The Jews and Modern Capitalism (part III)

[Menydh]

The Jews and Modern Capitalism
Die Juden un das Wirtschaftsleben

by Werner Sombart
translated by M. Epstein

Part III - The Origin of the Jewish Genius

[Menydh]

Chapter 13
The Race Problem


Prefatory Note
Strictly speaking the task I had set myself has now been completed. I have tried to show the importance of the Jews in modern economic life in all its aspects, and the connexion between Capitalism and "Jewishness." In other words, I have endeavoured to point out why it was that the Jews have been able to play, and still continue to play, so significant a part in economic life; endeavoured to show that their great achievements were due partly to objective circumstances, and partly to their inherent characteristics.

But here new questions crop up in plenty, and I must not pass them by unanswered, if I desire my most valued readers may not lay aside my book with a feeling of dissatisfaction. It is obvious that any one who has accompanied me to the point where I maintain that specifically Jewish characteristics exist, and that they will account for the great influence of the Jews in the body economic, must be bound to ask. What is the true nature of these characteristics? How have they come about? What will their ultimate effect be?

The answers to these questions may vary considerably. The Jewish characteristics we have noted may be nothing else but, as it were, a function without a corresponding organism; may be only surface phenomena, skin-deep, without any root at all in the human beings that give expression to them; may be but as a feather on a coat -- easily blown away; something which vanishes with the disappearance of the person.

Or they may become hardened into a habit and be deep-seated, but yet not sufficiently powerful to be hereditary. Contrariwise, they may be so marked as to pass from one generation to another. In this case, the question presents itself, when did they arise? Were these characteristics always in the Jew, were they in his blood, or have they only been acquired in the course of his history -- either in what is termed ancient times, or later? Again, all hereditary qualities may last for ever, or be only a temporary nature -- may be, that is, permanent or only transient. Seeing that we are dealing with a social group, it will be necessary here, too, to answer the question. Is the group a racial entity? In a word, are the Jews a subdivision of mankind, differing by blood-kinship from other people? Finally, in a problem of this sort we must deal with the possibility that the peculiar characteristics of the group may be due to admixtures with other groups, or to selection within the group itself.

The problem is many-sided: of that there can be little doubt. And the worst of it is that modern science can give no certain replies to the questions propounded. Attempts have of course been made, but they are not without prejudice, and any one even only superficially acquainted with the subject will be faced by more problems and puzzles than by solutions.

The most pressing need of the moment, so it seems to me -- one which alone will be able to withdraw the Jewish Problem from the semidarkness in which it is enshrouded -- is to obtain a clear conception of the questions at issue, and to bring some order into the abundant material at hand. It is almost as though at the point where the general Jewish Question intersects the race problem, a thousand devils had been let loose to confuse the mind of men. As one authority¹ recently urged with regard to the doctrines of heredity: what is most needed is an exact precision concerning elementals. The same is the case to an enormous extent with the question of whether the Jews are a race or not, and perhaps an outsider may contribute something to this end, just because he stands apart from the specialists. This thought emboldens me to attempt to give a resume of all that is current to-day regarding Jews as a race -- of all that is certain,and of the thousand and one theories, to say nothing of the numerous false hypotheses.

The Anthropology of the Jews
Touching the origin of the Jews and their anthropology and ethnology, opinions at the present day are pretty well agreed as to the essential facts. It is generally assumed² that Israel, like Judah, arose from the admixture of different Oriental peoples. When, in the 15th century B.C., the Hebrews, then a Bedouin tribe, wished to settle in Palestine they found there an old population long since established -- Canaanites, who were probably hegemonic, Hittites, Perizites, Hivites and Jebusites (Judg. iii. 5). Recent research has come to the conclusion, opposed to the older view, that the Israelitish clans largely intermarried with these peoples.

Later, when a portion of the population went into the Babylonian Exile, the admixture of races continued in Palestine. And as for the exiles (whose history in this connexion is of vital importance), we learn much from the latest cuneiform inscriptions concerning their attitude toward intermarriage. The inscriptions show, --without doubt,-- that there was a gradual fusion between the Jews and the Babylonians. The immigrants called their children by Babylonian names, and the Babylonians theirs by Persian, Hebrew and Aramaic names.³

Nothing like so clear are the views as to the relationship to each other of the peoples and clans of which the Jews were composed; still less as to how they can be distinguished from other similar groups; and least of all how they are to be called. A very heated controversy has recently raged about the term --Semites,-- with the result that in anthropological circles the word is no longer used. The Semite controversy, like that on the Aryans, only shows how vicious it is to allow linguistic concepts to interfere in the anthropological divisions of mankind. It is generally accepted that the Semites are all those peoples whose speech is Semitic, but that anthropologically they belong to different and differing groups.⁴

My own view is that the controversy as to the exact demarcation of the civilized Oriental peoples is a little futile. Nor does our ignorance on this point much matter. One thing however is certain -- that all of them, the Egyptians, the Babylonians, the Assyrians, the Phoenicians and the Jews, by virtue of their origin and earliest history, belong to one class, which may perhaps be termed "Desert" or "Desert-edge" Peoples. The assumption that a fair, blue-eyed tribe from the North intermingled with these is now almost unanimously regarded as a fable. The theory of the ubiquity of the Germans" will have to be but coldly entertained as long as no more convincing proofs are forthcoming than the reddish hair of Saul, or the dolichocephalic skull of the mummy of Rameses II.

What, then, was the anthropological history of the group of peoples in which the Jews originated? A common answer as regards the Jews was that they continued to mix with their non-Jewish neighbours in the Diaspora as they had done before. Renan, Loeb, Neubauer and others believe that the modern Jews are in large measure the descendants of heathen proselytes in the Hellenistic Age, or of marriages between Jews and non-Jews in the early centuries of the Common Era. The existence of fair Jews (to the extent of 13 per cent), especially in Eastern Europe, lent probability to this opinion. But to-day, so far as I can make out, the entirely opposite view generally prevails -- that from the days of Ezra to these the Jews have kept strictly apart. For more than two thousand years they have been untouched by other peoples; they have remained ethnically pure. That drops of alien blood came into the Jewish body corporate through the long centuries of their dispersion no one will deny. But so small have these outside elements been that they have not influenced to any appreciable degree the ethnical purity of the Jewish people.

It seems pretty clear now that in the past the number of proselytes admitted into Judaism was considerably overestimated. There is no doubt that in the Hellenistic and early Christian periods Judaism won adherents among the heathen peoples. (The subsequent centuries were of no consequence at all, with the exception of one case only.) Both the Roman and the Jewish Law made provision for such converts.. But we may assume with certainty that all of them were the so-called "Proselytes of the Gate" -- that is, they worshipped God in accordance with Jewish teaching, but they were not circumcised, nor were they allowed to marry Jewesses. Nearly all of them eventually drifted into Christianity. As a matter of fact, in the time of Pius circumcision was again allowed to the Jews, but the rite was expressly forbidden to be performed on proselytes. In this way conversion to Judaism was made a punishable offence. This in all probability was not the intention of the framers of the prohibition, but its effect was soon recognized, and it was extended.⁶ For Severus "forbade conversion to Judaism on pain of grave penalties."

But even if we allow foreign admixtures among the Jews in the early Christian Age, it could never have amounted to very much when we think of the millions of Jews who presumably existed at the time, and anyhow the stranger elements came from peoples closely akin to the Jews.

As for the centuries that followed the entry of the Jews into European history, we may take it that proselytizing ceased almost entirely. Throughout the Middle Ages therefore the Jews received but little of non-Jewish blood. The remarkable conversion of the Chozars in the 8th century cannot be regarded as an exception to this statement, for their realm was never very extensive. In the 10th century it was limited to a very small area in the western part of the Crimea, and in the 11th the tiny Jewish State disappeared altogether. Only a small remnant of the Chozars live in Kieff as Karaites. Hence, even if the whole of the Chozars professed Judaism, the ethnical purity of the Jews could have been affected but little. As a matter of fact, however, it is very doubtful whether Mixed marriages thus remain as the only possible source whence Jewish blood might be made impure. Certainly marriages between Jews and non-Jews must have occurred in some periods of Jewish history.

Mixed marriages were probably numerous -- a not extravagant assumption -- in those epochs in which the band of Jewish solidarity was somewhat loosened -- say, the last pre-Christian century, or the 12th and 13th in Spain. Even so, such relaxations never lasted for any considerable time; Jewish orthodoxy soon regained the upper hand, to the exclusion of non-Jews. What the Pharisees achieved in the first-named period resulted in the second from the Maimonides schism, and this had such reactionary consequences that marriages with Christian and Mohammedan women were annulled.⁸

But there are indications that such marriages were to be found. They were expressly forbidden at the early Spanish Councils. For instance, the 16th Canon of the Council of Elovia (304) provides that "the daughters of Catholics shall not be given in marriage to heretics, except they return to the Church. The same applies to Jews and schismatics." The 64th Canon of the Third Council of Toledo (589) forbids Jews to have Christian women either as wives or mistresses; and if any children spring from such unions they must be baptized. Once more, the 63rd Canon of the Fourth Council of Toledo (633) makes it incumbent upon Jews who have Christian wives to accept Christianity if they wish to continue to live with them.⁹ It seems hardly likely, however, that marriages against which these canons were issued were very numerous. And anyhow, as the children of such marriages were lost to Judaism, Jewish racial purity could not have suffered much by them.

Similarly, it is improbable that there was any admixture of Jews with the Northern peoples. There was an opinion current that the Jews in Germany up to the time of the Crusades lived among their Christian neighbours, and had free intercourse with them in every direction. But this view is hardly credible, and Brann, one of the best authorities on German Jewish history, has declared the assumption of even the least degree of assimilation at this period to be "an airy fancy, which must vanish into nothingness when the inner life of the Jews of those days is understood."¹⁰

There remain the fair Jews. They have been regarded as a proof of Jewish admixture with the fair races of the North. But no scholar of repute looks upon these as the outcome of legitimate unions between Jews and their Slav neighbours. On the other hand, one hypothesis¹¹ has found credence -- that the fair Jews are the children of illegitimate unions between Jews and Russians, either in the ordinary way or forcibly on the occasion of pogroms. But the weakness of this assumption is obvious. Even if it did explain the existence of fair Jews in Russia, it would be of no use at all for accounting for fair Jews in Germany, in Southern lands, in North Africa and in Palestine.

There is really no necessity to look for an explanation of the fair Jews in the admixture of races. All dark peoples produce a number of variants, and this is a case in point.¹²

We come back then to the fact that for some twenty centuries the Jews have kept themselves ethnically pure. One proof of this is found in the similarity of the anthropological characteristics of the Jews all over the globe, and, moreover, in that the similarity has been remarkably constant through the centuries. "Differences in treatment or environment have not been able to blur a common type, and the Jews more than any other race stand as a proof that the influence of heredity is much more powerful than that of environment" (E. Auerbach).

The anthropological homogeneity of the Jewish stock at the present time has been established by numerous anatomical experiments and measurements.¹³ The only doubtful question is whether the ancient contrast between Ashkenazim [German Jews] and Sephardim [Spanish Jews] extends to their anthropology. There are two conflicting opinions on the subject,¹⁴ but I believe the basis of either is not sufficiently conclusive to justify an independent judgment. It must be added, though, that personal observation would seem to warrant the belief that there was some anthropological difference between the two. Look at your spare, elegant Spanish Jew, with his small hands and feet and his thin, hooked nose, and then at his German brother, stout and bow-legged, with his broad, fleshy Hittite nose. Do they not appear as two distinct types to the ordinary observer? There is as yet no scientific ground to explain the difference.

Another controversial argument is whether the Jews of to-day are a separate entity, distinct from their neighbours physiologically and pathologically. There can be no doubt that from this point of view Jews do exhibit certain peculiarities in many respects -- early puberty, little liability to cancer, especially cancer of the womb, strong disposition for diabetes, insanity, and so forth. There are people, however, who cannot look upon these things as physiological and pathological Jewish traits, but explain them as resultants of the social position of the Jews, of their religious practices, and so on.¹⁵ Here also the ground has not been sufficiently prepared to warrant a definite statement.

It is different with the physiognomy of the Jew. Physiognomy, as is well known, is the outcome of two causes -- of certain facial forms and of their particular expression. You cannot weigh or measure either, and therefore this is a matter that must be left entirely to common observation. Now, just as the colour-blind distinguish no colours, so those who cannot see differences in men’s faces know nothing of physiognomy. When, therefore, some writers¹⁶ say that in the case of three-quarters of cultivated and wealthy Jews they cannot with certainty tell that they are Jews merely from their faces, then there is nothing to urge in reply. But a keen observer will most decidedly be able to tell. Jewish physiognomy is still a reality, and few will deny it. Undoubtedly there are individuals among Jews who do not look one whit Jewish. But there are also very many individuals among Gentiles who look very Jewish. I should not like to go so far as some do,¹⁷ and say that the Hapsburgs because of their heavy lips, or the Louis of France because of their hooked noses, were Jewish-looking. But among Oriental peoples (including possibly the Japanese) we do come across Jewish types. This in no wise detracts from the anthropological unity of the Jews. If it proves anything, it only points to a common origin of the Jews and the Oriental peoples. (It might be mentioned, by the way, that the lost Ten Tribes have been located in Japan -- a somewhat fantastic conjecture, but having something in its favour in the striking similarity of the Japanese and Jewish types.) To consider the Jewish physiognomy as an expression of decadence, or to account for it, as Ripley does, as a result of Ghetto life, is not very conclusive in face of the undeniable Jewish types depicted on the monuments of ancient Egypt and Babylonia. Look at the picture of Jewish captives in the epoch of Shishak (973 B.C.), or of the Jewish ambassadors at the court of Salmanasar¹⁸ (884 B.C.), and you will be convinced that from those days to our own, a period of nearly three thousand years, few changes have marked the Jewish type of countenance. This is but another proof of the proposition that the Jewish stock is an anthropological entity, and that its characteristics have been constant through the ages in a most extraordinary fashion.

The Jewish "Race"
In view of all this, may we speak of a Jewish race? The answer would depend on the connotation of the word "race." But to define it is not easy, for there are probably as many definitions as there are writers on it.¹⁹ It is, of course, open to any one to say. Such and such things I look upon as the mark of race, and if I apply my standard the Jews are or are not a race, as the case may be. But a procedure of this kind is more of the nature of a game. What is needed is a scientific definition. But how? Many methods have been tried -- anthropological differences, skull measurements, biological experiments and their application -- but all with no absolute result. It would, however, be a fallacy to conclude that because hitherto no satisfactory classification of the human species has been achieved, therefore no anthropological differences really exist. An Eskimo is different from a Negro, and the South Italian from the Norwegian. We do not require anthropology to tell us that.

So with the Jews. It may be difficult to class them, but anthropological peculiarities of their own they surely have. When therefore one distinguished scholar²⁰ writes: "I recognize only a Jewish religious community; of a Jewish race I know nothing," we must regard it as a hasty expression uttered in the heat of the moment. The objection to it is that we can easily place a "Jewish national community" with a common history beside the "Jewish religious community."

So with anthropological characteristics which mark off the Jew from the non-Jew. I am firmly of opinion that the Jews, no matter where they may be found, are an anthropological group differing from, let us say, the Swede or the negro. "A religious community" will not suffice.

After all, is it not a controversy about words? Some will have it that there is no Jewish race. Well and good. But they admit Jewish anthropological peculiarities. It is a thousand pities that there is no satisfactory term by which to describe them. "A people" will not serve, for the definitions of "people" are no less numerous than those of "race." But what does the name matter? The thing certainly is there, and I should have no hesitation in speaking of the Jewish race, or, if you will, of the Jewish "race."

Let me conclude this section with one or two wise words written by Arthur Ruppin,²¹ that excellent authority on the Jew, words that appear to me to be among the best that have been uttered on the subject: "The term ‘race’ should not be stretched too far. If we include in it such groups as developed their special anthropological characteristics in prehistoric times, and have since kept themselves without admixture with other groups, then in reality there are no ‘races’ among white-skinned peoples, seeing that all of them have intermingled over and over again. As for the Jews, whether they had common racial features in prehistoric times and have preserved them through the centuries, is a detail of no great significance. What does matter is this -- that it is certain that those who professed the Jewish religion formed a well-defined group distinct from their surroundings, even as late as the end of the 18th century, after many generations of strict avoidance of marriage with non-Jews. The community which has descended from this group may be called, for lack of a better name, a race, more particularly, ‘the Jewish race.’"

How the Jewish Genius Remained Constant
The question of greatest interest in these anthropological considerations is to discover whether any connexion exists between the somatic characteristics of the Jew and his intellectual qualities. We want to make sure whether the latter are in his blood, so to say, i.e., whether they are racial or no. To discover this it will be necessary to see whether the characteristics we have observed in modern Jews were to be found among Jews in ancient times also; whether they reach back to their earliest history, or whether they appeared at a later date, and if so, when.

The result will be that we shall observe that Jewish intellectual qualities have remained constant, that certain characteristics, certain peculiar features of the Jewish soul may be traced as far back as the formation of the Jewish ethnical group. We cannot prove all this directly, because we have no reliable accounts of the Jewish popular character dating from early times. What we do possess are brief and scanty expressions of opinions, valuable, however, as far as they go. It is of great interest, for example, to note that the Pentateuch (in four places -- Exod. xxxii. 9, xxxiv. 9; Deut. ix. 13 and 27) asserts of the Jews what Tacitus said of them later -- that they are a stiff-necked people. No less interesting is Cicero’s statement that they hang together most fraternally, or Marcus Aurelius’s that they are a restless people, to whom he cries, "O ye Marcomanni, O ye Quadi, O ye Sarmatae, at length have I found a race more restless than you!"; or finally Juan de la Huarte’s that their intellect is keen and well fitted for worldly things.

The first point to note is:

(1) The attitude of the Jews to the peoples among whom they dwelt all through the Diaspora. In the last century or so we have seen this to be one of aloofness. Before capitalism came and set them free, Jews were looked upon as "strangers," as "semi-citizens." They were hated and persecuted in all lands, but everywhere they knew how to preserve and maintain themselves.

How was it in antiquity? How later? The same spectacle confronts us, ever since the Jews came into contact with other peoples. Everywhere there was opposition, persecution and ill-treatment. To begin with the Egyptians: "They abhorred the children of Israel" (Exod. i. 12). Paul of Tarsus went so far as to say that the Jews "were contrary to all men" (1 Thess. ii. 15). In the Hellenistic period, in Imperial Rome -- the same story of hate and plunder and death. Philo and Josephus both record dreadful Jewish pogroms in Alexandria in the first century of our era. "Hatred of the Jew and ill-treatment of him are as old as the Diaspora itself" (Mommsen).

Under the Caesars their lot was no different: "I am just sick of these filthy, noisy Jews," said Marcus Aurelius. Then, in the time of Theodoric, massacres and wholesale plundering were the order of the day, as later in the 7th century under the Longobards. And the East was like the West; the 6th century in Babylon was as dark as the 7th in Northern Italy. Even in the Pyrenean Peninsula, where they enjoyed much that was good, the end was bitter: Christian and Moslem both laid hands upon them.

These instances might be multiplied. They are all expressions of hatred of the Jew in Christian and non-Christian environments alike. Can the phenomenon be explained without the assumption of the existence of Jewish characteristics, which remained constant no matter where the Jew was placed? The answer must surely be in the affirmative. The hatred of the Jew could not have been the result of a passing mood on the part of all these peoples.

Then again, everywhere and at all times the Jews were semi-citizens. Sometimes indeed they were not in this category because the law placed them there. On the contrary. There were many cases in antiquity where Jews were assigned privileged positions, by virtue of which they were excused certain duties of the citizen (e.g., military service), or had exceptional advantages in regard to legal enactments. Nevertheless they took no full share in the life of the State in which they were domiciled. The Greek inhabitants of Caesarea, a city on Jewish soil and built under Jewish rule, denied citizen rights to the Jews, and Burnus, Nero’s minister, upheld their decision.²² There was little change in this respect during the Middle Ages.

How are we to account for this generally prevailing treatment? Differing States adopted a similar policy towards the Jew: does it not seem clear that it was due to some special characteristic of his? If you like, say it was the strict adherence to the letter of the Jewish religion. But something it must have been.

And yet, despite all oppression, the Jew was not crushed. He knew how to maintain himself from the oldest times onward. Perhaps it was because of the curious mixture of stubbornness and elasticity which we have noted in Jews of modern days. They might be crushed never so relentlessly, but like a Jack-in-the-box they were soon up again. How they withstood the onslaught of the Roman Emperors, who used all the weapons at their command to stamp them out! Despite their efforts, there was again in the 3rd century a Patriarch at Jerusalem recognized by the government, with a jurisdiction of his own. In antiquity, in the Middle Ages, in this our own time, the peoples have summed up their judgment of the Jew in the one word -- stubborn: "ostinato come un ebreo."

The peculiar mixture of determination and elasticity is most wonderfully exhibited by the Jews in their bearing towards governments, where their religion was concerned. To it they owed most of their enemies; because of it they suffered hardships untold. Yet they would not give up their beloved faith. And when pressure was severe, many Jews pretended to have forsworn their religion only to be able to carry out its precepts in secret. We know of this conduct in connexion with the Marannos, but it is as old as the Diaspora itself. When you read of the thousands of crypto-Jewish heathens, crypto-Jewish Mohammedans, crypto-Jewish Christians, you are astounded at this unique event in huThe man history. The more so as it was the most religious Jews, teachers and leaders, who had recourse to the sham conversions in order to save their lives. Recall the case of R. Eleazar ben Parta, who was active under Hadrian as a pretended heathen;²³ that of Ismael ibn Negrela, who, as R. Samuel, held discourses on the Talmud and answered questions of religious practice, and as Vizier of the Mohammedan King Habus, began his master’s ordinances with the formula Chamdu-l-Illahi and ended them with urging those to whom they were addressed to live according to the laws of Islam;²⁴ that of the great Maimonides, who sought to give excellent reasons for his pretended conversion to Mohammedanism;²⁵ that of Sabbatti Zevi, the false Messiah, who though he acknowledged Mahomet yet did not lose the respect of his followers; that of the Neapolitan Jew Basilus, who made a pretence of having his sons baptized in order to be able to carry on the trade in slaves under their name,²⁶ since this branch of commerce was forbidden the Jews; that of the thousands and thousands of Marannos who, after the expulsion of the Jews from the Pyrenean Peninsula, appeared to all the world as Christians and returned to the faith of their fathers at the very first opportunity that presented itself. What remarkable people must these have been who combined such determination with such elasticity!

We have thus noted that many Jewish characteristics developed to their fullest in the Diaspora. But

(2) Is the Diaspora itself explicable as a result of only outward circumstances? Does it not itself rather bear witness to special characteristics? Or to put the question somewhat differently, would it have been possible to scatter any other people over the face of the earth as the Jews were scattered?

The experience of exile the Jews tasted in quite early days. Most people have heard of Tiglath-Pileser, who dragged a part of the Jewish population to Media and Assyria; of the later Babylonian Exile; of Ptolemy Lagi, who forced very many Jews to settle in Egypt and planted a Jewish colony in Cyrene; of Antiochus the Great, who brought two thousand Jewish families from Babylon and peopled with them the centre of Asia Minor, Phrygia and Lydia. Mommsen calls the settlement of Jews outside Palestine "an invention of Alexander or of his generals."

In all these cases the temptation is strong to ascribe the dispersion of the Jews to outward circumstances, seeing that in most of the cases the Jews were carried away from their homes against their will. There appears to be nothing therefore in these dispersions that would point to inherent Jewish characteristics. Such a conclusion would be hasty. Is there not this possibility -- that if the Jews had not possessed certain qualities they might never have been transplanted? The enforced settlements must have had some purpose. Either they were beneficial to the land from which the Jews were taken, or (what was more probable) to the land or the town where they were settled. Either they were feared in their own country as firebrands of sedition, or they were accounted such valuable citizens for their wealth or their industry that they were made the nucleus of new settlements, or they were held to be so trusty that they were utilized by rulers to strengthen their hold on turbulent centres (as was done by Ptolemy Lagi in Cyrene).

But many Jews may have forsaken Palestine for what might be termed economic reasons: there was not sufficient room for the maintenance of an increasing population. Considering the size and the productiveness of Palestine, emigration on these grounds must have been of frequent occurrence. But this points to a national characteristic -- viz., an increasing population due, as is known, to physiological and psychological causes alike. Furthermore, that economic pressure led to emigration was traceable to another national peculiarity. In this respect the Jews have been compared to the Swiss. They, too, leave their homes because the country is unable efficiently to maintain them all. But they only emigrate because they have the energy and the determination to do better for themselves. The Hindoo does not emigrate. If the population increases, he is content with his smaller portion of rice.

But to regard all Jewish dispersion as enforced is probably onesided. We cannot possibly explain so general a phenomenon, which moreover remains the same through the ages, without assuming a voluntary migration. What precisely this was due to -- whether to a migrative instinct, or to inability to remain on one piece of soil for long -- does not much matter. But some special characteristic will have to be associated with this people to account for their travelling so easily from land to land, no less than for their settlement in large cities, a proclivity shown by the Jews already in very early times. Herzfeld, who has compiled probably the most complete list of Jewish settlements in the Hellenistic Age, draws attention to the striking fact that of the settlements 52 are in towns, and of these 39 were wealthy commercial centres.²⁷

It would appear from all this that Jewish characteristics were by no means developed in the Diaspora, or as the Jewish historians assume, in the Middle Ages, but that the Diaspora itself was the result of these characteristics. The characteristics were there first, at least in embryo.

(3) So, too, with their religion. When it is asserted that the Jew of to-day is a product of his religion, that he has been made what he is, almost artificially, by means of a well thought-out policy of some man or group of men, and not organically, I am ready to admit the statement. My own presentation of this very subject in a previous chapter attempted to show what enormous influence the Jewish religion had, more especially on the economic activity of the Jew. But I want to oppose the view promulgated by H. S. Chamberlain with all my power. I want to make it clear that the religion of the Jew would have been impossible but for the special characteristics of the Jew. The fact that some man, or group of men, was able to give expression to such wonderful thoughts necessarily postulates that the individual or the group was specially gifted. Again, that the whole people should accept their teachings not merely by way of lip-service, but with deep and sincere inwardness -- can we explain this except by the supposition of special national characteristics? Today we can no longer free ourselves from the opinion that every people has, in the long run, the religion best suited for it, and that if it adopts another religion it keeps on changing it to suit it to its needs.

I believe, therefore, that we may deduce the special characteristics of the Jewish people from the special characteristics of the Jewish religion. From this standpoint many traits of the Jewish character adduced from Jewish legends may be placed very far back, certainly as early as the Babylonian Exile. That I shall proceed in this as the authors of anti- Semitic catechisms do, and infer from the somewhat questionable story of Isaac, Jacob and Esau, and their cheating of each other, a tendency on the part of the Jews for swindling, need not be feared. No one, I hope, will flunk so badly of me. Cheating is an element found in all mythologies. We need only cast our eyes on Olympus or Valhalla to see the gods cheating and swindling each other in the most shameless fashion. No. What I mean is that the fundamental characteristics of the Jewish religious system which we have already examined -- Intellectuality, Rationalism, Teleology -- are also the characteristics of the Jewish people, and they must have been in existence (I would repeat, at least in embryo) even before the religion was developed.

(4) My next point is the remarkable similarity in the economic activities of the Jews throughout almost all the centuries of history. In asserting that this is a proof that Jewish characteristics were constant, I am setting myself in opposition to the prevailing views. I differ not only from those who believe that the economic activities of the Jews have changed in the course of time, but also from those who agree with me that it was a constant factor in their development. From the latter I differ because we do no agree as to what those activities were.

What is the generally accepted view of Jewish economic history? I believe it may be traced to Heine, and is something to this effect. Originally the Jews were an agricultural people. Even in the Diaspora, it is said, the Jews tilled the soil, avoiding all other pursuits. But in the 6th and 7th centuries of our era they were forced to sell their holdings and had, willy-nilly, to look out for other means of livelihood. What did they do? They devoted themselves to trade, and for something like five centuries continued in this calling. Again Fate pressed heavily upon them, for the Crusades engendered much anti-Jewish feeling in commercial circles, and the growing trading class in each country organized themselves into gilds, and excluded the Jews from the markets, which they retained as the exclusive preserves of members of their corporations. Once more the Jews had to cast about for new occupations. All channels were closed to them; the only possibility left was to become moneylenders. So they became money-lenders, and before long enjoyed privileges as such because the usury laws meted out special treatment to them.

Such is the almost semi-official view prevalent in Jewish circles, certainly among assimilationists, but also among a goodly number of Jewish nationalists.

There is another view to which some historians, Jewish and Gentile (among the former Herzfeld), have given currency. It is that the Jews have always been a commercial people, from the age of King Solomon onwards, throughout the Diaspora, down to our own times.

I regard both views as wrong, certainly as one-sided, and I hope to give my reasons in a sketch of the economic history of the Jews which I shall furnish.

From the period of the Kings to the end of the national independence -- we may even say up to the codification of the Talmud -- the Jewish people were a self-contained, self-sufficing economic unit. Its surplus commodities it sent to foreign lands, and its constituent units produced all they needed, or at best, supplemented their own work by simple bartering with their neighbours. We should describe the whole by saying that we had here single economic units satisfying their own wants, with which was connected a certain amount of hired labour; there was something of the nature I of the manorial system, and there were some handicrafts. Where these are found little trade is possible. But how about the numerous merchants in Palestine, of whom we read in the time of the Kings? How account for them? To speak of merchants in the ordinary interpretation of the term is to misunderstand the nature of the economic organization of the country .in Solomon’s day. It was nothing but an extensive manorial system, something like that of Charlemagne, and obviously required the distribution of commodities. But this was not commerce. "The chief officers (they corresponded to the villici) that were over Solomon’s work were 550. .. . And King Solomon made a navy of ships in Ezion-geber. . . . And Hiram sent in the navy his servants, shipmen that had knowledge of the sea, with the servants of Solomon. And they came to Ophir and they fetched from thence gold, four hundred and twenty talents, and brought it to King Solomon" (1 Kings ix. 23, 26-28).

This and similar passages have been taken to denote a flourishing international commercial intercourse, even a monopoly of trade. But there is no need of this explanation at all. It is perfectly simple when we think of the royal household as a manor on a large scale, from which the servants, in company with those from another large manor, were sent forth to distant lands in order to bring back commodities that were needed at the King’s court. The economic independence of the royal household further appears in the story of the building of the Temple. Solomon asks Hiram to send him "a man cunning to work in gold, and in silver and in brass, and in iron and in purple, and in crimson and in blue, and that can skill to grave all manner of gravings, to be with the cunning men that are with me. . . . Send me also cedar-trees, fir-trees and algum-trees, out of Lebanon: for I know that thy servants can skill to cut timber in Lebanon; and behold my servants will be with thy servants. . . . And behold I will give to thy servants, the hewers that cut timber, twenty thousand measures of beaten wheat, and twenty thousand measures of barley, and twenty thousand baths of wine, and twenty thousand baths of oil" (2 Chron. ii. 7ff.). The same applies to a later passage in the same book (2 Chron. viii. 4), "And Solomon built Tadmor in the wilderness and all the store cities which he built in Hamath." Store cities tell of the manor and its wealth in kind rather than of commerce.

The other passages on which the theory is based that an extensive trade was carried on in later times hardly warrant this deduction.²⁸ True, we learn that the Babylonian exiles were wealthy (Ezra i. 46; Zech. vi. 10, 11), but no indication is given of their callings. There is not one iota of evidence in the Bible for the contention of Graetz that they had obtained their riches in commerce. Perhaps the cuneiform inscriptions brought from Nippur may support such an assumption. But to refer the prophecy of Ezekiel about the destruction of Tyre (Ezek. xxvi. 2) to jealousy of the Phoenicians, and then on that basis to establish the suggestion that even in the pre-Exilic period Palestine was largely a trading country, appears to me to be somewhat bold.

That we cannot be too careful in reasoning of this kind is made abundantly manifest by the interpretation put upon the famous passage in Proverbs (vii. 19, 20), where the wiles of the adulteress are described. "For the goodman is not at home, he is gone a long journey; he hath taken a bag of money with him: he will come back at the full moon." Was the husband a merchant? Perhaps, but he may have been a farmer who had left home to pay his rent to the bailiff in a distant town, and at the same time to buy a couple of oxen there.

There is no clear proof, therefore, for the existence of commerce as a specialized calling. On the other hand, there are passages which support my view that the manorial system was prevalent even at a later period. Take, for example, Nehemiah ii. 8, where the letter is mentioned in which Asaph, the keeper of the King’s forest, is asked to give timber to make beams for the gate of the castle. The injunction in Leviticus (xix. 35, 36) about just weights and measures does not in itself militate against this theory.

But this does not mean that there were no traders. There must have been, even in the period of the Kings, but they were only retail dealers. Do we not read of them in the Book of Kings (1 Kings xx. 34), where the defeated Benbadad. King of Syria, offers Ahab to build streets for bazaars in Damascus as his father had done in Samaria? Or in Nehemiah (iii. 32), where we are told that the goldsmiths and the merchants built their shops in a particular quarter? How this last statement can be construed to mean that there must have been highly respected merchant gilds (Bertholet) I cannot understand. You can almost see the small shopkeepers at the Sheep Gate.

That there was an international exchange of commodities, even in the earliest times, cannot of course be denied. There must have been extensive trade and great merchants, who exchanged the surplus produce of Palestine for the articles of luxury which they brought with them.²⁹ "Judah, and the land of Israel, they were thy (Tyre’s) traffickers: they traded for thy merchandise wheat of Minnith and pannag [a kind of confection] and honey and oil and balm" [Ezek. xxvii. 17]. But the extraordinary thing is that these great merchants were never Jews, but always foreigners. The caravans that crossed the country were led by Midianites, Sabaeans, Dedanites, men of Keder, but not by Jews.³⁰ Even retail trade, when the Proverbs were written, was in the hands of Canaanites. Ousted from trade in their own land, the Jews were hardly likely to have had any influence in the international trade of those times. The great international merchants were Phoenicians, Syrians or Greeks.³¹ "Absolute proofs that Jewish emigration was chiefly for commercial ends are wanting entirely."³² In view of all this I see no reason for regarding the passage in Josephus, which describes the position of the Jews in his days, as prejudiced and one-sided. It was in all probability true to fact. What does he say? "As for ourselves, therefore, we neither inhabit a maritime country, nor do we delight in merchandise" (Contra Apion, i. 12).

The centuries that followed brought little change in these conditions. In the Talmud those sayings predominate that would point to the prevalence among Jews, at least in the East, of small independent economic units, each sufficient for its own needs. It would be a mistake to speak of commercial activity. Granted we hear³³ that man accounted blessed who is able to become a spice-seller, and need not do laborious work. But surely the retail trader is meant, and not the great merchant. In fact trade, and more particularly over-sea trade, found little favour with the Rabbis. Some even go so far as to damn all manner of markets, pinning their faith to that economic organization where there is no need for the exchange of commodities. "R. Achai ben Joshia used to say, Unto whom may he be likened who buys fruit in the market? Unto a little child whose mother has died, which, when taken to the houses of other mothers who feed their own babes, yet remains unsatisfied. Whoso buys bread in the market is like to a man who digs the grave in which he will be buried."³⁴ Rab (175-247) constantly impressed upon his second son that "better was a small measure from the field than a large one from the vat" (i.e., warehouse).³⁵ Or again, "The Rabbis taught: four kinds of grain bring no blessing " the payment of a scribe, the fee of an interpreter, the earnings that flow from orphans’ property and the profits derived from over-sea trade." Why the latter? "Because miracles do not happen every day."³⁶

So much for the East. What of the West? Here, too, the Jews were not great merchants. Throughout the Imperial period and the succeeding early Middle Ages the Jew, like the Syrian, if he were a "trader" was only a poor chapman, a mere grasshopper who got entangled between the feet of the royal merchants of Rome, just like the small Polish dealer of the 17th and 18th centuries, who made himself a nuisance to the merchants of that day. All that we can discover regarding Jewish trade in the early mediaeval period fits beautifully into the picture. The Jews, in short, were never merchants so long as commerce, and especially inter-municipal and inter-national commerce, remained partly a robbing expedition and partly an adventure -- that is to say, until modern times.

If this is so -- if the Jews never were a trading people from of old -- are those correct who hold that they were agriculturists? Certainly, in so far as their economic organization was the manorial one. But that is not all. The occupation to which Jews devoted themselves in later times and which, in the view of Jewish historians, was forced upon them against their will, was well-known and practised even in the earliest periods. I refer to money-lending, and I attach the greatest importance to the establishment of this fact. The economic history of the Jews throughout the centuries makes it appear that money-lending always played a very great, nay, an extraordinarily great, part in the economic life of the people. We meet with it in all phases of Jewish history, in the age of national independence as in the Diaspora. Indeed, a community of peasant proprietors is fine game for money-lenders. Always the creditors are Jews, anyhow after the Exodus. In Egypt it appears the Jews were the debtors, and when they left, as the official report narrates, they carried away what had been lent to them. "And I will give this people favour in the sight of the Egyptians, and it shall come to pass when ye go, ye shall not go empty" (Exod. iii. 21). "And the Lord gave the people favour in the sight of the Egyptians, so that they let them have what they asked . . ." (Exod. xii. 36). Thereafter the position changed. Israel became the creditor and other peoples became its debtors. Thus the promise made by God was fulfilled, the promise that may rightly be called the motto of Jewish economic history, the promise which indeed expresses the fortunes of the Jewish people in one sentence: "The Lord thy God will bless thee as He promised thee: and thou shalt lend unto many nations, but thou shaltnot borrow" (Deut. xv. 6).³⁷

The oldest passage which points to a highly developed system of borrowing in ancient Israel is that in Nehemiah (vi. 15):

Then there arose a great cry of the people and of their wives against
their brethren the Jews. For there were that said. We, our sons and
our daughters, are many: let us get corn, that we may eat and live.
Some also there were that said, We are mortgaging our fields, and
our vineyards and our houses: let us get corn because of the dearth.
There were also that said. We have borrowed money for the king’s
tribute upon our fields and our vineyards. Yet now our flesh is as
the flesh of our brethren, our children as their children: and lo, we
bring into bondage our sons and our daughters to be servants, and
some of our daughters are brought into bondage already: neither
is it in our power to help it, for other men have our fields and our
vineyards. And I was very angry when I heard their cry and these
words. Then I consulted with myself and contended with the nobles
and the rulers, and said unto them, Ye exact usury, every one of
his brother. . . . Restore, I pray you, to them even this day their
fields, their vineyards, their olive-yards and their houses, also the
hundredth part of the money, and of the corn, the wine and the oil,
that ye exact of them.

The picture here drawn is clear enough. The people were divided into two sections, an upper wealthy class, which became rich by moneylending, and the great mass of agricultural labourers whom they exploited. This state of affairs must have continued, in despite of Nehemiah and other reformers, throughout the whole history of the Jews in Palestine and Babylon. We need only refer to the Talmud for proof. In some of the Tractates, after the study of the Torah nothing occupies so much space as money-lending. The world of ideas which the Rabbis had was crammed full with money business. A decision of Rabina (488-556), one of the last of the Amoraim (Baba Mezia, 70b), sounds almost like the creation of a money-lending monopoly for the Rabbis. Throughout the three Tractates called Baba, there are numerous examples from the business of money-lending and from the rise and fall of interest, and numerous discussions about money and problems of money-lending. The unprejudiced reader of the Talmud cannot but come to this conclusion: in the Talmudic world there must have been a good deal of moneylending.

With the Diaspora the business only extended. How far moneylending was regulated among the Jews in the Egyptian Diaspora, four or five centuries before the Common Era, may be seen from the Oxford Papyrus (MS. Aram. cl. P)³⁸:

... Son of Jatma ... you gave me money ... 1000 segel of silver. And
I am ready to pay by way of interest 2 hallur of silver / per month
for each segel until the day whereon I repay the money to you. The
interest / for your money is thus to amount to 2000 hallur every
month. And if in any month I pay you no / interest, then the amount
of interest shall be added to the principal and shall bear interest
itself. I undertake to pay you month by month / out of my salary
which I receive from the Treasury, and you will give me a receipt
(?) for the whole / sum and for the interest that I will pay you. And
if I have not repaid the whole of your / money by the month of
Roth in the year . . . then your money shall be doubled (?) / and
also the interest I have yet to pay, and month by month I must be
made to pay the same / until the day I repay you the whole / Witness,
etc.

In the Hellenistic and Imperial periods rich Jews were found supplying crowned heads with money, and the poorer Jews lent to the lower classes. The Romans were not unacquainted with Jewish business.³⁹ It was the same in the pre-Islamic period among the Arabs, to whom the Jews lent money at interest, and who regarded this business as being natural to the Jew, as being in his blood.⁴⁰

When the Jews first appeared on the scene in Western Europe it was as money-lenders. We have already noted that they acted as financiers to the Merovingians, which means, of course, mainly as creditors.⁴¹ They went further in Spain; there, where they had complete freedom of movement, the common people were soon in their debt. Long before there was a Jewish (i.e., money-lending) question in other States, the legislative authorities in Castile were dealing with the problem of debts owing to Jews, and dealing with it in such a way as to show that it was of no small practical importance.⁴² That money-lending became the principal calling of the Jews after the Crusades will be admitted on all hands.

We come, then, to this conclusion, that from the earliest times moneylending was a prime factor in the economic history of the Jews.

The time has really arrived when the myth that the Jews were forced to have recourse to money-lending in mediaeval Europe, chiefly after the Crusades, because they were debarred from any other means of livelihood, should be finally disposed of. The history of Jewish moneylending in the two thousand years before the Crusades ought surely to set this fable at rest once and for all. The official version that Jews could not devote themselves to anything but money-lending, even if they would, is incorrect. The door was by no means always shut in their faces; the fact is they preferred to engage in money-lending. This has been proved by Professor Bücher for Frankfort-on-the-Main, and the same may be done for other towns as well. The Jews had a natural tendency towards this particular business, and both in the Middle Ages and after rulers were at pains to induce Jews to enter into other callings, but in vain. Edward I made the attempt in England;⁴³ it was also tried in the 18th century in the Province of Posen,⁴⁴ where the authorities sought to direct the Jews to change their means of livelihood by offering them bounties if they would. Despite this, and despite the possibility of being able to become handicraftsmen and peasants like all others, there were, in 1797, in the southern towns of Prussia, 4164 Jewish craftsmen side by side with 11,000 to 12,000 Jewish traders. The significance of these figures is borne in upon us when we note that though the Jewish population formed 5 or 6 per cent. of the whole, the Christian traders totalled 17,000 or 18,000.

It may be urged, however, that the practice of usury, even when it is carried on quite voluntarily, need not be accounted for by special racial attributes. Human inclinations of a general kind will amply explain it. Wherever in the midst of a people a group of moneyed men dwell side by side with others who need cash, be it for consumption, be it for production, it soon comes about, especially where the legal conditions governing money-lending are of a primitive kind, that the one class becomes the debtors and the other the creditors.

True. Wherever rich and poor lived together, the latter borrowed from the former, even when there was as yet no money in existence -- in which case the debts were in kind. In the earliest stages of civilization, when the two classes felt themselves members of the same brotherhood, the lending was without interest. Later, especially when some intercourse with strangers sprang up, the borrower paid the lender a certain quantity of corn or oil or (where a money economy had already established itself) gold over and above the principal, and the custom of giving interest gradually became universal.

In this there is no difference between the ancient, the mediaeval or the modern world. All three were acquainted with money-lending and "usury," which was never confined to the members of any one race or religion. Think of the agrarian reforms in Greece and Rome, which prove conclusively that the economic conditions in these countries at certain times were exactly like those in Palestine in the days of Nehemiah.[Cf. A. E. Zimmern, The Greek Commonwealth, p. 111 ff. -- Trans.] In the ancient world the temples were the centres of the money-lending business, for in them were stored vast quantities of treasure. If at the Jerusalem Temple money-lending was carried on -- what is by no means established: the Talmudic tractate (Shekalim) which deals with Temple taxes clearly forbids the utilization of what remained over from certain sacrifices for purposes of business -- I say if such were the case, then there was nothing extraordinary in this: all temples in antiquity lent money. The temples of Babylonia, we are informed,⁴⁵ were like so many great business houses. The temples at Delphi, at Delos, at Ephesus, at Samos were no different.⁴⁶ And in the Middle Ages the churches, the monasteries, the houses of the various Knights and other religious orders took the place of the ancient temples in this respect. Despite the prohibitions of the Church against usury, they were the centres of a brisk trade in money. Is it any different to-day? The German peasant on the marshes of the North Sea coast who has managed to make a little money knows of nothing better to do with it than to lend it at interest to a needy neighbour.

To increase one’s fortune by means of interest on loans is so easy and pleasant, that everybody who is able makes the attempt. Every period wherein the demand for money is great gives opportunity enough (the periods, that is, of the so-called credit crises -- regularly followed, by the way, in recent European history by Jewish persecutions).

Everybody, then, does it -- gladly does it. The desire to take interest on money is pretty generally prevalent. But is the ability to do so? This leads me to my next proof in support of the view that Jewish characteristics have remained constant --

(5) The capacity of the Jew for money-dealing.

It is well-known that in the Middle Ages many authorities, whether individual rulers or corporations, almost begged the Jews to come to their city in order to carry on money-lending. All sorts of privileges were held out to them. The Bishop of Speyer is a case in point. He thought it would give his city a certain cachet to count a number of rich Jews among its inhabitants. Some of the cities of Italy in the 15th and 16th centuries actually made agreements with the wealthiest Jewish money-lenders that they should come and establish loanbanks and pawnshops.⁴⁷

Why should these requests have been made, and these privileges offered? Why should just Jews and no others have been invited to found money-lending concerns? No doubt to some extent it was because good Christian men were not willing to soil their souls by the nefarious trade, and Jews were called in to stand between them and damnation. But was this all? Does it not appear rather that the Jews had a special capacity for the business? They were the cleverest, the most gifted money-lenders, and that is why they were in demand. How else should we be able to account for their success, which for centuries brought them so much riches? Anybody can be a lender, but not everybody can be a successful lender. For that special capacities and attributes are necessary.

Turn to the pages of the Talmud and you will find that moneylending was no mere dilettante business with the Jews. They made an art of it; they probably invented (certainly they utilized) the highly organized machinery of lending.

The time has come, it seems to me, for a trained economist to deal thoroughly with the economic side of the Talmud and of Rabbinic literature generally. I hope this book may act as some spur to this end. All I can do here is to point the way, so that some successor of mine may find it the more easily. I shall briefly note some of the passages which appear to me to bear witness to an extensive acquaintance with economic problems, and more particularly those bearing on credit. When we recall the period in which the Talmud came into being (200 B.C. to 500 A.D.) and compare what it contains in the field of economics with all the economic ideas and conceptions that the ancient and the mediaeval worlds have handed down to us, it seems nothing short of marvellous. Some of the Rabbis speak as though they had mastered Ricardo and Marx, or, to say the least, had been brokers on the Stock Exchange for several years, or counsel in many an important money-lending case. Let me cite an instance or two.

(a) A profound acquaintance with the nature of the precious metals. "R. Chisda said. There are seven kinds of gold: ordinary gold, best gold, gold of Ophir (1 Kings x. 11), fine gold (1 Kings v. 18), drawn gold, heavy gold and Parvayin gold" (Joma, 45a).

(b) The idea that money is a common denominator in terms of which commodities are exchanged is fully developed. The best proof of this is the legal decision that the act of purchasing becomes complete not as soon as the price has been paid, but when the commodity is delivered. The whole of the 4th section of Baba Mezia is illustrative of this point.

(c) There is a clear conception of the difference between credit for production and for consumption. In the case of the first, interest is permitted; not so, from a Jew, in the case of the second. "If A rents a field from B at a rental of 10 measures of wheat and then requests B to lend him 200 zuz for the improvement of the field, promising a total payment of 12 measures of wheat -- that is permissible. But may you offer to give more in renting a shop or hiring a ship? Rab Nachman (235-320), on the authority of Rabba bar Abuha, was of opinion that sometimes it was permissible to give more for a shop in order to be able to hang pictures up in it, and for a ship too, in order to place a mast on it. The pictures in the shop will attract many people and so increase profits, and the mast on the ship will enhance the ship’s value" (Baba Mezia, 69b).

(d) Law and rules of practice point to an extraordinarily developed system of credit agreements. After reading the 4th and 5th sections of Baba Mezia you feel as though you had just laid down the report of an Enquiry into Money-lending in Hesse twenty or thirty years ago, where a thousand and one gins and traps were introduced into money-lending compacts. The Prosbol, too (by means of which it was possible to ensure the existence of a debt even over the year of release), is a sign of a highly organized system of lending (Section 10 of Sheviith).

(e) The treatment of deposits is handled in a way which shows practical knowledge of the subject. "If any one deposits moneys with a banker, the latter may not make any use of them if they are in one bundle. If, however, they are loose, he may, and if they are lost he is held responsible. But if the moneys are deposited with a private individual, whether they are in one bundle or loose, he may make no use of them whatever; and if they should be lost he is not bound to replace them. R. Meir (100-160) held that a shopkeeper was regarded as a private individual in this respect; but R. Judah (136-200) was of the contrary opinion, and said that the shopkeeper was like the banker. ..." (Baba Mezia, 43a).

(f) Finally I would mention the Jewish gift for figures. The Talmudists all had it, but it was to be found in earlier ages also. The exact statistical lists in the Bible and the later literature must have struck every one. One French writer remarks on the topic: "The race possessed a singular capacity for calculation -- a genius, so to say, for numbers."⁴⁸

Apart from all these considerations, the very success of the Jews in their money-lending activities effectively demonstrates a special capacity for the business. And the success was manifested in (6) Jewish wealth.

That ever since the race began some Jews amassed huge fortunes can be easily shown, nor can it be doubted that the average wealth of all Jews was fairly high. In all ages and in all lands Jewish riches were proverbial.

We may begin with King Solomon, whose wealth was renowned even among wealthy Oriental potentates -- although he did not acquire it by successful trading (though you never can tell!). Later we read that some of the Jewish exiles in Babylon were in a short time able to send gold and silver to Jerusalem (Zech. vi. 10, 11). That Jews played a great part in the economic life of the Euphrates country during the Exile appears from the commercial contracts dug up at Nippur.⁴⁹ Those who returned with Ezra brought great opulence with them (Ezra i. 6-11), and in the subsequent period the wealth of the priests was notorious.⁵⁰ Noticeable are the large number of rich men, some of them very rich, among the Talmudic Rabbis. It would not be difficult to compile quite a respectable list of such of them as were renowned for their wealth. Certainly, in any view, the rich Rabbis were in the majority.⁵¹

In the Hellenistic Diaspora likewise the impression cannot be avoided that the standard of wealth among Jews was pretty high. Wherever Jews and Greeks lived side by side, as in Caesarea,⁵² the former were the more opulent. There must have been a specially great number of wealthy Jews among those of Alexandria. Of very rich Alabarchs we are actually told, and we have already mentioned the position of the Alexandrian Jews as financiers of crowned heads.

It was not one whit otherwise in the early Middle Ages. We have it on record that many Jews in those days were blessed with the good things of the world in abundance. In Spain they offered money to Reccared if he would annul anti-Jewish legislation,⁵³ and in the early period of Mohammedan rule we learn that the Arabs envied them their wealth.⁵⁴ Cordova, in the 9th century, had "several thousand (?) Jewish families who were well off."⁵⁵ And more to the same effect.⁵⁶ There is no need to labour the statement that in the later Middle Ages the Jews were wealthy. It is a generally accepted fact.⁵⁷ And for what is called the modern period I have myself adduced proofs enough in this book.

We shall be justified in the conclusion, therefore, that from King Solomon to Bamey Bamato Jewish opulence runs through history like a golden thread, without ever once snapping. Is this merely accidental? If not, what was it due to -- subjective or objective causes?

Objective factors, i.e., outward forces, have certainly been hinted at to explain Jewish wealth. In the first place, the Jews were early taught to look for their chief happiness in the possession of money; in the second, the insecurity of their position forced them to accumulate their wealth in easily movable forms -- in gold or ornaments, which they could take about with them, which they could hide or carry off without much difficulty. These causes undoubtedly go a good way to account for the growth of Jewish wealth, but they by no means suffice to explain it completely. We must not forget that the outward forces referred to above, in order to produce the result they did, could not but have influenced a people possessing certain special gifts. But let that pass. Again, the facts instanced could only have been of any effect in the Diaspora. Let that also pass. The great weakness of this explanation is that it tells us merely why the Jews had any desire to become wealthy, and, incidentally, that then wealth took a particular form. The desire in this case is of little moment; it does not make clear why it was realized. Hence we must look for other causes. Besides, the desire to become rich has been universal ever since Alberich robbed the Maidens of the Rhine-gold.

Another explanation has therefore been suggested for Jewish wealth. The Jews, it has been rightly pointed out, for centuries occupied a position of inequality with their Christian neighbours, and therefore had less occasion to spend as much as the latter. The conception of social status, with varying standards of comfort for each, was unknown among them, and therefore also the thousand and one artificial wants that were associated with the idea. "It is certain," remarks a writer who has dealt with this aspect of the problem in a most delicate fashion,⁵⁸ "that a Jew, compared with a Christian of the same income, was bound to become the richer of the two, seeing that the Christian had very many opportunities of spending money which were denied to the Jew, for the simple reason that the former belonged to the ruling class, and the latter was only tolerated. As for the rich Jew, his circumstances were different from those of the Christian, for he had no need to consider what was demanded in his social class. Thus, any luxuries he cared to enjoy were not necessarily in accordance with his status."

Doubtless this is one explanation of the wealth of the Jews, and will account also for the specifically Jewish economic standpoint, which we have noted above. To it were due such ideas as that of free competition, that your expenses should be limited by your income -- a conception utterly foreign to a feudal society -- and that saving, associated with Jews from earliest times, was good. Let me recall an old German proverb:

Selten sind sieben Dinge:
Eine Nonne, die nicht singe,
Ein Madchen ohne Liebe,
Ein Jahnnarkt ohne Diebe,
Ein Geissbock ohne Bart,
Ein Jude der nicht spart,
Ein Kornhaus ohne Mause,
Und ein Kosak ohne Lause.
[Rare are seven things:
A nun who never sings,
A maid without a lover,
A fair without a robber,
A goat of beard bereft,
A Jew that knows no thrift,
A granary without mice,
And a Cossack without lice.]

To the saving habit of the Jews may be traced the tendency to accumulate capital. One sometimes hears it said that Jewish money remains in a business longer than Christian money, and increases more quickly to boot. In olden times the Jew could not enter the charmed circle of the feudal landed gentry, and so his money was not spent in keeping up the appearances demanded by his status. If he saved, his money had perforce to be invested in commercial enterprise, unless, of course, he lent it out directly at interest, as the Jews of Hamburg of the 17th century were in the habit of doing. Glückel von Hamem and her friends, whenever they had any surplus, always lent it out on security. The money fructified and increased.

All these considerations are valuable as far as they go. But they do not go far enough satisfactorily to explain the phenomenon of Jewish wealth. It is all very well pointing to objective forces in any problem. We must not forget, however, that those forces might not effect the particular result they did if the men and women whom they influenced were not constituted in a particular way. A people does not become thrifty because of the stress of outward circumstances alone. The merest tyro knows that. Besides, nowadays, when the Ghetto walls have long since fallen, and the Jew enjoys perfect equality when he may become a landed proprietor and regulate his life in accordance with the most rigid requirements -- nowadays, too, I say, Jews are thriftier than Christians. Look at a few statistics. In Baden, in the years 1895 to 1903, capital increased in the case of Protestants from 100 to 128.3 per cent, in the case of Jews from 100 to 138.2 per cent. This is striking enough, but it becomes even moreso when we remember that during the same period the incomes of Protestants grew from 100 to 146.6 per cent, those of Jews from 100 to 144.5 percent.

When all is said the possible causes hitherto mentioned would only explain why already existing wealth was increased. Not one can satisfactorily answer the question, How was it in the first place obtained? There is only one answer. Wealth is got by those who have a talent for it. From the wealth of the Jews, therefore, may be deduced special Jewish characteristics or attributes.

Is the Jewish Genius Natural or Artificial?
What is the result of all our considerations in the previous section? That in all probability the anthropological character of the Jews, no less than their intellectual attributes, has remained constant for thousands of years.

What does this prove? Are we to conclude that the Jewish genius is rooted in race? Those who have a dogmatic faith in race unhesitatingly say yes. We however, who are trying to proceed scientifically, must say no. Nothing as yet has been proved.

A brief reference to the methods of some of the believers in the racetheory⁵⁹ will show how unreliable their conclusions are. They start out with the assumption that the Jews are a race. Since every race must have specific characteristics, Jews have theirs. In other words, their specific characteristics are rooted in their race. But for this there is no actual proof. If the truth must be told, we know nothing whatever of the connexion between somatic or anthropological features and intellectual capacities.

What the race-theorists have produced is a new sort of religion to replace the old Jewish or Christian religion. What else is the theory of an Aryan, or German, "mission" in the world but a modern form of the "chosen people" belief? All well and good, but let no one be deceived into imagining that this is science. It is faith, and faith and science had best be kept apart.

As we have said, there is no certain connexion between somatic attributes and intellectual capacities. The constancy of each may be The Jews and Modern Capitalism/225 purely accidental; it may arise anew in every generation or may be carried on by the aid of tradition. And among a people who were attached to tradition as the Jews were, this assumption seems likely enough. The Jews were shut off from others, they possessed a strong love of family, their religious practices were scrupulously observed, the Talmud was energetically studied in every generation " all these supplied, as it were, the machinery for carrying on certain peculiarities from one generation to another merely by education alone.

This is one view. Yet Jewish characteristics may spring from the blood. Again, there are those who would trace them to environment. The Jewish religion, Ghetto life, the dealing in money for so many centuries have all three been instanced to account for the specifically Jewish type of character. There may be something in this. Only possibly, as I have tried to show, these influences instead of being causes may be results.

I propose in the next chapter to analyse the Jewish genius, laying special stress on the following points in the order given: (1) The original aptitudes of those races from which the Jews sprang as exhibited in their mode of life. (2) How the various elements mingled. (3) Which of these aptitudes survived under the influences of Jewish history. Finally, if these considerations should prove insufficient, we shall venture the hypothesis: (4) that certain characteristics grew up in the course of history. We shall see, however, that there will be no need to have recourse to this hypothesis, since the Jewish genius can be adequately explained along the first three lines. If this be so, then one result will have been established: that the Jewish characteristics are rooted in the blood of the race, and are not in any wise due to educative processes.



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Notes to Chapter 13

1. F. Martins, "Die Bedeutung der Vererbung fiir Krankheitsenstehung und Rassenerhaltung," in Archiv für Rass. und Ges. Biologie, vol. 7 (1910), p. 477.

2. Some of the most important of recent works on the ethnology and anthropology of the Jews are the following: von Luschan, "Die anthropologische Stellung der Juden," in Korrespondemblatt fur Anthropologie, vol. 23 (1892); Judt, Die Juden als Rasse (1903). On the historic side, much light has been thrown on the problem by Ed. Meyer, Die Israeliten und ihre Nachbarstamme (1906). Side by side with this excellent book may be placed one somewhat older, A. Bertholet, Die Stellung der Israeliten und der Juden w den Fremden (1896). That the whole literature on Babylonia must be mentioned here goes without saying, i.e., the works of Winkler, Jeremias, and others. Recently there appeared a book by W. Erbt, Die Hebräer. Kanaan im Zeitalter der hebraischen Wanderung und hebraischen Staatengründung (1906).

3. H. V. Hilprecht, The Babylonian Expedition of the University of Pennsylvania. Series A, Cuneiform Texts, vol. 9 (1898), p. 28; the same author’s Explorations in Bible Lands during the 19th Century (1903), p. 409.

4. Cf. von Luschan, "Zur phys. Anthropologie der Juden," in Z.D.S.J., vol. 1 (1905), p. 1.

5. The chief exponent of this theory is Ludwig Wilser, who has set forth his view in numerous articles, and at great length in his book. Die Germanen (1903). His chief opponent is Zollschan,op. cit., p. 24.

6. Mommsen, Römische Geschichte, vol. 5, p. 549.

7. Graetz, vol. 5, pp. 188, 330, 370.

8. Graetz, vol. 7, p. 63.

9. All these instances in Undo [see note 22, Chapter 5], p. 10.

10. In his criticism of Hoeniger, who holds the view expressed in the text as applicable to Cologne. Others who have supported Brann are Lau, Kuessen, and A. Kober, Studie zur mittelalterlichen Geschichte der Juden in Köln am Rhine (1903), p. 13.

11. Maurice Fishberg, "Zur Frage der Herkunft des blonden Elements im Judentum" in Z.D.S.J., vol. 3 (1907), pp. 7, 25. A contrary view in the same journal, vol. 3, p. 92, is Elias Auerbach’s "Bemerkungen zu Fishbergs Theorie," etc.

12. Cf. F. Sofer, "Uber die Plastizitat der menschlichen Rassen," in Archiv für Rass. und Ges. Biologie, vol. 5 (1908), p. 666; E. Auerbach, "Die jüdisehe Rassenfrage," in the same journal, vol. 4, p. 359; also vol. 4, p. 370, where von Luschan expounds an almost identical view. Cf. also Zollschan, op. cit; pp. 125, 134, etc.

13. See the results in Judt, op. cit. Cf. also A. D. Elkind, Die Juden. Erne vergleichend-anthropologische Untersuchung (1903). I know the book only from the review by Weinberg in Archiv für Rass. und Ges. Biologie, vol. 1 (1904), p. 915. Cf. also Elkind’s "Anthropologische Untersuchungen über die russ.- polnischen Juden," in Z.D.S.J., vol. 2 (1906), pp. 49, 65, and his other essay in vol. 4 (1908), p. 28; Leo Sofer, "Zur Anthropologische Stellung der Juden," in Pol. anthrop. Revue, vol. 7 (cf. review of this in Z.D.S.J; vol. 4, p. 160). Cf. E. Auerbach, op. cit., p. 332; Aron Sandier, Anthropologie und Zionismus (1904), though his results are not first-hand; Zollschan, op. cit., pp. 125, 134, etc.

14. The theory of "racial differences" between Ashkenazim and Sephardim is supported by S. Weissenberg, "Das jüdisehe Rassenproblem," in Z.D.S.J.. vol. 1 (1905); M. Fishberg, "Beitrage zur phys. Anthropologie der nordafrikanischen Juden," ditto. Opponents of the view are most of the authors mentioned in note 13.

15. For an all-round consideration of this question see Leo Sofer, "Zur Biologie und Pathologie der judischen Rasse," in Z.D.S.J.. vol. 2 (1906), p. 85. For further views, see the issues Biologie, vol. 4 (1907), pp. 47, 149: Siegfried Rosenfeld, "Die Sterblichkeit der Juden in Wien und die Ursachen der jüdischen Mindersterblichkeit."

16. F. Hertz, Moderne Rassen-Theorie (1904), p. 56.

17. C. H. Stratz, Was sind Juden? Eine ethnographischanthropologische Studie (1903), p. 26.

18. Illustrations in Judt, op. cit., and elsewhere. Cf. also L. Messerschmidt, Die Hettiter (1903).

19. Cf. Hans Friedenthal, Über einen experimentalen Nachweis von Blutsverwandtschaft (1900). Also appeared in the author’s Arbeiten aus dem Gebiete der experimentellen Physiologie (1908); also Carl Bruck, "Die biologische Differenzierung von Affenarten und menschlichen Rassen durch spezifische Blutreaktion," reprinted from the Berliner Klinischen Wochenschrift, vol. 4 (1907), p. 371.

20. Von Luschan, "Offener Brief an Herrn Dr. Elias Auerbach," in Archiv für Rassen und Ges. Biologie. vol. 4 (1907), p. 371.

21. A. Ruppin, "Die Mischehe," in Z.D.S.J., vol. 4, p. 18.

22. Mommsen, Römische Geschichte, vol. 5, p. 529.

23. M. Braunschweiger, Die Lehrer der Mischna (1890), p. 27.

24. Graetz, vol. 6, p. 22.

25. Graetz, vol. 6, 320.

26. Gregor. Ep. ix. 36, in Schipper, p. 16.

27. Herzfeld, Handelsgeschichte der Juden des Altertums, p. 204.

28. Herzfeld has perhaps dealt most fully with these questions. But besides many errors of textual interpretation he is also wrong as regards the dates of documents. He still maintains the chronology current before the age of criticism, and therefore places most of his sources in the pre-exilic period.

29. For the Talmudic period, see Herzfeld, op. cit., p. 118, where over a hundred imports into Palestine are given.

30. A. Bertholet, op. cit., p. 2.

31. Cf. Büchsenschutz, Besitz und Erwerb im griechischen Altertum (1869), p. 443.

32. L. Friedlander, Sittengeschichte Roms, vol. 3, p. 571.

33. Kiddushin, 826.

34. Aboth de R. Nathan, xxx. 6.

35. Pesachim, 113a.

36. Pesachim, 506. Cf. also the articles "Welthandel" and "Handel" in J. Hamburger’s Real-Encyklopädie des Judentums (1883, 1886) for more material under this heading.

37. A. Bertholet, "Deuteronomium" (1899), in Marti’s Kurz.
Bandkommentar zum A.T. On the passage in the text, Bertholet remarks that it refers to a period in which Israel is scattered all over the globe as a people of traders, and is a force in the world because of its wealth. Bertholet informs me that he regards the passage xv. 4-6 as a later addition to the text, and because the words appear to point to an extensive distribution of Israel he would incline to assign them to the Greek period after Alexander.
But for myself I cannot believe that the Jews were then a scattered commercial people. In order to make quite sure that I had not overlooked important passages I wrote to Professor Bertholet to ask him on what grounds he based his opinion. In his reply he referred me to Prov. vii. 19; xii. 11; xiii. 11; xx. 21; xxiii. 4; xxiv. 27; xxviii. 19, 20, 22; Ecclus. xxvi. 29-xxvii. 2. These passages deal with the dangers of wealth, and I have already discussed them in another connexion. None of them, however, appear to me to point to trade on a large scale. Certainly Prov. vii. 19 may have reference to a travelling trader, but not necessarily. And when we are told of Tobit (to whom also Professor Bertholet referred) that he was King Enemessar’s "agorastes" and as such had a comfortable income, does not that rather point to a feudal state of society? Again, Ananias, a merchant at the court of Adiabene (of whom Josephus tells), may have been a Hofjude. Of course, I do not deny that Jews participated in international trade. But I contend that this was not characteristic of them. What was characteristic was the business of lending, and of this it may be said, as Bertholet does, that Israel was then (in the period after Alexander) a power in the earth.

38. I am indebted to Professor Bertholet for calling my attention to this document.

39. E. Renan, Les Apôtres (1866), p. 289.

40. J. Wellhausen, Medina vor dem Islam (1889), p. 4.

41. Cf. Aronius, Regesten zur Geschichte der Juden im frankischen und deutschen Reiche bis zum Jahre 1273 (1902), Nos. 45, 62.

42. Cf. Lindo, op. cit; p. 73.

43. Statutes of Jewry, in Cunningham, Growth of English Industry and Commerce, vol. 1 (1905), p. 204.

44. Wassermann, "Die Entwickelung der jiidischen Bevolkerung in d. Provin. Posen," in Z.D.S.J; vol. 6 (1910), p. 37.

45. F. Delitzsch, Handel und Wandel in Altbabylon (1910), p. 33. Cf. Heici, Alttestamentliches Zinsverbot (1907), p. 32, and especially p. 54.

46. Weber, article "Agrargeschichte im Altertum," in Handworterbuch der Staatswissenschaften. Cf. also Marquardt, Römische Staatsverwaltung, vol. 2, p. 55.

47. In the years 1436 and 1437 a number of Jewish pawnbrokers were invited to Florence by the city council, in order to assist the poor who were in need of cash. Cf. M. Ciardemi, Banchieri ebrei in Firenze net secolo XV e XVI (1907). When the city of Ravenna was about to join itself to the Republic of Venice, one of the conditions of its adhesion was that wealthy Jews should be sent there to open a loan bank, so that the poverty of the population might be lessened. Cf. Graetz, vol. 8, p. 235. "We have seen that the business of finance in the period up to 1420 was gradually increasing in the bands of the Jews of Rome; from 1420 to 1550 circumstances were even more favourable, and hence we find a still greater growth. Indeed, it became customary for the Italian communes to make regular agreements with Jews concerning money-lending." Cf. Theiner, Cod. dipl. 3, 335, in Paul Rieger’s Geschichte der Juden in Rom (1895), p. 14.

48. A. Moreau de Jonnes, Statistique des peuples de I’antiquité, vol. 1 (1851), p. 98. For censuses in the Bible, cf. Max Waldstein in Statistische Monatsschrift, Vienna (1881).

49. A. Jeremias, Das alte Testament im Lichte des alien Orients (2nd ed., 1906), p. 534.

50. F. Buhl, Die sozialen Verhaltnisse der Israeliten (1899), pp. 88, 128.

51. Biographies of the Tahnudic Rabbis are frequent enough. Cf. Strack, op. cit.: Graetz, in vol. 4; A. Sammter in the Appendix to his translation of Baba Mezia (1876) and M. Braunschweiger. Die Lehrer der Mishna (1890).

52. Mommsen, Römische Geschichte, vol. 5, p. 529.

53. The 58th Canon of the 4th Council of Toledo (633), quoted by Lindo, op. cit., p. 14.

54. J. Wellhausen, op. cit., vol. 4, p. 14.

55. Cf. Graetz, vol. 5, p. 345.

56. Cf. Graetz, vol. 5, pp. 11, 39, 50; also the passages in Schipper, op. cit., pp. 20, 35; Aronius, op. cit., Nos. 45, 62, 173, 206, 227, etc. How Caro, op. cit., p. 83, arrives at the contrary conclusion it is not easy to perceive.

57. For the period up to the 12th century, see the references in Schipper, op. cit., also my Moderne Kapitalismus, vol. 1.

58. K. F. W. Freiherr von Diebitsch, Kosmopolitische, unparteiische Gedanken über Juden und Christen (1804), p. 29.

59. I cannot give a complete bibliography of all the works on biology, anthropology, ethnology, etc. Only a few will be mentioned for the guidance of the reader.
The works of Moritz Wagner appear to me to be of great value: Die Darwinsche Theorie und das Migrationsgesetz (1868); Uber den Einfluss der geographischen Isolierung und Kolonienbildang auf die morphologische Veränderung der Organismen (1871); Die Enstehung der Arten durch räumliche Sonderung (1889). Ludwig Gumploviez, Der Rassenkampf (1883); Die soziologische Staatsidee (2nd ed., 1901); Ward, Reine Soziologie, vol. 1; L. Woltmann, Politische Anthropologie (1903).
For the question of heredity, see H. E. Ziegler, Die Vererbungstehre in der Biologie (1905); W. Schallmeyer, Vererbung und Auslese (2nd ed., 1910); R. Sommer, Familienforschung und Vererbungslehre (1907); F. Martius, Das pathologische Vererbungsproblem (1909); J. Schultz, Die Maschinentheorie des Lebens (1909); W. Bolsche, Das Liebesleben in der Natur (1909).