“In fact, the ‘land’ cliché is far more convenient than explanatory. Indeed, it’s been directly challenged by the recent scholarship of Maristella Botticini of Bocconi University and Zvi Eckstein of Tel Aviv University, who point out that the timeline simply doesn’t jibe: Jews in Europe abandoned agrarian pursuits long before there were any landowning restrictions, and Jews in the Muslim world did so even though there never were any such restrictions. In Botticini and Eckstein’s telling, Jews who were super into being Jews were also super into traditional Jewish mandates like literacy and the education of sons. Armed with literacy and education, these Jews found they could make a lot more money away from the farm.”
“As UC Berkeley’s Professor John Efron points out, in the 1600s educated Polish Jews (doctors, especially) could own land. So in an inversion of the ‘Jews & land’ cliché, rather than becoming white-collar because they were banned from owning land, becoming white-collar allowed Jews to own land. It should be added that Jews made up a hugely disproportionate number of European doctors even during the centuries when they were prohibited from attending the continent’s medical schools (half of all Western European doctors were Jews during the Middle Ages), another flaw in the theory that Jews were pushed into occupations based on Christendom’s restrictions.”
Anonymous Controversy 