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]
<![endif]>

     "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