The Chosen Few: How Education Shaped Jewish History, 70-1492

Maristella Botticini and Zvi Eckstein ()

in Economics Books from Princeton University Press

Abstract: In 70 CE, the Jews were an agrarian and illiterate people living mostly in the Land of Israel and Mesopotamia. By 1492 the Jewish people had become a small group of literate urbanites specializing in crafts, trade, moneylending, and medicine in hundreds of places across the Old World, from Seville to Mangalore. What caused this radical change? The Chosen Few presents a new answer to this question by applying the lens of economic analysis to the key facts of fifteen formative centuries of Jewish history. Classification-JEL: Keywords: Jewish, history, 70 CE, agrarian, illiterate, 1942, male literacy, education, urbanites, crafts, trade, moneylending, medicine, Old World, radical change, transformation, commercial expansion, business opportunities, worldwide Diaspora, religion Volume: Edition: 1 Year: 2013

Keywords: agrarian; Jewish history; literate; transformation; crafts; trade; moneylending; medicine; reading; studying; urbanization; literacy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013
Edition: 1
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

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