CrossCurrents

Abstract:

Medieval Jewish economic law was in many ways fundamentally inhospitable to early capitalism. Practice ultimately changed, and law with it, but not without bitter dissent from some towering rabbinic authorities, or poskim. To be clear, these protagonists are by no stretch of the imagination leftist; their views on society and gender often run against the grain of progressive sensibilities, to put it mildly. But they do express with passion and clarity the stakes of capitalism's growth, and hold out the hope of another way. The goal here is not to restore the premodern ghetto, but to salvage a usable past from it for the daunting political road ahead.