From YNet News:
Finance Minister Yuval Steinitz recently instructed ministry officials to develop a comprehensive plan for deporting 100,000 illegal foreign workers from Israel within a year.
My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer
This can't be possible. George Will would argue that deportation would require too many Israeli buses to be feasible.
ReplyDeleteJews--is there anything they can't do?
As a Canadian and friend of the US, can I suggest you guys put Jews in charge, then ? Oops, already done that, you say ? How is that working out ?
ReplyDeleteKevin Mac Donald has been working for Ynet?
ReplyDeleteRichard Nadler will be outraged. Or will he?
ReplyDeleteI once cycled about Israel on a mountain bike, 2000 km. It was s great trip even though the roads were lethal due to the wild driving. Often I would meet "illegals" who were working on Israeli farms or in factories, both in Israel proper and the occupied territories. Most seem to come from Eastern Europe and Asia (Thailand, Philippines etc.). They were generally treated badly by locals. When I helped them with a few bucks or some nice conversation, invariably Israel's started acting more friendlily towards them in my presence. I could never understand why Israeli’s, who arguably are the most self-confident people on earth, would worry what a whitey would think.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, in contrast to the US where neocons complain about every fence and cop in sight, in Israel the degree of control over the borders, and what’s going on inside the place is so total that I think they’ll have them out in the time it takes to bus them to the airport.
where is the flurry of articles in the NYT, and commentary from the ADL of ominous shadows of 1933?
ReplyDeleteOh, right its good for jews...
Adjusting for relative population size, that's as if the US was to plan to deport 4.2 million illegal aliens.
ReplyDeleteBenefits of electing a right-wing party.
ReplyDeleteLook at the bright side, leftists/paleos once again have justification for their rambling about "Likudniks".
Ha, ha!
ReplyDeleteI'll bet this particular posting sets an all-time ISteve.com record for number of "rejected" comments...
Is there anything they can't do?
ReplyDeleteMaybe be a little nicer toward the native gentile population of America, and not try to impoverish and breed us out of existence under the rubric of "racism"?
Nah. We must pay for slavery, Jim Crow, and the Holocaust. In the name of justice and changing the world (tikkum olem).
israel offered to help the US design a border fence that would intercept whatever percentage of border jumpers the americans would like. 80%, 90%, 100%.
ReplyDeletefunny, i think the american politicians were forced to say "Uh, no thanks" to the israeli fence experts, instead of delivering their standard "Fences don't work" speech.
I'd say that these workers just do work that Israelis wont do themselves - but that just feeds into old stereotypes, right?
ReplyDeleteJews--is there anything they can't do?Apparently they're even willing to do the jobs that "Americans won't do." And if the highest IQ group on the planet is willing to do them...
ReplyDeleteSo the U.S. gets a "Progress by Pesach" campaign while Israel decides to deport 100,000?
ReplyDeleteThere will be a fight there as there is here. Just as here, in Israel the comfortable, fairly feminized, single yuppie suburban class depends on the illegal labor. That's who voted for Lvni after all.
ReplyDeleteThere is an eternal war in the West between yuppie "new elites" who just wholesale replaced the old aristocracy, and the populists. The balance of power being held by single women are the biggest demographic group.
Hey, they haven't had any problem expelling them before! Read this great Israeli Jewish article to see the excellent Jewish policies we Christians should be adopting in our national homeland:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.jewishcurrents.org/2004-july-susser.htm
1. no birthright citizenship -- once a wetback, always a wetback
2. fines of 10K shekels for hiring some wetback nanny or yard boy
3. as soon as a guest worker's term is up, off they go to jail or a camp.
4. African "refugees" go straight to a barbed wire camp or a cold jail cell.
You know the old saying: "what's good for the Jew is good for the Gentile"!
[God, I just love the Israelis! I pray, God, you will lift up our eyes to the example of your chosen people and we will follow it right here in America. Raus! Raus! Raus!]
testing99 said...
ReplyDeleteThe balance of power being held by single women are the biggest demographic group.Testing99, do you believe women should be allowed to vote? I want a straight answer on this, no equivocating.
As a Canadian and friend of the US, can I suggest you guys put Jews in charge, then ? Oops, already done that, you say ? How is that working out?
ReplyDeleteNobody washes a rental car. Israel is not the rental car.
Richard Nadler will be outraged. Or will he?
Bill Kristol and John P. Normanson, too. "Y" is for what, now?
What happened to the line breaks after HTML code? Why does it disappear. Ickkkkk....
ReplyDeleteThe difference between illegal aliens and guest workers in Middle Eastern countries like Israel, Saudi Arabia the Gulf States and illegal aliens and guest workers in Western countries is that the former do not enjoy much in the way of rights, access to government benefits or a mechanism by which they could ever achieve citizenship or permanent residence. Guest workers might not be so devastatingly bad for some Western countries in some circumstances if it were legally impossible for the workers or their descendants to stay longer than they were needed, as is the case in the Middle East.
ReplyDeleteAdjusting for relative population size, that's as if the US was to plan to deport 4.2 million illegal aliens.That was my knee-jerk reaction too. My other knee then jerked, and I realized that they're probably apples and oranges since 100k is probably precisely the number of immigrants people with Israeli interests at heart want deported.
ReplyDeleteSo, the equivalent number here in Emma Lazarus territory would be 30 million or so, not 4.2 million.
Benefits of electing a right-wing party.Benefits of having a ruling class interested in preserving your nation.
ReplyDeleteAnonymous testing99 said...
ReplyDelete4/16/2009Two paragraphs of dancing around the elephant in the room. Impressive, most impressive.
They are reliant on Chinese for construction.
ReplyDeleteThey pull out all of the PC-stops.
"Chinese workers at a company in Israel have been forced to agree not to have sex with or marry Israelis as a condition of getting a job."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2003/dec/24/israel1
Its about time. I'd vote for Netanyahu for president over the dip we got in the white house now.
ReplyDeletesvigor said
ReplyDelete"[This is among the] benefits of having a ruling class interested in preserving your nation."
Best comment so far.
Adjusting for relative population size, that's as if the US was to plan to deport 4.2 million illegal aliens.And that's just within 12 months, so there has probably been a logistical calculation, since these aren't people you can just bus back over a border. Presumably they're going after the rest later.
ReplyDeleteGuest workers might not be so devastatingly bad for some Western countries in some circumstances if it were legally impossible for the workers or their descendants to stay longer than they were needed, as is the case in the Middle East.
ReplyDeleteThe whole of the West is now officially multiracial. In a monoracial society like most of the Middle East you can easily separate citizen from non-citizen. In the West non-whites can be citizens and you're not allowed to assume they are not.
From that terrific "No Chinese having sex with Israeli women" article:
"Chinese workers at a company in Israel have been forced to agree not to have sex with or marry Israelis as a condition of getting a job.
"According to a contact they are required to sign, male workers may not have any contact with Israeli women - including prostitutes, a police spokesman, Rafi Yaffe, said.
"He said there was nothing illegal about the requirement and that no investigation had been opened...
"The labourers are also forbidden from engaging in any religious or political activity. The contract states that offenders will be sent back to China at their own expense...
"Israeli police have increased efforts to deport those working without permits because of rising Israeli unemployment, which has reached 11% in recent months.
"Advocates of foreign workers, who also come from Thailand, the Philippines and Romania, say they are subject to almost slave conditions, and their employers often take away their passports and refuse to pay them."
I don't hate Jewih Israelis for wanting to enforce their immigration laws. I admire them and support them, in fact. I hate those American Jews who have no problem with the double standard of enforcement in Israel but open borders in America.
Off topic comment just to note today's bankruptcy filing by General Growth Properties, which owns several hundred malls across the US. General Growth is run by the Bucksbaum family. One of the co-founders is the daddy-in-law of global genius and columnist Thomas Friedman. One wonders why with a son-in-law so smart the Bucksbaum's weren't able to avoid bankruptcy.
ReplyDelete"Its about time. I'd vote for Netanyahu for president over the dip we got in the white house now."
ReplyDeleteHe would likely encourage illegal immigration into the US.
"Testing99, do you believe women should be allowed to vote? I want a straight answer on this, no equivocating."
ReplyDeleteNah.
"Chinese workers at a company in Israel have been forced to agree not to have sex with or marry Israelis as a condition of getting a job."
ReplyDeleteUnlike western officials, Israeli's understand the basic math of human interaction. Western officials invariably find a way of clothing feral activities in PC nonsense and end up making catastrophic decisions based on that self-deception.
Apartheid also used to be known as a system with common sense and straight talk. That's why everybody hated it.
Testing99, do you believe women should be allowed to vote? I want a straight answer on this, no equivocating.
ReplyDeleteIt took T-boy ages to discover that relentless WASP-bashing didn't go down well with the isteve crowd. So he switched tactics and started blaming everything on women. It will take him another six months to figure out that no one else here shares his boiling sexual rage against women.
Isrealis understand what Europeans and Americans do not: that national citizenship must be based on a racial and cultural standard, and must be enforced by the physical exclusion of anyone who does not measure up. The alternative is 'paper' or 'proposition' citizenship, which, combined with mass immigration, sees the nation given over to the most numerous immigrant group or groups.
ReplyDeleteIsreal is the latest and greatest manifestation of the national ideal of a "homeland" as developed in Europe in the 19th century. May Isreal and Zionism show us the way back to national sanity.
This is HILARIOUS.
ReplyDeleteThe whole point of Zionism was that Jews would build their own nation with their own Jewish labor at all levels (low, medium, high) and not be materially dependent or reliant on non-Jews any longer, even for the most menial jobs - "labor Zionism" or "Zionist socialism" used to be popular catchphrases...originally Zionism had few religious connotations/associations and was mostly secular and ethnonationalistic, being mostly about communal Jewish economic sufficiency and becoming a 'normal' and 'rooted' group of people.
I guess that's all gone away now that they have so many non-Jewish immigrants from the 3rd world cleaning their houses, making their meals in restaurants, constructing their buildings and roads (and even the huge separation wall from the Palestinians?), working in their factories, picking the food on their farms/orchards, etc.
Israel is looking less and less like a true Jewish state and more like a posh (and of course very exclusive) Jewish-only beach resort which employs 'untermenschen' (AKA 'goyim') to do all of the actual work there.
Again, the whole point of Zionism was that Jews would cease to be middlemen, merchants, petty traders, bureaucrats, and so on and become actual workers (the bedrock of every nation) in their own state: meaning instead of the standard Jewish diaspora norm of Jewish lawyers, Jewish journalists/writers, Jewish professors/teachers, Jewish doctors, Jewish bankers, Jewish scientists, Jewish merchants, etc...in Israel there were supposed to be Jewish construction workers, Jewish garbagemen, Jewish craftspeople, Jewish farmers, Jewish bakers, etc. This was all an attempt to make Jews a 'normal' and 'rooted' people who didn't have to live as rootless middlemen in other people's societies but as a people capable of building and working at all levels in their own society, like a normal human nation or ethnic group.
So in many respects it looks like Zionism has proven to be a failure - it seems that Jews are unable to live and function in their own country without the 'assistance' shall we say of 3rd world workers...why is that? Is there something that makes Jews incapable of forming their own permanent and successful nation?
Svigor: In most aspects, Israeli elites are just as disdainful of the desires of their "yeoman" middle class as the elites in any Western country.
ReplyDeleteThe crucial difference is that the Israeli elites "get demographics" in a way that other elites just don't.
Why is that? Theories:
1) Mandatory military conscription. Gives everybody a healthy dose of reality. Draft-dodging is rising among certain sectors of the elite (the SWPL-influenced types) but is still considered highly unrespectable. It can hurt your future career.
2) It's just a smaller country, overall. A half-hour drive into the wrong territory and you could be dead. Israeli elite are less able to isolate themselves from Arabs in the way that US elites isolate themselves from non-whites.
3) Greater Jewish ethnocentrism is also a factor, of course.
Just to clarify, while guest workers from Thailand are completely harmless, the conflict with the Arabs, with its demographic aspect, makes Israeli Jews more aware of the demographic threats posed from other groups as well.
ReplyDeleteReporting from the area: Israeli prostitutes do not discriminate against Chinese contract workers (legal aliens), Somali illegals or other paying customers. About marrying an Israeli, Chinese Jews have no difficulties at all except that there are no Chinese Jews.
ReplyDeleteHeadache, I'm glad I'm not the only one who feels that way. It came up at work and me and a friend discussed it for a few minutes.
ReplyDeletePseudothyrum, I think I know hate when I hear it.
ReplyDeleteAnd of course by "Israeli" prostitutes, J. means the goy smuggled in from Ukraine or Belarus or wherever.
ReplyDeleteWhat does it mean for something to be "politicized?" From the Time article on Obama's Mexico trip:
ReplyDelete"I voted twice for comprehensive immigration reform that would have provided a pathway for legalization and improvement of the orderly path of migrants into the United States," [Obama] said. "We came close to getting that kind of a reform done several years ago and then it became politicized."
Once implemented, and controversy arises, this may prove useful in pressuring and breaking mainstream Jewish organizational support from the far-Left ones on domestic mass illegal immigration, particularly if the far-Left speaks out against Israel on this issue, and it is clear that a significant portion of non-Muslims are involved.
ReplyDeleteTime will tell.
About marrying an Israeli, Chinese Jews have no difficulties at all except that there are no Chinese Jews.-
ReplyDeleteFunny but false. There aren't many, but Chinese Jews do exist.
From which side?
ReplyDeleteTesting99, do you believe women should be allowed to vote? I want a straight answer on this, no equivocating.-
ReplyDeleteI would hope not, and I would hope he would feel the same way about men. All decisions have to be consensual to be legitimate, so voting -- by anyone -- just won't cut it. If people can't agree, they need to be in separate polities.
The question you should be asking is whether T99 believes the consent of women is necessary for a "consensus"; i.e., whether women have a right to participate in constitutional choice of the sort discussed by Tullock & Buchanan in The Calculus of Consent.
"I guess that's all gone away now that they have so many non-Jewish immigrants from the 3rd world cleaning their houses, making their meals in restaurants, constructing their buildings and roads (and even the huge separation wall from the Palestinians?), working in their factories, picking the food on their farms/orchards, etc."
ReplyDeleteRead Alex. Solz.'s 200 years together. Jews always hated manual labour. It’s a cultural/religious thing. The Palestinian issue folds nicely into this. They keep talking as if it’s a security issue. in fact the main reason for the occupation is that it supplies mass cheap labour. The more pressure they exercise in the territories the cheaper the labour gets.
Hate Detector said Pseudothyrum, I think I know hate when I hear it.'Hate Decector' - wow, what a handle; the insight, the gravitas. I'm kind of surprised Steve even let your comment through, as now grown-ups will be able to read it.
ReplyDeleteYou explain, point by point, exactly where Pseudothyrum is incorrect and then we will have a debate about that.
I detect a moron in the comments by “hate detector.”
ReplyDeleteAll decisions have to be consensual to be legitimate, so voting -- by anyone -- just won't cut it.
ReplyDeleteTotalitarianism and anarchism have so much in common. I much prefer the ideas this country was founded on. They worked very well for a long time.
"Hate' Detector said...
ReplyDeletePseudothyrum, I think I know hate when I hear it."
Self-righteous geek!
"---So in many respects it looks like Zionism has proven to be a failure - it seems that Jews are unable to live and function in their own country without the 'assistance' shall we say of 3rd world workers...why is that? Is there something that makes Jews incapable of forming their own permanent and successful nation?---"
ReplyDeleteWell they feel they are always going to need...
"hewers of wood and drawers of water'.
Anon said
ReplyDeleteFunny but false. There aren't many, but Chinese Jews do exist.
--
Until about 1900, a small jewish community remained in Kaifeng, China
They had intermarried for centuries and looked chinese
They have now disappeared
Pseudothyrum,
ReplyDeleteYou parade your ignorance.
"The whole point of Zionism was that Jews would build their own nation with their own Jewish labor at all levels (low, medium, high) and not be materially dependent or reliant on non-Jews any longer, even for the most menial jobs - "labor Zionism" or "Zionist socialism" used to be popular catchphrases"That wasn't the point of Zionism, but that is what the Zionists did. They were homesteaders, and they were mostly poor -- sort of like American homesteaders in the 19th Century. Americans worked their own fields back then too.
Then, in the space of a couple generations, Israel rose from a third world country to a first world one. So just like Americans, Israelis took advantage of cheap immigrant labor to do the dirty jobs.
"Again, the whole point of Zionism was that Jews would cease to be middlemen, merchants, petty traders, bureaucrats, and so on and become actual workers (the bedrock of every nation) in their own state: meaning instead of the standard Jewish diaspora norm of Jewish lawyers, Jewish journalists/writers, Jewish professors/teachers, Jewish doctors, Jewish bankers, Jewish scientists, Jewish merchants, etc...in Israel there were supposed to be Jewish construction workers, Jewish garbagemen, Jewish craftspeople, Jewish farmers, Jewish bakers, etc. This was all an attempt to make Jews a 'normal' and 'rooted' people who didn't have to live as rootless middlemen in other people's societies but as a people capable of building and working at all levels in their own society, like a normal human nation or ethnic group."You have missed the point of Zionism spectacularly. No one ever doubted the ability of a Jew to be a garbageman. It also wasn't the choice of European Jews to eschew "normal" jobs: pre-emancipation, they were excluded from these jobs. Additionally, pre-Zionism, Jews didn't think of themselves as "rootless". Why would they? Most European Jews could trace their ancestry back in their countries hundreds of years, longer than the most blue-blooded WASP can trace his ancestry back in the U.S. The founder of Zionism, Theodore Herzl, was thoroughly rooted and assimilated, as were most emancipated Jews. What changed Herzl's mind was seeing Dreyfus get railroaded in France. The point of Zionism was for Jews to have their own country where they wouldn't be subject to such discrimination.
"So in many respects it looks like Zionism has proven to be a failure - it seems that Jews are unable to live and function in their own country without the 'assistance' shall we say of 3rd world workers...why is that? Is there something that makes Jews incapable of forming their own permanent and successful nation?"So, in other words, in your bizzaro interpretation, Israel is a failure because it has become rich enough to import foreign workers, and it was a roaring success back in 1948 when it was a dirt-poor third world country full of refugees.
"---It also wasn't the choice of European Jews to eschew "normal" jobs: pre-emancipation, they were excluded from these jobs.---"
ReplyDeleteHmm, they were 'excluded' from 'normal' jobs in goy society but were (strangely) 'allowed' to have 'great' jobs and professions in those very societies where those same 'excluded' Jews could hold even greater power and influence over the native population--like banking, law, the arts, higher education--just like here in the good ol' US of A.
He he he.
Well, I got to hand it to you Jab, you guys rarely EVER miss a single talking point. If ever questioned or confronted by the goy's (how dare they!), just follow the script.
However, you may have to 'fine-tune' and tweak things around a bit, since many of us rely less and less on the 'lame-stream' media for the 'shaping' our perceptions of reality.
Most European Jews could trace their ancestry back in their countries hundreds of years, longer than the most blue-blooded WASP can trace his ancestry back in the U.S.
ReplyDeleteUmmmm....I don't go in for the Jewbashing, but really. Of course most American "blue-bloods" can't trace their ancestry in this country back that far. Aside from that, people who can trace their ancestry back to the beginning aren't treated like blue-bloods. The media depiction of a WASP isn't exactly white-gloved. Must be the fault of that damn Harvard WASP mafia!
re: Hate Detector
ReplyDeleteYou Betas are going to have to learn to stop being reactionary if you ever want to regain control of your people's destiny again.
Jabotinsky wrote,
ReplyDeleteMost European Jews could trace their ancestry back in their countries hundreds of years, longer than the most blue-blooded WASP can trace his ancestry back in the U.S.This isn't really comparable. First of all, WASPs can trace back their lineage to England long before they continued their culture in what eventually became the U.S.
Secondly, while Jews were in Europe for a long time, they weren't always in one country, and the borders--and ruling ethnic groups-- changed frequently, as did their specific situation. The importance of Yiddish was precisely because the Jewish experience was unstable and, overall, rootless. Yiddish allowed for contact with Jews throughout most of Europe and Russia, and among other issues, for resettlement if need be.
The founder of Zionism, Theodore Herzl, was thoroughly rooted and assimilated, as were most emancipated Jews.True, but as you yourself are conceding, that was a post-emancipation experience, and not the situation for most of their time in Europe. And in the Eastern European countries and in Russia, this was less true than in the western European nations, and such national identifications were less prevalent, even among secular Jews, who--and this is quite indicative--still spoke Yiddish as their primary, but certainly not only, language.
Actually, the commander of Israel's navy is Chinese
ReplyDeletehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eli_Marom
at least 25% Chinese
So, according to Jabotinsky, a country with, effectively, slave labor that is racially segregated from the majority population is the definition of success and of course a legitimate democracy.
ReplyDeleteI expect to see all the new Jewish defenses of the Confederacy real soon now.
Hmm, they were 'excluded' from 'normal' jobs in goy society...So were Jews legally excluded from exercising trades or not?
ReplyDeleteHistorical truth is more important than snarkiness.
The malicious condescension that drips from your comment is gross.
No one ever doubted the ability of a Jew to be a garbageman.Er, actually, I do. In the last 1000 years, Jews have demonstrated no ability to live amongst themselves only, and behave like a normal nation (lower, middle, upper classes). They seem to need at least one outgroup to attach themselves to, or at least, dominate.
ReplyDeleteMy theory is that if they ever find themselves without such an outgroup, they'll fragment and create one out of their own population.
It also wasn't the choice of European Jews to eschew "normal" jobs: pre-emancipation, they were excluded from these jobs.No one excluded Jews from agriculture, the occupation of the vast majority of humans pre-emancipation. I remember reading about one ruler who tried to FORCE Jews to till the soil. He failed of course.
Why Jews Don't Farm(I've read about a prohibition in Jewish law on tilling the soil outside the Promised Land, but I've been unable to confirm this)
The idea that Jews became rentiers, usurers, and bailiffs because they couldn't find honest work is laughable.
Most European Jews could trace their ancestry back in their countries hundreds of years, longer than the most blue-blooded WASP can trace his ancestry back in the U.S.I'm of Protestant English stock. I can trace my ancestry here to almost a century before there WAS a U.S. And probably a long way back in England, too, though I've never tried.
ReplyDeleteBut I digress. Viewed as a percentage, I can trace my ancestry back through U.S. history far longer than (I daresay) the vast majority of Jews can trace theirs in Europe. (Funny how unfair comparisons work, innit?)
Theodore Herzl, was thoroughly rooted and assimilated, as were most emancipated Jews. What changed Herzl's mind was seeing Dreyfus get railroaded in France.Hmm, an interesting way of formulating "assimilation," that; keeping your beliefs and identity hidden from those around you. I mean, otherwise, how can one square the circle of "changing one's mind" about being assimilated?
ReplyDeleteThe example is hilarious, btw - ONE famous case stripped away "total assimilation"? To the extent the guy founded Zionism, no less! It is to laff!
"---The malicious condescension that drips from your comment is gross.---"
ReplyDeleteReally, that bad?
Anyway, how do you define 'trades' (I guess banking and finance does not qualify as a 'trade')?
Furthermore, please provide the laws and ordinances that stipulated Jewish persons in Europe were barred from specific jobs.
I mean, it seems a bit more rationalizing than rational that Jewish persons would be excluded from trades and other jobs within European society--presumably due to the fear of their percieved subversiveness--and then turn around and let them have jobs of far greater power and control within those same European societies.
I would like to know exactly which trades were denied to Jews, between which dates and in which countries. Does anyone know, not just vague assertions.
ReplyDeleteOtherwise we do indeed end up in a position we are asked to believe that put upon Jews - who dreamed merely of being apprenticed to the local horse dung collector or shoe mender - were instead 'forced' into diamond trading or goldsmithing.
Oh the humanity!
I mean, it seems a bit more rationalizing than rational that Jewish persons would be excluded from trades and other jobs within European society--presumably due to the fear of their percieved subversiveness--and then turn around and let them have jobs of far greater power and control within those same European societies.Indeed. The edict against Christians profiting from usury was, of course, handed down from Rome. One wonders who influenced them to issue an edict handing over one of the most powerful professions of all over to a non-Christian population.
ReplyDeleteNot to suggest that the Roman church was ever corrupt.
"Dominate"? Sheesh. If you came from a literate urban population where the average IQ was 110 (or whatever), you wouldn't want to do menial low-class labor either.
ReplyDeleteThat said, Israel of course has a patriotic and virile (non-Ashkenazi) Jewish lower-middle class, so what you say simply isn't true.
I mean, it seems a bit more rationalizing than rational that Jewish persons would be excluded from trades and other jobs within European society--presumably due to the fear of their percieved subversiveness--and then turn around and let them have jobs of far greater power and control within those same European societies.I've not gone deep into this issue, but I think common sense is usually a good guide. Jews were not barred from farming, they were barred in some places from becoming landlords; the nobility didn't want Jews horning in on their territory. This became transformed by Jewish apologists into "Jews weren't allowed to farm." Common sense tells me that Jews weren't barred from trades (making things), either. How the hell would you even enforce that, especially against a group as canny as Jews? I can see Jews being barred from guilds in an inconsistent way (usually competition against Jews (aka, anti-Semitism) took ad hoc forms), but stopping them starting their own? Does that pass the common sense test? Obviously the CS test isn't perfect or even great, but it's a place to start.
ReplyDeleteLong story short, European populations preventing Jews from installing themselves as overlords passes the common sense test; European populations conspiring as a whole to leave nothing to Jews but usury and rent-seeking fails miserably (yeah! That's the ticket! They wouldn't let us be peasants, which was all we really wanted! Come ON already).
Jews never took to farming in the diaspora because, as 'rootless cosmopolitans' (to use a more recent term) or wanderers (older term), they were generally never settled long enough in one place to care about being intimately connected with the soil of a place and drawing sustenance from it with hard work from their own hands.
ReplyDeleteBeing expelled time after time from country after country, territory after territory, or city after city in nearly every European country doesn't exactly make a group amenable to 'settling down' if you know what I mean.
Great points about Yiddish made here too - it was truly universally Jewish, continent-wide tongue of the Ashkenazi Jews, and was used just as Svigor says: to facilitate Jewish travel, communication, and business dealings (and often emergency lodging...back to the constant expulsions) with their fellow Jews who lived hundreds of even thousands of miles away from them. Very smart of them, really - a way for Jews to break down all communication barriers, to remain constantly cozy with each other linguistically and thus automatically acquainted if they needed to be via a common language in the midst of the extreme tribalism and very large and often confusing language diversity across Europe.