JUDAICA - Wisdom In Torah

and trying to control the market. The artisan guilds in urban
areas were relatively powerful, closed corporate bodies, quite
effective in controlling urban crafts. As a social group the artisans
had a much narrower outlook than the merchants, were
much more under the influence of the Church, and resentful
and suspicious of outsiders. During this period the Jewish
artisans did not succeed in being incorporated into the general
guilds and had to operate outside the Christian guild organization.
Attempts to set up guilds of Jewish artisans were
numerous and always argued for on the basis of the need for
organization for successful competition or income maintenance.
Needless to say, the artisans, the plebeian masses of
the cities, quite often linked their struggle against competition
from Jewish craftsmen and traders to the social struggle
against the gentry and urban patricians. Thus anti-Jewish sentiment
often accompanied particular forms of the class struggle
of the urban plebeians.
The attitudes of the peasantry to the Jews did not matter
in terms of the policies toward the Jews, except in cases of
peasant wars and uprisings. Nor could the peasants prevent
Jews from acting on behalf of the crown, gentry, and nobility.
Nevertheless they affected some of the economic activities of
the Jewish traders and artisans and were of importance in the
social sphere since the peasants constituted the vast majority
of the population. There is no doubt that in the situations in
which the Jews acted as economic agents for the landowners
they were strongly resented by the peasants. But even in the
many instances when the Jews helped to bring the peasants
into the money economy the attitude was not one of unqualified
gratitude. This was due to the fact that the peasants’ entry
into and participation in the money economy was accompanied
by rising demands for incomes on the part of both the
landowners and the state at the expense of the peasants. In a
sense, with peasant incomes rising, rents and taxes tended to
rise accordingly. It would probably not be incorrect to conclude
that in spite of tangible benefits provided for the peasants
by some economic activities of the Jews, the peasants did
not differentiate among the various roles played by the Jews in
the rural economy. They were certainly either unable or unwilling
to distinguish between different categories of Jews, a
trait which they share with other social groups. The Jew was
the stranger who, in the eyes of the peasants (as well as of the
artisans), was suspected of undermining the traditional order.
That old order was one that the peasants did not like, but they
were too conservative to substitute another for it because of
all the accompanying uncertainties. The Jews, in turn, especially
those that settled in the rural areas, were perhaps only
a notch above the peasants economically, but they were separated
from the peasants by a cultural gulf that could not be
bridged. Thus suspicion on the one side was reciprocated by
contempt from the other.
ROLE OF THE JEWISH COMMUNITY ORGANIZATION. To
the extent that the relations between some groups of the general
community and various social groups within the Jewish
economic history
community appeared to the contemporaries as antagonistic,
and to the extent that the legal framework and policies of
many European states were discriminatory, there existed
a strong tendency within the Jewish community to engage
in self-defense. In addition, there manifestly existed a desire
to free themselves of the fetters of restrictions and controls
imposed by the state, guilds, and other existing corporate
bodies. But the latter attitude did not lead necessarily to a
laissez-faire attitude even in areas of autonomous choice.
The Jews’ demand for freedom of trade or for the free exercise
of one’s skills in crafts and manufacturing did not include a
demand for the abolition of regulations by the Jewish community
itself of the economic activity of its members. The
adoption of such an attitude would clearly clash with existing
economic realities and with the basic tenet of governmental
policy toward the Jews, which was accepted, willingly or unwillingly,
by the Jewish communities. The point of departure
of governmental policies was the principle, explicitly stated
or implicitly assumed, of collective responsibility of the community
for the acts of its members. In order for the Jewish
community to discharge this responsibility at least a modicum
of autonomy had to be granted in areas of taxation and
civil law.
Seen in historical perspective, the measures of self-regulation
and control by the autonomous authorities of the Jewish
community over the economic activities of their members
were perhaps only minor alterations in the general framework
of the economic life of the Jews, which was determined largely
by the conditions of the economy and major policies of the
state. Nevertheless, the details and alterations seem to have
been important since they apparently influenced the well-being
of many and helped minimize some effects of discrimination.
In general the spirit in which particular adjustments
and arrangements were made was one of pragmatic realism.
Broadly it coincided with the abolition of the restriction upon
Jews charging interest to their coreligionists, a move that officially
sanctioned a usage originating much earlier than the
beginning of the 17th century. The basic criteria for community
control appear to be in the same spirit: (1) maximum economic
effectiveness for the community, the collectivity as the
sum of its members; (2) conformity with traditional standards
of justice and welfare; (3) minimal interference with individual
initiative; and (4) continuity of religious traditions and maintenance
of the existing authority structure, social order, and
economic stratification.
Among the most outstanding examples of community
activity as a self-regulatory agency influencing the economic
life of its members, the following may be mentioned: (1) The
right to accept new settlers enabled communities at least to
some extent to regulate and direct the flow of migration. By
granting or refusing the “right of entry” in the community
(which was tantamount to the right of habitat and employment
in a certain locality; see *Ḥerem ha-Yishuv), the communal
authorities were able to exercise a degree of control upon
the supply of labor and the extent of competition for employ-
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