Jews and money – a persistent stereotype

JORDAN MOSHE

Ernst Hiemer’s chilling words may have been published in Nazi Germany in 1938, but the sentiment expressed in his children’s book, Der Giftpilz (German for toadstool) echoes throughout history and continues to resonate among many today.

For centuries, Jews have been inextricably linked to finance. The idea that Jews are innately good with money is among the oldest stereotypes in history, and as contemporary cartoons and other examples in the media show, it’s one we’ve been unable to shake off.

But why are Jews considered by so many (either pejoratively or positively) to be money-savvy? What it is about finance that makes it such a Jewish subject?

According to Abraham Foxman, the author of Jews & Money: The Story of a Stereotype, the supposed Jewish obsession with money is a fundamental pillar of Western anti-Semitism whose roots can be traced back to biblical times.

The narrative that Judas sold Jesus for thirty pieces of silver, he suggests, lent credence to a pernicious belief that Jews prized wealth above loyalty. Indeed, many ancient manuscripts and cathedral wall paintings show the redhead apostle – a visual marker of Jewishness – clutching a bag of ill-gotten coins.

This image would become a staple medieval icon, its legitimacy supported by the doctrinal Christian suspicion of mammon – a Hebrew term for wealth or possessions – as intrinsically evil, becoming “filthy lucre” in the gospel. This religiously charged belief spread, reaching England and wider Europe as the universal stereotype of the Jew as a misshapen, hook-nosed man clutching a moneybag rose in prominence during the commercial and financial revolution of the 12th and 13th centuries.

Equally injurious was the fact that European Jews in the Middle Ages were excluded from professional guilds and denied the right to own land. Coupled with their confinement to ghettos, these restrictions led to Jews earning a living in one of the only areas left available to them – finance.

Medieval Christian theology held that charging interest was sinful, which kept many Christians from becoming financiers. Although they had non-Jewish counterparts, Jews are said to have dominated the field. When Shakespeare wrote The Merchant of Venice in 1605, Jews had been providing commercial credit to Venice itself for almost a century. Based some distance from the city centre, Jewish moneylenders would ply their trade seated on benches known as banci, hence the eventual creation of the word “bankers”.

The fact that Christians regarded such occupations as incompatible with their religious principles fuelled the belief that Jews were morally lacking and willing to engage in unethical business practices that decent people had rejected. This led to a rise in the opinion that all financial transactions carried out by Jews were immoral, self-serving, and aimed at harming non-Jews.

Another explanation holds that the Jewish penchant for finance is not the result of exclusion, but the Jewish emphasis on learning and literacy. Certain academics contend that, with the destruction of Jerusalem and the beginning of the Jewish diaspora, Jewish continuity became dependent on religious literacy. Those who educated themselves remained Jews, whereas those who didn’t assimilated or converted. Over time, the Jewish community evolved into an educated population, which in turn incentivised Jews to abandon farming in favour of better-paying professions and businesses.

Jews continued to be connected with money as the decades passed. The stereotype often offered conflicting ideas, sometimes suggesting that all Jews were wealthy while at others, presenting an image of an impoverished, money-grubbing individual who would do anything to make a few coins. The Georgian and Victorian periods offered a variety of portraits (some positive and others negative) of figures such as Nathan Mayer Rothschild and other wealthy English Jews of the time alongside cartoons showing Jewish rag-and-bone men who scraped a living. As historian Diana Muir Appelbaum writes, “The message: in contrast to Christians, who would sooner die than demean themselves by scavenging trash, Jews, ‘like certain animals’, are at home in filth and ordure” for the sake of money.

The perception of affluent Jews in British society even inspired the creation of children’s games and ceramic figurines which perpetuated the stereotype. Examples of such artefacts were featured at the London Jewish Museum’s “Jews, Money, Myth” exhibition held in 2019 which included figurines of Jewish hawkers and peddlers alongside a dice game from 1807 called The New and Fashionable Game of the Jew.

As they rose in prominence, Jews continued to hold significant financial positions, making them ready scapegoats in times of economic crisis. Across Europe in the 18th and 19th centuries, Jewish financiers built a number of influential banks, feeding anti-Semitic conspiracy theories and bringing into play several conflicting slurs about Jews being the father of capitalism and communism simultaneously.

Such was the case in the 20th century, a time when Jews took the role of the “Bolshevik accomplice” while also remaining “disgustingly rich capitalists”, becoming a scapegoat for both sides. In time, Adolf Hitler would denounce Marxism as a Jewish plot to destroy the German people and economy, while Josef Stalin would accuse Jewish capitalists of plotting to destroy the Soviet Union.

The supposed bond between Jews and money remains a common stereotype today, sometimes more, sometimes less positive. In China, appreciation for Jewish business success has resulted in a rise in the publication of books which purport to contain the secrets of Jewish success with titles including Crack the Talmud: 101 Jewish Business Rules; 16 Reasons for Jews Getting Wealthy; and The Secret of Talmud: The Jewish Code of Wealth among them. Elsewhere, however, it remains a popular anti-Semitic trope used to undermine Jews in politics and finance.