ABSTRACT
This chapter shows the effect which the social life of the ghetto produced upon the mind of the Jew. If there is a “Jewish mentality” it ought, therefore, to become apparent through an examination of the occupational aspects of Jewish life, and the place of the Jews in the division of labor of medieval society. The enforced confinement of the Jews in ghettos throughout the major part of the Middle Ages, especially during that brighter period of the Renaissance almost up to the beginning of the nineteenth century, left profound effects upon not only their bodies, but upon their minds. During the Middle Ages proper, however, the Jews played an important role in the intellectual life of Europe. The Jews of the pale, the Russian, Polish, and in part the Roumanian Jews, came, as a result, to be differentiated from those of Western Europe, the German, French, Dutch, and English Jews, in several fundamental respects.
