Higgs Boson wrote:

The snobbery you cite was replicated in New York, as the wealthy,
long-established German Jews with their hochkultur patronized the
"wretched refuse of [your] teeming shores" -- the late 19th & early 20th
flood of poor Jews from Central/Eastern Europe. Sure, they did their duty
under Jewish law to take care of their poor coreligionists, but in a
condescending way -- at arm's length.

I grew up in upstate NY in a small whitebread town, but was bussed into the
neighboring city for high school. To put it mildly, there was a certain
snobbishness and clique formation among the well to do Jewish kids. The
poorer Jews were pretty much out in the cold. I had one friend who was what
was called a DP, or displaced person. His family didn't have much money
after escaping from Europe and his English was passable, but not great. He
was well beyond the pale as far as the snobs were concerned.

There was a lot of ethnic diversity and kids tended to hang with their own
crowd but most of the groups didn't have such a well defined pecking order.