This relative freedom to follow the logic of reason which their outsider status gave the Jews was nowhere better demonstrated than in their attitude to money. One of the greatest contributions the Jews made to human progress was to force European culture to come to terms with money and its power. Human societies have always shown an extraordinary unwillingness to demystify money and see it for what it is – a commodity like any other, whose value is relative. They tend, indeed, to attach absolute values to all commodities – failing to see that the value of a thing varies in time and space – and
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