Note 97 — Chapter XI · Harvest

Jew and Christian, too often ignorant of the virtues each possesses, are painfully conscious of one another’s defects. Better knowledge of history would do much to relieve or lessen mutual prejudices. How seldom do Christians realise that some of the less amiable qualities found in certain classes of modern Jews (Are there no objectionable Gentiles?) are the logical result of regulations decreed by our mediæval Christian forefathers. For example, the Jews were once as catholic as any other nation in the arts and industries they followed for a livelihood, until legal restrictions were multiplied against them. “Even in Spain,” writes Mr. Abrahams, “Jews were forbidden to act as physicians, as bakers or millers; they were prohibited from selling brass, wine, flour, oil or butter in the markets; no Jew might be a smith, carpenter, tailor, shoemaker, currier or clothier for Christians ... he might neither employ nor be employed by Christians in any profession or trade whatsoever.... In other parts of England these restrictions were far more rigidly enforced than in Spain. In England money-lending was absolutely the only profession open to the Jews. On the Continent Jews were taxed when they entered a market and taxed when they left it; they were only permitted to enter the market place at inconvenient hours, and the Church ended by leaving the Jews nothing to trade in but money and second-hand goods, allowing them as a choice of commodities in which to deal new gold or old iron.” (Jewish Life in the Middle Ages, p. 241).