In the early 1900s, Werner Sombart, a German professor of economics, became intrigued with a new book by the German sociologist Max Weber entitled: The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism.  In it Weber speculated about the Protestant faith and its ideals of rationality, frugality, hard work, efficiency, goal orientation, and other such attitudes in the creation of capitalism. Sombart -- and many others since him -- was attracted to the controversial notion that a religious world view had in some way shaped (and perhaps initiated) the western economic system. But Sombart thought that Weber's focus on Protestantism was not the right place to look for the roots of capitalism. After all, Christianity had evolved out of a much older religious tradition: Judaism. So Sombart wrote his own book, eventually even more controversial than Weber's, entitled The Jews and Modern Capitalism; it was based on the argument that a preceding Jewish value system informed the Protestant one.  As Sombart saw it, "Puritanism is Judaism." [NEWMAN, A., 1998, p. 165] "There is almost certainly a strong element of truth in Sombart's contentions," notes W. D. Rubinstein, "which may well account for the unique success enjoyed by the Jews in the English-speaking world in modern times, and the rarity of antisemitic tendencies." [RUBINSTEIN, WD, 2000, p. 21]

      When the book first came out, in 1911, Sombart's "fundamental assertions were not challenged," in fact he spoke to many audiences "recruited mainly from the Jewish intelligentsia." [MENDES-FLOHR, WERNER, p. 93] Both of these scholars -- Sombart and Weber -- have been pioneers in the scholarly debate about Jews and their role in economic history, each noting some of most enduring and self-preserving traits of Jewry over the centuries wherever they lived:

 

   *  They were foreigners with no formal citizenship everywhere in their

                diaspora.

   *  They were scattered throughout the world, never concentrated

                in a single area.

   *  Their physical and social separateness from non-Jews was voluntary

                and part of their religious world view.

   *  They were not peasants and were not linked to the land in their diaspora;

                wherever they were found, they were an urban class.

   *  They lived a double standard of morality: one for themselves and

                 another for non-Jews, which functioned to position them as

                 intermediaries between other peoples, and ultimately protected

                 their group solidarity and identity.

   * They had strong injunctions to marry only within the Jewish community.

                 [TRAVERSO, p. 44]  

    * They also accumulated "liquid wealth," per merchantry and

                 money lending enterprises.

      

     Among Weber's and Sombart's other arguments was the idea that mainstream Judaism has largely been rationalist and legalistic in scope, eschewing magic and the realm of the supernatural, "this life" oriented and not towards the hereafter, and that the natural world is viewed by traditional Judaism only in the way by which it can be profitably exploited for the benefit of the Jewish people. As Harry Kemmelman notes in one of his popular novels featuring lead character "Rabbi Small": "The virtuous Muslim, when he dies, goes to Paradise; the Buddhist assumes he will be reincarnated at a higher level; the Christian goes to heaven. When the virtuous Jew dies, he just dies." [KEMMELMAN, H., 1981, p. 171]

 

     Talcott Parsons notes that Jewish emphasis upon "rationality ... was mainly legalistic in character." [PARSONS, p. 106] This rationality, argues Sombart, was integral to capitalism. And all these aforementioned factors contribute to a decidedly materialist world view. As R. Joseph Hoffman observes:

 

     "The Old Testament has a great deal to say about wealth as a sign

     of divine favor and source of human happiness. It is arguable that

     no single aspect of ancient Israelite religion stands in such obvious

     contrast to ancient Greek speculation concerning the immaterial nature

     of the good as the insistence of the Hebrew writers that the things

     of this world, being 'God's possession and man's ward,' are a

     source of delight, contentment, and blessing. The theme is recurrent...

     [The story of Genesis] is the mythological embodiment of a

     fundamentally this-worldly, economic theology."

     [HOFFMAN, R. J., 1989,p. 172]

 

      "So closely has Jewish economic activity been intertwined with the history of capitalism," concurs prominent Jewish scholar Howard Sachar, "that many historians have forgotten that the Jews were its putty as well as its molders. Jews helped shaped the destiny of capitalism, but capitalism also shaped the destiny of the Jews." [SACHAR, p. 39]  "According to this distinguished economic historian [Sombart]," says Paul Mendes-Flohr, "Jewish values and ingrained sensibilities -- arid intellectualism, a calculating intelligence, insatiable desire, a double ethic -- display a particular affinity to the ethical code and attitudes required by ...  the major economic developments and instruments of capitalism." [MENDES-FLOHR, p. 134]

 

     Sombart was terribly off the mark with some of his speculations, especially a chapter devoted to innately racial "characteristics" of Jews (although, ironically, some Jewish scholars like Norman Cantor and Raphael Patai accept this kind of commentary today, so long as it is flattering to them), and Jews have had nearly a century to pick Sombart's ideas apart. But not all of them can be easily discarded. In particular, his essential queries still stand, re-examined and reconsidered by scholars in our own day. Why have Jews had such enormous economic influence wherever they were -- and are -- in history, and whenever capitalism developed, why were Jews always significantly located as beneficiaries? To what degree have they been responsible for, or at least instrumental in, the development of capitalism? What is it about Jews and money? "One need not accept Sombart's exaggerations," wrote Salo Balon, "to see that the Jew had an extraordinarily large share of the development of early capitalism and received corresponding benefit." [LIBERLES, p. 44]

 

     Sombart argued that, while Christian opinion in the medieval era disdained the pursuit of monetary gain and preoccupation with self-enrichment, Jewish religious principles actively encouraged a materially accumulative path. "Sombart notes will ill-concealed distaste," says Werner Mosse, "that the most learned Talmudists [rabbis and other Jewish religious scholars] were also the most skilled financiers, doctors, jewelers, and merchants." [MOSSE, p. 5] A year before the Jewish expulsion from Spain in 1492, for instance, Abraham Seneor, the Chief Rabbi of Castillian Jewry, was also a "tax farmer" (tax collector), [BARON, Econ Hist, p. 47] a position purchased from the Spanish aristocracy that was rendered in the public mind as a particularly despised form of exploitive entrepreneurism. Such colossal economic Jewish religious figures can be found yet today. By 1995, for example, Joseph Gutnik, an ultra-Orthodox Hassidic rabbi, had an economic empire worth $1.5 billion and was recognized as one of the richest men in Australia. His company, Centaur, notes the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, "had two main assets in western Australia -- a nickel mine and a gold mine ... Gutnik apparently has a fondness for diamonds. At one time he was even nicknamed Diamond Joe." [HANDWERKER, H., 5-15-01]

 

     Sombart proposed "on one hand, [that] Christianity was the religion of poverty, and condemnation of material wealth was part of its creed. On the other hand, Judaism was the rational basis for wealth, the home of the modern economic spirit -- free enterprise." [KREFETZ, p. 44] "Orthodox Jews have never despised business," notes the Jewish scholar Irving Kristol, "Christians have. The art of commerce, the existence of a commercial society, has always been a problem for Christians. Commerce has never been much of a problem for Jews ... Getting rich has never been regarded as being in any way sinful, degrading, or morally dubious within the Jewish religion." [KRISTOL, p. 317] "For the Jews, poverty was no virtue, wealth no evil. The Talmudic monetary laws, the dinei memonot, formed what was regarded by many as the most rewarding of Talmudic inquiry and crativity ... It's not the afterlife that's important but life itself for rich and poor alike." [GETTLER, L., 2000, p. 27]

    According to the New Testament," notes Jewish business author Steven Silbiger,

      "the Christian world has, at best, an ambivalent attitude toward money and wealth
       ... For Jews, on the other hand, wealth is a good thing, a worthy and respectable
       goal to strive toward. What's more, once you earn it, it is tragic to lose it. Judaism
       has never considered poverty a virtue. The first Jews were not poor, and that was
       good. The Jewish founding fathers, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, were blessed with
       cattle and land in abundance. Asceticism and self-denial are not Jewish ideals."       [SILBIGER, S., 2000, p. 1415]

     Silbiger compares the very different Christian and Jewish religious traditions about money. For the Christian:

     "Easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for someone who
      is rich to enter the Kingdom of God." -- Matthew 19:24; Luke 18:25; Mark 10:25

      "You cannot serve God and wealth."
      -- Luke 16:13

     "For the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil."
      -- Timothy 6:10

     For the Jew:

     "Where there is no flour, there is no Bible."
     --- The Mishna

     "Poverty causes transgression."
     --- Hasidic folk saying

      "Poverty in a man's house is worse than fifty plagues."
     --- The Talmud

    "The account of Yahweh's [God's] covenant with Abraham (Gen. 15), " notes R. Joseph Hoffman,

 

      "is ... told in terms of this-worldly reward and material blessing

      (Gen. 22:17) ...  [In Judaism there is a] doctrine of conspicuous reward

      for obedience [to God] ... [Apostle] Luke in particular presents the

      poverty ethic as a central Christian requirement ... Paradigmatically, to be

      a 'true' follower [of Jesus by his Apostles] is to be poor." [HOFFMAN,

      R. J., 1989, p. 173, 183, 185]

 

       As Sombart put it:

 

       "It is well known that the religion of the Christian stood in the way of

        economic activities. It is equally well known that the Jews were never

        faced with this hindrance. The more pious a Jew was and the more

        acquainted with his religious literature, the more he was spurred by

        the teachings of that literature to extend his economic activities."

        [SOMBART, p. 222]

   

      Sombart even out-Freuds Freudian theory by suggesting that Jewish religious dictates encouraged sexual sublimation which, in turn, improved energies in money matters. ("We see that a good deal of capitalistic capacity which the Jews possessed was due in large measure to sexual restraint put upon them by their religious teachers.") [SOMBART, p. 237]

 

     Exploring Jewish moral tenets towards non-Jews, particularly in the economic sphere, Sombart highlights excerpts from Jewish religious teachings like these:

 

         "If a non-Jew makes an error in a statement of accounts, the Jew may

          use it to his own advantage; it is not incumbent upon him to point

          it out."

 

         "It is permissible to take advantage of a non-Jew, for it is written,

          thou shalt not take advantage of thy brother [i.e., other Jews]."

          [SOMBART, p. 245]

 

     As modern Jewish defenders point out, there are indeed other Jewish religious citations that can be produced that infer different attitudes towards non-Jews. But as Sombart underscores, for the Jews who seek religious assurances that a Jew can cheat and deceive Gentiles with moral impunity, there are clearly many citations to be found in the Jewish religious record that support, and even encourage, such an attitude. Such attitudes were unquestionably used by Jews in history, often as a mainstay. Hence, as part of Gentile folklore throughout the world, Jews are consistently and universally depicted as misers, penny-pinchers, and cheats who are completely obsessed with making money, views that are bitterly decried by Jews today as being totally unfounded, completely unwarranted, and anti-Semitic: in all cases, "stereotypes." 

 

     Wherever Jews lived in their diaspora, there were similar perspectives about them in the traditions of surrounding peoples:

 

         *  "A real Jew will never pause to eat till he has cheated you. (Serbian)

         *   "The Jew cheats even when praying." (Czech)

         *   "A real Jew will get gold out of straw." (Spanish)

         *   "So many Jews, so many thieves."  (German)

         *   "A bankrupt Jew searches his own accounts." (Greek)

         *   "Bargain like a Jew but pay like a Christian." (Polish)

         *   "A Jewish miser will reject nothing more than having to part with his

              foreskin." (Russian)

         *   "A Jewish oath, a clear night, and women's tears are not worth a

               mite. (Venetian)

         *   "A Jew, if he cheats a Moslem, is happy that day." (Moroccan)

         *   "Mammon [money] is the God of the Jews." (Hungarian)

              [ROBACK, p. 186-204]

 

     Jewish scholar Leonard Dinnerstein notes the similar folk beliefs about Jews in the African-American community:

 

     "There are several humorous tales about a 'Colored Man, a Jew and a

     White Man' in which the Jew is distinguished from other caucasians.

     The main thrust of almost all of these jokes is the compulsive Jewish

     concern for wealth." [DINNERSTEIN, L., 1998, p. 117 (of double

     pagination]

 

     Like virtually all Jewish observers these days, however, Dinnerstein regards such folk tradition to be based on no facts whatsoever. As he decides, despite the fact that such folk traditions are part of every folk history wherever there have been Jews in any number,

 

      "[Blacks] have imbibed the European-American folklore about the

      cunning and exploitive Jew whose ruthlessly amassed fortune is

      used to political and economic control of society. There is more

      mythology than substance in these beliefs, but that does not lessen

      their impact. These stereotypes have existed among Blacks since

      their socialization into American culture." [DINNERSTEIN, L., 1998,

      p. 873 (pages are doubly paginated)]

 

     What Dinnerstein neglects to mention, of course, as do virtually all Jewish polemicists on this subject, is that these "stereotypes" have also been very much part of even Jewish folk lore, hence Jewish self-identity. What did the Jewish community think, and celebrate, about itself in its own traditions?

 

         *    "A Jew at a fair is like a fish in water." (Yiddish) 

         *    "The Jew loves commerce." (Yiddish)

         *    "A Jew and a wolf are never idle." (Yiddish)

         *    "The Jew likes to poke his nose everywhere." (Yiddish)

         *    "Better in the hands of a Gentile than the mouth of a Jew."

               (Yiddish)

         *    "When the Pole thinks, he seizes his moustache, when the Russian

               thinks, he takes hold of his forelocks, and when the Jew thinks, he

               holds his hands behind."   (Yiddish) 

                             [ROBACK, p. 186-204]

 

      As Irving Howe and Eliezer Greenberg note about Yiddish folklore: "This folk humor provides a means of indirect social aggression and at other times, it releases a mordant self-criticism." [KUMOVE, S., 1985, p. xx] The following are more examples of traditional Jewish self-identity from a collection of Yiddish folk sayings, [KUMOVE, S., 1985] further confirming certain troubling aspects of collective Jewish identity:

 

         *    "One need never suspect a Jew -- he surely is a thief." [p. 139]

         *    "It's good to do business with a thief."  [p. 233]

         *    "If you steal -- you'll have." [p. 233]

         *    "What is smaller than a mouse may be carried from a house."

                [p. 233]

         *    "Petty thieves are hanged, major thieves are pardoned." [p. 233]        

         *    "A thief gives handsome presents." [p. 230]

         *    "Before a thief goes stealing, he also prays to God." [p. 231]

         *    "Better with a hometown thief than a strange rabbi." [p. 231]

         *    "Thieve and rob if you must but be honorable."  [p. 232]

         *    "God protect us from Gentile hands and Jewish tongues." [p. 196]

         *    "Live among Jews, do business among the Goyim." [p. 143]

         *    "If you steal enough eggs, you can also become rich." [p. 249]

         *    "A fool gives and a clever person takes." [p. 106]

         *    "Always take -- if you give me, I'll go away, if not, I'll stay."

                [p. 106]

         *    "Always take!" [p. 106]

         *    "The goy is treyf [forbidden] but his money is kosher

                [acceptable]." [p. 126]

         *     "Offer a Jew a ride and he throws you out of your own wagon."

                [p. 45]

         *    "A sense of justice we want others to have." [p. 127]

         *    "Money rules the world." [p. 179]

         *    "Money is the best soap -- it removes the greatest stain. (p. 179)

         *    "Gold shines out of the mud." [p. 179]

         *    "Gold has a dirty origin but is nevertheless treated with honor.

                [p. 180]

         *    "The world stands on three things: on money, on money, and

               on money." [p. 180] [All from KUMOVE, 1985]

     Jewish psychoanalyst Theodore Reik, in Jewish Wit (his volume about the subliminal psychological meanings of Jewish humor) notes:

     "All kinds of deception and cunning, of fraud and trickery, devised and committed
     by Jews, either to get money or to avoid paying money, are exposed and
     candidly revealed by Jewish jokes." [REIK, T., 1962, p. 67]

     There is even an entire tradition of Yiddish folksongs like this:

     "Stealing has made its home in my heart,
     It doesn't let me alone for a moment.
     It tells me that it was made just for me,
     That it can't live without me for a moment."
     [RUBIN, R., 2001 -- Song 8]

     Jewish author Stephen Bloom was troubled when, during studies of an ultra-Orthodox group in America with deep roots in Jewish tradition, "anti-Semitic" stereotypes about Jews and money seemed confirmed:

     "To Lazar, bargaining was a thoroughly Jewish endeavor. Negotiating the
     lowest price wasn't chutzpah, it was tradition. 'I don't feel like a Jew unless
     I bargain!' Lazar bellowed. 'I feel bad when I don't make a deal. That's
     part of being a Jew! A Jew has to know he got something for the absolute
     lowest price -- or he feels rotten.' If Lazar hadn't been telling me this,
     I'd have thought it was one of the [non-Jewish] regulars at Ginger's
     [diner]. Lazar meant what he said, and his remarks were totally anti-Semitic.
     If anyone else were saying this, Lazar would have him by the throat."
     [BLOOM, S., 2001, p. 209]

                                 

     "Perhaps money is to Jews," suggested Gerald Krefetz in his 1982 book, Jews and Money, "what aggression and territoriality is to other national, religious, and ethnic groups, "... In the American context ... it continues to exert a magnetic attraction, for Jews seem to make much of it and hold it in high regard." [KREFETZ, p. 30] Rabbi Jonathan Sacks notes the Jewish religious perspective on making money, that "the Torah treats protectively the money of Israel." [SACKS, J., p. 107]  "The Bible [Torah] is all about business," adds Rabbi Burton Visotzky, a professor at the Jewish Theological Seminary, "In Exodus, people step out of the family, forming a corporate entity. A lot of negotiation goes on. Abraham negotiates with God, with Pharoah; Moses negotiates with God, with the people." [ELLIN]

 

     Forbes business magazine even featured a story in 1999 about this same Rabbi Visotzky, who teaches a monthly religious session to 20 powerful Jewish Manhattan businessmen. The article is intriguing for its insights on Jewish morality. On the day the reporter attended, the subject of discussion was Genesis 12:10-20. In this part of the Torah, the reader finds the disturbing story of the seminal Jewish patriarch Abraham, who pretends that his pretty wife, Sarah, is his sister so that he may both protect himself and sell her to the Egyptian Pharaoh. (She was, in fact, however incestuous, his half-sister.) [SMITH, M., 1989, p. 138] "This ploy," notes the Forbes reporter, "will not only save his life but also allow him to turn a profit on her sale. Less delicately put, Abraham becomes Sarah's pimp." [LEE, S., 11-10-99] After Abraham reaps payment, God punishes Pharaoh by cursing his land with the plague. The Egyptian leader returns Sarah to Abraham and bans them from his land. "Payoff time again for Abraham," notes the reporter, " -- Pharaoh pays him hush money." [LEE, S., 11-10-99]  Rabbi Visotzky then explained for Forbes the essence, as he saw it, to the biblical tale, quoting a lawyer in his study group who suggested that, "Morality aside, you may not like it, but by the end of the chapter -- let's face it -- Abraham is talking one-on-one with the head of state and he's earned start up costs." Visotzky then adds: "This is what it means to be a small and embattled people who are going to survive at any cost. The only thing that matters is the bottom line." [LEE, S., 11-10-99]

 

   (In this genre, a turn-of-the-century Jewish scholar, Cesare Lombroso, even argued that "among the Jews, before the definitive version of the Tablets of Law, the father had the right to sell the daughter to a man who would make of her his concubine for a period of time established by the sales contract ... The Jews thus trafficked in the prostitution of their own daughters."  [HARROWITZ, p. 117] In 2001, African-American reverend Jesse Jackson, mired in a scandal when it was discovered he had fathered a new child out of his marriage, turned to study the Torah with New York rabbi Marc Schneier, for solace. The rabbi "and Jackson," noted the Jewiish Telegraphic Agency, "studied the portion of Genesis in which Judah sleeps with his daughter-in-law, mistaking her for a prostitute. Despite his transgression, Judah is chosen from among his brothers to become heir to Jacob's dynasty, which later produces King David and, Jewish tradition holds, will one day produce the Messiah.") [WIENER, J., 1-26-01]

 

      Such Abrahamic ethics of survival and self-promotion aside, the Jewish historian Werner Mosse, in a review of Sombart's theses, notes that

 

      "What Jews brought with them from their past into the industrial age

       was, as has often been noted, their particular appreciation of the

       value of money." [MOSSE, p. 8]

 

       Mosse argues that this "appreciation of the value of money" was the Jewish means to security as a minority people in hostile Europe. "Significant also," Mosse writes, "is the sense of Jewish solidarity overriding even the economic competition. What gives this solidarity a special economic significance is the dispersal of Jews across national boundaries." [MOSSE, p. 11]

 

     This transnational allegiance to other Jews, and their lack of patriotic and defensive obligation to even the land in which they lived (until, for the assimilated, the 1800s), afforded Jews a uniquely favorable position of self-preservation and prosperity at the expense of non-Jews around them. Hannah Arendt notes that

 

               "The Jews had been the purveyors in wars and the servants of

                Kings, but they did not and were not expected to engage in

                conflicts themselves. When these conflicts enlarged into national

                wars, they still remained an international element whose

                importance and usefulness lay precisely in their not being bound

                to any national cause." [ARENDT, p. 21]

 

      This Jewish inter-connectedness across many lands, their own trans-national languages of Hebrew and/or Yiddish, and a materialist ethic (antithetical to the Middle Age Christian morals around them) accentuated -- often in monopolistic form -- further Jewish development in money-lending, merchantry, and other trades. (As early as the 4th century the Archbishop of Constantinople, St. John Chrysotome, noted that the Jews in the declining Roman Empire "possessed large sums of money and that their patriarchs assembled immense treasures." Jews occupied "the highest commercial position in (Antioch), causing a cessation of all business when they celebrated their holidays." [LEON, p. 123]

 

     Jewish cross national links and associated expertise in money-making matters gave rise, in the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries, to the phenomenon of "Court Jews," specious pseudo-princes eventually ubiquitous throughout Europe. Most of the hundreds of European nobles had Court Jews, who were usually afforded formal titles of aristocracy. By the 18th century, notes prominent Jewish historian Heinrich Graetz, "every state in Germany had its Court Jew or Jews, upon whose support the finances of the land depended." [GOLDBERG, M. H., 1976, p. 55] These confidantes of the nobility were influential in effecting requests and concessions on behalf of the Jewish communities. "What was characteristic of the Court Jew ... was his close association with [the Jewish] community whose interests he championed." [MEYER, p. 105]  "The Jewish heritage," says Selma Stern, "... which was the innermost core of their existence, made [Court Jews] remain ... more Jews than court factors." [STERN, p. 241]

 

      At various times and various places, such Jews were afforded trade monopolies by the European aristocrats, including the dealing of jewels, silver, tobacco, velvet, and other luxuries and commodities.  All classes, and especially the poor, could be critically and negatively effected by such Jewish manipulations. In the seventeenth