Jews appear in numbers beyond their `share’ in the American elite. Doctors, lawyers, etc. The joke about Jewish mothers wanting their daughters to marry one or the other works, but only because there are enough such men to make the aspiration remotely plausible. But slots at the top of society are few, and when one group earns more than its `share’, this can trigger resentment. Huffpuffers are proud men and women. They style themselves an elite. Their pride is injured by Jewish success.

This is something seen worldwide. Middleman minorities, (Indian merchants in Uganda, Chinese in Malaysia or Indonesia, Jews in Europe and America) who do disproportionately hold jobs that everybody would like, if only they could master its intricacies, resent the ones who actually do master those intricacies. The envious class persuades itself that it is not mastery, but intrigue and cheating, that has elevated the minority above the good common people, who are brought in as a prop to the argument.

The vanity of the Huffpuffers assures them that they are themselves anything but common, and their conscience whispers to them that they are anything but good. But no matter: they are anything but humble, and if they cannot earn a place in the sun, they will cut down whoever is shading them.