David f, I agree with many of your points, but not all.
There is some evidence to suggest that the very early Christians used a 'tit for tat' approach to money lending; as the Jews were forbidden to lend at interest to other Jews but not to gentiles, so the Christians would only lend at interest to Jews.
In the fourth century, the clergy were forbidden to lend at 'usury'; this was extended to the laity in the fifth century.
In the middle ages, European kings effectively allowed themselves to 'own' Jews. As you have indicated, they were excluded from many guilds, and thus were effectively forced into the money lending business. When the Jew died, or was found to have made a transgression (like allegedly sacrificing a Christian child to the Devil) the King took his possessions. At at least one point, medieval kings demanded compensation from the Pope for loss, when one of their Jews was converted.
As you say, the Jews were replaced in the financial world by the Lombards, and Florentine bankers. These organisations did not (technically) charge interest. Instead, they imposed 'conditionalities' and compensations, including insurance against non payment.
As to whether the hatred of Jews was because of moneylending is a myth or not is debatable. This is to deny the influence writers and playwrights such as Shakespeare had on their audience. Just as the tax collectors rather than the publicans were despised in Jesus' day, it would have been easy for medieval squires to blame the Jews, when they put rents up.
I would suggest discrimination of any kind can engender hostility in simple minds. Today, students and people on social security are invariably asked: “are you an aboriginal, or Torres Strait Islander”. My own daughter has complained about not being aboriginal, as she has friends who get more financial support -as students- than she.
And the land rights issue really brought the rednecks out of the woodworks.

Just as an aside, might I say That the true Christian spirit does not despise tax collectors. It does despise greed, thieft, violence etc as practised by some Roman officials of Jesus time.

But Matthew writer of the first gospel in the Cannon was himself a tax collector.

Dear Foxy,
I wish I could have known your father. A couple of years ago I met some friends from times bygone when we were students in Prague. We reminisced, mentioning old names, when I suddenly realised I could no more remember the name of the University administrator on whose initiative I was sacked (they found out I was “religious” so I was not allowed to teach). I am still “proud“ of this loss of my memory.

Dear David f,
>> to me he was no longer a Jew <<
I understand this, since you do not accept Jewish ethnicity independent of the person‘s religion. To me an Australian, whose parents were Italian, hence grew up in an Italian environment, is an Australian of Italian ethnicity, even if he/she does not have “enough knowledge of Italian culture“, and, of course irrespective of his/her religion.

As for religion, Lustiger as a professional would know enough about Judaism and Jewish theology, irrespective of his Jewish ethnicity, in the same sense that e.g. a Chief Rabbi in a European country would know more about Christianity or Catholic theology than an average Catholic. Of course, Lustiger as a Christian - even a Christian “dignitary“ - would interpret the relation between Judaism and Christianity from a Christian point of view, the same as a rabbi would interpret it from a Jewish point of view. To correlate these interpretations, to decide where they can agree and where they have to agree to disagree, should be left to the specialists on both sides of the dialogue. I am certainly not a specialist on theology, Christian or Jewish.

(Martin Buber wittily pointed out that both religious Jews and Christians are awaiting the coming of the Messiah, only that for Jews it would be the first, for Christians the second, coming.)

Please let us leave it at that. I indeed appreciate it when you do not make sweeping statements like many others, but present interpretations of facts as your personal view.

Dear Grim,

If there had been unremitting hostility to the Jews as there was to the Albigenses they would have disappeared as the Albigenses disappeared. A book on that subject is "An Unacknowledged Harmony: Philo-Semitism and the Survival of European Jewry" by Alan Edelstein.

However, the hatred predated the money lending aspect. The money lending exacerbated the feeling but was not the source.

The source of anti-Semitism was Christianity which competed with Jews for market share of converts. The New Testament is a document that contains hostility to Jews even though Jesus was one. Some Christians chose to favour Jews as the people of Jesus. Anti-Semitism is almost unknown outside Christendom and Islam. My father fled Russia and lived in both China and Japan ninety years ago. He loved Japan. The people were friendly, and he worked in Kobe and Osaka. He was just another red headed, blue-eyed European. His Jewishness was not important to either the Chinese or Japanese.

Christianity was more a missionary religion than Judaism and was intolerant to those who refused its message. This scenario has been played over and over. Missionaries have attempted to convert Jews. Often they were murdered or had to flee when they refused. Jews expelled from Spain in 1492 found refuge in Poland and Ottoman Turkey. Until most of Poland was absorbed by Russia Jews lived well in Poland. Lithuania was a place of refuge being multicultural and with a non-Christian ruling class until 1386.

The Polish nobility wanted to keep the peasants in their place but were not too literate and needed a middle class. Jews were literate and could not aspire to the nobility so they were no competition. The nobility invited Jews to settle. Jews managed the estates, collected taxes and performed all the other middle class functions. In general peasants hated them.

Stanislaw Poniatowski, the last king of Poland, wanted to make Poland a democracy with education for all, universal suffrage and other goodies. This alarmed despotic Russia, Prussia and Austria who divided Poland between them. Czarist Russia was not good for the Jews.

Oliver
For me is hypocricy to call a system humanistc ONLY because it is secular, I am interested for a humanistic system than for a secular brutal system as the former USSR.
Some seculars use emppty words, play mind games and try to prove that the black is white!
It is imposible for me to accept that the secular America is humanistic! I saw last year in TV a man shot an other man on a main road in the midle of the day, hundrends of drivers saw the wounded man and none helped him or phoned to police or ambulance! Do we call this kind of society humanistic? I do not care at all for this kind of secular system!
It is time to learn to say say the truths, Secularism does not mean humanism may be it means barbarians!
At the end, all words will lose their meaning!
Antonios Symeonakis
Adelaide

Dear George,

For some reason it is important to make myself understood to you.

I accept Jewish ethnicity apart from religion. I consider the Chief Rabbi of Rome who converted to Catholicism ethnically still a Jew since he had been part of the community for many years and knew the community. Religious conversion does not erase this. I have changed some of my positions due to our interchange.

However, it is completely unacceptable to Jews to be told Catholicism is the completion of Judaism. Protestantism is not the completion of Catholicism even though Protestantism has much more in common with Catholicism than Catholicism has with Judaism. Whatever his ethnicity Lustiger was a Christian bigot.

My cousin, Renata, from Trieste although not a Catholic and living in the United States is still Italian since she was part of that community and maintains links.

Apparently there is no such thing as Swiss ethnicity. Italian, German and French Swiss each have their own ethnic associations in Australia and have nothing to do with Swiss of other ethnicities.

Dear Grim,

It is doubtful that Shakespeare (1564 – 1616) ever knew a Jew. They were expelled from England in 1290 and readmitted under Cromwell in 1656. Even though he didn't know Jews and was exposed to the prejudices of his day Shakespeare recognised the humanity of Shylock unlike other depictions of Jews at the time such as "The Jew of Malta" that portrayed Jews as totally debased.

Shylock:

Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions? - fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer as a Christian is? If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die?