programs, which are ubiquitous at all levels of government, give preferences and special treatment in contracting and granting to businesses owned by minority groups that are preferred by the government. As a result, a business that is owned by someone with a Peruvian grandfather receives a preference in contracting over a business owned by someone whose grandparents are Italian and Irish. A business that is owned by a man who is sexually attracted to men and women receives a preference over a man who is only attracted to women.

Is it good for the Jews that we are now included as a “minority” by the Minority Business Development Agency?

It is apparently the result of advocacy by the Orthodox Jewish Chamber of Commerce.  Its founder and CEO, Duvi Honig, not surprisingly thinks it is a very good idea. He explained to the Jewish News Service, “We have a yellow star until today that we can’t be eligible to get minority dollars, minority grants or taxpayers, and it just didn’t make sense.”

Rabbi Pini Dunner, a well-respected Jewish leader and scholar, agrees. “The need is more pressing than ever, especially as our local community confronts the wildfires in Los Angeles – we’re in greater need of assistance than ever before.”  

And so does Marc Jaffe, the President of the Greater New York Chamber of Commerce: “Acknowledging Jewish businesses as minorities is long overdue. They are certainly marginalized and encounter considerable discrimination.”

Joining the praise and support are the Michigan Republican Congressman Jack Bergman and the New Jersey Republican state senator Robert Singer (both of whom are Jewish) – along with seemingly every Jewish publication that has covered this. In fact, none of these publications offered an alternative perspective or even a skeptical quote.

Could that be because the justifications appear so obviously correct? Let’s start with that of Mr. Honig. He actually equates Jews not getting special and preferred treatment by the United States government to that of our grandparents who were forced by the Nazis to wear a symbol marking us for persecution and annihilation!

It is ironic that the head of the Orthodox Jewish Chamber of Commerce – or Orthodox anything, or Jewish anything – would indulge in such victimization. As I discuss in the chapter on culture in “God Was Right,” the Torah clearly and repeatedly warns against adopting the victim mentality. This is a theme in the story of Ishmael and Hagar, in why God tells us to identify as “strangers” rather than “slaves,” in the story of Moses passing by the Amorites — and in explicit laws in Exodus and Deuteronomy regarding equal treatment for rich and poor.

We can see in the statement of Mr. Jaffe just why the Author of the Torah believed that victimization was such a concern – as victimization is apparently an eternal temptation. I have been a New York businessman for thirty years – and can attest that we are “certainly” not marginalized, and don’t encounter any discrimination. If any government entity discriminates against Jews – through taxes, regulations, purchasing, anything – Mr. Jaffe should enumerate who and how.

Ironically, the only discrimination I can think of is that wrought by the programs that he is excited to join. By giving preferences to certain groups, the government is effectively discriminating against the excluded groups. But given how enthusiastic he is for Jews to be a federally designated “minority,” I don’t believe that is what he is referring to.

There was a time when Jews were discriminated against – by state and private entities. When Jews could not get jobs at investment banks, what did we do? We created Goldman Sachs, Lehman Brothers and Solomon Brothers. When we could not get jobs at law firms, we created Proskauer Rose, Fried Frank and Wachtel Lipton. When we could not get jobs in entertainment, we created Paramount, Warner Brothers and MGM. When we could not get jobs at hospitals, we created Mt. Sinai in NYC (originally called The Jews Hospital), Cedar Sinai in LA and the Jewish Hospital in Cincinnati. We certainly never sought “minority” status at the Commerce Department, or anything like it.

The devastating Los Angeles wildfires destroyed all property in their way — regardless of the ethnicity or faith of the owners. Everyone in that area is in “greater need of assistance” than before – not only, or even particularly, Jews. It is equally unclear how a non-emergency program giving Jews everywhere preferences in all kinds of federal programs will help Jews (or anyone else) suffering acutely from the damage of the wildfires.

All programs that favor specific groups face a bedeviling question: Who qualifies? For instance, should a person with one grandparent from Peru and three from Boston qualify as “Hispanic”? Should a person who maintains just a “community attachment” to an Indian tribe be considered a “Native American”? According to US government policy, the answer is yes on both.

This question is especially relevant to Jews. The “Who is a Jew?” question is neither new or – to put it mildly – settled. Orthodox Judaism considers only people who are born to a Jewish mother (or who underwent an Orthodox conversion) to be Jewish. Reform Judaism recognizes patrilineal descent, and has more liberal conversion standards. Israel grants the “right of return” to those with one Jewish grandparent and to those who have undergone a conversion with an approved Rabbi – but uses the Orthodox definition for matters of marriage and burial.

These differences are profound and challenging. How is the Commerce Department supposed to collapse them, and settle a question that divides the worldwide Jewish community?  Apparently, they are punting – from the application to the “verification” process. I’m not sure how that will help – or, for that matter, what they will do with Christians who identify as Messianic Jews or Jews for Jesus.

There is another problem, which is not addressed in any of the commentary on this program: It is illegal. President Trump issued an executive order forbidding any “DEI-related factors, goals, policies, mandates or requirements” in federal hiring, promotion, performance reviews and contracting.

These specific points roll up into a larger question. How should we think of such programs in the first place? We can analyze them on a couple of vectors.

The first comes right from the Torah: “Be holy” – a command, Nachmanides explained, to sanctify ourselves within the permissible.  Accordingly, we have a Jewish obligation to ask of this program – as with any other: Is it right, just and even sanctified?  Here, the Orthodox Jewish Chamber of Commerce needs to explain why discrimination against an Italian-American gentile in the awarding of a paving contract in favor of a Jew is right and just.

The second derives from the underlying ideology of all programs that favor one ethnic, racial, gender or religious group over another. They are all based on the notion that the world is fundamentally divided into just two groups: perpetrator and victim.  This absurd duality always results in Jews eventually being cast as perpetrators or oppressors.  It is ironic that, in order to secure a supposedly narrow benefit, the Orthodox Jewish Chamber of Commerce is subscribing to that ideology.

The entire edifice of DEI, of which these minority preference programs are a part, is based on this false duality. In 2021, Jay Greene and James Paul analyzed the tweets of DEI personnel on campus. They concluded the profession was systematically and officially antisemitic. This report did not receive much currency outside of conservative circles at the time. But the response of DEI personnel – on and off campus – after October 7 revealed just how right and prescient their report was.

Despite these damning findings against DEI, we have a Jewish obligation to understand the other side of an argument, and to (per Pirke Avot) “judge everyone on the side of favor.” How might one do so here?

Jews are, by far, the victims of more hate crimes than any other group. The response should be more policing for Jews in the neighborhoods where we are vulnerable – not giving preferences to Jewish owned businesses everywhere.

One could say that it is acceptable to receive a benefit even if one wouldn’t vote for it. I remember reading years ago that the great economist Milton Friedman, who opposed Social Security, nevertheless collected it and the great columnist Michael Kinsley, who opposed the home mortgage deduction, took one himself. Both justified their decision by saying that they were following the law and participating in the system. They are far from unique here. A liberal who believes that there should be higher taxes is not a hypocrite if he pays at the legal rate. But that is a far cry from advocating for an unjust law and celebrating its receipt – which is what the Orthodox Jewish Chamber of Commerce did.

These narrow-minded and self-serving arguments don’t work.  The response of Jews, as Jews, should not be to try to assert our victimhood and join DEI. It should be to reject discrimination in all forms, and to resist its institutionalization and legitimization that manifests as DEI. Whenever anyone receives a benefit on the basis of an immutable characteristic, it is bad news for the Jews – and everyone else.

Mark Gerson is the author of the forthcoming book, “God Was Right: How Modern Social Science Proves the Torah is True.”