Among them all is why Jews in Europe gained access to so many demanding professions at a time when (until the Napoleonic Code) they could not have citizenship, all across Europe.
The lack of citizenship was a curse to most but came with something positive for the brightest. No citizenship meant they could not get to political power, it was out of reach. But that also meant he smart ones could not be a threat to those in power, so those in power used them, assigning them roles - trading, international finance, farm and property management, tax collecting - rather than gives such roles to a citizen who could more easily use it to gain power for themselves. I read once how in Russia and the Ukraine there were two kinds of Jews - the poorest of the poor who had less than nothing, and the ones who managed all the serfs and the farms they farmed, for those who controlled all the land. The Jewish manager was rewarded well and got his children educated well, and the powers that be would let the Jew do all that but they’d never be a citizen, never be able to aspire to power in their own right.
RE: Among them all is why Jews in Europe gained access to so many demanding professions at a time when (until the Napoleonic Code) they could not have citizenship, all across Europe.
I guess the exception would be England. How do we explain the rise to the Prime Ministership of Benjamin Disraeli? Jewish by birth.
He became one of the most powerful and infuential men in Europe.
Is it because he converted to Christianity?