THE ISSUE of Jewish usury has provoked more heat than light, the object of both prejudice and apologetics. The issue does not depend on an imagined essence of Judaism, whose discovery was the figment of some scholar’s imagination, but on reasoned inference from the available evidence.

If we be guided by this evidence, a discussion of the Jewish attitude towards usury in the high and late Middle Ages must treat four kinds of data: legal sources (halakhic sources), ethical and philosophical writings, biblical commentaries, and the literature of polemics. Let us take each in turn. |115|

Jewish law divides all religious imperatives into two major classes: pentateuchal and rabbinic. Pentateuchal injunctions are those found in the Bible— as understood by the Oral Law—and are viewed as of Divine origin. Rabbinic imperatives are those instituted by talmudic sages. Their transgression is no minor matter, to put it mildly; nevertheless, they remain but man-made laws. The Bible states (Deut. 23: 20–1): ‘You should not lend at interest to your brother … To the foreigner you may lend at interest.’ As the word nokhri (which the King James Version (vv. 19–20) translates as ‘stranger’) was taken by the Oral Law throughout the Bible (not just in the matter of usury) as meaning ‘non-Jew’, interest from a Christian, or Muslim, or heathen for that matter, was viewed by the halakhah as being allowed by the Bible.

The Talmud reports one view that there is a rabbinic injunction against lending to Gentiles at interest, unless such a transaction is necessary for simple subsistence (kedei ḥayyav). Another opinion denies the existence of such an injunction and holds that usury to a ‘foreigner’/‘stranger’ is allowed without qualification.

In the great talmudic glosses of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, the Tosafot, written in northern France and of incalculable influence in the Middle Ages, one does find the widespread practice of lending to Gentiles put to legal question. The text reads (and this text is cited endlessly throughout the Middle Ages):

Rabbenu Tam says [Rabbenu Tam being the sobriquet given to the towering figure R. Ya’akov of Ramerupt, the creator of the dialectical movement in northern France; d. 1171] that we now allow taking interest from Gentiles because we rule like the other view in the Talmud that interest-taking from Gentiles is permitted …