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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I read "The blessing of a skinned knee". The author, a Jewish psychotherapist, has 2 daughters and they didn't seem to do anything extraordinary at home - they went to school, playdates, had one music lesson a week and some tutoring.[/quote]

True, but when you are surrounded by achievers, achieving becomes the norm, not an exception or something praise worthy.  Jews are extremely resilient people who do not make excuses for failure.  Heck 6+Million were exterminated, wiping out whole families and they carry on, hardly looking back. Never in history will you see a more beaten down people who just pick them selves back up, dust off, and carry on with success.

Same reason a WASP family would not praise their kid for graduating high school. It is a complete expectation. Most Jews just take it up a notch. We also have tight communities. Jews always help Jews first. [b]My experience in business is that being Jewish has given me the ability to cut in line, just due to my last name.[/quote][/b]

That is pretty obnoxious.[/quote]

Obnoxious, and not something I have ever found to be true. Of course, my last name is not recognizably Jewish and I did not grow up in a heavily Jewish community.

For my family, it was all about hard work. My parents refused to let me get a job in high school, even in the summers (other than babysitting) because "school is your job." I worked my ass off. But it wasn't just to please them; I was driven as well. I don't know how of much that is personality and how much is the expectations and drive they instilled in me at an early age, but it is a definite character trait at this point. But I knew plenty of other kids at my non-Jewish school who worked extremely hard as well, and had equally or more demanding parents, so I don't know if I can label this a Jewish thing.

I know this isn't the OP's question, but I have found across my Jewish family and friends that even more than scholastic or financial success, there is a shared social and political outlook. Almost universally Democrat, liberal, sympathetic to the underdog, pro-immigrant, reasonably pro-union, extremely sensitive to bias or discrimination of any kind -- religious, racial/ethnic, gender, sexual orientation, etc. I see this in my immediate family (all professionals), in my working-class Midwestern relatives, and in pretty much all of my Jewish friends. Of course I see this in non-Jewish friends as well but it is not as pervasive. [/quote]

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