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Now (at last) we come to "Jews & Barbers"
During the 1960s I was buying Reader's Digest and reading its fat issues cover to cover.
After the end of the Cold War, RD lost all its charm propaganda and is now as thin as a string bean.
One of the memorable jokes in an issue of RD went like this:
A Jewish villager in Russia goes to his District Commissioner of Police and complains:
"There are posters in my village asking for: DEATH TO JEWS & BARBERS"
"Why Barbers?"
That about sums up Christendom's antipathy to Jews.
No doubt Jesus was born in a Jewish family. His mother Virgin Mary and father Joseph were Jews. And the Gospels refer to him as the King of Jews.
In the Gospel of John (19:19-20), the inscription is explained:
And Pontius Pilate wrote a title, and put it on the cross. And the writing was JESUS OF NAZARETH THE KING OF THE JEWS.
But he entered the Temple of Jews and tried to cleanse it of its prevailing sins, in particular, money-lending:
The cleansing of the Temple narrative tells of Jesus expelling the merchants and the money changers from the Temple, and occurs in all four canonical gospels of the New Testament. The scene is a common motif in Christian art.
In this account, Jesus and his disciples travel to Jerusalem for Passover, where Jesus expels the merchants and consumers from the temple, accusing them of turning it into "a den of thieves" (in the Synoptic Gospels) and "a house of trade" (in Gospel of John) through their commercial activities.
And this outraged the Jews and they took revenge by being instrumental in the crucifixion of Jesus.
That at least is how the story went...
And later on Christians all over the Christendom accused Jews wholesale as killers of Jesus and banished them from all trades. They were prohibited from owning land and property (other than cash); and drove them to ghettos outside their townships.
Christianity prohibited money-lending, and considered 'interest;...and interest on interest' (simple and compound) as a sin.
But not Judaism.
That was how Jews had to turn to the profession of money-lending.
But everyone in the Christendom needed money once in a while, like our Antonio.
And had to go to his Jewish Shylock. And got his loan.
And then Shylock got portrayed as greedy, venal, vengeful, immoral, sinful, and hideous.
That of course is the pinnacle of hypocrisy.
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All our banks nowadays charge interest on interest when they lend us money for our homes, cars, jewelry, and vices like drinks and drugs (personal loans).
But we don't kill our bankers nor our lady finance ministers...fortunately...
All that we do is to take humungous loans from banks and scoot to London or obscure places like Antigua and try our best to escape extradition.
There is this pawnbroker Wilson in Sherlock Holmes's "Red Headed League" who says:
"I don't have to leave my shop....my business comes to me"
How wonderful!
In the 1960s when I used to visit my father's town Gudur, I would take my pleasant evening walks on its main road called Raja Veedhi.
And I was charmed by the variety of its shops: cloth, provisions, gas stoves, gold, shamianas, electronics, musical instruments and such.
When I went there a couple of decades later, most of those shops vanished and were replaced with 'pawnbrokers'.
This gent reclined on a cushion under his ceiling fan and fattened his tummy:
"His business came to him"
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Although Shakespeare did injustice to Shylock as a jealous money-lender, he taught us to be neither a borrower nor a lender (in his Hamlet):
Polonius:
Neither a borrower nor a lender be,
For loan oft loses both itself and friend,
And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry.
Easier said than done...
My father, being a strict headmaster of the Muthukur school, couldn't very well go to the local pawnbroker with his wife's bangles.
But with his large family and small income, he needed money urgently once.
And someone advised him that he could take a loan on his LIC Policy.
And he got the form and read it and discovered that the only way he could take a loan was to declare it for "urgent medical expenses of the wife"
And he prevaricated despite his Gandhian adherence to truth (though not non-violence against his errant students and his naughty son).
And he got his loan approved...LIC was kind and accepted the fake medical certificate.
And within a month his wife fell seriously ill and had to be rushed overnight to the American Baptist Mission Hospital in Nellore for emergency surgery.
Then on he got scared and never took any more loans from anywhere, and followed the golden rule:
"Cut your coat according to your cloth!"
With the result that his only son became perennially hard up and had to take multiple loans from all possible sources other than pawnbrokers (having nothing to pawn) throughout his working life at IIT KGP (in order to support the education and marriage expenses of most of his father's six daughters).
Within a few years of joining IIT, he heard that he could take refundable loans from his Provident Fund (even concurrent ones).
And Gauri Babu (the kind Superintendent of the Accounts Section) advised him how to fill up the appropriate "Reason" column in the Application Form:
"Marriage of dependent sister"
And during his forty years there he must have married off a couple of dozen 'dependent sisters' (he being no Gandhian).
Till, after his putting in 15 years of service, Gauri Babu advised him that he could take a non-refundable loan for buying a house.
And he bought dozens of houses thereafter.
But still he needed ready cash to buy a fridge when the one he had bought a decade ago conked off midsummer in 1997.
Then he recalled that he had an FD in the State Bank of India.
Don't think that he took loans from PF and deposited them in the SBI as FDs.
No!
His story is as follows:
When he got married in 1979, the fond (retired Executive Engineer) grandfather of his bride wanted to give her a gift (don't call it dowry which is against Conduct Rules).
And he asked the old man to deposit it in his Tirupati SBI Account jointly in his own name and his granddaughter's.
And the EE was pleased at his noble gesture.
Two months after his granddaughter's marriage the EE visited KGP to find out if his granddaughter was happy with her husband. And kept the new bridegroom under strict vigilance for all of two weeks; during which the hubby pretended he was a non-smoker (in public).
And the old man felt immensely happy.
And after the said FD matured, the EE dropped his name and replaced it with his grandson-in-law's and got it transferred to SBI KGP.
And a decade later that chap took a loan on it for buying a new fridge.
And the interest on it was being deducted regularly from his salary account for a couple of years.
But one fine day he was summoned to the Bank and was roundly rebuked by the new Manager for not refunding the principal.
And that needed another of his dependent sisters to be married off forthwith :)
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Last Laugh:
Charlie Chaplin (suspected by some to be Jewish) made a movie (The Great Dictator) in which he played the double role of the Aryan Hitler and a Jewish Barber.
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