The Chosen Few: How Education Shaped Jewish History, 70-1492 by Maristella Botticini and Zvi Eckstein, Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ; ISBN 978-0-691-14487-0 ©2012, $39.50, p. 273, plus appendix, bibliography, and index
By Fred Reiss, Ed.D.
WINCHESTER, California — How many Jewish doctors and lawyers do you know? How many Jewish farmers? I would hazard a guess that the answers are many and few or none, respectively. Economists Botticini and Eckstein, co-authors of The Chosen Few, wondering why the Jews followed specific career paths, pose the over-arching question of how did the Jewish people come to be the way they are?
Reaching back in time to the destruction of the Second Temple, in 70 C.E., to find answers, they follow the intertwining monetary and historical paths taken by the Jews until their expulsion from Spain in 1492. As they follow the trail from Jerusalem to Mesopotamia, Persia, Egypt and the Maghreb, and into European countries they ask such things as: How did the Jewish population shrink from five million at the time of Jesus to one million at the time of Muhammad and then fall to under one million by the time of the Expulsion?
Considering the history of the Jewish people, why are the Jews urban dwellers of such professions as bankers, lawyers, physicians, and scholars, rather than Jewish farmers? Why have the Jews experienced one of the most scattered Diasporas in world history? When, how, and why did the Jews become “the chosen few?”
Some believe that medieval Christians in Europe forbade Jews from owning land so they could not be farmers and as they were were driven from one country to another the numbers dwindled. Others say that the Christians did not allow other Christians to be moneylenders, and Jews could not join guilds, so Jews filled the only job left open to them, and over time became bankers and financers. Furthermore, expulsions, massacres, and persecutions led to the shrinking Jewish population. The authors tell us that if you think you know the answers, think again, “the historical record suggests that none of these long-held views is valid.”
In The Chosen Few, Botticini and Eckstein present a novel theory (or should I say hypothesis) that three historical accidents mixing with an internal dictum forever altered the fate of the Jewish people. The three momentous exogenous events are: the destruction of the Second Temple in the first century, the establishment of the Muslim Empire during the seventh and eighth centuries, and the Mongol invasions through Asia and Europe in the thirteenth century. Internally, they argue, is the pronouncement by Yehoshua ben Gamla, who briefly ruled as a high priest during the first century C.E. after his wealthy wife purchased the position for him, demanded that Jewish teachers of small children be located in each and every land, region, and village and that fathers have the obligation to teach their children the Torah through these schools.
Employing the tools of the economist, including the concepts of utility, consumption, and marginal productivity, and drawing on contemporaneous records and modern scholarship, Botticini and Eckstein endeavor to show that those Jewish fathers who failed to heed ben Gamla’s pronouncement “dropped out” of Judaism, perhaps for another religion, because of the Jewish community’s shunning of illiterate families. On the other hand, those fathers who invested in the education of their sons, often a hardship in an agricultural-based economy set the stage for a smaller but more robust religion of highly literate people, making way for Jews to give up owning the land and working farms in favor of portable labor. “First- and second-century rabbinic Judaism, with its emphasis on literacy and learning, permanently endowed the Jews with some distinctive skills that enhanced their mobility and facilitated migration.”
From the ninth to the mid-thirteenth centuries, Jews roamed from Byzantium to Italy, from North Africa to the Iberian Peninsula, and all throughout Europe, where they settled as merchants and craftsmen. Beginning in the eleventh century, Jews began shifting their professions toward finance and money lending. Botticini and Eckstein ask why and respond with a history of money and credit in medieval Europe, thereby explaining and dismissing the prevalent theories, which include, Jews being barred from the guilds, Muslim and Christian bans on usury, persecution, and Talmudic prohibitions against selling wine to Christians. Among the reasons the authors suggest for why the Jews moved from merchants to moneylenders are: accumulated wealth, networking with other Jews, literacy, and the availability of two contract enforcing agencies, rabbinic courts and local authorities through charters granted to the Jews of that community.
The Chosen Few concludes with the thirteenth century Mongolian conquest of Asia, the Middle East and Europe, resulting in the collapse of late medieval civilization in much the same way as the sacking of Rome brought about the disintegration of western civilization. Many Jews reverted back to the ways of their ancient religion, farming and a pastoral life, and this new lifestyle, with its reduced economics, saw mass conversions to Islam of families that could not or would not invest in their children’s education.
Some readers might be put off by the math in small sections of chapters four and six, sections in which the authors change from prose to econometric equations. However, these sections can be skipped without loss of understanding the book’s central ideas.
To be sure, there are scholars who will summarily disagree with the authors’ fresh interpretations and hold that the traditional explanations are the correct interpretations. Yet, Botticini and Eckstein do not stint in presenting the historical record and are not cavalier in their analysis. The Chosen Few is novel in that it looks at Jewish history from the point of view of economic theory, rather than religious persecutions and thus becomes a fascinating and unique look at nearly a millennium and a half of Jewish life and Jewish history.
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Dr. Fred Reiss is a retired public and Hebrew school teacher and administrator. He is the author of The Standard Guide to the Jewish and Civil Calendars; Ancient Secrets of Creation: Sepher Yetzira, the Book that Started Kabbalah, Revealed; and Reclaiming the Messiah. The author can be reached through his website, fred.reiss@sdjewishworld.com.