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Part 2 of 3

Conclusion

Josephus, the first-century Jewish “historian,” anticipated many of his co-ethnic apologists in Against Apion, his two-volume defense of Judaism. In it, Josephus contested the early reputation for Jewish economic unscrupulousness, arguing that robbery “is alien to us, as are wars for enrichment, since we delight not in merchandise or the world of trade.”

Two thousand years later, Abraham Foxman would write another blanket denial of reality in Jews and Money: Story of a Stereotype. Although only spending about 5% of the book even discussing the nature and impact of Jewish wealth (the remainder predictably advocating harsh restrictions on free speech), Foxman makes the ridiculous claim that “Jews are just another ethnic minority, with both winners and loser in the race for economic success.”[1] As a true reflection of the nature of Jewish economic activity through the ages, this clearly leaves a lot to be desired. Thus, although separated by two millennia, Josephus and Foxman both have the same basic exhortation: “Move along. Nothing to see here.”

But of course there is something to see here, and that “something” is the story of the Jewish quest for the “rainless crop” — for the money to be made from money, from coin-shavings, or from air. Time and again, as many of these people have admitted or even boasted, Jews have been at the forefront of innovations in debt. Loans for monarchs, knights and peasants in England. Credit for alcohol in deepest Russia. Expensive credit and the instalment plan for cheaply made goods in Germany. Pawnbroking in Chicago. The stated income loan across America. Online moneylending throughout the West. Online gambling around the globe. They pioneered and expanded these spheres of economic activity and they remain its largest beneficiaries. I’ve established with ease that those billionaires who sit at the very top are loyal to those of their own ethnicity and comparably heartless to the millions of their customers who aren’t members of their impeccably moral tribe and “Light unto the Nations.” Jewish financial conduct, as well as reactions to it from within the Jewish community, are rife with ethnocentric cooperation and the age-old practice of dual ethics. Read more

“Interest on debts grows without rain.”-Yiddish Proverb

Some things never change, and one of these things seems to be the Jewish connection to usury. During a recent conversation with a good friend who now finds himself at the sharp end of the financial downturn, he mentioned having been forced to turn to the ‘services” of what has become known as a “payday loan” company. The relatively small, short-term, unsecured loans offered by these companies, to those struggling to hold onto the socio-economic ladder, very often come with eye-watering rates of interest. As the conversation continued, my friend despondently informed me that because of the rate of interest on his current loan, when the end of the month came he was in all likelihood going to be facing the prospect of paying off his loan only to have to immediately take out another.

He was trapped. Looking at this younger man, who also has a baby on the way, I offered to cover the totality of the interest on this particular loan on one condition: that he avoids at all costs taking out another loan. He gratefully accepted my offer, but I couldn’t help but feel that it won’t be long before the allure of quick (but expensive) cash begins to tug at him once more.

Cicero once remarked on “how large an income is thrift,” and I would also echo the sentiment that thrift is a matter of character more than of economics. But more immediately pressing to me in this case was the fact that although my young friend believed he was dealing with a fairly small-scale operation, with a “down-home” feel, he was in fact becoming ensnared in an international web that thrives and feeds on people just like him — the hard-working but economically weak victims of “the system.” The small storefront instant loan operations in your hometown, or the comforting names of the seemingly small-scale online lender, are simply the extremities of this web. Sitting at the feast table of this feeding frenzy on the working poor are a large number of businessmen who hail from an ethnic community which has a long, rich, and unbroken history in precisely this line of work. Regardless of those screeching cries of ‘stereotype,” this history is a well-documented one, and with the publication of this article I hope it will be documented better still. Moreover, I might add, despite the obfuscations of those with obvious bias, this particular tribe has more often than not engaged in this trade out of choice. After all, unlike crops which require toil, sweat, rootedness and, yes, rain, interest grows simply and incessantly with the tick of the clock. Read more