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265
THE JEWISH ENCYCLOPEDIA
Agriculture

of Serapis, the god with a measure on his head, which suggested resemblance to Joseph, the seller of corn in ancient Egypt (Mommsen, ibid. v. 577; Suidas, s.v. "Serapis"). The Alexandrian Jews owned ships and were mariners themselves, undoubtedly owing to their living near the seashore and their being made exporters of corn by the Jewish farmers throughout Africa (see Grittz, "Gesch." i. 387, note 3). That the Jews of Alexandria were both farmers and ship- owners we learn from Philo (Contra Flaccum," viii.). But llerzfeld ("Handelsgeschichte des Jh. dischen Alterthums," pp.76-102) has shown that the Jews in Palestine, too, from the time of the Maccabees until the destruction of the state, exported, partly in their own ships, their produce of craps, oil, and wine, of balsam, honey, spices, and of drugs of all kinds, and that the Jews remained tillers of the soil in all parts of the Roman empire, while pursuing other trades as well, as may be learned from the fact that they bought slaves and converted them to Judaism until they were forbidden to do so by Constantius in 339 and by Theodosius in 303 (Collex Theodos." xvi. 8, §§ 4, 9).

In Arabin the Jews of Yemen were in the time of Mohammed thrifty farmers. The Jewish colonists of aibar especially were very successful in the cultivation of wheat and of palm-trees, before their whole- sale slaughter by Mohammed.

The Jews of Abyssinia have always been farmers, and the Ten Tribes are described as agriculturists in the mythical story of Elda lia-Dani.

The Jews of southern France pursued an agricultural life and were possessed of ships for their wine trude from the sixth to the ninth century (Cassel, article "Julen "in Ersch and Gruber, "Encyklopädie," xxvii. 61, 61; Grätz, "Gesch." y. 56, after Gregory of Tours. See also Stohle, "Juden in Deutschland," p. 7). In Languedoc many were owners of the vineyards (J. Bédarride, "Les Juifs en France." p. 87; see Saige, "Les Juifs de Languedoc Antérieurement au XIVe Siècle, 1881," p. 70). In the time of Charlemagne, Jews used to farm large tracts of land for their Christian neighbors who had no experience in agricultural life, but the legislative In Western Europe. measures of the king, intended to render the Jews as a merchant class more serviceable to the state, prohibited this (Bédarride, l.c., p. 55). It was especially the wine trade which they controlled (Depping, "Die Juden im Mittelalter," p. 53).

In Spain, in the early Middle Ages, the Jews were the chief agriculturists, and remained such, not withstanding Visigoth legislation prohibiting them from working in the field on Sunday, and buying slaves and the like (see Grlitz, "Gesch. der Juden," v. 70. 168). Under Egica, in 691, they were forbidden to own land and curry true in their own ships, but in 711 the Arabs, after the invasion under Al-Tarik. restored the rights of the Jews, and the latter were quick to learn from their Moorish neighbors how to improve the method of irrigating the soil by hydraulic machines and the like (see Bédarride, l.c., p. 91 and note 21 on p. 46). The great silk industry of the Spanish Jews (see Grillz, esrl. der Juden." v. 396 et seq.) makes it proluble that they had also plantations of mullerry-trees, or perhaps the Sicilian Jews provided them with the raw material.

In Portugal the Jews were always allowed to cultivate the land and produce wine, while they were forbidden to do so in Spain under Christian rulers (see Kayserling." Gesch. d. Juden in Portugal," p.58).

In Greece the dews during the twelfth century, says Hertzberg in his "Gosh, Griechenlands," were most prosperous as agriculturists. Benjamin of Tudela found Jews inhabiting the vicinity of Mount Parassus occupied in tilling the soil ("Travels," ed. Asher, p. 16). In Italy the Jews were encouraged by Pope Gregory V. to be owners of land, though he would not rimntenance their having Christian slaves (Güdemann," Gesch. d. Jnd. Cultur in italien," 1.30). The Jews, first of Greece, then of Italy, de- voted particular care to the culture of silk, which in- volved the plantation of mulberry-trees, and helped toward the improvement of land and commerce (see Grätz. "Gesch." v. 272, note 4, und Güdemann, "Gesch. d. Jüd. Cultur in Italien," p. 240).

In his Gesch, d. Jüd. Cultur in Italien," p. 52, Güdemann calls attention to the warnings of the work Pirḳe Rabbi Eliezer against the wandering life of the truder, wherein occurs this sentener, A. ii.: "God particularly promised fertility of the land to the Israelites in order that they might lead a contented and quiet domestic life, and not be required to travel about from town to town."

In Germany the Jews, being compelled by the Jewish law, which forbids the use of non-dewish wine, to manufacture their own, produced sufficient In Central and Eastern Europe.to sell some of their own wine to non-Jews also. A decree of Henry IV. permitted the Jews to sell their own wine and drugs—revoking thereby one of Charlemagne forbidding the sale of the same (see Stobbe, Gesch. d. Juden in Deutsch. land, p. 231, note 90). Henry IV. also permitted the Jews of Speyer to own vineyards and gardens, which fact makes it probable that they superintended the work themselves. The dews of Silesia, Austria, Switzerland, and Frankfort-on-the-Main likewise possessed vineyards (see the quotation in Stobbe." Gesch. d. Juden in Deutschland." pp. 177, 276, note 171).

In modern Europe the Jews-partly under the impulse of the governments, partly of their own free will—have endeavored to reawaken their ancient love for agricultural pursuits. The Jewish communities of Warsaw and Kalish in 1842, in response to a memorandum by Prince Paskyovitch, organized societies for the promotion of Agriculture with ap- parently great success, for the time (see Jost," Neuere Gesch. ii, 293-313; Cassel, article "Juden," in Ersch and Gruber, p. 139). Still greater was the stress of such efforts made in Bavarin (Scheidler, "Juden Emancipation," in Ersch and Gruber, p. 307, note 5, where reference is made to statistics showing that more than 20 per cent of the Jewish population of Bavaria were devoting themselves in 1841 to agricultural and artisan pursuits).

Among the Jews in the Caucasus many were formerly large owners of orchards and vineyards; some produced wine, others a species of tubarro (Andrew, Zur Volkskunde der Juden," p. 281). According to J. J. Benjamin ("Eight Years in Asia and Africa," vil, 1958, pp. 96 et seq.), the more prosperous Jews in Kurdistan are farmers; they go with their wives and children to the fields and the vineyards in the morning, and return only in the evening. They literally observe the law of leaving the corners of the field and some of the grapes for the widows and orphans (Lev, xix. 9, 10).

On the virgin soil of America the Jews were among the pioneers of Agriculture. While Louis de Torres In America. introduced tobacco into use for civilized unkind (Kayserling. "Columbus," p. 95), Jews transplanted the sugar cane from Madeim to Brazil in 1548 according to Fishell; see M. J. Kohler. "Publ. Aut. dew. Hist. Soc." ii. 94) or in 1531 (Lindo, in . A. Kohnt's article, ibid. iii. 135, compare Joseph hu Kohen, in R. Gottheil's translation ibid. ii 1833) During the seventeenth