Same with Hollywood. They couldn’t find work in New York, so they built a cinematic empire in California.
this post was submitted on 21 Sep 2025
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all because thomas edison was a horrific antisemite, just like his spiritual inheritor, Elon Musk
Pretty much the same reason so many queers and jews work entertainment. (Am a queer jew in entertainment)
So is it true they were only allowed in the banking industry?
Most professions were closed to them - service industries generally remained open to them. Hence the representation of Jewish folk in educated professions like lawyers, doctors, translators, merchants, etc, in the Medieval and Early Modern period.
The restrictions were wide-ranging enough that in some places, Jews were forbidden from being farmers. Not simply from owning land, but being peasant tenant-farmers. Utter insanity.
It makes perfect sense if you want to ensure no Jewish people eat while Germans starve.
Honestly, it'd be a bit counterproductive from that standpoint. Money is of more use in circumventing famine than local land, considering local land production (or lack thereof) is usually the cause of famine. Not only that, but that wouldn't explain why Jews were often forbidden from other industries, like cloth-weaving.
It more broadly relates, I think, to medieval ideological conceptions of the Three Classes - 'Those Who Work, Those Who Preach, and Those Who Fight'. By preventing Jews from engaging in labor, and naturally excluding them from the clergy and aristocracy, it places Jews as complete 'outsiders' to the social structure.
we were barred from most aspects of public life, but were allowed to do the jobs aristocracy always needs doing: the interpretation of laws, the calculation of ciphers, and brute labor. the german aristocracy of the medieval period when jews were mass migrating into central europe from the balkans in response to pogroms in the area were not bound by the same religious laws as catholics regarding charging interest on loans, and the german nobility needed loans to beef up their military.
and it's not even like it was all jews who engaged in this practice, it was just the relatively well off ones. you should generally think of the early holy roman empire as being a real bad place to be jewish where we found ways to persist on the margins, which included some of us lending money
In Catholicism during medieval times, it was forbidden for Christians to lend money with interest (based on selective interpretation of the Bible). Jews would of course be exempt from that, so it was a nice workaround, because there was no ban on Christians lending money from Jews. This enabled Jews to get an early foothold in the finance industry before banking was even really a thing.
Combined with the already mentioned ban on Jews working in most professions in Christian countries well into early modern times (many places until the 19th century in fact), it was a pretty natural development that many Jews entered this profession.
Thanks. TIL.
As others have said it wasn't the only industry available, but that was one industry which was pretty much exclusively Jews. During the Middle Ages, the church considered usury (collecting interest on loans) a sin, but Judaism didn't. Banking doesn't work as an industry without usury, so they found a loophole making all the bankers Jewish.
Reading “The Jewish Question: A Marxist Interpretation” by Abram Leon was a fantastic read, on this subject.
Thanks for the recommendation!
I do find humour here, where are the Epstein files?
Wrong community?