Biblical Prohibition

The Torah generally permits one to earn a profit by renting out moveable objects or land which are to be returned at the end of the lease. The owner is permitted to charge a fee for risking attrition or loss of the article due to unforeseen accidents [Y.D. 176:1].

Nevertheless, the Torah forbids earning a profit from a brother-in-faith in an arrangement where the item(s) lent may be consumed by the borrower on condition that the borrower return the article's likeness even in a case of an unforeseen accident. This is called ribbis [Y.D. 176:1 ].

Talmudic Limited Extension

To ensure that people would not form a habit of ribbis lending, the Talmud extends this prohibition to include unnecessary profit earning through lending to people of all creed and faiths [Y.D. 159: 1].

The Catholic Church

As the Catholic church overtook Europe and stripped the Jews of the right to learn a trade, own real estate; one of the only options for stable income became money lending and tax collecting .

The Jewish Response

As a result of the constricting Jew laws, in addition to the excessive unfair Jewish tax burdens;  lending for a profit to the general population became necessary for which the rabbinic prohibition never outlawed taking interest from the general populace under such circumstances.  If not for the restrictive Jew laws, the Jews would have not been permitted to lend with interest indiscriminately to the general populace.  

Thus, the typical stereotypes and anti-Semitic satire of the Jewish money lender was a direct result of the restrictive Jew laws that the Christians imposed on them.

The Court Jew

In fact, the church and the catholic monarchs themselves encouraged the phenomenon of Jewish money lenders, though it often caused the ire and jealousy of the general populace.

Up until the 1545  "An Act Against Usurie" (37 H. viii 9) of King Henry VIII of England, Christian societies forbade Christians to lending for any interest to anyone.  The Christians doomed anyone taking interest as going to hell. They had no problem if the Jews went to hell because according to the Christian farce, the Jews were heading there anyway. Thus,  the Church permitted Christians to borrow for interest from Jews.

This phenomenon was a life saver for the medieval monarchs. The monarchs encountered problems financing their war expenditures and their attempting to stretch their control, which they solved through eagerly appointing a Court Jew.

The Court Jew had connections to Jews across the world. They had organizational skills and being "hell-bound" anyway, were able to earn money for the government by lending for interest and giving a kickback to the State and the church.  They were like the Jewish "Shabbos goy" for the State.

Anti-Semitism

The general populace eagerly took advantage of the Jewish lending capacity too. While at times the borrowers paid a high price for the loans; other times they were able to  "legally" absolve themselves from paying the entire debt to the Jew as is in Shakespeare's anti-Semitic book The Merchant of Venice.  

Back to the Torah

The Torah forbids charging interest between brothers-in-faith or achicha! Willingly accepting the Torah created a fraternity between brethren of faith to lend each other for free.

What about a Jew who rebels against his brothers-in-faith and willingly divorces him/herself from this fraternity?

The Talmud says that generally a Jew remains a Jew no matter what his or level of mitzvah observance may be. The mitzvos that apply between "brothers" include observant and non-observant Jews [Maseches Sanhedrin 44a].  

This includes both Jews who were not raised amongst Torah observant Jews or Jews who were indoctrinated with anti-Torah attitudes from their youth. While they do not fulfill the Torah's commandments, they have not rebelled against the Torah and as such remain "your brother"[Maseches Shabbos 68b, Rambam Hilchos Shgagos 2:6, Rambam P. Hamishnayos Chulin 1:2, Mahaduras Kapach, Y.D. 159: 3].

However, with respect to the laws of ribbis, a Jew who was raised in an observant family and rebelled to such an extent that he/she no longer affiliates him/herself with the Jewish people revokes his/her brotherhood right and severs him/herself from the protective fraternity resulting from the people's accepting the Torah at Sinai [Rambam P. Hamishnayos Chulin 1:2, Mahaduras Kapach]. 

It is important to underscore though; in contrast to rebellious parents, their children who were raised within an anti-observant environment are considered brothers. Their non-observance is simply a result of their upbringing and not a result of a conscious rebellion.  

Thus, nowadays, as most non-observant Jews are simply a by-product of  their upbringing, one must be careful not to illegally lend or borrow with interest from Jewish banks or individuals, regardless of the owner's level of observance [Y.D. 159: Sha"ch 8].  

While one who willfully rebels against the Torah loses the fraternity protection; whereby a "Jewish brother" may lend him/her with interest, the rebel still may not lend other Jews with interest. A Jew cannot opt out of Torah observance. His/her Torah responsibilities are a fact and remain, irrespective of whether or not he/she chooses to observe them.

The Marranos

The laws in 14th and 15th century Spain became increasingly oppressive toward the Jews. Hundreds of thousands chose expulsion, death, and torture rather than give up their faith. Many others opted to convert.  

Rambam rules that under normal circumstances a Jew is required to give up his life in order not to transgress one of the three cardinal sins [Rambam Yesodei HaTorah 5:2].

Nonetheless, if a Jew failed to live up to the calling and buckled under pressure, while he desecrated G-d's Name, he is not punished for his wrongdoings because he was forced. Nonetheless, if he has the ability to escape and opts not too, he will inherit the deepest depths of Purgatory [ibid. 5: 4].

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The conversios as they were called, were divided into various different categories.   

We will highlight four below.

1) There were those who knowing better, eagerly embraced Christianity, and vehemently  turned against  their former Jewish brethren.  In fact, the evil Tomás de Torquemada, the Grand Inquisitor was himself a descendant of conversios. In the fifteen years under his direction, the Spanish Inquisition grew from the single tribunal at Seville to a network of two dozen offices. He was responsible for the death of thousands of Jews.

2) The second group openly professed to be Christian but practiced Judaism in hiding. After escaping, they reaffirmed their full commitment to Judaism. Almost all of the Marranos who escaped to Holland officially resumed their observance and practice of Judaism openly. After a period of time they were integrated into the community. In Turkey, R. Eliyahu Mizrachi rallied the exiled Marranos around him and succeeded in re-assimilating them into the Jewish community.

3) A third group were those who practiced Christianity in public, kept whatever Jewish traditions they were able to keep in private but remained genetically Jewish by marrying cousins for generations.

4) A fourth group, were those who practiced Christianity in public, kept whatever Jewish traditions they were able to keep in private, passed the traditions down, but swiftly intermarried with the general population.

Ribbis to Marranos/Conversios

So was a practicing Jew permitted to lend a conversio with interest?

A practicing Jew could not lend with interest to a Marrano who was waiting to reaffirm his public commitment to Judaism would the opportunity avail itself.

Nor could a practicing Jew lend with interest to Jewish children who grew up in a Marrano upbringing and as a result did not adhere to the Torah.

Nor could a practicing Jew lend a Marrano who tried to remain affiliated to Judaism as much as possible.

However, a practicing Jew could lend with interest to a renegade Jew who was raised amongst Torah Jews and later rebelled against his Jewish brethren, no longer considering him/herself Jewish as well as to one who's mother was a gentile [Shu"t HaRivash 4, 10, 14].

And as stated, a conversio is never permitted to lend another Jew with interest.

Columbus & the Abarbanel: A Jew? In Search for a Jewish Homeland? Ribbis?

Let's read this CNN Report May 24, 2012:

"Everybody knows the story of Columbus, right? He was an Italian explorer from Genoa who set sail in 1492 to enrich the Spanish monarchs with gold and spices from the orient. Not quite.

For too long, scholars have ignored Columbus' grand passion: the quest to liberate Jerusalem from the Muslims.

During Columbus' lifetime, Jews became the target of fanatical religious persecution. On March 31, 1492, King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella proclaimed that all Jews were to be expelled from Spain. The edict especially targeted the 800,000 Jews who had never converted, and gave them four months to pack up and get out.

The Jews who were forced to renounce Judaism and embrace Catholicism were known as "Conversos," or converts. There were also those who feigned conversion, practicing Catholicism outwardly while covertly practicing Judaism, the so-called "Marranos," or swine.

Tens of thousands of Marranos were tortured by the Spanish Inquisition. They were pressured to offer names of friends and family members, who were ultimately paraded in front of crowds, tied to stakes and burned alive. Their land and personal possessions were then divvied up by the church and crown.

Recently, a number of Spanish scholars, such as Jose Erugo, Celso Garcia de la Riega, Otero Sanchez and Nicholas Dias Perez, have concluded that Columbus was a Marrano, whose survival depended upon the suppression of all evidence of his Jewish background in face of the brutal, systematic ethnic cleansing.

Columbus, who was known in Spain as Cristóbal Colón and didn't speak Italian, signed his last will and testament on May 19, 1506, and made five curious -- and revealing -- provisions.

Two of his wishes -- tithe one-tenth of his income to the poor and provide an anonymous dowry for poor girls -- are part of Jewish customs. He also decreed to give money to a Jew who lived at the entrance of the Lisbon Jewish Quarter.

On those documents, Columbus used a triangular signature of dots and letters that resembled inscriptions found on gravestones of Jewish cemeteries in Spain. He ordered his heirs to use the signature in perpetuity.

According to British historian Cecil Roth's "The History of the Marranos," the anagram was a cryptic substitute for the Kaddish, a prayer recited in the synagogue by mourners after the death of a close relative. Thus, Columbus' subterfuge allowed his sons to say Kaddish for their crypto-Jewish father when he died. Finally, Columbus left money to support the crusade he hoped his successors would take up to liberate the Holy Land.

Estelle Irizarry, a linguistics professor at Georgetown University, has analyzed the language and syntax of hundreds of handwritten letters, diaries and documents of Columbus and concluded that the explorer's primary written and spoken language was Castilian Spanish. Irizarry explains that 15th-century Castilian Spanish was the "Yiddish" of Spanish Jewry, known as "Ladino." At the top left-hand corner of all but one of the 13 letters written by Columbus to his son Diego contained the handwritten Hebrew letters bet-hei, meaning b'ezrat Hashem (with God's help). Observant Jews have for centuries customarily added this blessing to their letters. No letters to outsiders bear this mark, and the one letter to Diego in which this was omitted was one meant for King Ferdinand.

In Simon Weisenthal's book, "Sails of Hope," he argues that Columbus' voyage was motivated by a desire to find a safe haven for the Jews in light of their expulsion from Spain. Likewise, Carol Delaney, a cultural anthropologist at Stanford University, concludes that Columbus was a deeply religious man whose purpose was to sail to Asia to obtain gold in order to finance a crusade to take back Jerusalem and rebuild the Jews' holy Temple....

Scholars point to the date on which Columbus set sail as further evidence of his true motives. He was originally going to sail on August 2, 1492, a day that happened to coincide with the Jewish holiday of Tisha B'Av, marking the destruction of the First and Second Holy Temples of Jerusalem. Columbus postponed this original sail date by one day to avoid embarking on the holiday, which would have been considered by Jews to be an unlucky day to set sail. (Coincidentally or significantly, the day he set forth was the very day that Jews were, by law, given the choice of converting, leaving Spain, or being killed.)

Columbus' voyage was not, as is commonly believed, funded by the deep pockets of Queen Isabella, but rather by two Jewish Conversos and another prominent Jew. Louis de Santangel and Gabriel Sanchez advanced an interest free loan of 17,000 ducats from their own pockets to help pay for the voyage, as did Don Isaac Abarbanel, rabbi and Jewish statesman.

Indeed, the first two letters Columbus sent back from his journey were not to Ferdinand and Isabella, but to Santangel and Sanchez, thanking them for their support and telling them what he had found.

The evidence seem to bear out a far more complicated picture of the man for whom our nation now celebrates a national holiday and has named its capital...."

Conclusion:

If this CNN Report is true, perhaps, now we can appreciate why the Abarbanel made sure that Columbus received...an interest free loan...from his Jewish financiers...

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A Seed of David: Lo yasur shevet m'yehuda  

Why are the British People still interested in financing the Queen of England?

Queen Elizabeth II and the Ramban:

In July 20-24, 1263, 5023, Dominican Friar (Shaul) Pablo Christianity, a convert from Judaism to Christianity, convinced King James I of Aragon to order a public debate between himself and the Ramban (1194-1270)as to whether J was the messiah, in an effort to convince the Ramban and his fellow Jews to convert. This was known as the Vikuach HaRamban.

The Ramban outwitted Pablo, but had to print the content of the debate to prove that he won. Pablo accused him of blasphemy, which resulted in Ramban's leaving Spain and ultimate aliyah to Jerusalem where he lived for the last three years of his life (1267-1270)[1].

The first question Pablo directed at the Ramban was:

Yaakov Avinu bestowed Yehuda with the royal dynasty he said, "lo yasur shevet m'Yehuda um'chkokek m'bein raglav ad ki yavo shilo"

"the staff will not be removed from the tribe of Yehuda and lawmakers from between his feet until the messiah comes

Is there a King or governance of David today? asked Pablo. It must be that the messiah already came.

Ramban responded:

Yaakov meant that the Kingdom will not be removed forever from Yehuda. Even if there is a time when Yehuda will not reign, ultimately Yehuda will regain the power.

In explaining this Pasuk in light of the galuth, Rashi offers another explanation:

 lo yasur shevet m'Yehuda These are the  Jewish Exilarchs, descendants of Yehuda (Zerubavel) who were appointed by the gentile governments  umechkokek mbein raglav These are the princes of Eretz Yisrael.

(One of the most important functions of the Exilarch was the appointment of the judge.)

Could History offer an Alternative Refute to Pablo? 

Now; we already documented how King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella had Jewish ancestors and Queen Isabella descends from Zerubavel, Shevet Yehuda.

Queen Elizabeth of the United Kingdom is a direct descendant of Ferdinand and Isabella.

Next: Queen Elizabeth married Prince Phillip of Mountbatten. Their oldest child is Prince Charles heir apparent to the throne.

In addition to Elizabeth inheriting Davidic blood from Isabella, Prince Phillip traces his ancestry on his mother's side back to Countess Julie von Hauke (Julia Brody) who according to the Royal historians was a descendant of R. Nachman of Breslav and The Alter Lubavitcher Rebbe and was raised in the Royal palace after her parents died, as well as other lines which trace him back to the Exilarchs. R. Nachman as well as the Exilarchs are from Dovid Hamelech. Thus, Phillip, and Prince Charles and family have royal Davidic blood on many sides.  

That being said, we can postulate another possible explanation to the Pasuk, to counter Pablo's argument. Of course, this is a mere postulation and I am ready to back down if I am legitimately proven wrong.  

The language of Pasuk umechokeik mbein raglav and the lawmaker from between his legs is quite interesting. History and current events are showing us that the Davidic line of royalty still exists today. While not necessarily halachically shevet Yehuda, the monarchs today are from between  Yehuda's legs and many may perhaps be Jewish if their mothers are Jewish all the way up.

 No! Messiah has not yet come, but the Pasuk is as true as ever. G-d creates the universe, world events and politics in accordance with the Torah. So while the Western World has embraced democracy, G-d keeps the English taxpayers still awed by the English monarchy and willing to fund 450 of the 1200 staff members of the Royal Household in various residences around the United Kingdom, which may very well prevail ad ki yavo shilo.

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Another fascinating observation:  

While King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella wished to destroy the Jew, not only were they unsuccessful, but the Jewish presence in Eretz Yisrael began a revival as a result of the Spanish Expulsion. The few hundred Sephardic Jews who managed to reach Eretz Yisrael, by and large settled in Tzefas and the Upper Gallilee which soon became the Halachic and Kabbala center of the World.

Who was responsible for this? King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella.

The United States was the first country to recognize the newly formed Jewish State which has been enabling Jews to return to Eretz Yisrael.

Here are some famous quotations from  Harry Truman and Woodrow Wilson

"This government has been informed that a Jewish state has been proclaimed in Palestine, and recognition has been requested by the provisional government thereof. The United States recognizes the provisional government as the de facto authority of the new State of Israel."    (Granting de-facto recognition to Israel, May 14, 1948)

       (Speech for Conference of the National Jewish Welfare Board, October 17, 1952)

Woodrow Wilson (1913-1921)

      (Reaction to the Balfour Declaration)

Also, John Adams, John Quincy Adams and President Lincoln expressed a dream that the Jewish people would once again be given Palestine as their homeland.

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Conclusion: A Scion of David instrumental in Jews returning to Eretz Yisrael

So we see, that the United States of America played a pivotal role in the Jewish development in Eretz Yisrael. This too was a result of Columbus' voyage which was a result of the Anti -Jewish laws imposed by King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella.

Ironically, and against their will, but Isabella, a scion of David was the pivotal historical individual responsible for the returning of multitudes of Jews to Eretz Yisrael in two stages; both after the Spanish Expulsion and in the twentieth and twenty first century.

The Ways of Hashem are Hidden and His Calculations are different than man's. G-d's Word is Eternal.

We wait patiently until the true scion of David, the King Moshiach will appear and bring all of us back to Eretz Yisrael under G-d's Dominion.