Economic Antisemitism In The Non-Jewish Community
The economic antisemitism dating back to early centuries puts together stereotypes and rumors based on the economic status, jobs, and the economic behavior of the Jewish community. The stereotypes have seemed to be around forever, with many famous authors creating books, reports, articles, and extensive studies out to prove that the normal Jew was considered to be, “the mighty, greedy Jew,” (Reuveni and Wobick-segev, The Economy in Jewish History). Many famous authors and historians have claimed that the Jewish community owns too much power in the banking industry, and some even going as far as to claim they use manipulative ways in order to try to take full control of the world’s finances. Even in today’s modern world, it seems the Jews still
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take a large part of the blame worldwide for the financial struggles going on. In a 2007 survey conducted by the “Anti-Defamation League,” which asked citizens if they believed that “Jews have too much power in the international financial markets,” four European countries had a 40 percent agreement rate (Attitudes Toward Jews and Middle East in Five European Countries, 2007). The antisemitism towards the community dates back to the earliest centuries of the world, but why exactly? During medieval times, the Jewish community was subjected to an extensive list of legal restrictions. For a while, even moneylending and peddling were illegal to them, forcing communities to resign in ghettos without ownership of any land. It was also tough to travel for them, as each new city entered required a payment. During this time, it was extremely difficult for Jews to get a job, as they were excluded by the government from the trades and graft guilds that followed the First Crusade. Eventually, Jews had to settle for jobs that most did not want because they were considered “evil,’ such as tax collecting, rent collecting, and moneylending. It was illegal for Christians at the time to lend money, because it was considered a sin in the Catholic doctrine. Although the Jews and moneylending never seemed to go hand in hand, it eventually became only the Jewish community who was practicing the act in the 11th century. Despite possible criticism in the Torah, and some sections in the Hebrew Bible, the Jews made moneylending a business of their own, but this came with a harsh feedback from the rest of the community, including the stereotyping of Jews as insolent and greedy. Jews had an enormous advantage in moneylending; including universal literacy, a common language and religious culture, and the ability to have contracts enforced, even from a distance of thousands of miles (Why Did Jews Become Moneylenders? Because They Could, 2012). The Jews eventually took up a practice called usury, which is the illegal action or practice of lending money at unreasonably high rates of interest. This what upset the Christian community so much, as the Jewish community was forbidden to charge interest of loans to non-Jews, as outlined in the Torah and Tanakh. While these Jewish scriptures prevented the Jews from charging other Jews interest, it had no restrictions on charging the Christians. The typical annual rates of interest charged by the Jews ranged between 4-12 percent, but when the interest rate increased, it rose dramatically. Sometimes the Jewish usurers would charge 24-48 percent interest, which allowed them to make a substantial amount of money over the years. Since the Jewish community was making a nice profit off of their business, many non-Jewish Europeans eventually became jealous of them because they could not match the wealth and power the Jew’s were building. The power that the Jews controlled over the rest of the Christians economically created much resentment and hatred towards them.
They were often the center of crude nicknames, harsh comments, and bullying when seen walking around town. Many people saw this, and many famous authors wrote about it. Much of the antisemitism in the European commercial world came from the fact that those of the Non-Jewish community could not match the economies of scale and advertising promotions of the Jews at the time (Perry, 141). Mark Twain once wrote, “I am persuaded that in Russia, Austria, and Germany, nine-tenths of the hostility towards the Jewish community comes from the average Christian’s inability to compete successfully with the average Jew in business, in either straight business, or the questionable sort (Concerning the Jews, 1898). Along with this, Abraham Foxman wrote that “it is likely that non-Jews in Medieval or Renaissance Europe harbored feelings of fear, vulnerability, and hostility towards Jews, because they resented being beholden to Jewish lenders,” (Foxman, 65). Not only have famous authors wrote about how Jews have been portrayed economically through history, but it has been an important aspect in some famous plays, including work done by William Shakespeare. In Shakespeare’s famous play, The Merchant of Venice, the character Shylock is characterized as a Jewish moneylender who is considered “unscrupulous and avaricious.” This one character has stuck with the Jewish …show more content…
community more than almost any other. Gerald Krefetz, a famous author who specialized in financial topics, writes that Shylock is a classic image that has “haunted Jews” since it first appeared because it makes Jews look like a scapegoat. Abraham Foxman, mentioned above, also believes Shylock contributed to antisemitism in the economy, especially in Japan. He believes this because The Merchant of Venice is translated into Japanese more than any other play done by Shakespeare. This just another example of non-Jews adding to the stereotypes and rumors that have created the antisemitism within the economy. While the use of usury is one of the more prominent reasons that people believe there has been an antisemitism of some sort in the economy, there are many more. One of the biggest historical events of all time involved antisemitism within the economy. During Hitler’s reign over Germany, the antisemitism and persecution of Jews was clearly one of the main components of the Nazi ideology. Adolf Hitler’s socialism party rose to power during a time of economic depression in Germany. Hitler used economic antisemitism towards Jews as one of the biggest pushing points during his rise to power, including this quote in his book, Melin Kampf, “The Jewish train of thought in all this is clear. The Bolshevization of Germany – that is, the extermination of the national folkish Jewish intelligentsia to make possible the sweating of the German working class under the yoke of Jewish world finance – is conceived of world conquest… If our people and our state become the victim of these blood-thirsty and avaricious Jewish tyrants of nations, the whole earth will sink into the snares of this octopus,” (Hitler, 321). Clearly, one of Hitler’s biggest pushing points to the people of Germany was the struggling economy and the Jews as the main reason behind that. Once Hitler rose to power, he created a set of repressive laws known as the Nuremberg Laws in 1933, which took away citizenship laws from Jews. Shortly after the laws were put in place, Jewish doctors, Jewish shops, Jewish lawyers, were all boycotted by citizens of Germany. Six days after the boycott began, the Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service was passed, which banned Jews from being employed in the government. In a matter of a few months, Jews went from having great financial control to having to become forced to work at laboring jobs below non-Jews, or those of the “Aryan” race. Getting rid of the Jewish community within the economy did not stop there, though. In 1937 and 1938, Hitler and German authorities amped up their efforts to impoverish Jews and remove them completely from the Germany economy by forcing them to register all of their property with the government. Quickly before the Olympics in 1938, the Nazi government started the trend of “Aryanizing” Jewish businesses, which required all Jewish workers and managers to concede their businesses to non-Jews who bought them for dirt cheap prices from the Nazi government and party officials. After years of effort Hitler’s plan came full circle in April 1939. Nearly every Jewish company had collapsed under the boycotts, or had been forced to sell out through the “Aryanizing” process. Another example of Anti-Semitism in the economy was Henry Ford and his newspaper, The Dearborn Independent. The newspaper, written by Ford, had about 700,000 readers at the peak of its time. The paper was used as a way for Ford to discuss his anti-Semitic views to the rest of the country in an effort to get others to feel the same. The paper eventually became so popular that man of its excerpts were published into a book titled, The International Jew: The World’s Foremost Problem, which, unsurprisingly, became a best-seller in Nazi-Germany. Henry Ford was an innovative entrepreneur, but he was also considered a flagrant and unapologetic bigot: He hated immigrants, thought labor unionists were “the worst thing that ever struck the earth,” and made no secret of his belief in “The Jewish plan to control the world, not by territorial acquisition, not by military aggression, not by governmental subjugation, but by control of the machinery of commerce and exchange. He blamed Jewish bankers for everything that was wrong with the world, from the Great War to his own inability to buy out his company’s Shareholder’s during the recession of 1919. (Henry Ford Publishes Last Issue of the Dearborn Independent, History). The newspaper produced many hit pieces on the Jewish community throughout its existence.
Since Ford was a prominent businessman himself, he focused most of the paper on the state of the economy at the time and how the Jews were affecting it. Ford opposed World War One, and claimed it was started by Jews in an effort to gain a profit from them, “International Financiers are behind all war. They are what is called International Jew: German Jews, French Jews, English Jews, and American Jews. I believe that in all those countries except our own the Jewish financier is supreme… here the Jew is a threat,” (Roosevelt, Dearborn Independent). In 1920 through 1921, Ford ran a series of articles that specifically discussed the financial controls of Jews. One article, titled “Jewish Power and America’s Money Famine,” stated that Jews exercised power over America’s money supply by not providing farmers with any money when they needed it the most. The article also stated that a private group of Jews were controlling all of the gold that the country held, which, Ford states, meant the Jews were controlling all of America’s money. Clearly, Ford was writing with antisemitism on his brain. All of the erroneous claims written in the Dearborn Independent and finally gave rise to claims of antisemitism on Ford and his beliefs, which he then caught a lot of flak for. Eventually, in 1929, 15 years after his anti-Semitic talk started, he issued a statement apologizing for his slander on the Jewish
community. Here we are as a country in the year 2016 and antisemitism within the economy still exists today. Politics are a sensitive subject for everyone, but especially in this year’s past election race, Anti-Semitism came up numerous times. Of course, this past year was one of the more controversial elections of all time, with many twists and turns that almost no one expected. President elect Donald Trump released a closing campaign ad days before the election, with quotes such as, “The only thing that can stop this corrupt machine is you,” and “The only force strong enough to save our country is us,” and while these quotes might not seem like much, Senator Al Franken from Minnesota said on CNN’s “State of The Union” that Donald Trump was using an age old strategy as a rallying point for his election; Anti-Semitism. He was not the only one who said this, at the Anti-Defamation League, mentioned earlier in the essay, also stated that the ads have, “painful stereotypes and baseless conspiracy theories,” (Sen. Al Franken Claims That Donald Trump’s New Ad on The Economy is Anti-Semitic, The Washington Post). Not only does this ad include some quotes that raise the question of Anti-Semitism, but it also shows grainy images of three Jewish people who currently hold a high ranking in the world’s economy; Chair of the Federal Reserve Janet Yellen, Business magnate George Soros, and CEO/Chairman of Goldman Sachs, Lloyd Blankfein. Whether or not Trump’s main goal was to push the product of Anti-Semitism, this shows that it has not left people’s minds since the early days of the medieval ages. Throughout all of the advancements we have seen in this world, it seems that Anti-Semitism is always around us, one way or another. Ever since early times, Anti-Semitism has played a big role in the current nature of how the economy is going. It seems that when the economy is in a rough spot, most of the blame, at least in the past, has been put on the Jews and their actions, or as some say, their “greed.” From medieval to modern times, antisemitism has been a talked about subject that does not seem to be going away any time soon. It’s such a big deal that even our current President elect was just behind accusations of being Anti-Semitic. Some people still believe in Anti-Semitism within the economy because of acts done by one person, such as Bernie Madoff in 2008. Personally, I believe it’s sad that even today our country can believe that one religion is trying to gain full control over our country’s money and everyone else. Even back in the day, the claims are absurd to me that the Jewish community was trying to ruin it for everyone else and keep the money for themselves. As stated in the beginning of the essay, antisemitism was built on stereotypes and rumors, not factual evidence that supports it in any way. It seems all along, antisemitism was just a scapegoat to put the blame on the Jews for the world’s economic problems.
take a large part of the blame worldwide for the financial struggles going on. In a 2007 survey conducted by the “Anti-Defamation League,” which asked citizens if they believed that “Jews have too much power in the international financial markets,” four European countries had a 40 percent agreement rate (Attitudes Toward Jews and Middle East in Five European Countries, 2007). The antisemitism towards the community dates back to the earliest centuries of the world, but why exactly? During medieval times, the Jewish community was subjected to an extensive list of legal restrictions. For a while, even moneylending and peddling were illegal to them, forcing communities to resign in ghettos without ownership of any land. It was also tough to travel for them, as each new city entered required a payment. During this time, it was extremely difficult for Jews to get a job, as they were excluded by the government from the trades and graft guilds that followed the First Crusade. Eventually, Jews had to settle for jobs that most did not want because they were considered “evil,’ such as tax collecting, rent collecting, and moneylending. It was illegal for Christians at the time to lend money, because it was considered a sin in the Catholic doctrine. Although the Jews and moneylending never seemed to go hand in hand, it eventually became only the Jewish community who was practicing the act in the 11th century. Despite possible criticism in the Torah, and some sections in the Hebrew Bible, the Jews made moneylending a business of their own, but this came with a harsh feedback from the rest of the community, including the stereotyping of Jews as insolent and greedy. Jews had an enormous advantage in moneylending; including universal literacy, a common language and religious culture, and the ability to have contracts enforced, even from a distance of thousands of miles (Why Did Jews Become Moneylenders? Because They Could, 2012). The Jews eventually took up a practice called usury, which is the illegal action or practice of lending money at unreasonably high rates of interest. This what upset the Christian community so much, as the Jewish community was forbidden to charge interest of loans to non-Jews, as outlined in the Torah and Tanakh. While these Jewish scriptures prevented the Jews from charging other Jews interest, it had no restrictions on charging the Christians. The typical annual rates of interest charged by the Jews ranged between 4-12 percent, but when the interest rate increased, it rose dramatically. Sometimes the Jewish usurers would charge 24-48 percent interest, which allowed them to make a substantial amount of money over the years. Since the Jewish community was making a nice profit off of their business, many non-Jewish Europeans eventually became jealous of them because they could not match the wealth and power the Jew’s were building. The power that the Jews controlled over the rest of the Christians economically created much resentment and hatred towards them.
They were often the center of crude nicknames, harsh comments, and bullying when seen walking around town. Many people saw this, and many famous authors wrote about it. Much of the antisemitism in the European commercial world came from the fact that those of the Non-Jewish community could not match the economies of scale and advertising promotions of the Jews at the time (Perry, 141). Mark Twain once wrote, “I am persuaded that in Russia, Austria, and Germany, nine-tenths of the hostility towards the Jewish community comes from the average Christian’s inability to compete successfully with the average Jew in business, in either straight business, or the questionable sort (Concerning the Jews, 1898). Along with this, Abraham Foxman wrote that “it is likely that non-Jews in Medieval or Renaissance Europe harbored feelings of fear, vulnerability, and hostility towards Jews, because they resented being beholden to Jewish lenders,” (Foxman, 65). Not only have famous authors wrote about how Jews have been portrayed economically through history, but it has been an important aspect in some famous plays, including work done by William Shakespeare. In Shakespeare’s famous play, The Merchant of Venice, the character Shylock is characterized as a Jewish moneylender who is considered “unscrupulous and avaricious.” This one character has stuck with the Jewish …show more content…
community more than almost any other. Gerald Krefetz, a famous author who specialized in financial topics, writes that Shylock is a classic image that has “haunted Jews” since it first appeared because it makes Jews look like a scapegoat. Abraham Foxman, mentioned above, also believes Shylock contributed to antisemitism in the economy, especially in Japan. He believes this because The Merchant of Venice is translated into Japanese more than any other play done by Shakespeare. This just another example of non-Jews adding to the stereotypes and rumors that have created the antisemitism within the economy. While the use of usury is one of the more prominent reasons that people believe there has been an antisemitism of some sort in the economy, there are many more. One of the biggest historical events of all time involved antisemitism within the economy. During Hitler’s reign over Germany, the antisemitism and persecution of Jews was clearly one of the main components of the Nazi ideology. Adolf Hitler’s socialism party rose to power during a time of economic depression in Germany. Hitler used economic antisemitism towards Jews as one of the biggest pushing points during his rise to power, including this quote in his book, Melin Kampf, “The Jewish train of thought in all this is clear. The Bolshevization of Germany – that is, the extermination of the national folkish Jewish intelligentsia to make possible the sweating of the German working class under the yoke of Jewish world finance – is conceived of world conquest… If our people and our state become the victim of these blood-thirsty and avaricious Jewish tyrants of nations, the whole earth will sink into the snares of this octopus,” (Hitler, 321). Clearly, one of Hitler’s biggest pushing points to the people of Germany was the struggling economy and the Jews as the main reason behind that. Once Hitler rose to power, he created a set of repressive laws known as the Nuremberg Laws in 1933, which took away citizenship laws from Jews. Shortly after the laws were put in place, Jewish doctors, Jewish shops, Jewish lawyers, were all boycotted by citizens of Germany. Six days after the boycott began, the Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service was passed, which banned Jews from being employed in the government. In a matter of a few months, Jews went from having great financial control to having to become forced to work at laboring jobs below non-Jews, or those of the “Aryan” race. Getting rid of the Jewish community within the economy did not stop there, though. In 1937 and 1938, Hitler and German authorities amped up their efforts to impoverish Jews and remove them completely from the Germany economy by forcing them to register all of their property with the government. Quickly before the Olympics in 1938, the Nazi government started the trend of “Aryanizing” Jewish businesses, which required all Jewish workers and managers to concede their businesses to non-Jews who bought them for dirt cheap prices from the Nazi government and party officials. After years of effort Hitler’s plan came full circle in April 1939. Nearly every Jewish company had collapsed under the boycotts, or had been forced to sell out through the “Aryanizing” process. Another example of Anti-Semitism in the economy was Henry Ford and his newspaper, The Dearborn Independent. The newspaper, written by Ford, had about 700,000 readers at the peak of its time. The paper was used as a way for Ford to discuss his anti-Semitic views to the rest of the country in an effort to get others to feel the same. The paper eventually became so popular that man of its excerpts were published into a book titled, The International Jew: The World’s Foremost Problem, which, unsurprisingly, became a best-seller in Nazi-Germany. Henry Ford was an innovative entrepreneur, but he was also considered a flagrant and unapologetic bigot: He hated immigrants, thought labor unionists were “the worst thing that ever struck the earth,” and made no secret of his belief in “The Jewish plan to control the world, not by territorial acquisition, not by military aggression, not by governmental subjugation, but by control of the machinery of commerce and exchange. He blamed Jewish bankers for everything that was wrong with the world, from the Great War to his own inability to buy out his company’s Shareholder’s during the recession of 1919. (Henry Ford Publishes Last Issue of the Dearborn Independent, History). The newspaper produced many hit pieces on the Jewish community throughout its existence.
Since Ford was a prominent businessman himself, he focused most of the paper on the state of the economy at the time and how the Jews were affecting it. Ford opposed World War One, and claimed it was started by Jews in an effort to gain a profit from them, “International Financiers are behind all war. They are what is called International Jew: German Jews, French Jews, English Jews, and American Jews. I believe that in all those countries except our own the Jewish financier is supreme… here the Jew is a threat,” (Roosevelt, Dearborn Independent). In 1920 through 1921, Ford ran a series of articles that specifically discussed the financial controls of Jews. One article, titled “Jewish Power and America’s Money Famine,” stated that Jews exercised power over America’s money supply by not providing farmers with any money when they needed it the most. The article also stated that a private group of Jews were controlling all of the gold that the country held, which, Ford states, meant the Jews were controlling all of America’s money. Clearly, Ford was writing with antisemitism on his brain. All of the erroneous claims written in the Dearborn Independent and finally gave rise to claims of antisemitism on Ford and his beliefs, which he then caught a lot of flak for. Eventually, in 1929, 15 years after his anti-Semitic talk started, he issued a statement apologizing for his slander on the Jewish
community. Here we are as a country in the year 2016 and antisemitism within the economy still exists today. Politics are a sensitive subject for everyone, but especially in this year’s past election race, Anti-Semitism came up numerous times. Of course, this past year was one of the more controversial elections of all time, with many twists and turns that almost no one expected. President elect Donald Trump released a closing campaign ad days before the election, with quotes such as, “The only thing that can stop this corrupt machine is you,” and “The only force strong enough to save our country is us,” and while these quotes might not seem like much, Senator Al Franken from Minnesota said on CNN’s “State of The Union” that Donald Trump was using an age old strategy as a rallying point for his election; Anti-Semitism. He was not the only one who said this, at the Anti-Defamation League, mentioned earlier in the essay, also stated that the ads have, “painful stereotypes and baseless conspiracy theories,” (Sen. Al Franken Claims That Donald Trump’s New Ad on The Economy is Anti-Semitic, The Washington Post). Not only does this ad include some quotes that raise the question of Anti-Semitism, but it also shows grainy images of three Jewish people who currently hold a high ranking in the world’s economy; Chair of the Federal Reserve Janet Yellen, Business magnate George Soros, and CEO/Chairman of Goldman Sachs, Lloyd Blankfein. Whether or not Trump’s main goal was to push the product of Anti-Semitism, this shows that it has not left people’s minds since the early days of the medieval ages. Throughout all of the advancements we have seen in this world, it seems that Anti-Semitism is always around us, one way or another. Ever since early times, Anti-Semitism has played a big role in the current nature of how the economy is going. It seems that when the economy is in a rough spot, most of the blame, at least in the past, has been put on the Jews and their actions, or as some say, their “greed.” From medieval to modern times, antisemitism has been a talked about subject that does not seem to be going away any time soon. It’s such a big deal that even our current President elect was just behind accusations of being Anti-Semitic. Some people still believe in Anti-Semitism within the economy because of acts done by one person, such as Bernie Madoff in 2008. Personally, I believe it’s sad that even today our country can believe that one religion is trying to gain full control over our country’s money and everyone else. Even back in the day, the claims are absurd to me that the Jewish community was trying to ruin it for everyone else and keep the money for themselves. As stated in the beginning of the essay, antisemitism was built on stereotypes and rumors, not factual evidence that supports it in any way. It seems all along, antisemitism was just a scapegoat to put the blame on the Jews for the world’s economic problems.