Aviya Doron

PhD candidate

Supervisor: Prof. Dr. Elisheva Baumgarten

The Hebrew University of Jerusalem

“My research explores risk and trust in Jewish-Christian economic interactions in the German Empire between 1280 and 1420, focusing on the questions of how risk was conceptualized, experienced and overcome in interreligious personal contacts, and which institutionalized mechanisms governing economic exchange helped build and sustain trust between Jews and Christians. Beyond the prevailing risks involved in any economic exchange at the time, transactions between Jews and Christians entailed further risks arising from religious tensions between them. Thus, I aim to elucidate how long-established mechanisms for risk mitigation, such as pawns, guarantors and written documents, were specifically put into practice in exchanges between Jews and Christians. I specifically focus on three cities in the German Empire: Frankfurt, Cologne and Nürnberg, each a significant commercial and financial center and each embedded in a different institutional setting in the decentralized German Empire.

I recently completed a section of the dissertation focusing on the pawning exchange. Much of Jews’ credit transactions relied on pawns as collateral. Consequently, an important gateway into the daily concerns and prevailing norms informing these transactions is through aspects of material culture. Of particular interest is how different calculations of risk and mechanisms for building trust were required for each distinct object given to Jews as pawn. I initially intended to write one chapter focusing on three types of pawns that involved unusual risks – horses, foodstuff, and clothing. However, as my research progressed, I discovered that focusing on only three objects limits the scope of the analysis. I thus decided that this chapter will be expanded into a three-chapter section focusing on pawns, which breaks down the credit transaction into its different stages; assessing the object’s value; determining provenance over the object; storing and maintaining it during the period of pawning; and finally, liquidating the loan. Focusing on the different point in the credit exchange enabled me to highlight how similar risks manifested themselves differently when different objects were involved.

In these two chapters, as in my entire PhD project, I draw on Latin and vernacular legislative sources, responsa literature, and a broad range of documents of practice: court records, complaints, punishment books, and more. I aim to contextualize the sources that specifically address Jews’ economic possibilities and limitations within the general economic conditions in each particular location. This facilitates a broad understanding of the conditions in which Jews operated and helps us ascertain whether these conditions resulted from interreligious tensions or simply reflected norms of behavior in the particular city. Furthermore, I draw on insights from institutional economics and social-network analysis in order to clarify how individuals were linked with the greater environment in which they operated and illustrate their embeddedness in a larger web of relations to both institutions and other individuals. I hope that Identifying and understanding mechanisms for evaluating risk and building trust can shed new light on the role of economic incentives in shaping the boundaries between religious conflict and daily economic and social contacts.”

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