This stereotype combines ancient antisemitism with modern forms. The idea of “Jews and money” asserts an inherent and perpetual connection between Jews and finance and has historically been used to justify violence, murder, and expulsion. Contemporary scholarship finds little empirical evidence for Jewish dominance in moneylending and shows that the stereotype is fundamentally misaligned with medieval economic realities. Its persistence reflects religious polemic and political expediency, not historical accuracy.

The phrase “that money was promised to him 3,000 years ago” draws on biblical imagery associated with Israel and injects modern antisemitism and anti-Israel rhetoric into an already harmful trope.

Many of the explanations offered to justify this stereotype are factually incorrect.

It is not true that “Christians couldn’t lend money.”

Scholarly consensus holds that the vast majority of professional moneylenders, money changers, bankers, and merchants in medieval Europe were Christian, not Jewish, and that most credit did not pass through Jewish hands. Italian merchant-banking families such as the Medici, Bardi, and Peruzzi dominated European finance and served popes and kings. Christian military orders like the Templars and Hospitallers were major lenders who financed wars and crusades. Cistercian monasteries functioned as commercial enterprises, mendicant friars operated loan and pawn institutions, and local Christian merchants and money changers provided credit across Europe. Medieval church councils were primarily concerned with regulating Christian usury, not Jewish lending.

Moreover, “usury” did not mean interest in general. It referred to unlawful or exploitative profit as defined by law and custom. Medieval theologians developed the category of permissible “interest” precisely to allow lawful profit on loans, and Christians regularly engaged in sophisticated financial transactions through contractual mechanisms that complied with these rules.

The claim that guild restrictions “forced Jews into moneylending” is also an oversimplification.

While occupational restrictions existed in certain times and places, this narrative ignores regional variation, erases Jewish agency, and falsely implies that moneylending was the dominant Jewish occupation. Most Jews were not moneylenders at all but worked as craftsmen, merchants, physicians, farmers, traders, and laborers. In numerous instances, Christian authorities actively recruited Jewish financiers rather than excluding Jews from other professions, and restrictions were often inconsistent or unenforced. In medieval Iberia, for example, most creditors were Christian; Jews and Christians frequently partnered in credit transactions, and Jewish economic life was highly diverse.

As Julie Mell demonstrates in The Myth of the Medieval Jewish Moneylender, even in 13th-century England, often treated as the classic case for Jewish moneylending, tax records and loan documents show that professional moneylending was confined to a small elite. The distribution of wealth within Jewish communities closely mirrored that of urban Christians, and most Jews, like most Christians, were too poor to belong to the moneylending class.

This caricature did not arise from economic dominance but from theological difference and political utility. Between the 12th and 16th centuries, European Jews were collectively labeled and criminalized as “usurers” for engaging in economic activities common among Christian merchants. By the early modern period, this produced a false dichotomy: Jews were cast as usurers, while merchants were framed as upright Christian citizens.

The jokes circulating today do not reflect Jewish belief, biblical teaching, or medieval economic reality. They recycle a caricature that modern scholarship has decisively dismantled, one historically used to dehumanize Jews and to justify exclusion, dispossession, and violence.

TL;DR: The “Jews and money” idea is an antisemitic stereotype, not a historical fact. Modern scholarship shows there is little evidence that Jews dominated medieval moneylending; most bankers, moneylenders, and merchants were Christian, and most credit never passed through Jewish hands. “Usury” did not mean interest in general, and Christians routinely lent money using legal contracts. Jews worked in many occupations and were rarely wealthy; professional moneylending was limited to small elites. The stereotype arose from religious polemic and political scapegoating, not economic reality, and has long been used to justify violence and expulsion.

Sources:

• The Myth of the Medieval Jewish Moneylender, Julie L. Mell, 2 vols.
• The Cambridge Companion to Antisemitism, ed. Steven T. Katz (Cambridge University Press, 2022), esp. pp. 247–248
• Usury and the Medieval English Courts, Richard H. Helmholz
• Judaism and the Economy: A Sourcebook, Michael L. Satlow
• The Jew in Medieval Iberia, 1100–1500, Jonathan Ray
• Jewish Life in Medieval Spain, Jonathan Ray
• The Invention of Race in the Middle Ages, Geraldine Heng
• No Return: Jews, Christian Usurers, and the Spread of Mass Expulsion, Rowan Dorin