Subject: Re: Hmmmm
BTW - sure we got poor publicity in The Merchant of Venice - but we had already been expelled from England (and France and Hungary and Austria and Spain and Portugal and other places) centuries before Shakespeare was born

Yes, and it makes little sense to me. The explanation of usury, and the Rothschilds, seems recent and inadequate. Perhaps there were more groups kept separate, and easily expelled that I'm not aware of, but it seems that the Jews were well known for this - and the holocaust was horrific. It begins to make more sense if the Catholic Church felt somewhat threatened by Jews and helped instigate the expulsion from Britain. (Just reading a paper on this.) It seems that Italians took over lending money via loopholes.