From the beginning of their tenure in Europe
(and elsewhere), many Jews were merchants. This provided a base as they began
expanding into money lending activities, including usury. Usury is defined
most simply as money lending for profit. In medieval times it was universally
condemned as a heinous and immoral act by the Christian church. The act of
usury was deemed a mortal sin, and its practitioner's path of greed was understood
to end in eternal damnation in Hell. The idea of profiteering from someone
else’s' need -- possibly desperate -- for money was believed by medieval Christianity
to be the antithesis of compassion, generosity, and charity. Christ was upheld
as an example of poverty, non-materialism, and abstinence. Common wisdom asserted
that those who had surplus money to lend in the first place were obsessed
with greed and avarice and needed no more -- certainly by usury -- for their coffers.
And making money for doing absolutely nothing (except having the money available)
went against Christian medieval understandings of decency, justice, honest
work, and morality. In essence, usury was perceived as a crass system of exponential
exploitation by which the already wealthy could get increasingly wealthier
for little more than the fact of their wealth in the first place. (In the
nineteenth century, notes Abram Leon, Karl Marx argued that "usury centralized
money wealth, where the means of production are disjointed. It does not alter
the modes of production but attaches itself to it as a parasite, and makes
it miserable. It sucks blood, kills its nerve and compels production to proceed
under even more disheartening conditions." [LEON, p. 150]
As George Eaton Simpson and J. Milton Yinger
observed:
"The church's condemnation of usury
made sense in the relatively
self-sufficient, largely barter economy
in which a large proportion
of the population lived, even down to the
eighteenth century. Under
those circumstances, a person borrows money
only when he has
suffered some unusual loss -- long illness
of the breadwinner, loss
of crops, a destructive fire. To charge
interest in such a situation
is to kick a man when he is down. To the
great majority of people,
this continued to be the perspective on interest-taking: it was robbery;
money was unproductive and yet one had to
pay for its use."
[SIMPSON/YINGER, p. 295]
The vast gap between Christian and Jewish
moral perspectives, per materialist self-aggrandizement, is evidenced everywhere
in their respective traditions. In the Christian New Testament, for instance,
Jesus enjoined values of humility and modesty to his followers, teaching that
"It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than it is
for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of heaven." [LUKE 18-25] Jewish religious
tradition stands in drastic opposition. The [Talmudic] Mishnah, for instance,
proclaims, "Who is rich? He who enjoys his wealth." Likewise, there
is no equivilant in Jewish mainstream tradition to Christian vows of poverty
and material abstinence, [SHAPIRO, p. 12] as epitimized in recent times by Mother Teresa.
As the Talmud says: "Poverty in the home is more painful than fifty lashes."
[KOTKIN, p. 46]
"Judaism is a this-world religion,"
says Joshua Halberstam, "and making money is considered a natural human
endeavor. Unlike Christianity, Judaism never considered poverty a virtue;
the idea that the meek shall inherit the earth is a New Testament doctrine,
not a Jewish one." [HALBERSTAM, p. 25] "Judaism does not consider poverty noble," says Maurice
Lamm, "... The Jew prays for parnassah,
a respectable income." [LAMM, p. 108] As famed sociologist Max Weber
wrote, "Pharisaic [i.e., rabbinic] Judaism was also far from rejecting
wealth or from thinking that it be dangerous, or that its unqualified enjoyment
endangers salvation. Wealth was, indeed, considered prerequisite to certain
priestly functions." [POLL, S., 1969, p. vii]
The Jews were not forbidden in medieval
Europe to become usurers. Because they refused to convert en masse to the
dominant religious faith and, to Christian belief, be spiritually saved, Jews
were considered outsiders. Whatever its continuously decried immoral atmosphere,
usury was an economic opportunity and the Jewish community gravitated to it.
In historical perspective, this niche they were afforded was a great economic
privilege and a springboard for Jewish economic expansion to our own day.
(In the Islamic world too, where usury was religiously prohibited to Muslims,
Jews again gravitated towards that generally regarded repugnant activity).
Of course there were, religious and legal injunctions or not, small
numbers of Christian usurers too. But Jews had a distinct advantage in that
they could be completely open in their profit-making activities.
"The picture of the Jew," says Jacob Katz, "waiting at home for the Gentile to come
to borrow money or pay a debt is a realistic one ... [but] many Jews also
had also to call at the house of the Gentile to offer their services as traders
or money-lenders." [KATZ, Ex, p. 38]
Christian usurers, who were despised at
least as much by their co-religionists as Jews, usually had to be more discrete
in their dealings. The gravity in which
all usurers were violently hated by the general European population may be
measured in the following passage by Jacques Le Goff:
"The persecution and slaughter
of Italian usurers, in particular in
France during the late thirteenth and
fourteenth centuries, were
phenomena as frequent and widespread
as pogroms against the Jews,
with the one difference that the pogroms
were prompted by religious
motives as well as the hatred of wealthy
moneylenders of a different
faith." [LEGOFF]
"Italians and Hugenots," adds
Alan Edelstein, "were expelled from France for economic reasons, and
the same factors caused Germans in Novgorod to wall themselves for protection
from Russian mobs." [EDELSTEIN, p. 23]
The exploitive nature of Jewish usury invariably
alienated the Christian populace. The Cortes of Portugal, for instance, complained
in 1361 that Jewish usury was becoming "an unbearable yoke upon the population."
[LEON, p. 165] Guido Kisch, in a probable understatement, notes that "the
continual complaints against Jewish moneylenders, coming from all classes
of the medieval population, particularly in the 14th and 15th centuries, necessarily
made the Jew an unpopular figure." [KISCH, p. 328] Usurious Jews who
did no physical labor, who were segregated in their own communities, who did
not serve in the local military, and who were agents of the hated aristocracy,
were commonly accused of parasitism by local non-Jewish populaces. "Jewish
money lending," says Salo Baron, "[was a] lucrative business ...
For the most part, the accepted rate ranged between 33 and 43 per cent, although
sometimes they went up to double and treble those percentages, or more ...
When the European economy entered a period of deceleration in the late thirteenth
century, further aggravated by recurrent famine and pestilence, such exorbitant
charges, though economically doubly justified because of the increased risks,
created widespread hostility." [BARON, EHoJ, p. 45] Money lending was
not usually for a borrower's business expenses or expansion, but for subsistence
survival. [MACDONALD, p. 263] We are talking about desperate people who often
enough stood to perish from their web of increasing debt.
"It was not luxury needs," says
Abram Leon, "but the direct distress which forced the peasant or the
artisan to borrow from the Jewish usurer. They pawned their working tools
which were often indispensable to assure their livelihood. It is easy to understand
the hatred that the man of the people must have felt for the Jew in whom he
saw the direct cause of his ruin ... [LEON,
p. 171] In this role as petty usurers exploiting the people, [Jews] were often
victims of bloody uprisings..." [LEON,
p. 83] [uprisings that were] "first and foremost efforts to destroy the
letters of credit which were in [Jewish] possession." [LEON, p. 171]
In 1431, for instance, armed peasants demanded
that the city of Worms surrender its Jews to them, "in view of the fact
that they had ruined [the peasants] and taken away their last shirt."
[LEON, p. 172]
Usury was in fact considered immoral by
Jews too. The great Jewish theologian, Maimonides, wrote "why is [usury]
called nesek [biting]? Because he who takes it bites his
fellow, causes pain to him, and eats his flesh." [MINKIN, p. 362] Usury was forbidden to Jews, as well as Christians,
in the Old Testament. (The Islamic Quran also expressly states its prohibition
of "interest.") But there
was a qualifier. Jews conjured a double moral standard; usury upon others
in their own community was prohibited, but usury upon non-Jews was acceptable.
The Torah states that one cannot practice usury upon a
brother, but can to a
stranger. [DEUTERONOMY, 23:20] Who is a brother and who is a stranger? "Brother,"
in Jewish religious teachings means "Jew." "Stranger"
is anyone else.
St. Ambrose (339-397), the bishop of Milan
and writer whose works influenced later medieval Christian thinking, "considered
lending to a stranger a legitimate hostile act against an enemy." [BARON,
p. 53] St. Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274),
a well-known Christian theologian of his time, sounded an idealized, universalized
Christian ethic about the Deutoronomic double standard:
"The Jews were forbidden to
take usury from their brethren,
i.e., from other Jews. By this
we are given to understand
that to take usury from another
man is simply evil, because
we ought to treat every man as
our neighbor and brother...”
[NELSON, p. 14]
"All Jewish converts [to Christianity]
of early sixteenth century Germany," says R. Po-Chia Hsia, "attacked
the practice of Jewish money lending." One convert, Johannes Pffeferkorn,
argued that profits from usury was the main reason that Jews remained Jews,
that they were reluctant to become Christians and do "honest work."
Another, Anton Margaritha, argued that such "honest work by Jews would
humble them." [HSIA, p. 172] (Conversely, in England, the Jewish "monopoly
of usury brought them such wealth that some Christians undoubtedly went over
to Judaism in order to participate in the Jewish monopoly in lending.")
[LEON, p. 140, quoting BRENTANO]
A double standard ethic was endemic
to traditional Jewish teachings. The Old Testament laws were for the benefit
of Jews, and it always aggravated relations with their non-Jewish neighbors. The medieval Christian world held open doors
to Jewish converts to the purported universality of their own faith, but most
Jews opted for their own perception of themselves as an elite group -- God's
special Chosen People -- despite the inevitable hazards that such a self-perception
engendered from the surrounding non-Jewish communities. The old adage to avoid
trouble, "When in Rome, do as the Romans do," was studiously dismissed
by Jews to the extreme. They were even permitted talmudic (religiously-founded)
self-governance by Christian authorities and were only called to the greater
laws of the state for extraordinary transgressions. This situation provided
Jews the uninhibited capacity to act within favorable, double-standard, self-aggrandizing
laws created for themselves against the wider society. As Jacob Katz notes:
"The belief that Jewish law
was of divine origin, whereas Gentile
law was purely a human invention,
linked any evaluation with
with the most fundamental theological
tenet of Judaism. The moral
conduct of the Jew towards Gentiles,
if it was not to be
determined solely by expediency
and prudence, could have been
influenced only by principles derived
exclusively from Jewish
sources." [KATZ,
Ex,
p. 59]
Israeli professor Ehud Sprinzak notes traditional
Jewish perspective on the surrounding Gentile "law of the land"
in Eastern Europe:
"Everyone knew everybody in the [Jewish
community], and there was
no need for official code or written
law. The only formal law was the
Torah and its
halakhic interpretation as understood by the local rabbi
... It was a basis communal conduct ...
('You help me, and I'll
you') ... The attitude towards the formal
law of the land was suspicion
... One has to survive it, not respect
it. The art of Jewish survival within
the ghetto included an elaborate system
of using, avoiding, and
sidestepping the [Gentile] law."
[SPRINZAK, Elite, p. 178]
Or, as James Yaffe puts it:
"The feeling of separation ... leads
to a special Orthodox morality.
Ultimately because the moral value of every
act is determined by
halakhah,
by Jewish law, they develop a rather cavalier attitude
toward 'gentile' law. For example, a tiny
minority of Hasidim [in
America today] engage in jewelry smuggling.
In the shtetl [Jewish
Eastern European village] this was a traditional
trade. Nobody looked
upon it as a crime, because nobody recognized
the existence of
national borders; the only borders that
mattered were those that
divided the Jewish from the gentile world."
[YAFFE, J., 1968, p.
120]
The combination of insular self-governance,
their languages of Hebrew and/or Yiddish, and self-imposed isolation, also
inferred (and was in fact understood by Jews to be) a Jewish "sub-nationality"
within the broader Christian state. This too was much resented by the indigenous
European populace. It was a politically volatile situation. Each faith, the
majority Christian and minority Judaic, was entrenched in its respective belief
system, each implicitly hostile to the other, with the only significant intercourse
between them being the world of commerce, a field in which Jews were rapidly
building, despite their small numbers -- through trade and the hated usury
-- a profound advantage.
In this context of mutual hostility,
Jacob Katz paraphrases the sociologist Max Weber with regards to the Jewish
community's "extreme" use of its moral double standard in its treatment
of non-Jews, commercially or otherwise:
"[While it is a] universal
phenomena... [that] members of any
cohesive social unit observe ...
different moral standards among
themselves from those observed
by it in relation to strangers,
[the sociologist Max Weber] was
right in depicting the medieval
Jewish community as an extreme
case in point..." [KATZ p. 56]
Bearing in mind that the only interaction
Jews really had with Christians in this era was in the realm of commerce,
this double standard -- ethically treating Jews one way, and Gentiles the
other -- is again highlighted by Katz:
"No moral teaching could change
the realities of religious rivalry,
social segregation, and the plurality
of legal systems. All these
must have encouraged a double standard
of behavior. Those who
were reluctant to be guided by
the higher morality had the letter of
the law on their side." [KATZ, p. 61]
For the Jewish part, Katz's referral to
"the letter of the law" is their sacred Talmud, and other Jewish
teachings which "are far from forming the elements of a universalistic
ethic. They took social duality for granted," [KATZ, Ex, p. 63]
which is a delicate way of saying that Jewish religious teachings were commonly
interpreted to sanction the exploitation of non-Jews.
It is hard to miss the intention of the Talmud,
or misinterpret its noble meaning, or "pilpul" it into something
other than what it is, when it says:
"Rabbi Shemeul says advantage may
be taken of the mistakes of a
Gentile. He once bought a gold plate
as a copper one of a Gentile for
four zouzim, and then cheated him out
of one zouzim in the bargain.
Rav Cahana purchased a hundred and twenty
vessels of wine from a
Gentile for a hundred zouzim, and swindled
him in the payment out of
one of the hundred, and that while the
Gentile assured him that he
confidently trusted his honesty. Rava
once went shares with a Gentile
and bought a tree, which was cut up into
logs. This done, he bade, his
servants to go pick out the largest logs,
but to be sure to take no more
than the proper number, because the Gentile
knew how many there
were. As Rav Ashi was walking abroad
one day he saw some grapes
growing in a roadside vineyard, and sent
his servant to see whom they
belonged to. 'If they belong to a Gentile,'
he said, 'bring some here to
me, but if they belong to an Israelite,
do not meddle with them.' The
owner, who happened to be in the vineyard,
overheard the Rabbi's
order and called out, 'What? Is it lawful
to rob a Gentile?' 'Oh, no,' said
the Rabbi evasively, 'a Gentile might
sell, but an Israelite would not.'"
[HARRIS, p. 182, BAVA KAMA, Fol. 113,
col. 2]
This is to be found in Jewish religious
texts. Likewise, this:
"When an Israelite and a Gentile have
a lawsuit before them, if they canst,
acquit the former according to the laws
of Israel, and tell the latter such
is our laws; if they cannot get him off
in accordance with Gentile law, do
so, and say to the plaintiff such is your
law; but if he cannot be
acquitted according to either law, then
bring forward adroit pretext and
secure his acquittal. These are the words
of Rabbi Ishmael. Rabbi
Akiva says, 'No false pretext should be
brought forward, because if
found out, the name of God would be blasphemed,
but if there be no
fear of that, then it may be adduced.'"
[HARRIS, p. 31, BAVA KAMA,
Fol. 113 col. 1]
"The economic behavior of the Jew,"
wrote the great sociologist Max Weber, "simply moved in the direction
of the least resistance which was permitted them by [their] legalistic ethical
norms. This means in practice that the acquisitive drive, which is found in
varying degrees in all groups and nations, was here directed primarily to
trade with strangers [i.e., non-Jews], who were usually regarded as enemies."
[WEBER, p. 254]
In medieval Poland, "the limitations
upon non-Jews [by Jewish law and culture] were ... stringent," notes
Bernard Weinryb,
"Being outsiders in the Jewish community
they were subject to
all the prescriptions applying to foreigners.
Thus Jewish middlemen
and agents were forbidden to put one non-Jewish
businessman in
contact with another or to bring a non-Jewish
consumer into a
non-Jewish store. Many warnings were issued
to such agents against
showing non-Jews 'how to do business' or
divulging Jewish business
secrets to him ... Jews were forbidden to
rent a room to a non-Jew ...
Another area controlled by the Jewish community
was rents and
leaseholds. In time ... monopolistic tendencies
increased among the
Jews ... The fact remained that the monopolistic-exclusion
principles
were also an integral part of the Jewish
way of life and could thus not
be regarded as a constant anti-Semitic factor
directly solely against
themselves." [WEINRYB, p. 159]
In an overview of Polish history, another
Jewish scholar, Eva Hoffman, notes
"that the Jews had their views of the
people among whom they lived we
we cannot doubt, but their ordinary opinions,
ideas, and preconceptions
are largely inaccessible to us, since almost
no secular Jewish literature
is extant for the early period. We do know,
however, that Jews had
their exclusionism and monopolistic practices,
prohibiting rights of
residence to outsiders in their quarters,
and strictly guarded certain
business practices and 'secrets' from non-Jews
... We can take it
for granted, moreover, that fierce religious
disapproval traveled
both ways [between Jews and Poles] ... At
the same time, unlike
other minority groups, Jews had no wish
to assimilate, to take on
the coloring of the surrounding culture,
to become like the other."
[HOFFMAN, E., 1997, p. 45]
Strict adherence to Jewish laws and values
by even the most corrupt of Jewry was typical of the Jewish underclass of
Europe's Middle Ages who found in their religious beliefs sanction for their
predations on Gentiles. "Despite all their depravity," says Mordechai
Breuer, "members of the Jewish robber bands lived as Jews and generally
adhered to traditional Jewish lifestyles and customs. As a rule, they did
not undertake any expedition on the Sabbath [Saturday] and kept the dietary
laws." [BREUER, in MAYER, p. 249]
"Jewish bandits stole almost exclusively
from Christians," notes Otto Ulbrichtl, "No breaking into houses
of Court Jews or representatives of the Jewish community or synagogues (in
contrast to the many burglarized churches) were reported." [ULBRICHT,
p. 62]
Florike Egmond's historical work about organized
crime in the Netherlands (1650-1800) notes the following:
"[There was] picking pockets, the theft
of textiles and gold or
silver, and church robbery with its concomitant
violence against
priests and clergy. None of these was the
exclusive domain of
Jews, who were involved in various other
subcategories of theft
and burglary as well, but in these particular
offences Jews were
especially prominent ... [EGMOND, p. 108]
... Some Jewish
groups specialized in church robbery ...
From 1680 to 1795
the robbery of churches and priests and
clergy was the nearly
exclusive domain of Jews ... [EGMOND, p.
109] ... Jews robbed
not only Roman Catholic priests but Protestant
ones too. It
looks rather as if most Christian thieves
stayed away from all
churches, while Jewish thieves selected
churches for more
reasons that just convenience." [EGMOND,
p. 110]
In pre-Holocaust Poland and Russia, notes
Yiddish expert Abraham Brumberg, Jewish thieves, pimps, and prostitutes developed
a rich folklore of hundreds of songs, mostly in this tenor:
"I go into the street
I open a door
I spot a fur coat
I invite it to go with me." [LESTER, p. 36]
Such a worldview that callously preys upon
surrounding Gentile society was apparently not considered to be incongruous
with the fundamental tenets of Judaism. As Brumberg notes, 'Many who subscribed
to these [thieving] values considered themselves God-fearing and had their
own synagogues." [LESTER, p. 36] [This we shall run across again]
There is a tradition of Yiddish criminal songs
in Eastern Europe:
"The two large cities of Warsaw and Odessa
'boasted' of a strong Jewish
underworld which lived by its own laws,and the
songs in this category
are varied and vivid, revealing the sentiments
of the criminal world in the Pale
(area of Czarist Russia where Jews were permitted
to live). In many ways,
these songs are similar to those of the non-Jewish
world on themes that dealt
with the life and pursuits of housebreakers,
pickpocketes, hijackers,
counterfeiters, extortionists, gangsters, pimps
and even murderers. These
are genuine folk songs, products of anonymous
singers, actual persons who
daily evaded the police, faced the hostility
of the respectable community,
quarreled and brawled among themselves, experienced
the dangers and
pleasures of their 'chosen profession.'"
[RUBIN, R., 1979]
In 1939 Chaim Kaplan, a German-born Jew,
noted the Jewish émigrés at the Russian-Polish border where 2,000 Jews were
given a monetary advance by the Soviet government for a work project in the
Soviet hinterlands: "To our shame, only 800 returned to accept the work
and take the journey -- the rest disappeared without a trace. They simply
expressed their gratitude to the Soviet government, which had extended its
protection and opened its borders to them, with trickery. There were also
incidents of stealing from private people. Polish-born Jews are rather high-handed
in matters of 'yours' and 'mine,' and if they don't actually steal, they 'take'
... There can be no atonement for such shameful behavior. It reflects on the
character of an entire people." [KAPLAN, C., p. 90]
Jews were popularly perceived in medieval
(and even up to modern Europe) as either ostentatiously wealthy parvenus or
predatory small time thieves, with considerable moral overlap between them.
Both groups were significant players in local economies with the Jewish upper-class
and underclass often linked in economic exploitation of the non-Jewish communities
around them. "From Court Jews to peddler," says Jonathan Israel,
"those divergent groupings penetrated and depended on each other economically,
as well as in religion and commercial life. It would be idle to deny that
there was exploitation as well as collaboration and interdependence, but such
exploitation existed on all levels and operated in all ways." [ULBRICHT,
p. 59]
One of the privileges that Jews often
sought and acquired from European aristocracies in the Middle Ages was the
right to demand full payment from aggrieved owners when stolen objects found
their way into Jewish hands for sale. This caused deep resentment amongst
the Gentile population; it was often charged that this policy paved the way
for lucrative Jewish "fencing" operations where stolen goods could
regularly find their ways to Jewish shops and hiding spots in the their community.
[BARON EHOJ, p. 42] These Jewish agents of receivership were called in Hebrew
ba'al ha-davar, literally meaning ‘wire
pullers,’ figuratively meaning "Masters of the Affair." [BREUER,
p. 249]
Florike Egmond notes the same kinds of Jewish
fencing operations in the eighteenth century in the Netherlands:
"Two equally salient characteristics
of Jewish organized crime
[were] its near monopoly on the buying
and selling of stolen goods
and the central importance of towns to
all its activities ... [EGMOND,
p. 115] ... The near monopoly of Jews in
the fencing business indirectly
contributed to the prominence of other
Jews in organized crime ...
[EGMOND, p. 116] ... The period between
about 1740 and 1765 can
be regarded as the phase of expansion of
Jewish crime. After that
Jewish involvement in organized crime continued
at a consistently high
level." [EGMOND, p. 119]
Although based in urban areas, Jewish bands
were highly mobile and also preyed on those in the countryside. "Jews
involved in organized crime in the Netherlands," adds Egmond, "were
often active in retail trade ... Extensive travelling also meant numerous
contacts with other Jewish peddler." [EGMOND, p. 123] Eventually, common
self-protective interests brought some Jewish, Gypsy and Christian criminals
together. Egmond notes, however, that "most Christians who joined Jewish
bands, whether they acted as occasional assistants or as experienced members"
were always considered "outsiders." [EGMOND, p. 145] In the case
of one crime ring, the "Great Dutch Band," a band of mixed ethnicity,
it was formed by Moyse Jacob "who played a central role in bringing together
the various criminal circuits of the Dutch Republic within a more permanent
organizational structure." [EGMOND, p. 148]
In the Great Dutch Band's first (Brabant) "branch," two-thirds
of its sixty members were Jews; in its second branch (the Meerssen Band),
two-thirds of its sixty members were also Jewish; and 16 of 25 people were
Jewish in the Band's third expression. In the fourth, Jews were a quarter
of the group. "The first [branch]," notes Egmond, "set the
pattern with respect to criminal specialization, leadership, and forms of
organization. All the principal commanders had been instructed (and probably
selected) by Moyse Jacob himself." They were also all Jewish. [EGMOND,
p. 149]
In a volume about Polish peasant society,
William Thomas and Florian Znaiecki note that
"The Jewish shopkeeper in a [Polish]
peasant village is usually also
a liquor dealer without license, a banker
lending money at usury,
often also a receiver of stolen goods and
(near the border) a
contrabandist. The peasant needs, and fears,
him, but at the same
time despises him always and hates him
often. The activities of
those country shop keepers is the source
of whatever anti-Semitism
there is in the peasant masses. We have
seen in the documents the
methods by which the shopkeeper teaches
the peasant boy smoking,
drinking, and finally stealing; the connection
established in youth
lasts sometimes into maturity, almost every
gang of peasant thieves
or robbers centers around some Jewish receiver's
place, where the
spoils are brought and new campaigns planned.
Gangs composed
exclusively of Jews are frequent in towns,
rare in the country; usually
Jews manage only the commercial side of
the questions, leaving robbing
or transporting of contraband to peasants."
[THOMAS/ZNAIECKI, p.
1200-1201]
Jewish itinerants (perhaps 10% of the Jewish
population in Germany in the Middle Ages), as well as Jewish thieves, and
robbers were common in European life. Evidence of Christian criminals' linkage
to the Jewish economic underworld is reflected in the fact that "some
20%" of the vernacular for illicit activity in the jargon of non-Jewish
criminals contained words and terms derived from Yiddish and Hebrew. [BREUER,
p. 248]
Oklahoma professor Stan Nadel
notes the reason for the spreading of Yiddish criminal terms into the English
language across the world:
"It seems that [the Yiddish word] gonef
(sometimes gonnoff, hence the false
etymology) entered American and English slang
via what is known as thieves' cant.
One of the traditional occupations for Jews
in Europe and America was as
pawnbrokers. That is an occupation which ttends
to bridge the border between the
criminal and business worlds. At the margin,
the line between pawnbroker
and fence (handler of stolen goods) is often
obscured and some Jews played
and important part in the criminalized underground
of large cities ... I had
assumed [the term gonef] moved into
American English from German Jewish
immigrants in New York (like [famous Jewish
criminal] Mrs. Mandelbaum)
until I learned it was also present in 18th
century London thieves' cant. Then
I was told by a specialist on the 18th century
London underworld that Jewish
fences played a key role in linking the London
underworld with markets in
Amsterdam (he says they claimed they could
fence anything, including the
crown jewels), and that this is the source
of Yiddish loan words in English
thieves cant." [NADEL, S., 6-18-98]
But, as we will increasingly find, it
was not only the Jewish vagabonds, unscrupulous shopkeepers, or exploitive
upper strata Court Jews who played the role of swindler with the Gentiles.
No less an authority than Heinrich Graetz, one of the greatest Jewish historians
whose History of the Jews was a pioneer work, had this to say,
generally, about the Jews in Poland.
It was a mainstream ethic
"to twist a phrase out of its
meaning, to use all the tricks of the clever
advocate, to play upon words, and
to condemn what they did not
know ... Such were the characteristics
of the Polish Jew. ... Honesty
and right thinking he lost as completely
as simplicity and truthfulness.
He made himself master of all the
gymnastics of the Schools (of
religious interpretations) and applied
them to obtain advantage over
any one less cunning than himself.
He took a delight in cheating and
overreaching which gave him a sort
of joy of victory. But his own
people he could not treat in this
way: they were as knowing as he. It
was the non-Jew, to his loss, that
felt the consequences of the
Talmudically trained mind of Polish
Jew." [GRAETZ, v.10, p. 62,
82]
Israeli professor Jay Goren recalls the
Jacob-Esau tradition, where Jacob, the Jewish cheater/deceiver, is heroized
in Jewish tradition, noting:
"As we may recall, Jacob the tent
dweller, who used his head,
outsmarted Esau, the skilled hunter,
who uses his hands, and cheated
Esau out of his inheritance, Isaac's
blessing. The blessing was the
birthright of Esau by virtue of his being
the firstborn child. In Jewish
tradition, Jacob came to symbolize the
Jews and Esau the Gentiles.
Thus, an image of contrasting roles were
formed whereby the Jews
were supposed to use their heads and
the Gentiles their muscles."
[GOREN, p. 135]
The Israeli author Israel Shahak in 1994
argued that Orthodox Judaism is, in its very construct, motivated by "a
combination of hypocrisy and the profit motive." Even in Israel today,
secular Jews look with disdain upon the Orthodox religious community for its
"duplicity and venality." "It is actually true," Shahak
writes, "that the Jewish religious establishment does have a strong tendency
to chicanery and graft due to the corrupting influence of the Orthodox Jewish
religion." [SHAHAK, p. 48] [See Jewish drug money laundering, later chapter]
The great German philosopher, Immanuel Kant,
echos Graetz and Shahak in his own observations of the Jewish community:
"[The Jews], living among us,
or at least the greatest number of them,
have through their usurious spirit
... received the not unfounded
reputation as deceivers ... They do
not seek civil honor, but rather
wish to compensate their loss by profitably
outwitting the very people
among whom they find protection ...
We may suppose that their
dispersion throughout the world, with
their unity in religion and
language, must not be attributed to
a curse that had been afflicted
upon this people. On the contrary,
the dispersion must be considered
a
blessing, especially since the wealth of the Jews, if we think
of them
as individuals, apparently exceeds
per capita that of any other nation
at the present time. [KANT, p. 101-102]
A well-known French Jewish socialist (and
later Zionist), Bernard Lazare, addressed this issue of Jewish morality in
1894:
"The moral charge of the anti-Semite
[is that] the Jew is more dishonest
than the Christian; he is entirely unscrupulous,
a stranger to loyalty and
candor. Is this charge well founded? It
was true and is true in all those
countries where the Jew is kept outside
of society; where he receives
only the traditional Talmudic education....
The Talmud and anti-Judaic
legislation [in Gentile societies] united
to corrupt the Jew to his very
depths. Impelled by his teachers on the
one hand, by hostile forces on
the other, by many social causes besides,
to the exclusive occupation
of commerce and usury, the Jew became degraded.
The pursuit of
wealth ceaselessly prosecuted, debauched
him, weakened the voice of
conscience within him, taught him habits
of fraud." [LAZARE, p. 164]
This ethic was of course brought by Jews,
particularly from Eastern Europe, to America. As Jewish commentator James
Yaffe notes: "The Lower East Side [the turn-of-the-century Jewish section
of Manhattan] pushcart peddler who prided himself on his honesty wouldn't
hesitate to sell damaged goods to the gentile housewife." [YAFFE, J.,
1968, p. 68] Max Weber notes this quality in Jewish identity through history,
referring to it as "the dualistic nature of [Judaism’s] in-group and
out-group moralities." [POLL, S., 1969, p. v]
As Mary Antin, a Jewish immigrant to the United States
from Russia, once observed in her autobiography, The Promised Land:
"[Jewish merchants and money lenders] preyed
upon [Christians], and our
shopkeepers gave false measure. People who want
to defend the Jews ought
never to deny this. Yes, I say, we cheated the
Gentiles whenever we dared,
because it was the only thing to do ... Is not
that the code of war? Encamped
in the midst of the enemy, we could practice
no other. A Jew could hardly
exist in business unless he developed a dual
conscience, which allowed him
to do to the Gentile what he would call a sin
against a fellow Jew." [TRAXEL,
D., 1998, p. 29]
Many modern Jewish apologists refute such
exposure and criticism of traditional Jewish double standard of morality. As we have seen, when caught in the act of
deceit there are religious texts that recommend explaining it quickly somehow
away. Jules Carlebach, for example, argues that a "dual morality"
-- if, in his view, it ever existed -- was no big deal; he likens the Jewish
medieval communities in Europe to "independent political states,"
saying:
"If an independent political state
adopted legislation which is intended
to further the interests of its citizens,
but which has no parallel
provisions in neighboring states, then
it is both logical and essential
to create a dual system." [CARLEBACH,
p. 224]
Jews had always closed ranks as a completely
"foreign" body in mainstream Christian society. While some Jewish
religious teachings certainly supported the notion that they should live in
obedience with the laws of the host country they lived in, this was largely
expedient and prudent for their own survival.
Less supportive Jewish texts included prayers that anticipated the downfall of surrounding non-Jewish society.
During Arab-Christian hostilities, for instance, Jews appealed to God to drain
them both in war. They had a prayer, notes Salo Baron, "composed in the
geonic period which was unheard of in any other period of Jewish history in
the dispersion: 'Be it Thy will, O Lord, that the Kings should wage war on
one another.'" [BARON, ASOC&REL, p. 186]
Jewish communities in Europe, as insular
self-entities always searching for their own best interests, had been known
to betray non-Jewish lands in which they lived. Both Hebrew and Yiddish were
Jewish languages that were impenetrable to most non-Jews. (For centuries rabbinical
dictate even forbade the teaching of Hebrew to Gentiles). These "secret"
languages tended to heighten non-Jewish suspicions of them. The Muslim invasion
of Christian Spain was aided by the Spanish Jewish community who expected
better treatment under Islamic rule. The French city of Bordeaux was believed
by some to have been betrayed by Jews in 848 to invading Normans; the same
charge was made against Jews for the fall of the French town of (Visigothic)
Arles to Catholics. Poles charged Jews with abetting invading Swedes in the
17th century. [HAGEN, p. 23] In the
12th century, Byzantine Jews aided invading Turks (Constantinople was breached
with help from -- and through -- the Jewish quarter); in the 17th century
Spanish and Portugese Jews intrigued with the Dutch. [MACDONALD, p. 64-65]
On the other hand, in the early 1800s, when Napoleon invaded the Pale of Russia,
"the pattern of German-Jewish behavior during the Napoleonic invasion
was largely repeated in Russia." [SACHAR, p. 79] The Jews, in other words,
did nothing, laid low, and waited to see who was victorious. "With the
exception of the Jewish community of Lithuania," says Howard Sachar,
"the citizens of the Pale were not obliged to commit themselves until
the war was won." [SACHAR, p. 79]
The Italian ambassador to Poland, Eugenio
Reale, in 1946 wrote an analysis of the "Jewish question" in Poland:
"In effect, Polish Jews together
with German Jews held a monopoly
over all exports and imports of goods
between Germany and Russia.
Certain branches of manufacture in Poland
were also under their control,
particularly the textile industry in Lodz.
It is of little wonder, then, that
the Jews often manifested their true,
undeniably existing feelings of
solidarity with the Prussians. In Pomerania,
during the 1848
insurrections, groups of Jews greeted
the insurgents with shouts
such as: 'We do not want Poland, we are
Prussians.' Almost a half
century later, during the Warsaw manifestations
in favor of Polish
autonomy in the Russian sphere, the Jews
took a similar position against
the demonstrators, shouting, "Why
should Poland exist? Down with
Poland! Down with the white eagle [the
symbol of Poland]."
[PIOTROWSKI, p. 46]
In Morocco under French rule, notes Nahum
Goldmann, "the Jews were on such poor terms with the Arabs that they
were nearly all pro-French -- which brought them the hatred of those who aspired
to independence." In Algeria, also bucking under French colonialism,
Jews "even had automatic French citizenship, unlike the non-Jews."
[GOLDMANN, N., 1978, p. 48] Even in 1996, notes the American Jewish Yearbook,
"Between 800 and 900 Jews were known to be living in Bosnia-Herzegovnia
... During the [civil] war, about 300 people who before the fighting had not
declared themselves as Jewish joined the Jewish community, presenting written
documentation such as marriage or birth certificates. Before the war, these
people had declared themselves as 'Yugoslavs.' Some of them remained in Bosnia-Herzegovinia
while others went to Israel." [SINGER/SELDIN, 1997, p. 378]
The Jewish Diaspora community in Europe
has been formally called to task by Christian authorities a number of times
in history, including two momentous occasions to find out exactly what the
Jews in their midst believed and where they morally, politically, socially,
and religiously stood with regards to Gentiles. One of the most important
accounts of such an occasion was in France in the year 1240. A Jewish apostate named Donin, Christianized to Nicholas de Rupella,
well versed in Hebrew as a Talmudic scholar, claimed to Church officials that
there were many elements in the Jewish teachings that were threatening to
non-Jews. A public disputation was held between Donin and Rabbi Yehiel ben
Joseph of Paris and as Jeremy Cohen notes about Hebrew records of the event:
"Some modern writers have labeled the Hebrew protocol [of the disputation]
a prime example of literary polemic, using well-known forensic motifs to reinforce
popular Jewish belief rather than actually reporting what occurred."
[COHEN, J., 1982, p. 66]
Jacob Katz notes the infamous line in
the Talmud that came up for public examination, stating "The best among
Gentiles should be slain." One can imagine that such a directive in Jewish
religious texts, whatever its complex historical context as a part of intra-Jewish
argument, exposed to Church leaders in Medieval society by a Jewish apostate,
was not an easy one for the rabbis to explain away. Even Katz passes on its
essential content, simply alluding to "whatever its meaning may be..."
[KATZ, p. 108] M. K. Harris, in his book on Talmudic literature, adds an addenda
to this opinion to "kill the best of the Gentiles." "Modern
editions," notes Harris, "qualify this by adding 'in time of war.'"
[HARRIS, p. 191]
The intention of the Church inquiry
was, of course, to squeeze out of Jewish religious texts the most self-condemnatory
sounding material. Hence, some of what Katz calls the Talmud's apparent "picture
of extreme hostility on the part of the Jews towards their Christian neighbors"
seemed nothing less than indicting:
'You have permitted [Jews] to shed
the blood of Gentiles.' 'It is
permitted to steal and plunder the
Gentile's possessions and (it is
allowed) to cheat him.' 'Concerning
the lost property of a Gentile,
you say that it is forbidden to return
it to him.' The Gentile is
suspected by the Jew of practicing
fornication, adultery, and
sodomy. The Jew is not allowed to
make the Gentile any gift,
nor is he even permitted to say, "How
handsome this Gentile is;'
it is permitted to you to curse and
to despise idolatry'; and we
are as despised in your eyes as locusts
and flies.'" [KATZ, p. 107]
The way the rabbis weaseled out of the
grim possibility of extremely serious repercussions for the Jewish community
was to argue that such lines -- although they truly exist in Jewish sacred
texts -- applied to Gentiles of antiquity, yes, but that Christians were now
an exception. This position, says Katz, was "no more than an ad hoc device
to be used in the course of controversy. There is no indication in the Talmud or in the later
halakhic sources that such a view was ever held, or even proposed, by an
individual halakhist. In fact, evidence to the contrary exists." [KATZ,
p. 110] Rabbis even tried to convince Christian interrogators that insults
and degradations in the Talmud directed towards Jesus of Nazareth referred
to a different Jesus because it was a common name! [POPPER, p. 10] As Rabbi
Yehiel ben Joseph said in defense of the Talmudic texts that defamed Christ,
"Not every Louis born in France is the king of France. Has it not happened
that two men were born in the same city, had the same name, and died in the
same manner? There are many such cases." [COHEN, J., 1982, p. 70] "The
Jesus of the Talmud," notes scholar Jeremy Cohen, "... is mentioned
as condemned to wallow eternally in boiling excrement ... When forced to admit
that one talmudic passage mentioning the crimes of Jesus and his execution
did indeed apply to the Christian Jesus, Yehiel still emphasized that the
Talmud was not responsible for maintaining this opinion among Jews."
[COHEN, J., 1982, p. 71]
The Jewish representatives also took great
pains to distance themselves from traditional prayers that asked, as the apostate
noted, for the end of the "unrighteous kingdom." Did this mean the surrounding society in which
the Jews currently lived? It did. This has always meant to Jews "the
whole secular world and its entire political edifice" [KATZ, p. 112],
but the Jewish defenders managed to convince their inquirers that the prayers
alluded to the ancient powers of Biblical eras.
This formal inquiry evinced a renewed
suspicion by the Church towards Jews, as well as an outside steerage of the
Judaic faith -- for their own safety -- towards liberalization. "The
Paris disputation," says Katz, "marks a transition, from the comparative
tolerance of the Catholic Church towards the Jewish faith to the harassing
practice of scrutinizing and censuring Jewish customs and tenets. The same
event assisted, or even compelled, the Jews to take a further step towards
the idea of religious tolerance." [KATZ, p. 113]
In 1806 a second group of Jewish community
leaders were forced to again face a formal inquiry into their belief system
by the greater society in which they lived. This convening again occurred
in France, but this time it was at Napoleon's insistence. The Jewish "Assembly
of Notables," and later an even more influential assemblage of Jewish
leaders, the Sanhedrin, was presented with twelve written questions, upon
whose answers their fate -- as a community -- was understood to rest. With the rise of the European nation states,
conflicts between them, and with continued Jewish self-conception as a kind
of sub national entity, Napoleon sought to confront the affluent and powerful
parts of the Jewish community as to their ultimate political loyalties and
allegiances.
Questions included:
*
In
the eyes of the Jews, are Frenchmen considered as brethren? Or are they considered
strangers?
*In either case, what line of conduct
does their law prescribe towards Frenchmen not of their religion?
* Do Jews born in France, and treated
by the laws as French citizens, consider France as their country? Are they
bound to defend it? Are they bound to obey the laws and to conform to the
dispositions of the civil courts?
* Can a Jewess marry a Christian,
and a Jew a Christian woman? Or does the law allow the Jews to intermarry
only among themselves?
* Does Jewish law encourage Jews to
practice usury among their own community?
The Jewish notables replied, after extended
consultations, with an affirmation of Jewish loyalty to France and the brotherhood
of all French citizens, complete with careful, cautioned, diplomatic explanation
for all such replies. Napoleon's emissary, Count Mole, 'was struck by what
appeared to him to be evasive references: now to Moses, now to the Talmud,
now to practical Jewish usage. He was particularly suspicious of the answer
on usury ... [but] Napoleon ... declared himself satisfied." [SACHAR,
p. 48] The Jewish answers to Napoleon -- the compromises of both orthodox
and secularly assimilated Jewish leaders -- are, in retrospect, considered
also by historians to have been largely evasive. The gulf between those who
represented traditional Jewish teachings and the growing numbers of secularized
Jews was great, but both -- traditional and assimilative -- HAD to figure
out ways to give Napoleon the answers he wanted. This gulf is reflected in
Jacob Katz's view that
"Even learned Jews sincerely
maintained that Judaism had
always taught universalistic
ethics only. When the 'scientific'
anti-Semites of the 1880's discovered
and published the
extracts from ancient Jewish
authorities on which earlier anti-
Semitism had been based, the
general Jewish public was not
only outraged but genuinely astonished
... Jewish leaders and
scholars reconciled the contemporary
views with the ancient
authorities by resorting to apologetics."
[KATZ, p. 196]
Robert Goldenberg notes the long tradition
of Jewish evasiveness when it comes to explaining the Talmud to non-Jews:
"[In the Middle Ages] Christians too
studied the Talmud -- often with
the help of apostate Jews -- and would then
quote rabbinic authority
in support of their own claims. Jews thus
had to develop a double
attitude toward the nonlegal aspect of the
Talmud: when it was useful
to them they cited it to refute the Christians'
claims, but when it
weakened their position they felt free to
repudiate it." [GOLDENBERG,
R., 1984, p. 164-165]
In our day, Jewish apologists, propagandists,
and populists continue to proliferate, reaching back into rabbinical law to
recreate a romantic vision of the historical record of Jewish morality towards
others. "The fact that the Jews in general," proclaims Nachum Gidal,
in a polemic against Christianity, "were very ethical in their religion,
family, and daily life was of little significance for the Christian community."
[GIDAL, p. 12] "At all times and in all places," claims Meir Tamari,
both a Talmudic scholar and the chief economist of the Bank of Israel, "Jews
were encouraged, especially in the economic field, to go beyond the letter
of the law and to that which was more merciful than required, even though
the rabbinical authorities could not naturally enforce such kindness."
[TAMARI, p.]
Or, as Jacob Neusner rhapsodizes:
"It is ethical for a Jew to guide the
frail old lady across a busy street,
it is also ethical for a Boy Scout to do
so. And so being Jewish and
being a Boy Scout functionally are pretty
much the same thing."
[NEUSNER, J., 1972, p. 75]
