Court Jew

In the early modern period, a court Jew or court factor (German: Hofjude, Hoffaktor) was a Jewish banker who handled the finances of, or lent money to, European royalty and nobility. In return for their services, court Jews gained social privileges, including in some cases being granted noble status. Court Jews were needed because usury did not apply to them, whereas it did to Christians.

Examples of what would be later called court Jews emerged in the High Middle Ages, when the royalty, the nobility, and the church borrowed money from money changers—among the most notable are Aaron of Lincoln and Vivelin of Strasbourg—or employed them as financiers. Jewish financiers could use their family connections, and connections between each other, to provide their sponsors with, among other things, finance, food, arms, ammunition, gold, and precious metals.

The rise of the absolute monarchies in Central Europe brought numbers of Jews, mostly of Ashkenazi origin, into the position of negotiating loans for the various courts. They could amass personal fortunes and gain political and social influence. However, the court Jew had social connections and influence in the Christian world mainly through the Christian nobility and church. Due to the precarious position of Jews, some nobles could ignore their debts. If the sponsoring noble died, his Jewish financier could face exile or execution. The most famous example of this process occurred in Württemberg, when—after the death of his sponsor Charles Alexander in 1737—Joseph Süß Oppenheimer was put on trial and finally executed. In an effort to avoid such fate, some court bankers in the late 18th century—such as Samuel Bleichröder, Mayer Amschel Rothschild, or Aron Elias Seligmann—successfully detached their businesses from these courts and established what eventually developed into full-fledged banks.

Court

A court is a tribunal, often as governmental institution, with the authority to adjudicate legal disputes between parties and carry out the administration of justice in civil, criminal, and administrative matters in accordance with the rule of law. In both common law and civil law legal systems, courts are the central means for dispute resolution, and it is generally understood that all persons have an ability to bring their claims before a court. Similarly, the rights of those accused of a crime include the right to present a defense before a court.

The system of courts that interprets and applies the law is collectively known as the judiciary. The place where a court sits is known as a venue. The room where court proceedings occur is known as a courtroom, and the building as a courthouse; court facilities range from simple and very small facilities in rural communities to large buildings in cities.

The practical authority given to the court is known as its jurisdiction (Latin jus dicere) – the court's power to decide certain kinds of questions or petitions put to it. According to William Blackstone's Commentaries on the Laws of England, a court is constituted by a minimum of three parties: the actor or plaintiff, who complains of an injury done; the reus or defendant, who is called upon to make satisfaction for it, and the judex or judicial power, which is to examine the truth of the fact, to determine the law arising upon that fact, and, if any injury appears to have been done, to ascertain and by its officers to apply a legal remedy. It is also usual in the superior courts to have barristers, and attorneys or counsel, as assistants, though, often, courts consist of additional barristers, bailiffs, reporters, and perhaps a jury.

Court (surname)

Court is a surname. Notable people with the surname include:

Government Center (MBTA station)

Government Center is an MBTA subway station located at the intersection of Tremont, Court and Cambridge Streets in the Government Center area of Boston. It is a transfer point between the Green Line and the Blue Line. With the Green Line platform having opened in 1898, the station is the third-oldest operating subway station (and the second-oldest of the quartet of "hub stations") in the MBTA system; only Park Street and Boylston are older. The station previously served Scollay Square before its demolition for the creation of Boston City Hall Plaza.

The station is closed from 2014 to 2016 for a major renovation, which includes retrofitting the station for handicapped accessibility and building a new glass headhouse on City Hall Plaza. The current renovation project will make the station fully accessible when it re-opens in March 2016. As of February 2016 the project is on budget and on schedule to reopen on March 26, 2016.

History

Scollay Square

The northern section of the Tremont Street Subway opened on September 3, 1898, with a station at Scollay Square. The station had an unusual platform design. The three-sided main platform served northbound and southbound through tracks plus the Brattle Loop track, one of two turnback points (the other Adams Square) for streetcars entering the subway from the north; a side platform also served the loopBoston Elevated Railway streetcars from Everett, Medford, and Malden (which formerly ran to Scollay Square on the surface) used Brattle Loop, as did cars from Lynn and Boston Railroad and its successors. The last of those, the Eastern Massachusetts Street Railway, used the loop until 1935.

Jews

The Jews (/dʒuːz/;Hebrew: יְהוּדִים ISO 259-3 Yehudim, Israeli pronunciation [jehuˈdim]), also known as the Jewish people, are an ethnoreligious group originating from the Israelites, or Hebrews, of the Ancient Near East. Jewish ethnicity, nationhood and religion are strongly interrelated, as Judaism is the traditional faith of the Jewish nation, while its observance varies from strict observance to complete nonobservance.

The Jews trace their ethnogenesis to the part of the Levant known as the Land of Israel. The discovery of the Merneptah Stele confirms the existence of the people of Israel in Canaan as far back as the 13th century BCE. Since then, while maintaining rule over their homeland during certain periods—such as under the Kingdom of Israel, the Kingdom of Judah, the Hasmonean Dynasty, and the Herodian Kingdom—Jews also suffered various exiles and occupations from their homeland—from Ancient Egyptian Occupation of the Levant, to Assyrian Captivity and Exile, to Babylonian Captivity and Exile, to Greek Occupation and Exile, to the Roman Occupation and Exile. These events subjected Jews to slavery, pogroms, cultural assimilation, forced expulsions, genocide, and more, scattering Jews all around the world, in what is known today as the Jewish diaspora.

Jew (word)

The term Jew passed into the English language from the Greek Ioudaios and Latin Iudaeus, from which the Old French giu was derived after dropping the letter "d", and later after a variety of forms found in early English (from about the year 1000) such as: Iudea, Gyu, Giu, Iuu, Iuw, Iew developed into the English word “Jew.” It thus ultimately originates in the Biblical Hebrew word Yehudi meaning "from the Tribe of Judah", "from the Kingdom of Judah", or "Jew". The Jewish ethnonym in Hebrew is יהודים, Yehudim (plural of יהודי, Yehudi).

Etymology

Yehudi in the Hebrew Bible

According to the Book of Genesis, Judah (יְהוּדָה, Yehudah) was the name of the fourth son of the patriarch Jacob. During the Exodus, the name was given to the Tribe of Judah, at least nominally descended from the patriarch Judah. After the conquest and settlement of the land of Canaan, Judah also referred to the territory allocated to the tribe. After the splitting of the united Kingdom of Israel, the name was used for the southern kingdom of Judah. The kingdom now encompassed the tribes of Judah, Benjamin and Simeon, along with some of the cities of the Levites. With the destruction of the northern kingdom of Israel (Samaria), the kingdom of Judah became the sole Jewish state and the term y'hudi (יהודי) was applied to all Israelites. When the word makes its first appearance in writing (in the book of Esther) its meaning has already expanded to include converts to the Jewish religion as well as descendants of Israelites.

Jew (disambiguation)

A Jew is a member of the Jewish people.

Jew may also refer to:

Places in the US

Other uses

See also