Jewish slave trade

Slavery was customary during the antiquity and the Middle Ages, and legislations commonly permitted the slave trade. According to the Jewish Law, Jewish slaves had the right of emancipation on the , and all slaves had to be freed after seven Sabbatical cycles on a Jubilee year. A slave who was taken to the Holy Land became free as soon as he touched the soil.

Allegations that Jews dominated the slave trade in Medieval Europe, Africa, and/or the Americas has been widely debated by scholars.

History

In 492 Pope Gelasius permitted Jews to introduce slaves from Gaul into Italy, on the condition that they were non-Christian.

Ibn Khordadhbeh in the 9th century describes two routes by which Jewish slave-dealers carried slaves from West to East and from East to West. Similarly, the Jews of Verdun, about the year 949, purchased slaves in their neighborhood and sold them in Spain.

The means by which Jews earned their livelihoods were largely determined by the restrictions placed on them by the authorities.
The Christian Church repeatedly protested against the sale of Christians to Jews, the first protest occurring as early as 538. At the third council of Orleans a decree was passed that Jews must not possess Christian servants or slaves, a prohibition which was repeated over and over again at different councils—as at Orleans (541), Paris (633), Toledo (fourth council, 633), Szabolcs (1092), Ghent (1112), Narbonne (1227), Béziers (1246). After this time the need of such a prohibition seems to have disappeared. Thus, at Marseilles, in the 13th century, there were only two cases of Jewish, as against seven of Christian, slave-traders It was part of St. Benedict's rule that Christian slaves were not to serve Jews.

Despite the ruling, many Christians trafficked with the Jews in slaves, and the Church dignitaries of Bavaria even recognized this traffic by insisting on Jews and other merchants paying toll for slaves.

Allegations and refutations

Allegations that Jews dominated the slave trade in Medieval Europe, Africa, and/or the Americas often appear in antisemitic discourse as a part of "Jewish domination" or "Jewish persecution" antisemitic canard. Medieval Christians made such allegations, claiming Jews controlled trade and finance and hatched plots "to enslave, convert, or sell non-Jews." Such allegations are denied by David Brion Davis, who argues that Jews had no major or continuing impact on the history of New World slavery.

One of the latest examples of such accusations are made in the Nation of Islam's 1991 book The Secret Relationship Between Blacks and Jews. These charges were widely refuted by scholars.

Jewish slaves

Jewish communities customarily ransomed Jewish captives according to a Judaic mitzvah regarding the redemption of captives (pidyon shvuyim). Knowing this, slave traders preyed on Jews.
In his A History of the Jews, Paul Johnson writes:
Jews were particularly valued as captives since it was believed, usually correctly, that even if they themselves poor, a Jewish community somewhere could be persuaded to ransom them. If a Jew was taken by Turks from a Christian ship, his release was usually negotiated from Constantinople. In Venice, the Jewish Levantine and Portuguese congregations set up a special organization for redeeming Jewish captives taken by Christians from Turkish ships, Jewish merchants paid a special tax on all goods to support it, which acted as a form of insurance since they were likely victims.

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