JUDAICA - Wisdom In Torah

economic history
often interfered with their ability to earn a livelihood, many
Jews now depended on the ramified Jewish welfare system.
The economic effects of anti-Jewish riots also were quite significant.
Although far from resembling medieval massacres,
the occasional anti-Jewish outbreaks in the Middle Eastern
cities seriously interfered with Jewish business activities. The
first major anti-Jewish riot, staged by the Alexandrian mob
with the support of the Roman governor Avilius Flaccus, is
well described by Philo, an eyewitness. In his indictment of
Flaccus, the philosopher wrote:
But cessation of business was a worse evil than plundering. The
provision merchants had lost their stores, and no one was allowed,
either farmer or shipper or trader or artisan, to engage
in his normal occupation. Thus poverty was brought about
from both quarters, both from plunder, for in one day they
were dispossessed and stripped of their property, and from
inability to earn a living from their normal occupations (In
Flaccum, 7:57).
Even in less stormy periods the Jewish masses required the
intercession of their leaders to counteract inimical measures
by unfriendly officials. Under these harsh conditions the old
ritualistic animosities between the learned and the illiterate
am ha-areẓ paled into insignificance. In any case, the main
obstacle to rapprochement between the two classes was eliminated
when the levitical tithes were discontinued in the Diaspora.
Differences in the study of Torah were likewise toned
down by the leading Palestinian rabbi Johanan’s declaration
(in the name of R. Simeon b. Yoḥai) that the biblical commandment,
“This book of the law shall not depart out of thy
mouth” (Josh. 1:8), could be fulfilled by the mere recitation of
the Shema in the morning and evening. If, because of fear that
the disclosure of this statement might discourage study, the
rabbis forbade its being given wide currency; the fourth-century
Babylonian Raba, however, insisted that it be divulged to
the public (Men. 99b; see also the anecdote about Judah ha-
Nasi’s reconsideration in BB 8a). In short, even illiterate Jews
could now fulfill their religious duties to the satisfaction of
their more learned brethren.
Muslim Middle Ages
After the rise of Islam and its speedy expansion from southern
France to India, Jewish economic life took a drastic turn.
Together with the simultaneous developments in Christian
Europe, *Islam’s perennial antagonist, the new political and
socioeconomic evolution for the first time converted a predominantly
agricultural Jewish population into a people of
merchants, moneylenders, and artisans. This lopsided economic
stratification carried over into the modern period and
was only slightly rectified in the emancipation era.
A major cause of this epochal change was the new treatment
of Jews by the host nations as primarily an indispensable
source of fiscal revenue for the respective governments
and bureaucracies. In the declining Roman Empire and, still
more, in Sassanian *Persia, Jews were often considered important
objects of fiscal exploitation. This, however, was largely
done by administrative chicanery within the generally oppressive
taxation systems in the two empires. Jews and pagans in
the Christian Roman Empire and Byzantium, and Jews and
Christians in Zoroastrian *Iran may have been mere defenseless
victims of arbitrary acts by rapacious officials; or, for special
historic reasons, they may have been forced after the fall
of Jerusalem to pay for a time a special tax, the so-called fiscus
judaicus (in lieu of the old Jewish Temple tax); but they
were not singled out, as a matter of principle, as a separate
class of taxpayers on whose shoulders was supposed to rest
the main burden of financially maintaining the existing governmental
structures.
It was left to the founder of Islam to enunciate the broad
general commandment: “Fight those who do not practice
the religion of truth from among those to whom the Book
has been brought, until they pay the tribute by their hands,
and they be reduced low” (Qur’an 9:29). Later Muslim jurists
and statesmen, constantly invoking this injunction of their
messenger, interpreted it to mean that Jews, Christians, and
for a time also Zoroastrians, as “people of the book,” that
is as adherents of scriptural religions, be tolerated in Muslim
countries, provided they pay “tribute,” that is taxes of
all kinds, and are kept in a low social status without exercising
any control over faithful Muslims. The latter provision (similar
to Christian Rome’s denial to Jews of the honos militiae
et administrationis) was supposed to entrust all responsibility
for the defense of the country and its administration to
the Muslims, while delegating the entire fiscal burden and
the task of keeping the economy alive to the infidel or “protected”
peoples. Though *Muhammad himself left the details
open, some extremists, such as Ash-Shafiʿī, founder of one
of the four influential schools of Muslim jurisprudence, contended
that a Muslim state could exact tribute to the extent
of two-thirds of all his possessions from a Jewish or Christian
subject.
The prevailing practice was to collect from these religious
minorities a land tax of 25% of the crops and a poll tax from
adult and able-bodied males. According to Abu Yusuf, Caliph
Harun al-Rashid’s chief fiscal expert, the Christians and Jews
were divided into three income classes and paid 1 dinar, 2 dinars,
and 4 dinars, respectively (Kitab al-Kharaj, 69ff. (Ar.),
187ff. (Fr.); a dinar was valued about $4 by its weight in gold,
but had many times that value in purchasing power). Despite
the great inflationary changes in the following three centuries,
*Obadiah (Johannes), the Norman proselyte, recorded an increase
by only half a dinar for each of these classes. He added
that if a delinquent Jewish taxpayer died his body could not be
buried unless his family or the Jewish community paid up all
tax arrears (Fragment, ed. by A. Scheiber, in: KS, 30 (1954/55),
98). These basic imposts were augmented by a variety of local
and individual taxes, enforced “gifts” and loans, and other
services which made the life of the Jewish masses very difficult.
But at least in periods of rapid economic progress, as in
the ninth century, some Jews of the upper classes were able to
amass sizable fortunes.
104 ENCYCLOPAEDIA JUDAICA, Second Edition, Volume 6