Jewish views on slavery

Judaism's religious texts contain numerous laws governing the ownership and treatment of slaves. Texts that contain such regulations include the Tanakh (Jewish Bible), the Talmud, the 12th century Mishneh Torah by noted rabbi Maimonides, and the 16th century Shulchan Aruch by rabbi Yosef Karo. The original Judaic slavery laws found in the Jewish Bible bear some resemblance to the 18th century BCE slavery laws of Hammurabi. The regulations changed over time, and in some cases the regulations contradict each other. Scholars are not certain to what extent the laws were generally followed, and some scholars suggest that some of the laws were aspirational guidelines. The Jewish Bible contained two sets of laws, one for Canaanite slaves, and a more lenient set of laws for Jewish slaves. In later eras, the laws designated for Canaanites were applied to all non-Jewish slaves. The Talmud's slavery laws, which were established following the biblical era, contain single set of rule for all slaves, although there are a few exceptions where Jewish slaves are treated differently from non-Jewish slaves. The laws include punishment for slave owners that mistreat their slaves. In the modern era, when the abolitionist movement sought to outlaw slavery, supporters of slavery used the laws to provide religious justification for the practice of slavery.

Biblical era

In antiquity, Jewish society - like all ancient societies - condoned slavery. Slaves were seen as an essential part of a Jewish household. It is impossible for scholars to quantify the number of slaves that were owned by Jews in ancient Jewish society, or what percentage of households owned slaves, but it is possible to analyze social, legal, and economic impacts of slavery.

The Jewish Bible contains two sets of rules governing slaves: one set for Jewish slaves (Lev 24:39-43) and a second set for Canaanite slaves (Lev 25:45-46). The main source of non-Jewish slaves were prisoners of war. Jewish slaves, in contrast to non-Jewish slaves, became slaves either because of extreme poverty (in which case they could sell themselves to a Jewish owner) or because of inability to pay a debt.

In biblical times, non-Jewish slaves were drawn primarily from the neighboring Canaanite nations, and the Jewish Bible provided religious justification for the enslavement of these neighbors: the rules governing Canaanites was based on a curse aimed at Canaan, a son of Ham, but in later eras the Canaanite slavery laws were stretched to apply to all non-Jewish slaves.

The laws governing non-Jewish slaves were more harsh than those governing Jewish slaves: non-Jewish slaves could be owned permanently, and bequeathed to the owner's children, whereas Jewish slaves were treated as servants, and were released after 7 years of service. One scholar suggests that the distinction was due to the fact that non-Jewish slaves were subject to the curse of Canaan, whereas God did not want Jews to be slaves because he freed them from Egyptian enslavement.

The laws governing Jewish slaves were more lenient than laws governing non-Jewish slaves, but a single Hebrew word, ebed (meaning slave or servant) is used for both situations. In English translations of the bible, the distinction is sometimes emphasized by translating the word as "slave" in the context of non-Jewish slaves, and "servant" or "bondman" for Jewish slaves.

Most slaves owned by Jews were non-Jewish, and scholars are not certain what percentage of slaves were Jewish: one scholar says that Jews rarely owned Jewish slaves after the Maccabean era, although it is certain that Jews owned Jewish slaves during the time of the Babylonian exile. Another scholar suggests that Jews continued to own Jewish slaves through the Middle Ages, but that the Biblical rules were ignored, and Jewish slaves were treated the same as non-Jews.

An example of conflicting laws is the law governing the release of Jewish slaves: Leviticus 25:40 describes release in the Jubilee year (every 50th year), whereas Exodus 21:2-3 prescribes release after seven years of service (see also Jeremiah 34:14).

Scholars are not certain how faithfully Jews obeyed the slavery laws. Jeremiah 34:8-22 describes, in very forceful terms, how God punished the Israelites for not properly following the laws on slavery, and that suggests that the laws were not followed very strictly.

Essenes

Slave ownership was widely accepted by the majority of early Jewish societies, but the Essenes were a small, ascetic sect that reportedly renounced slavery, although some scholars question whether the Essenes actually renounced slavery.

Talmudic Era

In the early Christian era, the regulations concerning slave-ownership by Jews apparently became the subject of some confusion, and efforts were undertaken to revise the slavery laws. The precise issues that necessitated a revision to the laws is not certain, but it could include factors such as ownership of non-Canaanite slaves, the continuing practice of owning Jewish slaves, or conflicts with Roman slave-ownership laws. Thus, the Talmud (circa 200-500 CE) contains an extensive set of laws governing slavery, which is more detailed, and different than the original laws found in the Jewish Bible.

The major change found in the Talmud's slavery laws is that a single set of rules - with a few exceptions - governs both Jewish slaves and non-Jewish slaves. Another change was that the automatic release of Jewish slaves after 7 years is replaced by indefinite slavery, in conjunction with a process whereby the owner could - under certain situations - release the slave by a written document (a manumission). However, historian Josephus wrote that the seven year automatic release was still in effect if the slavery was a punishment for a crime the the slave committed (as opposed to voluntary slavery due to poverty). In addition, the notion of Canaanite slaves from the Jewish Bible is expanded to all non-Jews.

One of the few rules that distinguished between Jewish and non-Jewish slaves regarded found property: items found by Jewish slaves were owned by the slave, but items found by a non-Jewish slave belonged to the slave owner. Another change was that the Talmud explicitly prohibits the freeing of a non-Jewish slave, which was stricter that the biblical law which was silent on the issue, and simply permitted slaves to be owned indefinitely. However, non-Jewish slaves could be converted to Judaism and then freed, in some circumstances.

It is apparent that Jews still owned Jewish slaves in the Talmudic era, because Talmudic authorities tried to denounce the biblical permission that Jews could sell themselves into slavery if they were poverty-stricken. In particular, the Talmud said that Jews should not sell themselves to non-Jews, and if they did, the Jewish community was urged to ransom or redeem the slave.

Female slaves

The biblical ability for fathers to sell their daughters into slavery was restricted by the classical sources, to extend only to pre-pubescent daughters, and only then as a last resort before the father had to sell himself; the sale was only regarded as complete when payment was received, or when a deed (referred to as the shetar) was written in the name of the daughter's father. Although the biblical text clearly differentiates between selling daughters with the intention of their marriage, and other forms of slavery, the Talmud argued that when a pre-pubescent girl was sold into slavery, their master had to marry her, or marry her to his son, when she started puberty; if the master failed to marry the girl, or marry her to his son, she was to be freed.

The classical rabbis instructed that masters could never marry female slaves - they would have to be manumitted first; similarly, they ruled that male slaves could not be allowed to marry Jewish women. By contrast, masters were given the right to the services of the wives of any of their slaves, if the enslaved husband had been sold into slavery by a court of law. Unlike the biblical instruction to sell thieves into slavery (if they were caught during daylight, and couldn't repay the theft), the rabbis ordered that female Israelites could never be sold into slavery for this reason.

Sexual relations with female slaves

Sexual relations between a slave owner and female slaves were apparently acceptable in the time of the patriarchs, and children resulting from such liaisons were integrated into the patriarch's Israelite family. Sexual relations with slaves became prohibited in later eras (Lev 19:20-22), but violations were reported even after prohibitions were instituted. The punishment specified in the Jewish Bible for sexually violating a female was the sacrifice of a Ram, but the punishment in Talmudic era was flogging and temporary excommunication.

Freedom

Manumission of a Canaanite slave was seen as a religious conversion, and involved a second immersion in a miqva. The Talmud made many rulings which had the effect of making manumission easier and more likely. The costly giving of gifts, on the occasion of manumission, is only biblically mandated in connection with automatic 7th-year manumission; the Talmud therefore restricted its compulsory performance to this circumstance only

In the biblical regulation, the price for buying one's freedom was set as the total fee for a hired servant, over the outstanding period of service, but the classical rabbis changed the price to be the original price for which the servant was purchased, pro-rated for the amount of service already worked; if the servant has become weak or sickly, and therefore worth less as a product, the price of freedom was to be reduced further, and it could never be increased for an increase in the servant's strength or skills.

Several prominent Jewish writers of the Middle Ages took offense at the idea that Jews might be enslaved; Joseph Caro and Maimonides both argue that calling a Jew slave was so offensive that it should be punished by excommunication. However, they did not condemn enslavement of non-Jews. Indeed, they argued that the biblical rule that slaves should be freed, if they had been harmed to the extent that their injury was covered by the lex talionis, should actually only apply to slaves who had converted to Judaism; additionally, Maimonides argued that this manumission was really punishment of the owner, and therefore that it could only be imposed by a court, and required evidence from witnesses

In Maimonides' opinion, manumission could not even be carried out by wills; this, however, was a technicality, as Maimonides still permits heirs themselves to be compelled by a will to carry out manumission of the deceased owner's slaves.

Voluntary manumission

Voluntary manumission is not mentioned by the bible, but the Talmud allowed masters to free slaves voluntarily by a number of mechanisms. Such manumission was to be formally executed by a written deed (the shetar shihrur), which must sever the dependency and servitude completely; if any of the master's rights were reserved, or the deed was written in the future tense, it would be invalid and ineffectual. These deeds would become effective as soon as it was transferred to a 3rd party, or delivered to the slave; however, if the master had sent the deed to the slave, it would become void if the master died before the slave received it. Possession of the deed was counted as prima facie proof of manumission, but the former slave was not allowed to work on land gifted to him by his former master, unless witnesses were able to verify it. Despite the general disregard for non-Jewish laws, writs of manumission written by non-Jewish magistrates were acknowledged to retain their validity under Jewish law.

Although, in their view, slave masters had previously had the right to revoke voluntary manumission, the classical rabbis instructed that it should no longer be permitted. Indeed, if the master merely says that he has freed his slave, the rabbis would not even allow him to repudiate his statement, instead compelling such a master to create a writ of manumission; even if the slave denies that he has been given this writ, he is still considered freed. Other symbolic acts were also regarded as freeing the slave: namely, if the master put phylacteries on the slave, gave him a free woman for a wife, or made him publicly read three or more verses from the Torah; if these acts were committed, it was compulsory for the master to give the former slave a writ of manumission

Treatment of slaves

The Bible's insistence that Israelite slaves should be treated more gently was expanded by the Talmud to insist that Jewish slaves should be granted similar food, drink, lodging, and bedding, to that which their master would grant to himself. Furthermore, the Talmud instructed that servants were not to be unreasonably penalised for being absent from work due to sickness. The biblical 7th-year manumission was still to occur after the slave had been enslaved for six years; extra enslavement couldn't be tacked on to make up for the absence, unless the slave had been absent for more than a total of four years, and if the illness didn't prevent light work (such as needlework), then the slave could be ill for all six years without having to repay the time.

The vague biblical instruction to avenge slaves that had died, from punishment by their masters, became regarded as an instruction to view such events as murder, with masters guilty of such crime being beheaded. On the other hand, the protection given to fugitive slaves was lessened by the classical rabbis; fugitive Israelite slaves were now compelled to buy their freedom, and if they were recaptured, then the time they had been absent was added on as extra before the usual 7th-year manumission could take effect.

However, slaves were often treated as property; for example, they were not allowed to be counted towards the quorum, equal to 10 men, needed for publish worship. Sadducees went as far as to hold slave owners responsible for any damage caused by their slaves; by contrast Pharisees acknowledged that slaves had independent thought. Slaves were unable to own property; anything found by them, or given to them, was regarded as the possession of their masters. Nevertheless, the Talmud instructs that adult slaves were not to be circumcised against their will, and they were not to be pressured, for more than a year, into agreeing to circumcision.

Maimonides and other halachic authorities forbade of strongly discouraged any unethical treatment of slaves. According to the traditional Jewish law, a slave is more like an indentured servant, who has rights and should be treated almost like a member of the owner's family. Maimonides wrote that, regardless whether a slave is Jewish or not, "The way of the pious and the wise is to be compassionate and to pursue justice, not to overburden or oppress a slave, and to provide them from every dish and every drink. The early sages would give their slaves from every dish on their table. They would feed their servants before sitting to their own meals... Slaves may not be maltreated of offended - the law destined them for service, not for humiliation. Do not shout at them or be angry with them, but hear them out". In another context, Maimonides wrote that all the laws of slavery are "mercy, compassion and forbearance"."

Converting or circumcising non-Jewish slaves

The Talmudic laws required Jewish slave owners to try to convert non-Jewish slaves to Judaism. Other laws required slaves - if not converted - to be circumcised and undergo ritual immersion in a bath (mikveh). This form of semi-conversion whereby the slave was circumcised and required to adhere to the negative Mosaic commandments (but not the full rigor of the Jewish law) was widely practiced. A fourth century Roman law prevented the circumcision of non-Jewish slaves, so the practice may have declined at that time, but increased again after the 10th century. Jewish slave owners were not permitted to drink wine that had been touched by an uncircumcised person, so there was always a practical need - in addition to the legal requirement - to circumcise slaves.

Although conversion to Judaism was a possibility for slaves, rabbinic authorities Maimonides and Karo discouraged it, on the basis that Jews were not permitted (in their time) to proselytise; slave owners could enter into special contracts, by which they agree not to convert their slaves. Furthermore, to convert a slave into Judaism without the owner's permission was seen as causing harm to the owner, on the basis that it would rob the owner of the slave's ability to work during the Sabbath, and would prevent them from selling the slave to a non-Jews.

Middle Ages

Slave ownership by Jews continued in the Middle Ages, including ownership of Muslim slaves. Jewish laws governing treatment of slaves were restated in the 12th century by noted rabbi Maimonides in his book Mishneh Torah, and again in the 16th century by rabbi Yosef Karo in his book Shulchan Aruch.

The legal prohibition against Jews owning Jewish slaves was emphasized in the Middle Ages yet Jews continued to own Jewish slaves, and owners were able to bequeath Jewish slaves to the owner's children, but Jewish slaves were treated in many ways like members of the owner's family.

Leaders of Christianity, such as Pope Gregory the Great (pope 590-604), objected to Jews owning Christian slaves, due to concerns about conversion to Judaism and the Talmud's requirement to circumcise slaves. The first prohibition of Jews owning Christian slaves was made by Constantine I in the fourth century. The Third Council of Orléans in 538 repeated the prohibition for Gaul. The prohibition was repeated by subsequent councils - Fourth Council of Orléans (541), Paris (633), Fourth Council of Toledo (633), the Synod of Szabolcs (1092) extended the prohibition to Hungary, Ghent (1112), Narbonne (1227), Béziers (1246). It was part of St. Benedict's rule that Christian slaves were not to serve Jews.

Europe & Mediterranean 1500 - 1800

Jews continued to own slaves during the 16th through 18th centuries, and ownership practices were still governed by Biblical and Talmudic laws. In European Christian nations, such as Portugal and Spain, Jews were prohibited from owning Christian slaves, so there was a demand for non-Christian (heathen) slaves, such as slaves from Africa.

Latin America and the Caribbean

Jews participated in the European colonization of the Americas, and they owned slaves in Latin America and the Caribbean, most notably in Brazil and Suriname, but also in Barbados and Jamaica. Especially in Suriname, Jews owned many large plantations. Many of the ethnic Jews in the New World, particularly in Brazil, were New Christians or Conversos, some of which continued to practice Judaism, so the distinction between Jewish and non-Jewish slave owners is a difficult distinction for scholars to make.

United States

Jewish slave ownership practices in the southern United States were governed by regional practices, rather than Judaic law. Many southern Jews held the view that blacks were subhuman and were suited to slavery, which was the predominant view held by many of their non-Jewish southern neighbors.

Many Jews living in the southern United States, where slavery was legal, owned slaves: one estimate is 25% of Jewish households in the antebellum south owned slaves. In South Carolina in 1790, 45% of Jewish households owned slaves, averaging about 5 slaves per slave-owning household. There were not many Jews in the South, and Jews accounted for only 1.25% of all Southern slave owners. Jewish slave owners included Aaron Lopez Francis Salvador, Judah Touro, and Haym Salomon.

Jewish slave owners were found mostly in business or domestic settings, rather than plantations, so most of the slave ownership was in an urban context - running a business or as domestic servants. Some Jews prefered white indentured servants, rather than black slaves. Yet there were some Jewish plantation owners, including Judah P. Benjamin.

Jewish slave owners freed their black slaves at about the same rate as non-Jewish slave owners. Jewish slave owners sometimes bequeathed slaves to their children in their wills.

Slavery debate among Jews

In the civil-war era, prominent Jewish religious leaders in the United States engaged in public debates about slavery. Generally, rabbis from the Southern states supported slavery, and those from the North opposed slavery. The most notable debate was between rabbi Morris Jacob Raphall, who endorsed slavery, and rabbi David Einhorn who opposed it. In 1861, Raphall published his views in a treatise called "The Bible View of Slavery". Raphall, and other pro-slavery rabbis such as Isaac Leeser and J. M. Michelbacher (both of Virginia), used the Tanakh (Jewish Bible) to support their argument. Abolitionist rabbis, including Einhorn and Michael Heilprin, concerned that Raphall's position would be seen as the official policy of American Judaism, vigorously refuted his arguments, and argued that slavery - as practiced in the South - was immoral and not endorsed by Judaism.

Virtually all southern Jews supported slavery, although some of that sentiment may have been due to fear of anti-semitic reprisals. Historian Betram Korn wrote: "Nor was there anyone among the many Jewish journalists, writers, and publicists of the Old South who questioned the moral, political, or economic justice of slavery."

Redeeming Jewish slaves

The Hebrew bible contains instructions to redeem (purchase the freedom of) Jewish slaves owned by non-Jews (Lev. 25:47-51). However, these instructions only began to be followed in the Greek and Roman periods. The Talmud contained similar guidance to emancipate Jewish slaves, but cautioned the redemeer against paying excessive prices since that may encourage "the Romans" to enslave more Jews.

Many Jews were taken to Rome as prisoners of war, but Julius Caesar, who was fairly friendly towards Judaism, appears to have freed most of them. Josephus, himself a former first century slave, remarks that the faithfulness of Jewish slaves, and former slaves, was appreciated by their owners; this may have been one of the main reasons for freeing them. Also, Jewish slaves held in Rome were sometimes freed by their owners because of "their unwillingness to break the laws of their fathers, they were unserviceable".

In the Middle ages, redeeming Jewish slaves gained importance and - up until the 19th century - Jewish congregations around the Mediterranean Sea formed societies dedicated to that purpose. Jewish communities customarily ransomed Jewish captives according to a Judaic mitzvah regarding the redemption of captives (Pidyon Shvuyim). Knowing this, slave traders preyed on Jews. In his A History of the Jews, Paul Johnson writes:

Jews were particularly valued as captives since it was believed, usually correctly, that even if they themselves poor, a Jewish community somewhere could be persuaded to ransom them. If a Jew was taken by Turks from a Christian ship, his release was usually negotiated from Constantinople. In Venice, the Jewish Levantine and Portuguese congregations set up a special organization for redeeming Jewish captives taken by Christians from Turkish ships, Jewish merchants paid a special tax on all goods to support it, which acted as a form of insurance since they were likely victims.

Jews in the slave trade

As slave traders

Jewish participation in the slave trade was recorded in the Middle Ages, starting in the 5th century, when Pope Gelasius permitted Jews to introduce slaves from Gaul into Italy, on the condition that they were non-Christian. In the 8th century, Charlemagne (king 768-814) explicitly allowed the Jews to act as intermediaries in the slave trade. In the tenth century, Spanish Jews traded in Slavonian slaves, whom the Caliphs of Andalusia purchased to form their bodyguards. In Bohemia, Jews purchased these Slavonian slaves for exportation to Spain and the west of Europe. William the Conquerer brought Jewish slave-dealers with him from Rouen to England in 1066. At Marseilles in the 13th century, there were two Jewish slave-traders, as opposed to seven Christians.

Ibn Khordadhbeh in the 9th century describes two routes by which Jewish slave-dealers carried slaves from West to East and from East to West. According to Abraham ibn Yakub, Byzantine Jewish merchants bought Slavs from Prague to be sold as slaves. Louis The Fair granted charters to Jews visiting his kingdom, permitting them to trade in slaves, provided the latter had not been baptized. Agobard claimed that the Jews did not abide to the agreement and kept Christians as slaves, citing the instance of a Christian refugee from Cordova who declared that his coreligionists were frequently sold, as he had been, to the Moors. Many, indeed, of the Spanish Jews owed their fortune to the trade in Slavonian slaves brought from Andalusia. Similarly, the Jews of Verdun, about the year 949, purchased slaves in their neighborhood and sold them in Spain.

Despite prohibitions against Jews owning Christian slaves, many Christians trafficked with Jews in slaves, and the Church dignitaries of Bavaria even recognized this traffic by insisting on Jews and other merchants paying a toll for slaves.

Classical regulations

The fear of apostasy was behind most of the classical rabbis' regulation of the slave trade. Despite the Bible allowing Israelite slaves to be owned by non-Israelite residents, the Talmud prohibited sale of Jewish slaves to non-Jews; although the Samaritans believed themselves to be the original Israelites, the rabbis counted them as non-Jews in regard to this regulation. Nevertheless, short temporary loans of slaves were potentially permitted; the Talmud argued that the sale of Jewish slaves to a convert or to a non-Jew, even to a non-Jewish temple, was to be upheld, but all Jews would then be required to buy the slave's freedom, whatever the price. Trade with Tyre, which had formally been significant, was now to be restricted to the slave trade, and only then for the purpose of removing slaves from non-Jewish religion

Other types of trade were also discouraged, including men selling themselves to women. The Talmud instructed that treating slaves as security for a loan, while not itself forbidden, must immediately result in the manumission of the slave in question. Religious racism by the classical rabbis meant that they completely forbade the sale or transfer of Canaanite slaves out from Palestine to elsewhere.

Allegations that Jews played a major role in the Atlantic slave trade

During the 1990s, conflict arose between the United States Jewish community and African-American community due to alleged Jewish involvement with the slave trade. An early controversial comment on that topic was made by professor Leonard Jeffries in a 1991 speech in which he said that "rich Jews" financed the slave trade, citing the role of Jews in slave-trading centers Rhode Island, Brazil, the Caribbean, Curacao, and Amsterdam. His comments drew widespread outrage and calls for his dismissal from his position.

One of the sources that Jeffries cited was The Secret relationship between Blacks and Jews, a book published in 1991 by the Nation of Islam. That book alleges that Jews played a major role in the African slave trade, and it became the source of tremendous controversy, and resulted in several scholarly works rebutting its charges. Professor Tony Martin of Wellesley College included The Secret relationship between Blacks and Jews in the reading list for his classes, leading to charges of anti-semitism in 1993.

Responses

Such allegations are denied by David Brion Davis, who argues that Jews had no major or continuing impact on the history of New World slavery. These charges were widely refuted by other scholars, as well. While acknowledging Jewish participation in slavery, scholars reject allegations that Jews dominated the slave trade in Medieval Europe, Africa, and/or the Americas.

According to a review in The Journal of American History of Jews, Slaves, and the Slave Trade: Setting the Record Straight by Eli Faber and Jews and the American Slave Trade by Saul S. Friedman:

Eli Faber takes a quantitative approach to Jews, Slaves, and the Slave Trade in Britain's Atlantic empire, starting with the arrival of Sephardic Jews in the London resettlement of the 1650s, calculating their participation in the trading companies of the late seventeenth century, and then using a solid range of standard quantitative sources (Naval Office shipping lists, censuses, tax records, and so on) to assess the prominence in slaving and slave owning of merchants and planters identifiable as Jewish in Barbados, Jamaica, New York, Newport, Philadelphia, Charleston, and all other smaller English colonial ports. He follows this strategy in the Caribbean through the 1820s; his North American coverage effectively terminates in 1775. Faber acknowledges the few merchants of Jewish background locally prominent in slaving during the second half of the eighteenth century but otherwise confirms the small-to-minuscule size of colonial Jewish communities of any sort and shows them engaged in slaving and slave holding only to degrees indistinguishable from those of their English competitors.

Curse of Ham used to justify slavery

See also: Curse of Ham § Early Jewish interpretations, and The Bible and slavery

Some scholars have asserted that the Curse of Ham described in Judaism's religious texts was a cause for the belief held by many Europeans that black Africans were inferior race, and was used as justification for slavery - citing the Tanakh (Jewish Bible) verses Genesis 9:20–27 and the Talmud. Scholars such as David M. Goldenberg have analyzed the religious texts, and concluded that those conclusions on faulty interpretations of Rabbinical sources: Goldenberg concludes that the Judaic texts do not explicitly contain anti-black precepts, but instead later race-based interpretations were applied to the texts by later, non-Jewish analysts.

See also

• Christianity and slavery
• History of slavery
• Islam and slavery
• Slavery in ancient Greece

• Slavery in ancient Rome
• Slavery in antiquity
• Slavery in medieval Europe
• The Bible and slavery
• Pidyon Shvuyim

References

• Abrahams, Israel: Jewish life in the middle ages, The Macmillan Co., 1919
• Benjamin, Judah P. "Slavery and the Civil War: Part II" in United States Jewry, 1776-1985: The Germanic Period, Jacob Rader Marcus (Ed.), Wayne State University Press, 1993.
• Blackburn, Robin (1998). The making of New World slavery: from the Baroque to the modern, 1492-1800. Verso. ISBN 1859841953.
• Davis, David Brion (2006). Inhuman bondage: the rise and fall of slavery in the New World. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0195140737.
• Faber, Eli: Jews, Slaves, and the Slave Trade: Setting the Record Straight. New York: New York University Press, 1998. ISBN 0-8147-2638-0
• Friedman, Saul S.: Jews and the American Slave Trade. (New Brunswick: Transaction, 1998. ISBN 1-56000-337-5)
• Friedman, Murray (2007). What went wrong?: the creation and collapse of the Black-Jewish Alliance. Simon and Schuster.
• Goldenberg, David M. (2003). The curse of Ham: race and slavery in early Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Princeton University Press.
• Goldenberg, David. "The curse of Ham: a case of Rabbinic racism?", in Struggles in the promised land: toward a history of Black-Jewish relations in the United States, (Jack Salzman, Ed), Oxford University Press, 1997, p. 21-52.
• Greenberg, Mark, and Ferris, Marcie. Jewish roots in southern soil: a new history UPNE, 2006
• Haynes, Stephen R. (2002). Noah's curse: the biblical justification of American slavery. Oxford University Press.
• Hezser, Catherine, Jewish slavery in antiquity, Oxford University Press, 2005.
• Korn, Bertram Wallace "Jews and Negro Salvery in the Old South", in Strangers and Neighbors, Adams (Ed.), Univ of Massachusetts Press, 1999 (pp 147-182).
• Lewis, Bernard. Race and slavery in the Middle East: an historical enquiry, Oxford University Press US, 1992.
• Rodriguez, Junius. The Historical encyclopedia of world slavery, Volume 1, ABC-CLIO, 1997
• Roth, Norman: Medieval Jewish Civilzation: an encyclopedia, Taylor & Francis, 2003.
• Schorsch, Jonathan (2004). Jews and blacks in the early modern world. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0521820219.
• Tertullianus, Qunitus Codex Agobardinus
• Whitford, David M. (2009). The Curse of Ham in the Early Modern Era: The Bible and the Justifications for Slavery. Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.

External links

• Jews and Slavery
• Excerpts from Slavery and the Jews. A Historical Inquiry By Eli Faber
• Jewish occupations Jewish Encyclopedia, 1906 ed.
• Slave markets in East Europe

 This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Singer, Isidore; et al., eds. (1901–1906). The Jewish Encyclopedia. New York: Funk & Wagnalls. {{cite encyclopedia}}: Missing or empty |title= (help)