JUDAICA - Wisdom In Torah

1549). Prostitution and adultery were punished by life banishment
by takkanot of Prague of 1612. There is even a report of
a man who was excommunicated and “run out” of Ereẓ Israel
by the Safed rabbis in 1548 for indulging in unnatural practices
with his wife (Eleazar Azikri, Sefer Ḥaredim (1601), part 3, ch.
2). Forfeiture of domiciliary rights throughout Lithuania was
applied by the Council of Lithuania to thieves, receivers, and
forgers, and could be broadened also to any persons engaged
in suspicious or prohibited dealings, infringing ethics, or disturbing
the peace of the community. Since the whole community
was liable to make good a claim by a gentile for money
he had lent to a defaulting Jewish debtor, in Lithuania the Jew
wishing to borrow from a gentile had first to obtain permission
from the av bet din. A borrower who failed to do so could be
banished, and his right of domicile forfeited (Pinkas ha-Va’ad,
paras. 163 and 637). The Lithuanian Council also withdrew the
right of domicile from and imposed banishment on a person
provoking a gentile by quarrels or blows (idem, para. 21). Its
regulations of 1623, when itinerant beggary and unlicensed
behavior was widespread, lay down expulsion for a beggar,
if necessary with the assistance of gentile officers. In 1628 the
Lithuanian Council withheld the right of domicile from any
Jew absent ten years from his community of origin who had
failed to pay his fiscal contribution. Banishment was frequently
applied in the Sephardi community of *Hamburg, its governing
body (*mahamad) being empowered by the Hamburg senate
to expel from the community any of its members infringing
morals or engaged in dishonest business dealings, among
other offenses. The offender thus sentenced was served with a
writ from the beadle (shamash). If he proved unable to travel
for lack of funds, the mahamad lent his relatives money to defray
the expenses of the journey. Sometimes the offender was
sent abroad, mainly to Amsterdam, and if his conduct subsequently
improved was permitted to return. This punishment
was also meted out to juvenile offenders.
Bibliography: IN BIBLE: Mak. 2:6; Sif. Num. 60; Jos., Ant.,
4:172–3; Philo, Spec., 3:123; F. Rundgren, in: VT, 7 (1957), 400–4;
W. Zimmerli, in: ZAW, 66 (1954), 10–19; M. Greenberg, in: JBL, 78
(1959), 125–23. MIDDLE AGES: S. Assaf, Ha-Onashin Aḥarei Ḥatimat
ha-Talmud (1922), 35–38; Baron, Community, index; Baer, Spain, 1
(1961), 430.
BANJA LUKA (Banya Luka), city in northern Bosnia. The
earliest reference to a Jewish community dates from 1713, when
Jewish merchants of Banja Luka appealed to the French government
to appoint one of them French mercantile consul in
the town. The community had both a Sephardi and an Ashkenazi
synagogue and numbered 226 persons in 1875, 336 in 1895,
and 457 in 1927. A joint community center was built in 1936. It
was damaged by Allied bombing in 1944. Each congregation
had its own rabbi: Menachem Romano for the Sephardim,
Pinchas Keller and Mavro Frankfurter for the Ashkenazim.
There was some Zionist activity under the leadership of Judah
Levy and Hans Bramer. Both synagogues were destroyed during
the Holocaust, when most of the local Jews perished.
banking and bankers
From the 1990s Banja Luka was the seat of the Republika
Srpska (Serbian Republic) as part of the Federation of Bosnia-
Herzegovina. A small Jewish community was reestablished.
Bibliography: Jevrejski Almanah, 1–2 (1926–27), index.
Add. Bibliography: Spomenpca 400 (1966); Y. Eventov, Toledot
Yehudei Yugoslavia, vol. I (1971), 97–99; Z. Loker (ed.), Toledot Yehudei
Yugoslavia, vol. II (1991), 213–15.
BANKING AND BANKERS
Antiquity
There is little likelihood that financial transactions played
a prominent role in the pre-Exilic epoch in Ereẓ Israel; according
to the ethos of Jewish society, then founded on a
pronounced agrarian structure, lending was part of the assistance
a man owed to his neighbor or brother in need (cf.
Deut. 23:21). During the Babylonian era Jews had greater opportunities
to come into contact with a highly developed
banking tradition and to participate in credit operations. After
the Exile, commerce and credit certainly had a place in Ereẓ
Israel. Though the society remained predominantly agrarian,
Jerusalem had a number of wealthy families, including tax
agents and landowners, who speculated and deposited their
gains in the Temple, which had in some ways the function of
a national bank (see *Heliodorus). Organized banking probably
arose in connection with Ma’aserot (“tithes”), in particular
Ma’aser sheni, and the pilgrimages to Jerusalem, through the
activities of the *money changers. The use of Greek terms indicates
a strong Hellenistic influence on the establishment of
banking. Meanwhile, the Jewish communities forming in the
Diaspora, the most important at first being that of *Babylonia,
were given an impulse toward a new way of life by the longstanding
traditions of a capitalist type of economy existing
around them (see Nippur and *Murashu’s sons). In Babylonia,
Jews engaged in financial transactions: some were farmers of
taxes and customs, and the wealthiest of them were landowners;
among the latter were *Huna, the head of the academy of
Sura, and Rav *Ashi. However, talmudic references show that
the standards of an agrarian economy were still dominant and
therefore gamblers and usurers were not thought trustworthy
witnesses (see e.g., Sanh. 3:3).
Another important Jewish colony was to be found at *Alexandria,
center of the trade between the Mediterranean and
the Arabian and Indian world, where Jews were engaged not
only in commerce and international trade but in moneylending
too. According to *Josephus, a Jewish tax agent was able
to make a loan of 3,000 talents. The *alabarch Alexander Lysimachus,
who loaned King *Agrippa I 200,000 drachmas (Jos.,
Ant., 18:159–160), was also the steward of Antonia, mother of
Emperor Claudius. Another Alexandrian Jew was treasurer
to Candace, queen of Ethiopia.
Middle Ages
THE CALIPHATE. With the rapid development of city life and
commerce in the caliphate of Baghdad from the late eighth
century and the transition of the majority of Jews under ca-
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