i’d be more interested in jewish numbers than protestant or catholic
I think Indians are even more so but there it's about caste and not just being Indian.
Humans are weird.
Alternatives like University Affiliation, Regional ties, Ethnic ties, Clan ties, and Workplace affiliation play a greater role due to the nature of South Asian immigration in the US (tends to be white collar professionals across all ethnic groups).
Treating South Asian Americans homogeneously will lead to the same mistakes like treating all Latinos homogeneously - plenty of South Asian heavy battleground counties like Loudoun County, Middlesex County, Williamson County, Kern County, San Joaquin County, etc have seen Ds margins drop significantly in the current election.
That said, we are a clannish bunch, and biradari (and every other South Asian language's equivalent of that word) is our guanxi.
That said I do agree with you to a certain extent that pre-Tech immigration absolutely was a thing (and a major factor in the Punjabi community across western US).
> more similar to Guyana. (My great grandfather came during that 1920s era but jumped ship in NYC instead
Oh dang, that's pretty wild! I thought most immigration to Guyana from South Asia during that era was primarily from Eastern UP, Bihar, and West Bengal, not Sindh/Punjab.
My intuition would be that nepotism would be more rife with this kind of community makeup, if you know your distant family and your family friends very well they're much more likely to try to help you out.
A good example is the 11th Century Mediterranean world.
In the Muslim sphere of influence, Jewish culture was highly intellectual, and produced numerous scholars.
In the Christian sphere of influence, Jewish culture was highly fundamentalist, and produced almost no native Jewish scholars.
Heck, modern day Israel or New York offers almost the same contrast, as did the first century Middle East.
Judaisms tendency to split into these two camps, usually simultaneously, is one of its many fascinating features.
Hum... Just have a look at a list of Nobel prize winners.
Judaism is nothing like protestantism or even catholicism. If it were, we wouldn't have protestantism or catholicism. Judaism ( by that I mean real judaism ) is racial/ethnic and centered around bloodlines while protestantism is universal.
> promotes education and reading for all.
No. Judaism promotes the study of torah/tanakh and even that is only within their own people. Judaism most certainly does not promote education in the general sense and not to the general public. That modern jews in the west pursue education is not due to judaism but to european culture.
> Plus Judaism promotes some form of debate.
In a superficial manner. Like how protestants and catholics debate. Certainly not in the socratic way of the greeks.
Judaism didn't go around the world spreading literacy like Catholicism and especially Protestantism did. After all the jewish god is only for the jews while the christian god is for all humanity.
Isn't it basically a meme now that when you ask a rabbi a question you get a question in return? I think that's a cultural difference.