The smarter partner when I started attended Yale and Yale. He was so brilliant. Others used to feel bad b/c he had to deal with us mere mortals. In practical terms, he wasn't so successful. He knew every law review article but he could not communicate with other partners b/c he had such an extraordinary brain. People used to make nice jokes about this problem.
The Ivy League, investment banks, advertising agencies, and other elite groups excluded Jews by quota (only a small percentage). It was an express quota. Not too long before I graduated school, Columbia solved the problem by holding mandatory first year classes on Saturdays. My school was a relative late comer. Most of the students were local New York Jews. I don't know whether there is any proof but more than one Jewish alumni told me that the public interest scholarship which I received was not designed for public interest. Rather, it was to offer free tuition to WASP prep school grads. This argument is bolstered by looking at old photographs of the scholars.
I know Jewish people who strive to be admitted to the WASPIEST institution that once excluded them. Today lawyers classify law firms as Jewish or Christian. Until WWII, there was a strict demarcation. After WWII, some new large Wall St. law firms opened with both religious groups as partners. There were no white ethnic partners, black ones, or women. The integration only started when the Civil Rights laws were enforced while as I was in school. Private schools in NY are the same way. According to the law firms, no blacks or women or white ethnics were qualified. Just as the Witnesses justify Southern segregated KHS by local custom, the law firms said they were only accomodating their clients. The government called this bunk. I started practice in 1981. A fairy must have sprinkled magic dust over law schools b/c all of a sudden half the entering lawyers were women and many blacks were hired. Nothing happened to the practice.
I specifically chose to practice at a WASP firm b/c I felt more comfortable after working other places. It would have been to my advantage to practice in a Jewish firm b/c I could get away with more crap. If the firm crossed me, I could scream religious prejudice. It is crazy but every starting associate made this personal calculus. If the firms had been mixed from the beginning, such distinctive cultures would not exist.
Jews went into fields which accepted them. Government hired Jews, at least up north. Creative places, such as Hollywood, were not as segregated. Fashion is another Jewish stronghold. The ACLU has a strong Jewish practice b/c as an outside group, Jews identified wth movements for human rights. The laws that protected African-Americans also impact Jewish people. This support was largely withdrawn when the ACLU Board decided to represent Nazis who wanted a permit to march through Skokie, ILL., a stronghold of concentration camp survivors. Many thought the ACLU would die. Christians were not permitted to lend money. For Europe to function, Jewish people were needed in banking. It has absolutely nothing to do with Jews being money hungry.
Hopefully, the culture is changing. Any such discrimination is highly illegal now. I see a public face and a different private face but there is no doubt it has changed. It takes more than one or two generations, however. I knew nothing about this before I lived in New York. It is a hot topic there.f
Besides, prospering where they were able to work, the Jewish culture highly favors education. Something some Christians oppose. Torah and Talmud study are hard work. Learning Hebrew is not easy. It makes sense that such a culture would prosper when quotas and other prejudices disappeared.
