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Greed or Ambition
BY MOSHE KATZ
CEO
ISRAELI KRAV INTERNATIONAL
February 19, 2025, Mexico
I am going to address the "Elephant in the room", i.e. a topic most people prefer to skirt, to avoid, to bypass. We Israelis are known as being blunt, straight, and honest, direct and to the point, we do not avoid the issues, we face them head-on. On the flight over to Mexico I finally watched a film that my dear mother, may she rest in peace, loved. I now understand why. So I watched the slow paced "Driving Miss Daisy". I have always been a fan of Morgan Freeman, and he gave another outstanding and authentic performance as Hoke, a black American chauffeur in Georgia during the period of segregation. Dan Akroyd,(Boolie) another great actor gives an excellent performance as a successful Jewish businessman in Atlanta, Ga. His wife, also Jewish, tries her best to blend in and be more Gentile than the Gentiles. Her mother-in-law finds this very distasteful, as she says, with a nose like that she should not be the first to wish everyone a Merry Christmas. Yes, we Jews can laugh at ourselves, big noses and all. The film explores racism against African Americans and antisemitism in the South.
When Miss Daisy is informed by Hoke that her synagogue was bombed by Jew haters, she begins to show true camaraderie with black Americans and joins Dr. Martin Luther King in his campaign for equality for all Americans.
When Hoke/Freeman first approaches Boolie for a job, he says, I have always worked for Jews, yeah, I know what people say, you are all cheap and stingy and whatnot...
but Hoke knows that working for Jews is a wise decision. After working there for some time, Hoke decides to renegotiate his salary, and this the uneducated man does very well. In fact, he "out-Jews the Jew", for those unfamiliar with the term, to "Jew someone down" in parts of America means to drive a hard bargain, negotiate, or manipulate. It is an offensive, racist slur, that has its source in the European Christian antisemitism. While it is an accepted term in many parts of the USA, it is nothing short of a terrible ethnic insult against Jews and is totally unjustified.
The term to “Jew down” was born out of stereotypes formed during medieval times about Jews being cheap or prone to hoard money. Often they were forced into financial occupations and thus were best known as money lenders, leaving them vulnerable to anti-Semitic misrepresentations. Think of portrayals such as Shylock, the villainous lender in Shakespeare’s “The Merchant of Venice.” (Cleveland Jewish Times, Sep 27, 2019)
The term itself means to haggle or bargain for a lower price than originally agreed upon.
Over my years of travel all over the world, to teach Krav Maga to all people, regardless of ethnicity or religion, I have heard this insult repeated many times. I want to point out that none of the people who used this concept were anti-Jewish, in fact just the opposite, these were all students, and people that thought of me as a friend, and yet, they simply repeated what they heard from others without realizing what in fact they were saying and implying.
The idea that all Jews are wealthy is not even close to being true, it is a lie based on medieval European stereotypes. In fact, most Jews throughout the ages were poor, as they were heavily discriminated against. The lot of the Jew in Europe was poverty, discrimination and degradation. The few Jews who achieved financial success, despite the built-in discrimination, shared their wealth with their less fortunate brethren.
The stereotype of "The Jew with Money" is built-in to Western Culture, including Latin America, and seems to not want to die, despite being based historical inaccuracies.
The other day, a kind and good person made such a remark, and that is what sparked this blog. So what did you do before you became a Krav Maga instructor? I answered that I worked in a bank for a while. This individual responded, well, naturally, You are a Jew so you are a banker. Jews are greedy.
Well, well!
I tried my best to enlighten this good and kind person. Yes, we have Jews in Israel who work in banks, as we have Jews who sweep the streets, sell candies and drive taxis and sell coffee at the airport, just like any other people. Mexico also has people working in banks and I am quite certain they are not all Jews.
But this raises an important point which I wish to address: How do we distinguish between Greed and Ambition?
There is a band called KISS, it was founded by two Jews named Chaim Klein and Stanley Eisenberg, you might know them as Gene Simmons and Paul Stanly. They hired two non-Jews to fill the band with the necessary musicians. At one point they fired them. Stanley explained that they were fired due to "Antisemitism". This surprised me as the two Jewish members of the band were hardly living Jewish lifestyles, they were far from traditional Jews. Stanly explained that the band had a strict policy against over partying, no drugs or alcohol, this was a business! The other musicians wanted to just party, sex, drugs and rock n roll man! When the confrontation took place, the accusation was - You god-damn Jews are so fukking ambitious. That was it. They were out.
The band leaders understood that one cannot live on hit singles forever. They devised a business plan so they can continue to profit long after the hit singles ended, as no one can expect to be on top forever. This is called wise financial planning. We must work in this lifetime, we must make a living. They were born poor, to immigrant Holocaust survivors, they had to work hard.
Is ambition a bad thing? Is it greed?
Ambition is what creates a better future for everyone. I have been to parts of the world where the lack of ambition is quite evident. The people live as they did centuries ago, other than having cell phones and other modern gadgets invented by "god damn ambitious Jews".
We Jews see wealth as a blessing, I have been told by locals that the Church trained people to believe that Poverty is the way to heaven, while "others" collected the wealth. When one is blessed with wealth in the Jewish community, they share it, they build synagogues, they built hospitals like Long Island Jewish, which serves ALL people. Yes, Ambition is good. Ambition brings wealth to all.
My dear father, may he rest in peace, begin each month by saying - May each day bring us closer to some worthy goal. And that is how I live, as my father taught us.
And when we retire, what do we do? We study the Torah, we create charitable organizations, we help others. When my father retired, he joined the police as a volunteer. When my mother retired, she taught English for free to children who needed extra help. She headed an organization that helped immigrants from the former Soviet Union and from Ethiopia. This is ambition, the desire to make things better, to improve ourselves as human beings and as a community.
We want more, we want a better life, for everyone! We contribute to the world. Every society throughout history that expell3ed their Jews, eventually wanted them back, as the departure of Jews always lead to financial decline. I see daily advertainments of European countries trying to convince Jews to "reclaim" their citizenship on the basis of proving that an ancestor was expelled from Spain, Portuga, Germany etc. They advertise the benefits of European citizenship. This has been the case throughout history, there was one point where Japan tried to bring the persecuted Jews of Europe to settle lands taken from the Chinese.
Yes, eventually everyone wants us back, personally I am not interested in being a guest in anyone else's country, no thank you.
Are we ambitious? I sure hope so, and my goal is to create the best self defense system in the world so that ALL people can walk the streets without fear.
I am not content; I want to achieve more. I will never retire.
Moshe Katz, 7th dan Black Belt, Israeli Krav Maga. Certified by Wingate Institute. Member Black Belt hall of fame, USA and Europe.
Understand the Israeli Fighting Mentality - Israel a Nation of Warriors by Moshe Katz
What is the cultural background of Krav Maga? What makes it unique? What makes the Israeli military so effective? Why are Israeli security systems used all over the world?
What are the Biblical origins of Krav Maga and who was the first Krav Maga instructor?
What weapons and military strategies did our Biblical ancestors use?
How has Krav Maga developed in Israel and what are its goals?
All that and more in this unique book.
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