the reputation of the jews for being a business people has done them more harm than good, and has, in fact, retarded their emancipation 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 emancipated, would ruin the russian peasantry and completely monopolize 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 utilize 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 devoted to agriculture. there are thirteen terms for rain in hebrew while there is only one for commerce. the number of agricultural laws in the scriptures 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 labor. 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 sages 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 guilds 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 christian 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 warrior 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 christians 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 secondly, 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 laborer. out of the million eastern jews, who emigrated to this country from 1899-1908, about 60 per cent were laborers. 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 socialist 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, passionate 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 relatively 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 artistic 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.
