Imagine two economists traveling back in time and arriving in the town of Sepphoris, in the Galilee, in the year 200. Upon entering the synagogue, they see a nine-year-old Jewish boy—the son of a farmer— reading a portion of the Torah in front of the local community. the economists, who know some stylized facts about the occupational structure and demography of the Jewish people today, wonder whether there might be a connection between what they saw in their journey back in time and the subsequent economic and demographic history of the Jews.
This research project has been a twelve-year long journey of studying and learning that began one day over a lunch conversation in the cafeteria of Boston University, during which we put ourselves in the shoes of the economist time travelers. We never imagined that what we thought was an interesting question for an article would develop into more than a decade of work that involved sifting through an immense body of literature, meeting with scholars and experts on Judaism and Jewish history, visiting ancient synagogues in the Galilee, thinking about and discussing how to interpret the key facts and puzzles of the history of the Jewish people through the lens of economic theory, and ultimately writing a book. the book relies on two pillars of scholarship: the remarkable body of literature that generations of historians and scholars of Judaism have produced and the thinking that economists adopt when studying a wide array of topics, including the choice of occupation, the decision to invest in education, the impact a social norm may have on the way individuals make choices and communities organize themselves, and the choice of a religion.
During this journey of learning, we accumulated many debts of gratitude to colleagues, scholars, and institutions. Joel Mokyr, at Northwestern University, is the person to whom we owe the most. Since the very beginning, he encouraged us with his boundless enthusiasm and provided valuable suggestions and deeply thoughtful comments. Joel was extremely generous in reading our manuscript several times and contributing in a major way to shaping the book. He was also pivotal in organizing a conference at Tel Aviv University in December 2010 in which a group of scholars from various fields read our manuscript and provided us with invaluable feedback.
At various stages of this project, our research and manuscript greatly benefited from the generous help and very useful suggestions of Mark . . .