How the “Jewish American Princess” became America’s most complex Jewish stereotype

This was interesting enough up until I got to the part where she talks about moving to my hometown and describes

200 Jewish families, led into hostile territory by jobs at the nearby Merck corporate campus. In school, I could count the other Jews on one hand

And like, ???

I mean I know she’s kind of leaning into the self-absorbed executive-wife-class stereotype here

(and at that she’s missing the tax refugees from the New Jersey pharmaceutical and telecom industries)

but one of the big institutions in our town was a farm school that was founded in 1896 to train Jews for a new world where they could be smallhold farmers

(using their advanced education, they tended to become farm-sector merchants, civil servants, and professors instead)

I mean, southeastern PA always had an ecumenical Quaker vibe, been Jews around since colonial days. I admit it’s not at all the town she came from where no one she knew celebrated Christmas, but I think I’ve been in classes where I’d go past two hands. I’ve hung out and smoked pot in a treehouse at what I’m guessing is the sleepaway camp she mentions – Camp Galil, it’s been there since the 1940s.

I dunno, I guess uh, I remember feeling like the local Jewish community was pretty well-established and learning some now-an-authority-on-Jewish-American-identity part of it had understood itself as some sort of tentative outpost in hostile territory was kinda weird