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 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.