Chosen we may be, but clever and rich too?

My mother is Jewish. Funnily enough this makes me, despite my lack of faith in anything Jewish, Jewish. Lest I offend anyone, let's just say I am a member of the "quasi-historical community" of Jewish identity, as Jean-Paul Sartre once referred to it. Better yet, let's say I am a quasi-historical Jew.

Under ordinary circumstances, being a Jew by ethnicity gives me little more than a big nose and the right to high-five other Jews (it's in the Torah; look it up). Being a Jew in China, though, to my perpetual amusement, gives me instant genetic clout. If in a conversation with a native Chinese person I admit to my Jewish ancestry, the very next words out of his/her mouth will often be:

"Ah, Jews are very clever."

It's the same "quick-say-a-nice-thing" reflex one tends to employ when an acquaintance drops the name of his/her alma mater, or the price of their new shoes, as in, "Oh, that's a great school" or "Hey, that's not a bad deal." But even though I know its intent is a good-natured pat on the back, the statement "Jews are very clever" has an unpleasant ring to it.

Racial stereotypes of any kind are frowned upon in the melting pot of America, but this assertion is especially dicey because the word "clever" doesn't have quite the same neutrality in American-English as it does in the British version more commonly studied by Chinese learners. British "clever" is more likely to mean "congming" (intelligent) in Chinese, whereas the American "clever" has just a whiff of "jiaohua" (crafty) about it, and much suffering has been caused by the perception that Jews are shifty swindlers. It's an unfortunate coincidence.

What's also unfortunate, but less of a coincidence, is when certain Chinese friends go one step further in an attempt to please and casually drop the following "fact": "Jews are good at making money."

Again, it's intended as a compliment, but the circumstances of world history make it difficult to instantly accept it as such. The same stereotype has been used for centuries to accuse Jews of manipulating the world's capital resources, often with tragic results.

Even in the United States today, such accusations are articulated bitterly by poor white racists who feel victimized by economic disparity and ostensibly need an entire quasi-historical community to lob their frustrations at.

But in the entrepreneurial feeding frenzy of modern China (which is lovingly frosted on top of the money worshipping traditions of ancient China), the ability to make money is often viewed as a necessary skill - a virtue.

You can even find books in airport bookstores (the ones that only seem to sell motivational DVDs for aspiring CEOs) with titles like Money Making Secrets of the Jews: The World's Smartest People Teach You How to Succeed without a trace of irony or malice.

That doesn't make it OK to judge people (positively or negatively) by their ethnicity or religion or mother's ancestor's noses, but it's certainly worth remembering the Chinese attitudes towards the Jewish identity are decidedly divorced from the tragedy of traditional Western racism.

So that's why I don't write this so much as an admonishment to well-meaning Chinese so much as a bit of perspective to folks who might be just arriving in China, might be Jewish and might be taken aback at statements like the ones above. And to other foreign Jews who have been here longer than I have, chances are you're familiar with this phenomenon, too. High-five?