http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gRdfX7ut8gw
because the Eastern-Polish/Ukrainian community was decimated by Bogdan Chmel'nitzky uprising (so many people were killed that that fact alone accounts for the higher incidence of Tay Sacs and other genetic diseases amongst Ashkenazic Jews)
That's highly unlikely. Regardless of how many were killed there were stil far more Ashkenazis in Poland/Ukraine than anywhere else. If you're looking for tiny and isolated communities which therefore have low genetic diversity they are sooner found in ghettos in West Europe.
In Eastern European communities, Jews did not intermarry with non-Jews like in Western Europe. If you mean that an Eastern European Jew could always marry someone from a village far away, that simply did not happen. People married within their village and oftentimes within their specific communities. Even nowadays, it is said that there are only seven Chassidic families in all of Crown Heights, NY (discounting the newcomers — i.e., by the time of immigration of this Chassidic group to Crown Heights, there were about seven families; my rabbi from New Orleans, for example, is related to almost all of Crown Heights).
Anyway, I heard this during a talk by a Harvard geneticist studying Tay Sacs.
Jews begun to marry non-Jews in West Europe sooner than in East Europe, but on the whole intermarriage was an option for a very short period of time Jews spent in Europe in either case.
FlyingAxe: Judaism still held some norms that impeded a fully free market, norms that didn’t apply to relations with gentiles. Well, to some degree you're right, but there is another way to look at it: Judaism is basically pro–free market, but when one has dealing with your family (which, for a Jew, includes all Jews), there are additional considerations. For instance, even among many libertarians, one would consider it strange to charge interest when giving a loan to your parents or siblings. If your brother owns a field next to yours, and you're selling your field, it makes sense to say that it's nice to offer it to your brother first (considering he is willing to pay the market price), so that he can expand his field. Etc. It still means that one has to be fair in business dealings with non-Jews (one cannot commit theft, fraud, one has to pay for damages, etc.), but one does not have to go above and beyond free-market relations. But to a large degree, this discussion is academic. At a certain point, rabbis recognized necessity of banking. They created a legal loophole called heter iska that allowed Jews to lend money to other Jews for interest. They also created a mechanism that allowed debts to continue to be binding even after the Jubilee year. Etc. So, while it is still forbidden for me to charge interest from my mom for borrowing $100, if I really wanted to lend someone a significant amount of money (or borrow it) with interest, we could go to a rabbi and fill out this form in front of witnesses.
Judaism still held some norms that impeded a fully free market, norms that didn’t apply to relations with gentiles.
Well, to some degree you're right, but there is another way to look at it: Judaism is basically pro–free market, but when one has dealing with your family (which, for a Jew, includes all Jews), there are additional considerations. For instance, even among many libertarians, one would consider it strange to charge interest when giving a loan to your parents or siblings. If your brother owns a field next to yours, and you're selling your field, it makes sense to say that it's nice to offer it to your brother first (considering he is willing to pay the market price), so that he can expand his field. Etc.
It still means that one has to be fair in business dealings with non-Jews (one cannot commit theft, fraud, one has to pay for damages, etc.), but one does not have to go above and beyond free-market relations.
But to a large degree, this discussion is academic. At a certain point, rabbis recognized necessity of banking. They created a legal loophole called heter iska that allowed Jews to lend money to other Jews for interest. They also created a mechanism that allowed debts to continue to be binding even after the Jubilee year. Etc.
So, while it is still forbidden for me to charge interest from my mom for borrowing $100, if I really wanted to lend someone a significant amount of money (or borrow it) with interest, we could go to a rabbi and fill out this form in front of witnesses.
Ah, you see, we may find some common ground. This ‘you do not trade freely within the tribe’ thing is very, very widespread in every culture, because it is genetically imprinted. Those communities that managed to find a loophole where those that prospered, all else being equal. This is why I see Judaism as crucial in planting the seed of a free society in the west. That seed was later taken on by some protestant sects, and even Judaism itself - from what you say - further extended the ‘zone of free trade’ later on.
Nowadays one is indeed looked down if he charges interest to friends and family, but this modern circle is very circumspect, and no one will say anything if you charge interest to unknown guys (though we seem to be relapsing back into tribalism with modern socialist ideologies). So, now we’re out from that ‘community trap’, but there was a time when only Judaism managed to find loopholes to it. Therein lies its great merit.
I just listened to this Church lecture from mises.org today: What is Morally Right About Economic Freedom by Rabbi Daniel Lapin. In there he basically asks the question "Why have Jews been successful in business?" and answers it in light of Jewish tradition.
I thought it was fantastic. I don't necessarily agree with everything he says (although I agree with the vast majority), and I think a lot can be added to the concept of Judaism and Capitalism from Talmud and Chassidic thought, but I think the lecture is much better than Dr. Gordon's lecture, both in content and presentation.
Of all the Church lectures, I enjoyed the one on Islam by Mustafa Akyol the most. Here was clearly someone who knew what he was talking about in terms of using the religion's sources and looking at them through the light of libertarianism. The lecture I linked to above is close second.
I don't really think there is much difference between the situation of Jews in Western Europe and in Eastern, except in Eastern Europe, the conditions in the 17th-19th centuries were similar to the conditions of Jews in medieval Western Europe. Jews were very involved in economic transactions where they were allowed to do so. Also, in medieval Europe, Jews also formed communes (ghettos), which were oftentimes self-governing. But this difference was proportional to Russian Empire lagging a few centuries in economic and social development behind Western Europe.
This. I'd say regions that were 'in-between' West and East, such as Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, were a good example of a halfway point between a gentile autarchy (szlachta) and serfdom contrasted with the large number of healthy cities and towns, which while not as booming as the west still fairly equaled them in overall size and wealth, providing plenty of outlets for trade and Jewish communities were unarguably among those to influence it.