Will converting to Judaism help my network?

I imagine being a card carrying member of "the tribe", so to speak, would open up a lot of opportunities. Not trying to be antisemitic or anything here, but a lot of people on wall street are Jewish, right? And Jewish people tend to band together because they're oppressed or whatever. Maybe more so with all the stuff about Israel these days (I don't follow the news or really care about the conflict, but I see Jewish people complaining all the time). 


Again, I'm not trying to be antisemitic here, I don't have anything against Jewish people but the banker stereotype must have come from somewhere, and it can't hurt my chances, can it? Would changing my name to something like Ari, and joining a synagogue in NYC give me good connections? I'm not sure how being Jewish works, but I have curly hair

7 Comments
 

There are more qualified Jewish applicants than there are spots. Being Jewish won't help beyond shooting the shit after a major holiday. Source: me, a Jew.

 

At the bank I worked at the only holidays that were respected were Jewish holidays. Obviously, secular Jews at the bank would of course become religious Jews. If you were borderline (like lets say you are 25% or 10% Jewish, e.g., Jew-ish) I would 100% become fully Jewish. It is extremely beneficial. If you are fake Jewish I don't think it helps with networking though or anything though. 

A really big thing was pretending to be the type of orthodox or whatever type of Jew that can't touch technology on certain days. Maybe this wasn't fake, but probably this was fake. 

I would say that it's not actually true that most banks are run by Jewish people. Jewish people are just really successful in general in NYC so it's not really that different in finance. However, there ARE some banks that due have a large portion of leadership that are Jews. That said, you need to look Jewish to be allowed to have holidays etc. 

 

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