In feudal society the Jews were not allowed to work the land. This led to them having mobility because they were not tied to the land like the Christian serfs that worked the land. It also led to the Jews living in urban communities with an internal autonomy. Life centered almost entirely in the Jewish community and security for the individual Jew was for all practical purposes unattainable without membership in such a community. (1) These communities were dependent on rabbinic law for order and stability and regularly accumulated wealth for providing tax revenue to Christian authorities who protected the community from assault and plunder. (2) The Jews in feudal society mostly relied on their occupation as merchants to obtain money to pay the communities taxes.
Under feudal order Jewish society was a radially organized network of essentially autonomous but intimately connected urban communities, by necessity egalitarian in social philosophy, that accorded highest social status only to men who combined religious learning and piety with commercial talent and political wisdom. (3) The need to share the expense of extraordinary or even ordinary taxes levied by an external power to whom the communities were collectively responsible was often at the root of attempts to organize and coordinate the autonomous communities. (4) These communities regulated just about everything in their social world, such as the raising of funds, through taxation, to cover all expenses and financial obligations; and the development and administration of communal, charitable, educational, and religious institutions, for probably the first time in history exclusively on Jewish law. (5) Thus rabbinic scholarship was not a peripheral interest, not a mere luxury for the Jews of Northern Europe, but the mainspring of their being, the essence of life itself. (6) Not only were communal policies instituted based on rabbinic law, but also based on consensus from the community.
In order to survive Jewish communities relied on relationships with the local count and bishop. To maintain good relations with these men the Jewish communities paid taxes. Since taxes were assessed on the community as a corporate entity, it was the responsibility of community leaders to collect the required amounts and to pay in lump sums. (7) In return for dependable revenue as well as desirable trade commodities that might not otherwise be obtainable these men would protect the Jews. (8)
The source of the tax money was the Jewish merchants. A remarkable feature of this period was the fact that because many prosperous merchants were also recognized rabbinic scholars, large gatherings of merchants presented opportunities for legal and political discussions among men who were responsible for rabbinic legislation. (9) Markets were thus not just major economic events, but and intrinsic feature of Jewish social life. (10)
The Jewish merchants were not only important to the Jewish community, but also the Christian feudal society. Unlike most Christian in feudal society the Jews had a great range of mobility across kingdoms. They were the principle, and until the end of the tenth century virtually the only, people engaged in an export-import trade that linked France and the Rhineland with England, Italy, Spain, North Africa, Byzantium, Hungary, Poland, Russia, and other distant locations extending into the Orient. (11)
Jews living within feudal society experienced relative freedom of mobility and freedom to rule themselves. The Jews were able to be ruled almost exclusively based on their own laws made in consensus and based on rabbinic law. The communities as a whole were responsible for paying taxes to the rulers of the area they lived in. The ability to successfully pay these taxes was mostly based on the Jews mobility that allowed them to do trade in far away lands to gain wealth.
Endnotes
1. Leonard B. Glick, Abraham’s Heirs: Jews and Christians in Medieval Europe (Syracuse: Syracuse UP, 1999) 65-66.
2. Glick 69.
3. Glick 65.
4. Anna Foa, The Jews of Europe after the Black Death (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2000) 64.
5. Glick 67.
6. Glick 68.
7. Glick 66.
8. Glick 66.
9. Glick 70.
10. Glick 70.
11. Glick 69.
