Purchasing Power: The Economics of Modern Jewish History

363 Pages·2015·5.191 MB·English

by  Rebecca Kobrin and Adam Teller (eds)

Purchasing Power
JEWISH CULTURE AND CONTEXTS
Published in association with the Herbert D. Katz Center
for Advanced Judaic Studies of the University of Pennsylvania
David B. Ruderman and Steven Weitzman, Series Editors
Purchasing Power
Th e Economics of Modern Jewish History

Edited by
Rebecca Kobrin and Adam Teller
UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA PRESS
PHILADELPHIA
Publication of this volume was assisted by a grant from the Martin D. Gruss
Endowment Fund of the Herbert D. Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies
of the University of Pennsylvania.
Copyright © 2015 University of Pennsylvania Press
All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations used for purposes of review or scholarly
citation, none of this book may be reproduced in any form by any means without
written permission from the publisher.
Published by
University of Pennsylvania Press
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104-4112
www . upenn . edu / pennpress
Printed in the United States of Ame rica
on acid- free paper
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication Data
Purchasing power (2015)
Purchasing power : the economics of modern Jewish history / edited by Rebecca
Kobrin and Adam Teller.
pages cm. — (Jewish culture and contexts)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-8122-4730-5 (alk. paper)
1. Jewish merchants— History. 2. Jews— Economic conditions— History. 3. Jewish
capitalists and fi nanciers— History. 4. Jewish businesspeople— History. 5. Jews—
Commerce— History. 6. Jews in public life— History. 7. Jewish philanthropists—
History. I. Kobrin, Rebecca, editor. II. Teller, Adam, editor. III. Title. IV. Series:
Jewish culture and contexts.
DS140.5.P87 2015
330.089'924— dc23
2015006401
C o n t e n t s
Introduction. Purchasing Power: Th e Economics of Modern
Jewish History 1
Rebecca Kobrin and Adam Teller
PART I. NETWORKS AND NICHES: THE CREATION OF JEWISH
ECONOMIC POWER
Chapter 1. Licenses, Cartels, and Kehila: Jewish Moneylending and
the Strug gle Against Restraint of Trade in Early Modern Rome 27
Bernard Dov Cooperman
Chapter 2. Contraband for the Catholic King: Jews of the French Pyrenees
in the Tobacco Trade and Spanish State Finance 46
Carsten L. Wilke
Chapter 3. Daily Business or an Aff air of Consequence? Credit,
Reputation, and Bankruptcy Among Jewish Merchants
in Eighteenth- Century Central Eu rope 71
Cornelia Aust
Chapter 4. Jewish Quarters: Th e Economics of Segregation
in the Kingdom of Poland 91
Glenn Dynner
Chapter 5. From Moses to Moses: Jews, Clothing,
and Colonial Commerce 112
Adam D. Mendelsohn
vi Contents
Chapter 6. Brokering a Rock ’n’ Roll International: Jewish Rec ord Men
in Ame rica and Britain 125
Jonathan Karp
PART II. PHILANTHROPY, MONEY, AND THE DEPLOYMENT
OF POWER IN JEWISH ECONOMIC HISTORY
Chapter 7. Th e “West” and the Rest: Jewish Philanthropy
and Globalization to c. 1880 155
Abigail Green
Chapter 8. Rebels Without a Patron State: How Israel Financed
the 1948 War 171
Derek Penslar
Chapter 9. Orthodoxy Th rough Diamonds: Jewish Life in Antwerp
aft er World War II 192
Veerle Vanden Daelen
Chapter 10. Faith Meets Politics and Resources: Reassessing Modern
Transnational Jewish Activism 216
Jonathan Dekel- Chen
Chapter 11. Anxieties of Distinctiveness: We r n e r Sombart’s Th e Jews and
Modern Capitalism and the Politics of Jewish Economic History 238
Adam Sutcliff e
Notes 259
Index 343
List of Contributors 353
Purchasing Power
In t r o d u c t i o n
Purchasing Power: Th e Economics
of Modern Jewish History
Rebecca Kobrin and Adam Teller
It is perhaps no coincidence in our current age of global capitalism, when
many comment upon the power of the economy and economic institutions
to shape the world, that we are considering anew the larger role of the econ-
omy in Jewish history as well as the place of Jews in economic history.1 In
recent de cades, the social, and then the cultural, turn in historical research
pushed questions concerning Jews’ economic activity to the sidelines. Th is
does not mean, however, that economic issues themselves were in any sense
marginal in the Jewish historical experience. Th ey most certainly were not.
Nor could they have been, since Jews, like all other individuals and groups
in human society, had to engage with the economy in one way or another in
order to survive.
Th is last statement, banal as it may be on a superfi cial level, is im por tant
because it points to many of the key questions in Jewish economic history as
it is beginning to be understood and practiced today. What was the signifi -
cance of being Jewish in determining the forms of economic activity under-
taken by Jews in diff erent times and places? What were the relative weights
of individual and group factors in that pro cess? When did Jewishness abet
the formation of commercial alliances and when did it aid in such pro cesses?
What might be meant by the use of the term “survival” from an economic
2 Rebecca Kobrin and Adam Teller
lens? Is it to be taken to refer simply to the basic physical needs of Jewish in-
dividuals being met, or should it be understood as creating the conditions
for the continued existence (and even fl ourishing) of Jewish society and cul-
ture in the oft en inhospitable conditions of diaspora? Finally, what did “en-
gaging with the economy” mean for Jews and Jewish socie ties? Did it mean
fi nding a place in an existing economic system, and so being shaped by eco-
nomic conditions? Perhaps it also meant the ways in which Jews shaped the
economy to their own needs and in doing so contributed to pro cesses of eco-
nomic development and change.
In its engagement with these questions, this volume repositions eco-
nomics in our understanding of the modern Jewish experience. Historians
of the Jews have tirelessly devoted themselves to unraveling the distinctive
religious, ideological, cultural, and po liti cal threads that came together
in modern Jewish life. But in so doing, they have neglected other crucial
topics— most notably, the economic circumstances that formed the context
for (and even, some would argue, underpinned) this wealth of intellectual,
cultural, and po liti cal development. As a result, we have yet to see clearly how
Jews’ economic choices and practices— both real and imagined— shaped not
only their place in the global economy but also their historical development
as a distinctive group.
To address this shortcoming, the essays collected here highlight the ways
in which Jews wielded economic agency, while acknowledging that their in-
de pen dence was limited by the fact that they were continually responding
to local conditions— political, social, and economic.2 Illustrating the ways
Jews responded to the diff erent economic circumstances in which they found
themselves, this volume also begins the pressing task of bringing our under-
standing of the economic history of the Jews into line with the subtle but
signifi cant rewriting of the history of the global economy that has been ongo-
ing since the 1980s— a rewriting virtually absent from the broader reconsid-
eration of modern Jewish life penned in the same de cades.
A central issue connecting all the studies of Jewish economic life in this
volume is that of power. At its core, each contribution assesses vari ous aspects
of how power relations informed, dovetailed with, and shaped Jews’ economic
activities in the modern world as well as the ways these activities were per-
ceived. As outsiders in most of the places where they lived in the diaspora, Jews
not only found a foothold in society, but frequently went on to strengthen
their position by providing key economic serv ices to their neighbors. Th e
Jews’ success in identifying economic opportunity and then exploiting it