"The Torah lights, the Torah shines, but only money warms

In the early 1900s, Werner Sombart, a German professor of economics, became intrigued with a new book by the German sociologist Max Weber entitled: The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. In it Weber speculated about the Protestant faith and its ideals of rationality, frugality, hard work, efficiency, goal orientation, and other such attitudes in the creation of capitalism. Sombart -- and many others since him -- was attracted to the controversial notion that a religious world view had in some way shaped (and perhaps initiated) the western economic system. But Sombart thought that Weber's focus on Protestantism was not the right place to look for the roots of capitalism. After all, Christianity had evolved out of a much older religious tradition: Judaism. So Sombart wrote his own book, eventually even more controversial than Weber's, entitled The Jews and Modern Capitalism; it was based on the argument that a preceding Jewish value system informed the Protestant one. As Sombart saw it, "Puritanism is Judaism." [NEWMAN, A., 1998, p. 165] "There is almost certainly a strong element of truth in Sombart's contentions," notes W. D. Rubinstein, "which may well account for the unique success enjoyed by the Jews in the English-speaking world in modern times, and the rarity of antisemitic tendencies." [RUBINSTEIN, WD, 2000, p. 21]

When the book first came out, in 1911, Sombart's "fundamental assertions were not challenged," in fact he spoke to many audiences "recruited mainly from the Jewish intelligentsia." [MENDES-FLOHR, WERNER, p. 93] Both of these scholars -- Sombart and Weber -- have been pioneers in the scholarly debate about Jews and their role in economic history, each noting some of most enduring and self-preserving traits of Jewry over the centuries wherever they lived:

* They were foreigners with no formal citizenship everywhere in their

* They were scattered throughout the world, never concentrated

* Their physical and social separateness from non-Jews was voluntary

and part of their religious world view.

* They were not peasants and were not linked to the land in their diaspora;

wherever they were found, they were an urban class.

* They lived a double standard of morality: one for themselves and

another for non-Jews, which functioned to position them as

intermediaries between other peoples, and ultimately protected

their group solidarity and identity.

* They had strong injunctions to marry only within the Jewish community.

* They also accumulated "liquid wealth," per merchantry and

money lending enterprises.

Among Weber's and Sombart's other arguments was the idea that mainstream Judaism has largely been rationalist and legalistic in scope, eschewing magic and the realm of the supernatural, "this life" oriented and not towards the hereafter, and that the natural world is viewed by traditional Judaism only in the way by which it can be profitably exploited for the benefit of the Jewish people. As Harry Kemmelman notes in one of his popular novels featuring lead character "Rabbi Small": "The virtuous Muslim, when he dies, goes to Paradise; the Buddhist assumes he will be reincarnated at a higher level; the Christian goes to heaven. When the virtuous Jew dies, he just dies." [KEMMELMAN, H., 1981, p. 171]

Talcott Parsons notes that Jewish emphasis upon "rationality ... was mainly legalistic in character." [PARSONS, p. 106] This rationality, argues Sombart, was integral to capitalism. And all these aforementioned factors contribute to a decidedly materialist world view. As R. Joseph Hoffman observes:

"The Old Testament has a great deal to say about wealth as a sign

of divine favor and source of human happiness. It is arguable that

no single aspect of ancient Israelite religion stands in such obvious

contrast to ancient Greek speculation concerning the immaterial nature

of the good as the insistence of the Hebrew writers that the things

of this world, being 'God's possession and man's ward,' are a

source of delight, contentment, and blessing. The theme is recurrent...

[The story of Genesis] is the mythological embodiment of a

fundamentally this-worldly, economic theology."

[HOFFMAN, R. J., 1989,p. 172]

"So closely has Jewish economic activity been intertwined with the history of capitalism," concurs prominent Jewish scholar Howard Sachar, "that many historians have forgotten that the Jews were its putty as well as its molders. Jews helped shaped the destiny of capitalism, but capitalism also shaped the destiny of the Jews." [SACHAR, p. 39] "According to this distinguished economic historian [Sombart]," says Paul Mendes-Flohr, "Jewish values and ingrained sensibilities -- arid intellectualism, a calculating intelligence, insatiable desire, a double ethic -- display a particular affinity to the ethical code and attitudes required by ... the major economic developments and instruments of capitalism." [MENDES-FLOHR, p. 134]

Sombart was terribly off the mark with some of his speculations, especially a chapter devoted to innately racial "characteristics" of Jews (although, ironically, some Jewish scholars like Norman Cantor and Raphael Patai accept this kind of commentary today, so long as it is flattering to them), and Jews have had nearly a century to pick Sombart's ideas apart. But not all of them can be easily discarded. In particular, his essential queries still stand, re-examined and reconsidered by scholars in our own day. Why have Jews had such enormous economic influence wherever they were -- and are -- in history, and whenever capitalism developed, why were Jews always significantly located as beneficiaries? To what degree have they been responsible for, or at least instrumental in, the development of capitalism? What is it about Jews and money? "One need not accept Sombart's exaggerations," wrote Salo Balon, "to see that the Jew had an extraordinarily large share of the development of early capitalism and received corresponding benefit." [LIBERLES, p. 44]

Sombart argued that, while Christian opinion in the medieval era disdained the pursuit of monetary gain and preoccupation with self-enrichment, Jewish religious principles actively encouraged a materially accumulative path. "Sombart notes will ill-concealed distaste," says Werner Mosse, "that the most learned Talmudists [rabbis and other Jewish religious scholars] were also the most skilled financiers, doctors, jewelers, and merchants." [MOSSE, p. 5] A year before the Jewish expulsion from Spain in 1492, for instance, Abraham Seneor, the Chief Rabbi of Castillian Jewry, was also a "tax farmer" (tax collector), [BARON, Econ Hist, p. 47] a position purchased from the Spanish aristocracy that was rendered in the public mind as a particularly despised form of exploitive entrepreneurism. Such colossal economic Jewish religious figures can be found yet today. By 1995, for example, Joseph Gutnik, an ultra-Orthodox Hassidic rabbi, had an economic empire worth $1.5 billion and was recognized as one of the richest men in Australia. His company, Centaur, notes the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, "had two main assets in western Australia -- a nickel mine and a gold mine ... Gutnik apparently has a fondness for diamonds. At one time he was even nicknamed Diamond Joe." [HANDWERKER, H., 5-15-01]

     Sombart proposed "on one hand, [that] Christianity was the religion of poverty, and condemnation of material wealth was part of its creed. On the other hand, Judaism was the rational basis for wealth, the home of the modern economic spirit -- free enterprise." [KREFETZ, p. 44] "Orthodox Jews have never despised business," notes the Jewish scholar Irving Kristol, "Christians have. The art of commerce, the existence of a commercial society, has always been a problem for Christians. Commerce has never been much of a problem for Jews ... Getting rich has never been regarded as being in any way sinful, degrading, or morally dubious within the Jewish religion." [KRISTOL, p. 317] "For the Jews, poverty was no virtue, wealth no evil. The Talmudic monetary laws, the dinei memonot, formed what was regarded by many as the most rewarding of Talmudic inquiry and crativity ... It's not the afterlife that's important but life itself for rich and poor alike." [GETTLER, L., 2000, p. 27]

    According to the New Testament," notes Jewish business author Steven Silbiger,

      "the Christian world has, at best, an ambivalent attitude toward money and wealth
       ... For Jews, on the other hand, wealth is a good thing, a worthy and respectable
       goal to strive toward. What's more, once you earn it, it is tragic to lose it. Judaism
       has never considered poverty a virtue. The first Jews were not poor, and that was
       good. The Jewish founding fathers, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, were blessed with
       cattle and land in abundance. Asceticism and self-denial are not Jewish ideals."       [SILBIGER, S., 2000, p. 1415]

     Silbiger compares the very different Christian and Jewish religious traditions about money. For the Christian:

     "Easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for someone who
      is rich to enter the Kingdom of God." -- Matthew 19:24; Luke 18:25; Mark 10:25

      "You cannot serve God and wealth."
      -- Luke 16:13

     "For the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil."
      -- Timothy 6:10

     For the Jew:

     "Where there is no flour, there is no Bible."
     --- The Mishna

     "Poverty causes transgression."
     --- Hasidic folk saying

      "Poverty in a man's house is worse than fifty plagues."
     --- The Talmud

    "The account of Yahweh's [God's] covenant with Abraham (Gen. 15), " notes R. Joseph Hoffman,

"is ... told in terms of this-worldly reward and material blessing

(Gen. 22:17) ... [In Judaism there is a] doctrine of conspicuous reward

for obedience [to God] ... [Apostle] Luke in particular presents the

poverty ethic as a central Christian requirement ... Paradigmatically, to be

a 'true' follower [of Jesus by his Apostles] is to be poor." [HOFFMAN,

R. J., 1989, p. 173, 183, 185]

"It is well known that the religion of the Christian stood in the way of

economic activities. It is equally well known that the Jews were never

faced with this hindrance. The more pious a Jew was and the more

acquainted with his religious literature, the more he was spurred by

the teachings of that literature to extend his economic activities."

Sombart even out-Freuds Freudian theory by suggesting that Jewish religious dictates encouraged sexual sublimation which, in turn, improved energies in money matters. ("We see that a good deal of capitalistic capacity which the Jews possessed was due in large measure to sexual restraint put upon them by their religious teachers.") [SOMBART, p. 237]

Exploring Jewish moral tenets towards non-Jews, particularly in the economic sphere, Sombart highlights excerpts from Jewish religious teachings like these:

"If a non-Jew makes an error in a statement of accounts, the Jew may

use it to his own advantage; it is not incumbent upon him to point

"It is permissible to take advantage of a non-Jew, for it is written,

thou shalt not take advantage of thy brother [i.e., other Jews]."

As modern Jewish defenders point out, there are indeed other Jewish religious citations that can be produced that infer different attitudes towards non-Jews. But as Sombart underscores, for the Jews who seek religious assurances that a Jew can cheat and deceive Gentiles with moral impunity, there are clearly many citations to be found in the Jewish religious record that support, and even encourage, such an attitude. Such attitudes were unquestionably used by Jews in history, often as a mainstay. Hence, as part of Gentile folklore throughout the world, Jews are consistently and universally depicted as misers, penny-pinchers, and cheats who are completely obsessed with making money, views that are bitterly decried by Jews today as being totally unfounded, completely unwarranted, and anti-Semitic: in all cases, "stereotypes."

Wherever Jews lived in their diaspora, there were similar perspectives about them in the traditions of surrounding peoples:

* "A real Jew will never pause to eat till he has cheated you. (Serbian)

* "The Jew cheats even when praying." (Czech)

* "A real Jew will get gold out of straw." (Spanish)

* "So many Jews, so many thieves." (German)

* "A bankrupt Jew searches his own accounts." (Greek)

* "Bargain like a Jew but pay like a Christian." (Polish)

* "A Jewish miser will reject nothing more than having to part with his

foreskin." (Russian)

* "A Jewish oath, a clear night, and women's tears are not worth a

* "A Jew, if he cheats a Moslem, is happy that day." (Moroccan)

* "Mammon [money] is the God of the Jews." (Hungarian)

[ROBACK, p. 186-204]

Jewish scholar Leonard Dinnerstein notes the similar folk beliefs about Jews in the African-American community:

"There are several humorous tales about a 'Colored Man, a Jew and a

White Man' in which the Jew is distinguished from other caucasians.

The main thrust of almost all of these jokes is the compulsive Jewish

concern for wealth." [DINNERSTEIN, L., 1998, p. 117 (of double

Like virtually all Jewish observers these days, however, Dinnerstein regards such folk tradition to be based on no facts whatsoever. As he decides, despite the fact that such folk traditions are part of every folk history wherever there have been Jews in any number,

"[Blacks] have imbibed the European-American folklore about the

cunning and exploitive Jew whose ruthlessly amassed fortune is

used to political and economic control of society. There is more

mythology than substance in these beliefs, but that does not lessen

their impact. These stereotypes have existed among Blacks since

their socialization into American culture." [DINNERSTEIN, L., 1998,

p. 873 (pages are doubly paginated)]

What Dinnerstein neglects to mention, of course, as do virtually all Jewish polemicists on this subject, is that these "stereotypes" have also been very much part of even Jewish folk lore, hence Jewish self-identity. What did the Jewish community think, and celebrate, about itself in its own traditions?

* "A Jew at a fair is like a fish in water." (Yiddish)

* "The Jew loves commerce." (Yiddish)

* "A Jew and a wolf are never idle." (Yiddish)

* "The Jew likes to poke his nose everywhere." (Yiddish)

* "Better in the hands of a Gentile than the mouth of a Jew."

* "When the Pole thinks, he seizes his moustache, when the Russian

thinks, he takes hold of his forelocks, and when the Jew thinks, he

holds his hands behind." (Yiddish)

[ROBACK, p. 186-204]

As Irving Howe and Eliezer Greenberg note about Yiddish folklore: "This folk humor provides a means of indirect social aggression and at other times, it releases a mordant self-criticism." [KUMOVE, S., 1985, p. xx] The following are more examples of traditional Jewish self-identity from a collection of Yiddish folk sayings, [KUMOVE, S., 1985] further confirming certain troubling aspects of collective Jewish identity:

* "One need never suspect a Jew -- he surely is a thief." [p. 139]

* "It's good to do business with a thief." [p. 233]

* "If you steal -- you'll have." [p. 233]

* "What is smaller than a mouse may be carried from a house."

* "Petty thieves are hanged, major thieves are pardoned." [p. 233]

* "A thief gives handsome presents." [p. 230]

* "Before a thief goes stealing, he also prays to God." [p. 231]

* "Better with a hometown thief than a strange rabbi." [p. 231]

* "Thieve and rob if you must but be honorable." [p. 232]

* "God protect us from Gentile hands and Jewish tongues." [p. 196]

* "Live among Jews, do business among the Goyim." [p. 143]

* "If you steal enough eggs, you can also become rich." [p. 249]

* "A fool gives and a clever person takes." [p. 106]

* "Always take -- if you give me, I'll go away, if not, I'll stay."

* "Always take!" [p. 106]

* "The goy is treyf [forbidden] but his money is kosher

[acceptable]." [p. 126]

* "Offer a Jew a ride and he throws you out of your own wagon."

* "A sense of justice we want others to have." [p. 127]

* "Money rules the world." [p. 179]

* "Money is the best soap -- it removes the greatest stain. (p. 179)

* "Gold shines out of the mud." [p. 179]

* "Gold has a dirty origin but is nevertheless treated with honor.

* "The world stands on three things: on money, on money, and

               on money." [p. 180] [All from KUMOVE, 1985]

     Jewish psychoanalyst Theodore Reik, in Jewish Wit (his volume about the subliminal psychological meanings of Jewish humor) notes:

     "All kinds of deception and cunning, of fraud and trickery, devised and committed
     by Jews, either to get money or to avoid paying money, are exposed and
     candidly revealed by Jewish jokes." [REIK, T., 1962, p. 67]

     There is even an entire tradition of Yiddish folksongs like this:

     "Stealing has made its home in my heart,
     It doesn't let me alone for a moment.
     It tells me that it was made just for me,
     That it can't live without me for a moment."
     [RUBIN, R., 2001 -- Song 8]

     Jewish author Stephen Bloom was troubled when, during studies of an ultra-Orthodox group in America with deep roots in Jewish tradition, "anti-Semitic" stereotypes about Jews and money seemed confirmed:

     "To Lazar, bargaining was a thoroughly Jewish endeavor. Negotiating the
    lowest price wasn't chutzpah, it was tradition. 'I don't feel like a Jew unless
     I bargain!' Lazar bellowed. 'I feel bad when I don't make a deal. That's
     part of being a Jew! A Jew has to know he got something for the absolute
     lowest price -- or he feels rotten.' If Lazar hadn't been telling me this,
     I'd have thought it was one of the [non-Jewish] regulars at Ginger's
     [diner]. Lazar meant what he said, and his remarks were totally anti-Semitic.
     If anyone else were saying this, Lazar would have him by the throat."
     [BLOOM, S., 2001, p. 209]

"Perhaps money is to Jews," suggested Gerald Krefetz in his 1982 book, Jews and Money, "what aggression and territoriality is to other national, religious, and ethnic groups, "... In the American context ... it continues to exert a magnetic attraction, for Jews seem to make much of it and hold it in high regard." [KREFETZ, p. 30] Rabbi Jonathan Sacks notes the Jewish religious perspective on making money, that "the Torah treats protectively the money of Israel." [SACKS, J., p. 107] "The Bible [Torah] is all about business," adds Rabbi Burton Visotzky, a professor at the Jewish Theological Seminary, "In Exodus, people step out of the family, forming a corporate entity. A lot of negotiation goes on. Abraham negotiates with God, with Pharoah; Moses negotiates with God, with the people." [ELLIN]

Forbes business magazine even featured a story in 1999 about this same Rabbi Visotzky, who teaches a monthly religious session to 20 powerful Jewish Manhattan businessmen. The article is intriguing for its insights on Jewish morality. On the day the reporter attended, the subject of discussion was Genesis 12:10-20. In this part of the Torah, the reader finds the disturbing story of the seminal Jewish patriarch Abraham, who pretends that his pretty wife, Sarah, is his sister so that he may both protect himself and sell her to the Egyptian Pharaoh. (She was, in fact, however incestuous, his half-sister.) [SMITH, M., 1989, p. 138] "This ploy," notes the Forbes reporter, "will not only save his life but also allow him to turn a profit on her sale. Less delicately put, Abraham becomes Sarah's pimp." [LEE, S., 11-10-99] After Abraham reaps payment, God punishes Pharaoh by cursing his land with the plague. The Egyptian leader returns Sarah to Abraham and bans them from his land. "Payoff time again for Abraham," notes the reporter, " -- Pharaoh pays him hush money." [LEE, S., 11-10-99] Rabbi Visotzky then explained for Forbes the essence, as he saw it, to the biblical tale, quoting a lawyer in his study group who suggested that, "Morality aside, you may not like it, but by the end of the chapter -- let's face it -- Abraham is talking one-on-one with the head of state and he's earned start up costs." Visotzky then adds: "This is what it means to be a small and embattled people who are going to survive at any cost. The only thing that matters is the bottom line." [LEE, S., 11-10-99]

(In this genre, a turn-of-the-century Jewish scholar, Cesare Lombroso, even argued that "among the Jews, before the definitive version of the Tablets of Law, the father had the right to sell the daughter to a man who would make of her his concubine for a period of time established by the sales contract ... The Jews thus trafficked in the prostitution of their own daughters." [HARROWITZ, p. 117] In 2001, African-American reverend Jesse Jackson, mired in a scandal when it was discovered he had fathered a new child out of his marriage, turned to study the Torah with New York rabbi Marc Schneier, for solace. The rabbi "and Jackson," noted the Jewiish Telegraphic Agency, "studied the portion of Genesis in which Judah sleeps with his daughter-in-law, mistaking her for a prostitute. Despite his transgression, Judah is chosen from among his brothers to become heir to Jacob's dynasty, which later produces King David and, Jewish tradition holds, will one day produce the Messiah.") [WIENER, J., 1-26-01]

Such Abrahamic ethics of survival and self-promotion aside, the Jewish historian Werner Mosse, in a review of Sombart's theses, notes that

"What Jews brought with them from their past into the industrial age

was, as has often been noted, their particular appreciation of the

value of money." [MOSSE, p. 8]

Mosse argues that this "appreciation of the value of money" was the Jewish means to security as a minority people in hostile Europe. "Significant also," Mosse writes, "is the sense of Jewish solidarity overriding even the economic competition. What gives this solidarity a special economic significance is the dispersal of Jews across national boundaries." [MOSSE, p. 11]

This transnational allegiance to other Jews, and their lack of patriotic and defensive obligation to even the land in which they lived (until, for the assimilated, the 1800s), afforded Jews a uniquely favorable position of self-preservation and prosperity at the expense of non-Jews around them. Hannah Arendt notes that

"The Jews had been the purveyors in wars and the servants of

Kings, but they did not and were not expected to engage in

conflicts themselves. When these conflicts enlarged into national

wars, they still remained an international element whose

importance and usefulness lay precisely in their not being bound

to any national cause." [ARENDT, p. 21]

This Jewish inter-connectedness across many lands, their own trans-national languages of Hebrew and/or Yiddish, and a materialist ethic (antithetical to the Middle Age Christian morals around them) accentuated -- often in monopolistic form -- further Jewish development in money-lending, merchantry, and other trades. (As early as the 4th century the Archbishop of Constantinople, St. John Chrysotome, noted that the Jews in the declining Roman Empire "possessed large sums of money and that their patriarchs assembled immense treasures." Jews occupied "the highest commercial position in (Antioch), causing a cessation of all business when they celebrated their holidays." [LEON, p. 123]

Jewish cross national links and associated expertise in money-making matters gave rise, in the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries, to the phenomenon of "Court Jews," specious pseudo-princes eventually ubiquitous throughout Europe. Most of the hundreds of European nobles had Court Jews, who were usually afforded formal titles of aristocracy. By the 18th century, notes prominent Jewish historian Heinrich Graetz, "every state in Germany had its Court Jew or Jews, upon whose support the finances of the land depended." [GOLDBERG, M. H., 1976, p. 55] These confidantes of the nobility were influential in effecting requests and concessions on behalf of the Jewish communities. "What was characteristic of the Court Jew ... was his close association with [the Jewish] community whose interests he championed." [MEYER, p. 105] "The Jewish heritage," says Selma Stern, "... which was the innermost core of their existence, made [Court Jews] remain ... more Jews than court factors." [STERN, p. 241]

At various times and various places, such Jews were afforded trade monopolies by the European aristocrats, including the dealing of jewels, silver, tobacco, velvet, and other luxuries and commodities. All classes, and especially the poor, could be critically and negatively effected by such Jewish manipulations. In the seventeenth century, for instance, Moses Jacobson "almost monopolized the highly important salt trade [to Poland and Lithuania] limiting the quantities he imported from Holland so the prices remained high. He bought so many goods that he could load up whole ships and deprived local merchants of their livelihoods." [CARSTEN, p. 145]

"[The Court Jews] became," says Lewis Coser, "the rulers' instrument for destroying feudal forces, estates, and guilds restricting his power. They were his financiers and bankers and collaborators.... " [COSER, p 575] "In their capacity as bankers and money lenders," says Selma Stern, "[Court Jews] often participated in political councils, in secret diplomatic missions, in the negotiation of peace treaties, and in military conferences." [STERN, p. 115] Eva Hoffman calls similar Jews in the Polish empire "court servitors." "One such servitor," she observes, "a man known as Becal, paid a large sum to the king in return for a license to collect royal tolls in Ruthenia and Volhynia -- in defiance of a law prohibiting Jews to lease royal customs. Over time, some of the more successful Jews began to identify with the szlachta [the aristocracy], adopting its dress, comportment and sometimes its arrogance." [HOFFMAN, E., 1997, p. 50]

Such Jews also functioned as the official gold and silver suppliers, as well as the money minters, for the nobles of various lands. Usually (but not always) under sanction of the Lords, these Jews, lessees of the royal mints, often withdrew millions of pieces of common coinage, particularly during wars, to reduce their silver content towards skimming profit for themselves and the ruling aristocracies. The resultant "devaluation of the currency and staggering inflation" was a "despised but very lucrative business" provoking "the ire and hatred of the impoverishing population" against the Jewish community. [BREUER, p. 109-110] During the Seven Years War in the mid-1700, 20-25 percent of Prussia's war costs were raised in this way. "Whatever the ethical questions surrounding the operation of the mint entrepreneurs," notes Steven Lowenstein, "there can be little question that [the Seven Years War] created a new type of Jewish elite." [LOWENSTEIN]

"[Court Jews]," says Stern, "were charged with counterfeiting and with violating money regulation; they were accused of money-clipping... they were blamed for the disorder in the currency system, for the fluctuations in the value of money, and for the resultant impoverishment of the subjects of the realm." [STERN, p. 162]

Another Jewish proclivity, war profiteering, has a long history. Jews were "prominent as military suppliers to Christians against Muslims in 13th century Spain, and against a rebellion of Catalonian nobility against King Pedro III of Aragon (1276-1285)." Jews, in this era, "also played a prominent role in the production of military equipment, metal casting, and armament manufacture." [ENCY JUD, p. 934] In the 16th century, some Jews were experts in gunpowder and cannon manufacture and co-religionists "probably served as military suppliers during this period in Central Europe also." [ENCY JUD, p. 934] In the 17th and 18th centuries Jews in Amsterdam supplied the armies of Holland, Morocco, and England. Various internal 17th century wars in Morocco provided Dutch Jews the opportunity to "act as military suppliers to all sides involved in the conflict." [ENCY JUD, p. 934]

Jewish war profiteering was so widespread by the sixteenth and seventeenth century that "no war was waged in Germany" without Jewish financing, [MEYER, p. 106] and Court Jews across Europe were loaning rival aristocracies funds for supplying Christian armies to war against each other. Jews were hence positioned for centuries as prime war profiteers and beneficiaries of Gentile political turmoil. Jews risked not their lives in these conflicts as combatants (some Jews began to serve in armies after Emancipation), but their investments (and increased popular Gentile hostility) during risky times. During the many wars of Europe, "this situation," says F. L. Carsten,

"proved the great opportunity for those Jews who provided the

armies with food and fodder, bought the soldiers' booty at advantageous

prices and traded in the wake of the armies. Because there were so many

princes and because they all needed loans so badly, this was the

opportunity not only for a few Jews attached to one court, but for

dozens, even hundreds, working for many different princes, to supply

them with what they needed, or rather more often what they did not

need." [CARSTEN, p. 143]

"Although the Court Jews themselves constituted only a minute proportion of the Jewish population," says the Encyclopedia Judaica, "they required a widespread network of subcontractors, petty merchants, etc., who were also Jewish, in order to fulfill their functions as major contractor-suppliers, especially in war time. Large scale providing was achieved through contacts with Jewish dealers in Eastern Europe." Anti-Jewish critics contended that in Germany at this time "all the military suppliers were Jews and all the Jews were military suppliers." [ENCY JUD, v. 5, p. 934]Prominent Jewish war contractors included the Model family, Joseph Oppenheimer, the Gomperz family, Israel Avaron, and the Wertheimer, Mayer, and Herschel families. In England Abraham Israel "was the most prominent contractor during the rule of Cromwell." Jews supplied William of Orange's military needs in the 1700's and Solomon de Medina supplied the troops of the Duke of Marlborough. Jews supplied the Duke of Schoenber's armies in Ireland and Peterborough's campaigns against the Spanish. Robert Harley "was accused of ruining the economy of England in order to enrich Jewish military suppliers." [ENCY JUD, v. 5, p. 935]

"European history in the Baroque Age," notes Howard Sachar, "is studded with the names of these resourceful Jewish agents: men such as Israel Aaron, the first Jew to be admitted to East Prussia, who served as army supplier to Frederick William, the Great Elector, during all of Frederick William's European wars; the banker Elias Gumperts of Cleves, who was also of use to the Great Elector in furnishing stone, wood, palisades, uniforms, munitions, food, and money for fortresses along the Rhine ... During the war of the Austrian Succession and the Seven Years War in the eighteenth century, we find Jewish purveyors aligned with a Bavarian army that at one moment fought with, and the next moment against, the Prussians." [SACHAR, p. 24]

Jews also provided the French military supplies beginning in the 16th century, especially during the reign of Louis XIV. Abraham Gradis also supplied the French troops in Canada during the Seven Years War in the 18th century. "Among their other activities ["the Jewish banking firm of Mendes"] is reputed to have financed the French war in Canada, and to have dealt in bullion imports from America. Such operations as these naturally led to employment of these [Jewish Sephardic] Marrano bankers as loan agents by various European monarchs and for a couple of centuries or so practically all wars were more or less financed from these sources." [OSBORNE, S., 1939, p. 15]

Jews also "played a prominent role in supplying weapons and provisions to the English army in the colonies." Mathias Bush provided the troops in Pennsylvania against the French, the Frank family contracted for the English army in America, and the Shaftall family supplied the American army in Georgia. [ENCY JUD, v. 5, p. 935] Even in a small town like Talbotton, near Atlanta, Georgia, "a local grand jury called to investigate war profiteering [in the Civil War] issued a report that blamed all the town's problems on unnamed Jewish businessmen." [TRACHTENBERG, 1996, p. 18] "Joseph Seligman, founder of the investment firm J. & W. Seligman, ws the person [Abraham] Lincoln trusted to convince European investors to buy Union bonds to finance the cost of the Civil War. Emmanuel Lehman, one of the founders of the Southern-based investment banking house Lehman Brothers, went to Europe and raised a great deal of money for the Confederacy." [SILBIGER, S., 2000, p. 45-46]

In 1618-1648 a series of wars -- known as the Thirty Years Wars -- spread across Europe. Largely a Catholic-Protestant conflict, it also echoed economic and territorial animosities. Germany was particularly devastated. The largely mercenary armies traversing Europe were often unpaid and ended up looting and ravaging the general populace. Starvation was rampant. "The agony of the Thirty Years War," says Jewish historian Howard Sachar, with a flair for descriptive deprecation, "had literally pulverized the German peasantry into a race of hysterical grass-eating mystics." [SACHAR, p. 65] Grass-eating mystics or not, another Jewish scholar notes that "while the Christian populace was decimated -- in a number of regions reduced by 60 to 70 per cent -- the Jewish population as a whole experienced only a minimal overall decline ... Many Jews were able to provide services useful for the conduct of the war in their capacity as middle men, suppliers of goods, and credit agents." [MEYER, Ed., p. 95] "Many Jewish businessmen in the 17th century," says Sachar, "laid the foundation for his modest fortune by his purchase and disposal of the debris left on the battlefield of the Thirty Years War. Of course, foraging for one's own duke behind enemy lines, or even within one's own lines, was dangerous work, and not infrequently Jews were caught and executed as spies." [SACHAR, p. 23] "

"In Vienna," notes Joachim Prinz, "after the Thrity Years' War, for example, the wealth of many of the Jewish families intoxicated the whole Jewish community ... In Russia, some Jews seemed to propser during the Thirsty Years' War because they were the tax colectors for the state." [PRINZ, J., 1973, p. 52] "The Thirty Years' War," adds J. O. Hertzler, " ... brought destruction, starvation, and pestilence. Again the spleen of dispossessed princes and impoverished and outraged peasants was vented upon the Jews who had achieved prosperity through their purchases and trade." [HERTZLER, p. 95] During such periods, being Jewish was a distinct advantage towards survival. One rabbi of the era noted that "the soldiers, for years now on the march through the towns and villages, have often treated us more kindly than the non-Jews, so that Gentiles have sometimes brought their belongings to Jews for safe-keeping." [MEYER, Ed., p. 97] Historian Mack Holt notes the situation of the people of France during times of warring:

"[The civilians] overcome the dual threat of death and destruction

from the soldiers themselves, as well as the pressure and hardship

of royal taxation which the king needed to pay for the military

destruction ... [There was also] the threat of financial ruin meted

out by the crown's tax collectors ... [HOLT, p. 195] Whenever

marauding troops billeted themselves on the civilian population,

they invariably seized all livestock and grain stores as a matter of

practice." [HOLT, p. 197]

Wealthy Jews were involved in the financing of World War I (Jews "played a prominent part in organizing the German war economy") [MOSSE, W., 1987, p. 257] as well as earlier German wars of unification. Geran Bleichroeder's money, for instance, was notable in 1866, during fighting between Prussia and Austria. The Philipp Speyer firm in Germany was involved in arranging credit for the United States during its Civil War and was involved in financing the building of railroads across America. [GROSS, N., p. 219] Earlier, Daniel Franks "was instrumental in raising money for the British army during the French and Indian War with the aid of his brother, Moses, a London financier." [GROSS, N., p. 223] Mayer Amschel Rothschild's "great fortune was acquired by hiring [William IX's] troops, as mercenaries to the British in the American Revolutionary War." [OSBORNE, S., 1939, p. 15] Conversely, Haym Solomon, an immigrant from Poland, helped secure credit for the American Revolution from France and the Netherlands. In Germany, "through [Ludwig] Loewe's brother Isidor (1848-1910) and jointly with the firm of Mauser, an order of unprecedented magnitude was obtained for equipping the Turkish army." [GIDAL, p. 266] After a merger with the Mauser company, this company "was supplying half the armies of the world with rifles." [BERMANT, C., 1977, p. 74] The London Rothschilds "found the 20,000,000 pounds to compensate slave owners after the abolition of slavery in the British Empire in 1833. In 1854 a 16,000,000 pound loan to finance the Crimean War was launched through the House of Rothschild, and in 1871 they raise 100,000,000 pounds to help France pay her war indemnity to Prussia. " [BERMANT, C., 1977, p. 40]

"Among the branches of trade in which Jews achieved special prominence," underscores Jewish scholar W.E. Mosse, "the outstanding one in the early nineteenth century was, undoubtably, war contracting. It was this activity which may be said to have laid the foundations of the fortunes of the German-Jewish economic elite. This was, unquestionably, the major source of early Jewish capital accumulation." [MOSSE, W., 1987, p. 386] Mosse suggest that some of the reasons why war profiteering became such an important source of Jewish economic activity was rooted in "the quasi-monopoly" they held in the European agricultural produce trade and "corruption in business dealings" with "those responsible for awarding military contracts." [MOSSE, W., 1987, p. 388] Eventually Jews rose to become "prominent" even in the armaments industry itself, including weapons and ammunition. (Even Chaim Weizmann, a chemist and eventually the first president of modern Israel, was instrumental in providing acetone as an explosive ingredient for British heavy artillery at a crucial time during the first World War. Weizmann's efforts helped secure formal British government support for the principle of a Jewish state in the land then known as Palestine). [RHODES, R., 1988, p. 88-91]

With the rise of European political movements against the Jews in the late nineteenth century, Albert Lindemann notes that "a European-wide body of opinion, cutting across class lines, focused on what was perceived as Jewish ruthlessness and immorality in search of profit. It was often asserted, and much discussed in the press, that the brutal Boer War (in South Africa, 1899-1902) was manipulated to benefit wealthy Jews. The repression of an uprising in 1907, in the course of which thousands of starving and desperate Romanian peasants were slaughtered, was widely described as protecting Jewish interests.... Involvement of Jews in these matters was not only plausible but real enough." [LINDEMANN, p. 32-33] "[Jews] were a crucial element in the development of South Africa during the final quarter of the nineteenth century and a considerable proportion of the 'Uitlanders,' whose restiveness undere Boer rule was to lead to the South African war, were Jews. Among them was ... Barney Barnato ... [who] built up one of the largest fortunes in South Africa and controlled a labour force of one hundred and twenty thousand men." [BERMNANT, C., 1977, p. 54]

In Germany, says Sarah Gordon, there was "the popular belief that Jews had been highly active as war profiteers between 1914 and 1918 [World War I], and that they had promoted or gained from postwar inflation by questionable activities as financiers and middlemen. Anti-Semites eagerly compiled statistics on Jewish criminal activity, both real and bogus, to buttress their arguments." [GORDON, p. 53] "The most repulsive of men," remarked the well-known German Jewish philosopher (and Zionist) Martin Buber, "is the oily war profiteer, who does not cheat any God, for he knows none. And the Jewish profiteer is more repugnant than the non-Jewish for he has fallen lower." [MENDES-FLOHR, BUBER, p. 141]

Jewish international economic power toward expressly Jewish political ends in a war could even be asserted in Asia. At the turn of the twentieth century, American Jews who were concerned about a perceived Russian mistreatment of its Jewish citizens included Jacob Schiff, a senior partner in the American banking firm of Kuhn, Loeb, and Co. He believed that "the only hope for Russian Jews seemed to lay in the possibility that the Russo-Japanese War would lead to upheaval in Russia and constitutional government there." [BEST, G., 1972, p. 315] Toward this end, Schiff helped Japan raise $180 million, nearly one-fourth of the total Japanese expenditure in its war with Russia. Schiff, the wealthy capitalist, even funded socialist indoctrination programs for Russian prisoners of war by the Japanese, in the hope that this might aid in the Tsar's downfall. [LINDEMANN, p. 170] The Universal Jewish Encyclopedia claims that "in his later years [Schiff] recognized that he had innocently aided in the creation of a menace in the shape of Japanese imperialism." [UJE, v. 9, p. 400]

At the same time, since 1890, Jewish-American financiers -- led by Jacob Schiff, Isaac Seligman, and Adolph Lewisohn -- had vigorously lobbied the powerful international Jewish banking community as a collective entity to reject Russia's own searches for loans. Ultimately defeated by Japan and suffering great indemnity demands, Tsarist Russia faced a largely successful international economic lockout by Jewish money lenders (the Russian government ultimately collapsed to the communist revolution, a situation international Jewry hoped to be better for Russian Jews). "A great nation," reported the Jewish Chronicle with satisfaction about the teetering Tsarist state, "was now going from one Jewish banker to the other, vainly appealing for financial help." [ARONSFELD, p. 103]

Simon Wolf, Chairman of the Board of Delegates of the United American Hebrew Congregation, wrote that

"Russia at this juncture needs two important elements to inspire its future

prosperity and happiness: money and friends ... The Jews of the world

control much of the first ... There is no disguising the fact that in the

United States especially the Jews form an important factor in the

formation of public opinion and in the control of the finances...”

The following ultimatum to the huge country of Russia, and a threat to those who broke Jewish ranks to do business with it, was announced by a group of Jewish American businessmen wielding their own foreign policy, self-described as the "Hebrew alliance:"

"First, until equal civil and religious rights are given the Jews of Russia,

no money will be loaned the Russian government by any American

Second, the Rothschilds [the worlds greatest and far-reaching banking

firm, based in Europe] are united with the American Jewish bankers in

this agreement and will use all their enormous prestige and power to

assist in carrying out the threat.

Third, no financial concern will be allowed to loan Russia money, under

pain of the displeasure and financial punishment that such a

combination of resources of the Hebrew alliance could so readily

dispense." [ARONSFELD, p. 100]

Jewish economic collusion against Russia, notes Edwin Black, "was widely criticized for the stubborn continuation of their boycott even as it threatened the Allies' [World War I] war effort. But the boycott remained in effect until the monarchy was toppled in 1917." [BLACK, p. 31] Even within Russia itself, a Jewish "adventurous millionaire," Parvus (aka Israel Lazarevitch Gelfand, or also anglicized as Helphand), was a sponsor of V. I. Lenin. [SINGER, N., p. 2] In this historical context -- the "conspiracy" of international Jewish financiers unifying to bring Tsarist Russia to collapse -- the Universal Jewish Encyclopedia notes that "the canard of the Jewish conspiracy to attain political world domination originated at the time when the Tsarist regime was threatened with revolution." [UJE, v. 3, p. 1] The most famous anti-Semitic volume of all time, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, which claimed to evidence a Jewish conspiracy to dominate the world, was created -- and published -- in Russia at this time.

Stemming to great extent from profits garnered from the mostly Christian misery of Europe's Thirty Years War, the phenomena of "Court Jews" rose to power and prominence in the 17th century, forging grandiose and pompous lifestyles that stirred ill will from the common peasantry. "The wealth and luxury displayed by many Court Jews," says F.L. Carsten, "indeed made them an easy target for popular wrath. Many maintained great houses and loved ostentatious, grand displays, as so many princes and nobles did." [CARSTEN, p. 151] "Court Jews," says Selma Stern, "built and bought stately homes in which they reigned in patriarchal fashion in the midst of their numerous employees, clerks, servants, business friends, Talmudic scholars, and Yeshiva students." [STERN, p. 228] (A Jewish author even wrote an entire book about an earlier European period, 768-900 BCE, when there existed "a Jewish princedom in feudal France." Arthur Zuckerman noted that there is "unimpeachable evidence that the Carolingian Kings granted Septimanian Jewry a domain of considerable extent along the Mediterranean seacoast and on the borders of Spain.") [ZUCKERMAN, A., 1972, p. 13]

Court Jew Behrend Lehman, for example, was so wealthy that he owned a castle and thirteen villages. Israel Jacobson owned fifteen estates and other property throughout Germany. [CARSTEN, p. 151] Suss Oppenheimer, one of the most famous Court Jews (who was hanged when his aristocratic benefactor died and political winds changed) "with an extended network of Jewish financiers throughout Germany and the Netherlands" financed wars for the Hapsburg Empire against Louis XIV in 1688. His economic support helped save Vienna from the Turks in 1683 and his money "played a decisive role" in the siege and capture of Budapest in 1686 and Belgrade in 1688. [MEYER, p. 106] Oppenheimer reflected common Jewish practice by doing "all his business with other Jews; [he] gave contracts for military and court supplies only to them." [CARSTEN, p. 155]

In gleaning from the wars of the non-Jews around them, Court Jews not only kept their lucrative business networking within the local and transnational Jewish community, they even took the self-protective, self-promotive clan ethic to the next extreme. Although Court Jews were scattered in nations throughout Europe,

"virtually all of the many hundreds of Court Jews were related by

marriage. This was of considerable advantage for their financial,

diplomatic, and dynastic services." [BREUER, p. 112]

Not surprisingly, on the other end of the economic spectrum, Jewish street thieves and robbers followed the same clannish pattern as their wealthy counterparts. "I believe I can prove," said a commentator in the nineteenth century, "by means of a genealogical table that at least several hundred of the most notorious Jewish bandits alive form one single family." [BREUER, p. 249]

This notion of a "single family" has much broader implications. The collective incestuous economic character of both rich and lower class Jews, unified as members of an ethno-religious clan and functioning as a self-contained network within and against the non-Jewish communities in which they lived, even transnationally, is noted by Deborah Hertz in a commentary about the wealthy Jews of Berlin who rose to prominence in the eighteenth century:

"None of the loaning, purveying, selling, or investing feats performed

by the wealthy Jews in Berlin could have been executed without the aid

of poor Jews who lived in small villages to the east. Both economic

historians and anti-Semites alike have pointed out that cooperation

between Jewish financiers in various European capitals was

indispensable for Jewish financial interests in this era. It has less

frequently been noted that the international ties linking Jews in different

cities were also ties across the Jewish social hierarchy." [HERTZ, p. 44]

This Jewish emphasis towards ethnocentric unity and monopolistic economic control is a foundation of Jewish Diaspora history and surfaces and resurfaces over the centuries all over Europe. Jews were often expelled ("due as a rule to economic causes") [HERTZLER, p. 88] en masse from towns, provinces, and even entire countries many times in their history.

1012 - Mainz 1446 - Brandenburg 1541 - Prague

1182 - France 1462 - Mainz 1550 - Genoa

1276 - Upper Bavaria 1483 - Mainz 1551 - Bavaria

1296 - England 1483 - Warsaw 1557 - Prague

1306 - France 1492 - Spain 1569 - Papal states

1322 - France 1496 - Portugal 1649 - Hamburg

1394 - France 1496 - Naples 1669 - Vienna

1420 - Lyons 1498 - Nuremberg 1744 - Bohemia

1421 - Austria 1510 - Brandenberg Moravia

1424 - Cologne 1515 - Genoa Prague

1438 - Mainz 1533 - Naples 1891 - Moscow

1439 - Augsburg 1541 - Naples [SIEGEL, p. 127-129]

On a more local scene, in England alone, for example, resulting from complaints and animosities against Jews leading up to their expulsion from the country in 1296, Jews were expelled from a number of cities, including

1190 - Bury St. Edmund 1236 - Southampton

1231 - Leicester 1242 - Berkhamsted

1234 - Newcastle 1244 - Newbury

1235 - Wycombe 1263 - Derby

[BARON, Ancient, p. 243]

        From the 15th century to the late 19th century Jews were also banned from most of Russia as an inassimilable "alien people," limited to living in an area (with large numbers of other ethnic peoples) commonly referred to as the Pale of Settlement. Jews consisted of about 12% of the total population of this area.

     Joachim Prinz notes the difficulties faced by the French attempt to ban Jews from all of France:

     "In 1683, the French government insisted upon a general expulsion of the Jews
     from France. Special instructions were sent to the authorities of Bordeaux,
     which had a considerable community of Marranos [secret Jews], warning them
     'not to expel more than a dozen Conversos [Marranos] every year because if
     if they are forced to leave Bordeaux, it would ruin the city's economy as the
     commerce is almost entirely in the hands of that sort of persons.'" [PRINZ,
     J., 1973, p. 129]

Although modern Jewish apologists tend to stress Christian religious persecution of Jewry, the much more vital reason for non-Jewish animosity, wherever Jews were, was that Jews often formed strangleholds on important parts of local economies, thanks to their centuries-old domination in commerce and often "unsavory" business practices, as well as their clannishness and transnational loyalties and allegiances to each other, always at the expense of non-Jews. As Deborah Hertz writes, concerning Germany,

"Across the German-speaking territories, city councils, princes, and

emperors were besieged by complaints from gentile craftsmen and

merchants that Jewish business practices already had or would soon

undermine their livelihood." [HERTZ, p. 37]

In Strasbourg, notes Howard Sachar, in 1806, Napoleon "was inundated with anti-Jewish grievances, with accounts of the 'ruination' of the peasantry by Jewish moneylenders. The petitioners begged the emperor to take special measures against Jewish foreclosures." [SACHAR, p. 44] Jews are often portrayed in history as having been "forced into" their usurious paths. "It is self-evident," counters Abram Leon, "that the claim, as do most historians, that the Jews began to engage in lending only after their elimination from trades is a vulgar error. Usurious capital is the brother of commercial capital ... The eviction of Jews from commerce had as a consequence their entrenchment in one of the professions which they had already practiced previously." [LEON, p. 138]

The periodic consequences for Jewish exploitation of the impoverished could be violent. The Jewish Polish scholar Yitzak Schipper believed that "by the thirteenth century ... the Jewish moneylender became the creditor of the poor classes of feudal society. He came face to face with those who could least afford to pay interest and carry the burden of medieval usury ... The religious motive propagated and stimulated by the Crusaders was hardly a decisive factor in the hatred and persecution of the Jews. Jewish pogroms in the Middle Ages were of a strictly socio-economic character.. The main purpose [of the violent attacks against Jews] was the destruction of promissory notes..." [LITMAN, p. 65, 67]

In later centuries, "in Austria," says Albert Lindemann, "the capitalist financiers, the stockjobbers, the builders of the railroads, those responsible for the bankruptcies of [non-Jewish] artisans and small investors were undeniably to large extent of Jewish background." [LINDEMANN, p. 25]

      The rise of powerful Jewish banking institutions began -- especially in Germany and the Netherlands -- in the seventeenth century. Wealthy Jews became influential in Dutch imperialist activities overseas, many as shareholders in both the Dutch East and West India Companies. About a quarter of both the Dutch East and West India companies were Jews; they also represented 37 of 41 members of the Amsterdam Stock Exchange in this era. [SACHAR, p. 28] When the Dutch Governor, Peter Stuyvesant, of New Amsterdam (now known as New York City), wrote a letter in 1655 to his superiors at the Dutch West India Company to seek permission to ban Jews from his colony, he was rebuffed. "He did not reckon," notes Lewis Wirth, "with the fact that the Jews of Amsterdam were financially interested in the company that employed him and were represented in the Board of Directors." [WIRTH, p. 133]

     "In Germany," notes Joachim Prinz,

     "forty Marrano ['secret' Jewish] families paticipated in founding the Bank of Hamburg
     in 1619, and by the middle of that century they were accused of having too
     luxurious a life style, as evidenced by their palatial homes and their ostentatious
     funerals and weddings ... Some of the finest homes in Amsterdam belonged to
     newly arrived Marranos." [PRINZ, J., 1973, p. 127]

By the late seventeenth century important Jewish banking firms were founded in London. Sir David Salomons, "one of the founders of the Westminster Bank, is also recognized as one of the creators of the joint stock system. Furthermore, London owes its position as the world's money centre largely due to the activities of three Jewish banking houses, namely the Goldschmid family, the house of Rothschild, and the banker Lord Swaythling." [OSBORNE, S., 1939, p. 16] "Several Jews," says Howard Sachar,

"were ... directors of the East India Company and of Lloyd's of

London... [SACHAR, p. 28] ... In the early modern age, the courts

of Europe were almost completely dependent upon private bankers

for short term loans ... most of the money in those days ... was in

the hands of the Jewish dealers in gems and precious metals. The

identical circumstances that produced the merchant and purveyor

produced the Jewish banker: his connection with the Netherlands,

the banking center of Europe, through his Sephardic brethren, his

international connections in all the mercantile centers of Europe;

above all, his long experience in dealing with precious metals and

the currencies of the continent." [SACHAR, p. 24]

The most famous banking house in history and the enduring symbol of international finance, investment banking, and trans-Jewish intrigue, the House of Rothschild (HR) of Frankfurt, Germany, rose to economic power in the nineteenth century, with branches throughout Europe. "The key aspect of the HR operational strategy," notes Sam Lehman-Wilzig, "was secrecy ... The extent to which [the Rothschilds] followed this strategy [of secrecy] bordered on the incredible. To this day their records have not been made public." [LEHMAN-WILZIG, p. 254] "By the mid- [nineteenth] century," writes Benjamin Ginsberg, "the entire European state system was dependent upon the international financial networks dominated by the Rothschilds." [GINSBERG, B., 1993, p. 18] "Instances occurred," notes Howard Sachar, "in which the Rothschilds demonstrably altered the course of international politics." [SACHAR, p. 137] Its quick reversal of political allegiance, national loyalties, and attendant financing is noted by Hannah Arendt: