JEWS AS FARMERS

You have to go back almost 2,000 years to find a time when Jews, like virtually every other identifiable group, were primarily an agricultural people. Around A.D. 200, Jews began to quit the land. By the seventh century, Jews had left their farms in large numbers to become craftsmen, artisans, merchants, etc., the only group to have given up on agriculture. Jewish participation in farming fell to about 10 percent through most of the world.

It’s true that in the Middle Ages, Jews were often prohibited from owning land. However, in the Muslim world, Jews faced no limits on occupation, land ownership, or anything else that might have been relevant to the choice of whether to farm. Moreover, a prohibition on land ownership is not a prohibition on farming.

So, what’s different about the Jews? Why didn’t other groups leave the land? The temptation was certainly there. Skilled urban jobs have always paid better than farming. But those jobs require literacy, which requires education – and for hundreds of years education was so expensive that it proved a poor investment, despite those higher wages. So, for economic reasons alone, pretty much everyone should have stayed on the farms.

One very logical reason given to explain this phenomenom is that the Jews were bound, not just by economic rationalism, but also by the dictates of their religion. And the Jewish religion, unique among religions of the early Middle Ages, imposed an obligation to be literate. To be a good Jew you had to read the Torah (Pentateuch) four times a week at services: twice on the Sabbath, and once every Monday and Thursday morning. And to be a good Jewish parent you had to educate your children so that they could do the same.

The literacy obligation had two effects. First, it meant that Jews were uniquely qualified to enter higher paying urban occupations. Jews, who had to go to school for religious reasons, naturally sought to earn at least some return on their investment. Only many centuries later did education start to make sense economically, and by then the Jews had become well established in banking, trade, etc.

Over time, you’re left with a population of people who enjoy education, are required by their religion to be educated, and are particularly attached to their religion. Naturally, these people tend to become educated. And once they’re educated, they leave the farms.

Until, that is, we finally had land of our own........