Excerpt from The Jews of Today, translated by Margery Bentwich (New York: Holt, 1913).
For biographical information on Arthur Ruppin, see the note at the beginning of selection 5.
As merchants and entrepreneurs, the Jews were soon brilliantly successful, showing all that great business capacity which for 2,000 years had seemed to mark them out as predestined for commercial callings. It is a mistake to account for the fact that the majority of Jews are occupied in trade, by saying that the Christians of the Middle Ages shut them out from all other callings. It was not in Europe that the Jews first became traders; since the Babylonian exile, they had devoted themselves in ever-increasing numbers to trade in Syria, Egypt, Babylon, and so forth, while in Palestine itself, till the destruction of their nationality, they lived on the products of the land. In the Diaspora the Jews have never occupied themselves with agriculture to any extent.10 The Middle Ages did not turn them into traders, but merely intensified and increased an aptitude that was already there. It may be taken as a general rule that legislation does not produce new conditions in domestic economy, it only legalizes existing conditions and thus secures them against changes. Laws would never have succeeded in confining the Jews to work as traders and peddlers if the Jews had not already come to Europe in these capacities. On the other hand, the Christians of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, when they took up commerce, and when all the great trades sprang up, did exclude Jews from their organizations, and thereby drove them from respectable and respected trades into the despised ones of peddling, pawnbroking, and usury.
It is commonly agreed that the Jews do not owe their commercial eminence to chance, but to an extraordinary inborn business capacity. “The Jewish race is—on one side of its character—the incarnation of the capitalistic business spirit,” says Sombart,11 whose verdict will stand for that of others.12 This means, in fact, that Jews, to a far greater extent than Christians, produce men who not only have energy and daring, but possess alert minds, with a special gift for swift comprehension and combination. It is this gift which makes the Jews the greatest chess players, excellent skilled workmen, technical inventors, and first-class businessmen.
It is only because this business capacity, from its great importance in industrial life, is so strikingly in evidence that we are apt to form the erroneous conclusion that the talents of the Jews are exclusively commercial.13
It is not unlikely that the Middle Ages helped to foster this natural inclination of the Jews; the continual persecutions and restrictions acted as a sort of natural selection by which the less cunning and resourceful Jews were removed, and only the very cleverest—those who could extricate themselves from the greatest difficulties—were able to survive. Similarly the smartness of the American is most simply explained by this theory of natural selection; that is to say, it was only the most energetic, adaptable, and courageous elements of Europe who risked the voyage over the ocean, and left these gifts as an inheritance to their descendants. The commercial ascendancy of the Jews must not be taken to mean that every Jew is ipso facto a good businessman, and that no Christian is his equal. There are and always were great businessmen among Christians. But the proportion is much greater among Jews than among Christians. The extraordinary part played by Jews in the building up of modern international trade and finance is proof of this. Jews have had no small share in inaugurating the present-day system of joint-stock enterprises and of banks, with their facilities for exchange, for the concentration of capital, for improvement in communications, for unbounded competition and wild speculation. In Germany the new kind of shop—the store—is entirely the creation of Jews, and the latest industrial combinations, trusts, syndicates, and so forth are, if not creations of Jews, at least used by them to the greatest advantage.
In the struggle for life, besides intellectual gifts, the industry, versatility, and powers of adaptation of the Jew stand him in good stead. The Jew does not despair if one of his enterprises fails; he begins again straight away with another. If he should be altogether unsuccessful in one calling, he is ready at once to take up another.14 In this he is totally unlike the German Christian, for example, who is slow to change his vocation, but similar to the North American, who also changes his profession without the slightest hesitation. The adaptability of the Jew is shown also in another direction; he changes his manner of living according to circumstances, without being in the least upset by the change. Thus he can exist on less than the European Christian, and yet not be satisfied with the best that money can buy. This is due to the fact that the Jew, unlike, let us say, the German peasant, has no fixed standard of life: he is therefore always in a state of uncertain equilibrium, always pushing forward, never satisfied; whereas the Christian is usually content when he has arrived at the standard of his class.
10. The opposite is the view taken by Schipper (Angänge des Kapitalismus bei den abendlän-dischen Juden im früheren Mittelalter).
11. Der moderne Kapitalismus, vol. ii. p. 349 (Leipzig, 1902). Sombart has recently depicted in detail the eminent part played by Jews in the development of capitalism, in his book Die Juden und das Wirtschaftsleben (Leipzig, 1911).
12. Corroborations of this verdict can be found in Russell and Lewis, The Jew in London, p. 63; B. Webb, The Jew of East London, chap. ii.; Woltmann, Politische Anthropologie, p. 308; and so forth.
13. When we speak of the commercial superiority of the Jews, it is only in comparison with the European peoples among whom they live. Compared with some other peoples, particularly Indians, Greeks, Armenians and Chinese, this superiority is no longer apparent. In the East there is even a proverb to the effect that in business one Armenian is equal to three Greeks, and one Greek to three Jews. It is perhaps more than a coincidence that all these rivals of the Jews belong, like them, to the oldest civilizations, to nations who had reached a high state of culture at the time when the peoples of Central and Northern Europe were totally uncivilized. An ancient culture seems thus calculated to develop a predisposition to trade and commerce.
14. That is, provided the calling is not held in contempt. For instance in Galicia, a Jew who had his firewood chopped by a Ruthenian told me in answer to my question [about] why a Jew was not employed for this work, that no Jew would undertake it for double the wage.