No idea. The articles I’ve read discuss Orthodox Jews as the ethnic/cultural group that has the largest share of the third-party market. I’m sure if another group in the remainder had more than 10% of the market, they’d be highlighted, too. That there’s an additional concentration in a specific zip code associated with Orthodox Jews makes it more interesting.
The “day of rest” religious aspect is interesting, too, in seeing the legitimate ways and semi-shady workarounds fundies and cultural traditionalists get around their hoary old religious and/or cultural laws to succeed in business. The Amish are another good example – they’ve managed to sell furniture over the Internet for decades now.
Point is Orthodox Jews deal within their own community, much like the Amish or here in Canada the Mennonites who share a ludditian philosophical way of existence without machinery.
Orthodox Jews using Amazon from one point of postal code is not unusual as they rely on community and business trust/reputation to … cough ‘fence’ items.
The Amish and Mennonites aren’t really Luddites, but they do reject technologies that they feel are incompatible with their culture, so close enough.
Moving beyond pedantry, yes, it’s not unusual for Orthodox Jews to deal within their own community. Which is the reason that how and why they adapt their business practises to deal with the outside world at this scale and using this technology is interesting and newsworthy.
All the more so because there’s probably as much co-operation as there is competition between the businesses operating in that enclave. I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that they’ve modeled some of their practises on the Orthodox Jewish NYC jewellery and diamond industry, which runs its own private religious courts of law to settle disputes and enforce contracts.
I’m not sure what you’re trying to imply about Orthodox Jews being particularly prone to operating as “fences”. While pawnshops where such activity goes on used to be associated with Jews (for a few centuries it was one of the handful of industries they were allowed to participate in), that’s a pretty outdated canard.
I find this article very disturbing, is this really relevant?
Is this coincidentally because they founded some sort of collective or virtual kibbuz?
What is the number/percentage of catholic Christian’s? Do we care about them as a separate group? Why do we then about some sellers being Jewish? I couldn’t care less about their religion
This serves the stereotype of the “greedy economic dominant jews” in it’s undertone.
May be sensitive but especially with the sensationalist headline I find this strangely disappointing from boingboing.
A lot of the power sellers are simply selling another persons book. Let’s say you have a book on Amazon for $0.01 plus $3.99 shipping. I list and sell the same book on ebay for $1 plus $3.99 shipping. I can automate the address you send this to and net my ~50 cents after fees etc. There are usually buyer and seller discounts along the way. If I automate the listings and invoicing correctly I can probably list 1 million books/items a month. If I get a 1% throughput I make $5000 a month doing exactly nothing but monitoring my automation.
Some people complain about it but they’re pretty clear on the website when they’ll be open for orders, when stuff will be shipped, and so on and so forth. I’ve been buying from them for decades without issue.
There are of course a variety of workarounds for orthodox-owned businesses to keep open and be observant. One trick is to hand temporary ownership of the business to a gentile, especially during a holiday like Passover that would require being closed for a week. Of course it comes down to what is rabbinically acceptable in your community.
Maher thinks he’s pointing out hypocrisy, but rules lawyering is actually an ancient tradition in Judaism specifically. (Note: I am not Jewish, just interested in religions generally). “The Torah is not in Heaven.” “My children have vanquished me.” The Gemara’s reasoning that the commandment to execute a rebellious son had never been carried out and never would be, and was there only as a reward to those who studied deeply enough to understand that. This is very different than the way the other Abrahamic religions decide on the meaning of their rules. I’m not pretending it doesn’t lead to some horrendous outcomes in either the ancient world or the modern world, but I think “hypocrisy” is a category error.
I also think it’s brilliant to use online businesses to generate income to support an insular community that prefers to not interact overmuch with the outside world. The only other communities I can think of that try to remain separate from modernity or other cultures with any success are the Amish, who accept a much lower standard of living as one of the prices of community, and the Roma, who seem to embed themselves much more in the surrounding culture.
It’s still ridiculous workarounds and lawyerballing to the supposedly ironclad rules of a deity one acknowledges as being all-knowing and all-wise. So it is hypocrisy. It’s great on an intellectual level (nothing wrong with being known as “The People of the Book”, which comes partially out of Talmudic debate), but if one is gonna be a self-righteous fundie then at least stick to the rules and show some respect to your flavour of Invisible Bearded Sky Man™.
There are other, less funny, hypocrisies rampant amongst self-righteous fundie communities, of course, but the kinds of gadgets shown in the video clip fall into the same general category.
Fair enough. Personally I find it kinda admirable, but I’m naturally more drawn to esoteric things and finding ways to draw odd conclusions from seemingly simple premises. All the apologies to my middle school and high school English teachers who had to read my essays
As I said earlier antisemitism is a very American thing. But, oh no. We aren’t antisemitic. We just LOVE us some Jews. We’re just, uh, pointing out that they’re excellent at business and know how to drive a hard bargain to bring prices down.
It is an interesting topic. But when I saw that headline I half-expected it to be prefixed with “I’m just saying that…” (e.g. someone I encountered in college who said “I’m just saying that there are a lot of Jews in Congress.” That he showed up to libertarian meetings in camouflage might be neither here nor there.)
