we were barred from most aspects of public life, but were allowed to do the jobs aristocracy always needs doing: the interpretation of laws, the calculation of ciphers, and brute labor. the german aristocracy of the medieval period when jews were mass migrating into central europe from the balkans in response to pogroms in the area were not bound by the same religious laws as catholics regarding charging interest on loans, and the german nobility needed loans to beef up their military.

and it’s not even like it was all jews who engaged in this practice, it was just the relatively well off ones. you should generally think of the early holy roman empire as being a real bad place to be jewish where we found ways to persist on the margins, which included some of us lending money