Language:
English
Pages:
344 Seiten
Edition:
5. printing
Year of publication:
2014
Series Statement:
The Princeton economic history of the Western World
Series Statement:
The Princeton economic history of the Western World
Keywords:
Bildung
;
Wirtschaft
Abstract:
In 70 CE, the Jews were an agrarian and illiterate people living mostly in the Land of Israel and Mesopotamia. By 1492 the Jewish people had become a small group of literate urbanites specializing in crafts, trade, moneylending, and medicine in hundreds of places across the Old World, from Seville to Mangalore. What caused this radical change? The Chosen Few presents a new answer to this question by applying the lens of economic analysis to the key facts of fifteen formative centuries of Jewish history. Maristella Botticini and Zvi Eckstein offer a powerful new explanation of one of the most significant transformations in Jewish history while also providing fresh insights into the growing debate about the social and economic impact of religion.
Abstract:
Passover, Sukkot, and Shavuot are harvest festivals that hearken back to a time when Jews were farmers just like everyone around them. But Jews as professional farmers did not endure in fact or as a stereotype. Instead, Jews moved into more highly skilled fields̶as moneylenders, traders, doctors, lawyers. What happened centuries ago that caused most of the world̷s Jewry to move from tilling fields to work that required them to be able to read and write? That̷s the question that a pair of economists̶Maristella Botticini of Bocconi University in Milan, and Zvi Eckstein of the School of Economics at ICD Herzliya in Israel, set out to answer in their recent book, The Chosen Few: How Education Shaped Jewish History, 70-1492. What they found is surprising. The common explanations used to understand why Jews were moneylenders̶that they were forbidden from owning land throughout the Muslim World and in Europe̶do not hold up. Using an economics lens, Botticini and Eckstein rethink why, then, Jews landed in the professions they did as far back as the Middle Ages. From her office in Milan, Maristella Botticini joins Vox Tablet host Sara Ivry to discuss how the fall of the Temple in Jerusalem in 70 C.E. led to greater literacy among Jews, what happened to Jews who could not afford to educate their sons as per rabbinical decree, and what they will cast their gimlet eyes on next̶namely, why Jews were not inventors in the Industrial Revolution.
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