ARE THE JEWS A COMMERCIAL PEOPLE?

 The reputation of the Jews for being a business people has done them more harm than good, and has, in fact, retarded¹ their emancipation² in many countries. But nowhere has this reputation done them so much harm as in Russia. Even the Russian liberals, who are not anti-Semitic, seem to believe that the Jews, if emancipated³, would ruin the Russian peasantry and completely monopolize⁴ Russian commerce. They are therefore not eager to take up the cause of the Jews, though they may be liberal in every other respect.

 

The Russian and Roumanian anti-Semites, however, base their theories of the need for oppressing the Jews on the belief that the Jews are too shrewd in business and that they will exploit the Russians and Roumanians if they are given freedom to move about and to utilize⁵ all their commercial energy and intelligence. This view is not restricted to those countries alone. We find traces of it even in America.

 

Has this belief any foundation in fact or is it only a myth? The question is interesting enough to be discussed. There are two methods of considering this question, the historic and the pragmatic. Have the Jews always been a business people? Are they today a business people? Instead of answering these questions in the affirmative or in the negative, we think it wiser to lay the facts before the public and to let it answer the two questions.

 

In ancient times—as confirmed by the Bible—the Jews were not much of a business people. The bulk of the people were devoted⁶ to agriculture. There are thirteen terms for rain in Hebrew while there is only one for commerce. The number of agricultural laws in the Scriptures⁷ exceeds by far the number of laws and regulations relating to commerce. The attitude of ancient Jews to commerce was similar to the attitude of the ancient Greeks to labor⁸. Indeed the ancient Jews, in contradistinction to the Greeks, respected labor and despised business and commerce. Josephus Flavius in his book against Apion, says clearly: "We Jews do not find much pleasure in commerce." The Talmudic sages⁹ warned the people against commerce again and again, and represented the business man as an ignoramus and a sinner. Rabbi Meir ruled: Trade less and study more. Rabbi Johanan exclaimed: There is no Torah among tradesmen and business people.

 

Taking all these facts into consideration, we fail to see how any intelligent person can say of the Jews that they were always a business people. Indeed, it is interesting to observe that the word used in Hebrew for commerce is not of Hebrew but of Greek origin.

 

But what about Diaspora Jewry? The Diaspora Jew was not allowed to become an agriculturist. He was forced to live in the city and as he was excluded from all artisan guilds¹⁰ he was obliged to become a tradesman or a money lender. How did the sturdy agricultural Jew become a business man, when business was never his ideal? To answer this question we must learn the attitude of the early mediaeval Christian¹¹ Church to commercialism. The slogan of the Church was "Nullus Christianus debet esse mercator" (No Christian dare be a merchant), for commerce turned the Christian from the Church. This hostile attitude of the Church toward commerce had its origin in the influence of Greek culture on Christianity. The Greeks, as is well known, despised the merchant and considered him a necessary evil. The social status of the merchant in ancient Greece was very low and the representatives of Greek thought, Plato and Aristotle, contributed largely to lowering it still further. According to Plato the merchant class is to the intellectual class what the stomach is to the brain and the raison d'être of the merchant class is only to be found in its feeding the warrior¹² class. Plato describes the merchant as belonging to the third and lowest class of society. The early Church had taken over these views of commerce and made them its own. Even Thomas Aquinas, who lived in the 13th century, when commercial life still flourished, adhered still to the early Christian ideas about commerce. But as commerce is necessary to the existence of organized society, the Church made the Jews the bearers of commerce by forbidding Christians¹³ to trade and inducing the Jews to do so.

 

The Church had another reason for making the Jew the business man. The representatives of the Church—fine psychologists that[117] they were and still are—knew that as long as the Jew confined himself to agriculture he would continue to be "stubborn and stiff-necked," and no Christian propaganda would induce him to give up his religion. The peasant is the conservative element of society. The tradesman, however, whose business it is to make bargains and compromises in his business life, is always inclined to make compromises in morality and religion. If the Jews were made tradesmen, so the leaders of the Church thought, two aims could be achieved at one stroke. First they would be made to do the "dirty work" for the Christians, and secondly¹⁴, their conservative Jewish spirit would be broken. These were the reasons why the Christian world consciously forced the Jews into commercialism. On the other hand, political conditions in the Middle Ages actually compelled the Jews to take to commerce.

 

Thus a people, originally agricultural, became commercial. It is clear that the Jews are not a business people by nature but out of necessity and by reason of historical developments.

 

But now another question arises: Are the Jews clever as a business people and do they really show an inherent business genius? The anti-Semites and many of our friends believe that every Jew is potentially a business genius. Is this true? This question is also best answered by facts.

 

In Eastern Europe, where industry and commerce are not developed, and where Jews live in masses, the ordinary Jew is not a business man. On the contrary, the ordinary Jew in the East is a skilled or unskilled laborer¹⁵. Out of the million Eastern Jews, who emigrated to this country from 1899-1908, about 60 per cent were laborers¹⁶. The great masses or Eastern Jews in America are, in the main, laborers. As Eastern Jewry forms the bulk of the Jewish people, there is no reason to think that the modern Jew is eo ipso a business man, or a tradesman. The great Jewish Socialist¹⁷ movement likewise testifies to the fact that the Jews are not a business people in the sense used by our enemies and by many of our friends, because a Socialist movement cannot rise and flourish among business people.

 

The Jews, in individual cases, may be sharper in business than their non-Jewish fellow business men of the same station in life. Belonging to an Oriental, passionate¹⁸ race, they have a more vivid imagination and can see things in brighter colors than the non-Jews. This is, however, true only of individual cases. The ordinary Jewish business man is as clever or as stupid as the Gentile business man. A mediocrity, whether a Jew or a Gentile, is a mediocrity, and the Jewish mediocrity is no more productive or creative than the non-Jewish mediocrity. It is interesting that in the Levant, where Greeks, Armenians and other Oriental people are active in business, the Jew cuts a relatively¹⁹ poor figure as a business man. There are in Salonica great Jewish merchants but the vast majority of Salonica Jews are artisans and laborers. The Jews of the East when settled in the West, be it in Western Europe or America, have seldom achieved a great success as merchants or business men.

 

The fact is that the Jew is no more shrewd as a business man than the Englishman, Frenchman, or American. It is true, however, that in exceptional cases the Jews produce commercial geniuses as they also produce literary and artistic²⁰ and scientific geniuses. We are an old and relatively pure race and our experience is far-reaching. We have more productive powers than many other peoples, and we produce proportionately more great men than other peoples. Some of these great men are great in business, but that does not mean that the Jews are a business people and a clever business people.

1 retarded   

a.智力迟钝的，智力发育迟缓的

参考例句：

• The progression of the disease can be retarded by early surgery. 早期手术可以抑制病情的发展。
• He was so slow that many thought him mentally retarded. 他迟钝得很，许多人以为他智力低下。

2 emancipation   

n.（从束缚、支配下）解放

参考例句：

• We must arouse them to fight for their own emancipation. 我们必须唤起他们为其自身的解放而斗争。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• They rejoiced over their own emancipation. 他们为自己的解放感到欢欣鼓舞。 来自《简明英汉词典》

3 emancipated   

adj.被解放的，不受约束的v.解放某人（尤指摆脱政治、法律或社会的束缚）( emancipate的过去式和过去分词 )

参考例句：

• Slaves were not emancipated until 1863 in the United States. 美国奴隶直到1863年才获得自由。
• Women are still struggling to be fully emancipated. 妇女仍在为彻底解放而斗争。 来自《简明英汉词典》

4 monopolize   

v.垄断，独占，专营

参考例句：

• She tried to monopolize his time.她想独占他的时间。
• They are controlling so much cocoa that they are virtually monopolizing the market.他们控制了大量的可可粉，因此他们几乎垄断了整个市场。

5 utilize   

vt.使用，利用

参考例句：

• The cook will utilize the leftover ham bone to make soup.厨师要用吃剩的猪腿骨做汤。
• You must utilize all available resources.你必须利用一切可以得到的资源。

6 devoted   

adj.忠诚的，忠实的，热心的，献身于...的

参考例句：

• He devoted his life to the educational cause of the motherland.他为祖国的教育事业贡献了一生。
• We devoted a lengthy and full discussion to this topic.我们对这个题目进行了长时间的充分讨论。

7 scriptures   

经文，圣典( scripture的名词复数 )； 经典

参考例句：

• Here the apostle Peter affirms his belief that the Scriptures are 'inspired'. 使徒彼得在此表达了他相信《圣经》是通过默感写成的。
• You won't find this moral precept in the scriptures. 你在《圣经》中找不到这种道德规范。

8 labor   

n.劳动，努力，工作，劳工；分娩；vi.劳动，努力，苦干；vt.详细分析；麻烦

参考例句：

• We are never late in satisfying him for his labor.我们从不延误付给他劳动报酬。
• He was completely spent after two weeks of hard labor.艰苦劳动两周后，他已经疲惫不堪了。

9 sages   

n.圣人( sage的名词复数 )；智者；哲人；鼠尾草（可用作调料）

参考例句：

• Homage was paid to the great sages buried in the city. 向安葬在此城市的圣哲们表示敬意。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• Confucius is considered the greatest of the ancient Chinese sages. 孔子被认为是古代中国最伟大的圣人。 来自《现代汉英综合大词典》

10 guilds   

行会，同业公会，协会( guild的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• View list of the guilds that Small has war on. 看目前有哪些公会是我们公会开战的对象及对我们开战的对象。
• Guilds and kingdoms fit more with the Middle Age fantasy genre. （裴）:公会和王国更适合中世纪奇幻类型。

11 Christian   

adj.基督教徒的；n.基督教徒

参考例句：

• They always addressed each other by their Christian name.他们总是以教名互相称呼。
• His mother is a sincere Christian.他母亲是个虔诚的基督教徒。

12 warrior   

n.勇士，武士，斗士

参考例句：

• The young man is a bold warrior.这个年轻人是个很英勇的武士。
• A true warrior values glory and honor above life.一个真正的勇士珍视荣誉胜过生命。

13 Christians   

n.基督教徒( Christian的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• Christians of all denominations attended the conference. 基督教所有教派的人都出席了这次会议。
• His novel about Jesus caused a furore among Christians. 他关于耶稣的小说激起了基督教徒的公愤。

14 secondly   

adv.第二，其次

参考例句：

• Secondly,use your own head and present your point of view.第二，动脑筋提出自己的见解。
• Secondly it is necessary to define the applied load.其次，需要确定所作用的载荷。

15 laborer   

n.劳动者，劳工

参考例句：

• Her husband had been a farm laborer.她丈夫以前是个农场雇工。
• He worked as a casual laborer and did not earn much.他当临时工，没有赚多少钱。

16 laborers   

n.体力劳动者，工人( laborer的名词复数 )；（熟练工人的）辅助工

参考例句：

• Laborers were trained to handle 50-ton compactors and giant cranes. 工人们接受操作五十吨压土机和巨型起重机的训练。 来自《现代英汉综合大词典》
• Wage-labour rests exclusively on competition between the laborers. 雇佣劳动完全是建立在工人的自相竞争之上的。 来自英汉非文学 - 共产党宣言

17 socialist   

n.社会主义者；adj.社会主义的

参考例句：

• China is a socialist country,and a developing country as well.中国是一个社会主义国家，也是一个发展中国家。
• His father was an ardent socialist.他父亲是一个热情的社会主义者。

18 passionate   

adj.热情的，热烈的，激昂的，易动情的，易怒的，性情暴躁的

参考例句：

• He is said to be the most passionate man.据说他是最有激情的人。
• He is very passionate about the project.他对那个项目非常热心。

19 relatively   

adv.比较...地，相对地

参考例句：

• The rabbit is a relatively recent introduction in Australia.兔子是相对较新引入澳大利亚的物种。
• The operation was relatively painless.手术相对来说不痛。

20 artistic   

adj.艺术(家)的，美术(家)的；善于艺术创作的

参考例句：

• The picture on this screen is a good artistic work.这屏风上的画是件很好的艺术品。
• These artistic handicrafts are very popular with foreign friends.外国朋友很喜欢这些美术工艺品。