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Comment by twawaaay | Hacker News Reader

The "Jew with a Coin" is antisemitic. The coin is used in this case to symbolise greed which antisemites here automatically assign to all Jews. (I know, I am a Pole)

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I'm not sure even Grabowski agrees, here's what he first says about it:

> Anthropologist Erica Lehrer wrote about this phenomenon in Kazimierz (a center of Jewish life in Kraków) in her 2013 book Jewish Poland Revisited, uncovering that some Poles collect these odd pieces of art as good luck charms and may not consciously attribute sinister meaning to them.

Maybe Wikipedia editors are whitewashing antisemitism, but he should really find more clear cut cases.

No conflict here. You can own a piece of art that is racist or antisemitic without being racist or antisemitic.

Also, in certain parts of Poland antisemitism is so pervasive that it is basically part of local folklore. So you try to go read children's book and there will be a Jew in it trying to steal kids money... and nobody thinks twice about it just like nobody questions stories about a fat guy wearing red suit flying around dropping presents.

People collect Lawn Jockeys for good luck too, but, like the "Jew With A Coin", they're self-evidently bigoted.

Those ideas don't oppose each other. The figurine may be generally antisemitic and may be collected by some as odd piece of art. Similar to Gollywogs.

I’m curious of your assessment of the Wikipedia article’s accuracy:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jew_with_a_coin

It takes a more measured tone than your own, but the practice still seems rooted in deeply anti-semitic tropes.

So the way antisemitism here works is pretty much the same way it always did. The same way Nazis used.

People assign certain qualities to Jews. They repeat the same ad nauseam in jokes, in caricature, etc. Rather than treat Jews individually, antisemites tend to treat them in a way that dehumanises them -- which is a move that makes further antisemitism easier. You see, dehumanising is about disconnecting your empathy, about not seeing "them" as individuals but as a class of people that you can assign to qualities you hate.

Also there is a reason Nazis hated Jews so much. The whole goal was to find a way to be able to make people do things by finding a common enemy that will be easy to vilify. And Jews were already pretty common (everywhere in Europe), easy (no own government) target and already with pretty poor sentiment. No, Nazis did not invent antisemitism.

The funny thing about all this is that historically Jews were prevented here from many trades and, out of necessity, they took up certain professions connected with finances because they just couldn't do much else. Because of this Poles formed this connection between Jews and money and greed while completely forgetting that it was the governments at the time that caused this.

> Because of this Poles formed this connection between Jews and money and greed while completely forgetting that it was the governments at the time that caused this.

I don’t think they’ve forgotten. In much of Europe rulers that issued crippling taxes or engaged in ruinous financial schemes are not remembered fondly.

Hm, yeah, all of a sudden I think I'm more on Grabowski's side. This is extremely weasel-worded: "Opinions about the motif vary; some cultural studies scholars believe it promotes Polish–Jewish dialogue or view it as harmless folklore or nostalgia, while others believe it is an antisemitic and offensive stereotype."

Maybe you can argue the trinkets aren't in themselves anti-Semitic, but I completely agree with you that they're 100% undeniably rooted in anti-Semitic tropes. I mean even the word "nostalgia" there is weird. Nostalgia for what?

My polish grandmother has it as a painting in her house (a jew counting coins). She bought it few years ago. She says the jew brings good luck. She is absolutely not racist nor antisemitic.

She might not be, but the notion of "the jew brings good luck" is absolutely anti-semetic and dehumanizing (associating Jews with money and reducing the people to a notion).

Well it's hard to not associate Jews with money in Europe, especially eastern one, where for cultural and religious reasons the minority was heavily involved in trade and banking since middle age.

Even today despite global jews being less than 0.2% of world population are 20% of Forbes 200 richest, e.g. 5 of the 10 richest americans are jews.

> My polish grandmother has it as a painting in her house (a jew counting coins). She bought it few years ago. She says the jew brings good luck. She is absolutely not racist nor antisemitic.

> Even today despite global jews being less than 0.2% of world population are 20% of Forbes 200 richest, e.g. 5 of the 10 richest americans are jews.

While I don't know your grandmother, your representation of yourself reads very antisemitic to non-Polish audiences. You may want to take a minute of introspection as to what shared cultural influences led to your grandmother's art choices and your insistence that antisemitic stereotypes are valid. There might be a connection there. That said, you probably wouldn't want me painting all Poles as insensitive oblivious racists.

There's a difference in statistics which don't say anything about causality - like the mentioned involvement in banking due to religious/cultural restrictions, and the association going the other way - this is a Jewish figurine with money, therefore it's lucky. That's the whole issue with antisemitism, racism, etc. It's like the historical connection of black people being banned from public pools -vs- associating being black with not being a good swimmer.

It's actually pretty easy to not do associations the other way... just need to be aware and care. It's easier for us now than for previous generations to be aware at least, but being open-minded in general always helped.

Just because a stereotype has a historical basis doesn't make it not racist. In the Americas black people were slaves for hundreds of years, but if I carry around a little statue of an African slave because that's what I still associate with black people, that's definitely racist and dehumanizing.

The sin of usery prevented Catholics from banking leaving a void filled by people who didn’t follow Christ.

Think about how much we decry banks today. Now place yourself in the 14C. Jesus drove out the moneychangers 4 daYs before his crucification, hmm today. The “greatest story ever told” informs people. Moneychangers are bad, moneychangers are Jewish therefore Jews are bad.

This is completely bonkers. Usury isn't condemned because Christ threw the money changers out. Usury is condemned because it is exploitative and because it is theft[0]. IIRC, Jewish bankers weren't even the worst offenders in, say, Renaissance Europe; there were Christian bankers who charged higher interest.

One difference, though, is that while Catholics are forbidden from offering usurious loans to anyone, Jews are only forbidden from doing so to other Jews. It is permissible to offer such loans to non-Jews[1].

[0] https://www.newadvent.org/summa/3078.htm

[1] https://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/4108763/jewis...

Sure. A person singing a racist song might just be liking the song and not thinking twice about it. Doesn't change the fact the song is racist.

Does she pat the head of young jewish children for luck?

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