ABSTRACT
The usurer's trade he will reprobate because, like all offences committed by Jews in the public eye, it is, in rabbinic phrase, "a profanation of the Name," inasmuch as it dishonours Judaism and its Divine Author. The usurer's trade, then, is a violation of both the letter and the spirit of Judaism. The professional usurer is branded by the Talmud with relentless severity. The usurer, they add, breaks all the commandments; his sin is as flagrant as murder. Deceit is always a flagrant sin, no matter who the victim of it may be. To cheat a Gentile is even worse than cheating a Jew, for besides being a violation of the moral law, it brings Israel's religion into contempt, and desecrates the name of Israel's God. For the world is only too prone to judge the Jew harshly, and to include the race in the blame which, rightly or wrongly, it metes out to the individual.
