The Promise and Peril of Credit takes an incisive look at pivotal episodes in the West's centuries-long struggle to define the place of private finance in the social and political order. It does so through the lens of a persistent legend about Jews and money that reflected the anxieties...

Contents: Preface -- 1. Defining the issues in religion and finance -- 2. The three Abrahamic religions -- 3. Attitudes of Judaism, Christianity and Islam to usury -- 4. Social policy in the Abrahamic religions -- 5. Economic framework of the Abrahamic religions -- 6. What the Abrahamic...

Introduction : longing, belonging and the making of Jewish consumer culture / Nils Roemer and Gideon Reuveni -- Jewish consumer culture in historical and contemporary perspective / David Biale -- German-Jewish spatial cultures : consuming and refashioning Jewish belonging in Berlin, 1890-1910 /...