Settings of Silver: An Introduction to Judaism by Stephen M. Wylen

Author:Stephen M. Wylen [Wylen, Stephen M.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: REL040030
ISBN: 9781616434984
Publisher: Paulist Press
Published: 2012-07-17T23:00:00+00:00

The Jew as Moneylender

In an advanced commercial economy such as that of the United States, banking is perceived as an honorable and useful profession. People recognize credit as a way of increasing their personal wealth and the wealth of society by enabling them to acquire durable goods and means for production that would otherwise be beyond their reach. In a primitive agricultural society banking is not honored, and bankers are considered to be socially unproductive. The medieval church forbade lending money for interest, reflecting both the perceptions of an agricultural society and the biblical commandment that forbids such loans. Since society could not exist without moneylending, the church gave this economic role to Jews. They were able to fulfill this role because Jewish law allowed lending at interest to non-Jews, and because Jewish law, which had developed in the sophisticated commercial society of the Roman Empire, distinguished between commercial loans and charitable, private loans. For the latter one could not charge interest but for the former, a loan made to a person so that he can invest for profit, interest was permitted.

Jews in the Middle Ages had a variety of attitudes toward their role as moneylenders. Some shared the attitude that banking was unethical and unproductive; they bemoaned the fact that Christian law restricted Jews to this trade. Others took an attitude similar to that held in society today, that lending money at interest bestowed a benefit upon society and was therefore an honorable and productive profession.9

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