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Economic Activities of German Jews in the Middle Ages

“…Later, landed property that was not vineyards becomes somewhat more common. In another case two Jewish brothers went to court over intermingling fields possessed by them 108 . As in other more modest cases, their title to the land was most probably acquired when lenders defaulted on their loans 107 .…”

“…Town-dwelling Jews also held to this attitude, nicely expressed in a Responsum by Meir ben Barukh of Rothenburg, where a woman categorically states: it never entered my mind to live in a village without Minyan (orderly religious services) and prayer 111 . In medieval society, work in agriculture and indeed life in the countryside was held to be socially and culturally demeaning.…”