A remark about Jews who "abandoned agricultural labor ". Till the Austrians
came, Jews weren't allowed to own or lease Land. Under the Austrian regime
there was a possibility for them to become "Ackerjuden" - Ploughing Jews.
Which means they could lease Land and farm it. My paternal grandmother came
from such a family from Molodia, and other distant relatives from
Marmornitsa, and Sadagura too. All of them authentic good farmers. Some of
them who came to Israel continued their vocation here.
Yosef Eshet
----- Original Message -----
From: "Edgar Hauster" <bconcept_at_hotmail.com>
To: "Hardy Breier" <hardy3_at_bezeqint.net>
Cc: "Czernowitz Discussion Group" <czernowitz-l_at_cornell.edu>; "Sasha
Wolloch" <sasha_at_raltron.com>; "'Fred Weisinger'" <fredweisinger16_at_gmail.com>
Sent: Monday, April 06, 2015 1:14 PM
Subject: RE: [Cz-L] Book of the Month, April 2015: Usury in Bukovina
Hardy...
That's a slippery ground and additionally I'm afraid that we are deviating
from our topics. However, from my point of view, usury is not an ethnical
phenomenon but a social one. Again I have to refer to Chaim Zhitlowsky, who
put it much better than I could (
http://goo.gl/x1vKMo, p. 95):
"The Jewish masses have been numbed to their degraded condition by poverty
and ignorance that have dulled their sense of honor and national pride.
Atavistic forms of religious fanaticism have translated national aspirations
into the unrealizable dreams of a translucent future. The practice of usury
and exploitation of the peasantry have elicited a completely understandable
hatred toward Jewish exploiters and provided Christian clergy and
reactionary groups with fuel to stoke centuries of accumulated religious and
national antipathy into fires of implacable hatred for the Jewish masses.
This hatred sometimes sparks pogroms as terrible as those we have seen in
Russia. For how on earth is a rural farmer supposed to know that the Jewish
masses, who have abandoned the transparency of agricultural labor and
concealed themselves in the cities, are not part of the same crowd as his
exploiter; how, in the heat of the moment, can he possibly realize that he
is venting his pent-up rage on someone just as poor and unfortunate as he
is!"
Chaim Zhitlowsky's papers, archived by YIVO
(
http://digifindingaids.cjh.org/?pID=1278442) are worth to be
(re)discovered!
Edgar Hauster
-snip-
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Received on 2015-04-07 08:16:15