The Memoirs of Giacomo 'Jacques' Casanova are one of those books people like to say they have read or would like to read before they die. They are also one of our best historical sources for the realities of ordinary life in eighteenth century Europe and are much cited and analyzed by scholars of history of that period.

What I'd like to do here is sharpen that focus somewhat and turn the angle of our gaze onto Casanova's comments about the jews that he encountered over the years as well as what he thought about them.

Now as I am sure you are aware (given the cultural references we use to this day associated with him) Casanova was something of a ladies man and mentions over 120 women who he had sex with. The reality is probably that Casanova had sex with far more women than that, but simply forgot the briefer encounters leaving us with the only those he had a substantive relationship with (in his own mind at least).

By way of beginning we should forestall claims that Casanova's observations were a 'product of his socio-cultural biases' by pointing out that Casanova had little real problem with the jews (as can be seen in how he reflects that the jews in a synagogue he visited showed 'superior spirituality' compared to the devout Christians that he knew).

Indeed he even recounts with glee his attempts to seduce a jewess named Leah whose father Moses was a horse dealer.

As he was later to recount: he found a jewish-style appearance singularly attractive in women and was fond of bedding girls who looked like they might have been part of the jewish community (whether they were or not: they looked the part, which was all that mattered to him). One such instance he recounts of encountering a simple girl who looked like Leah and who he wanted to bed, but unlike Leah she had no high pretensions and simply wanted to know whether she could do his laundry.

We also find Casanova frequently associated with jews and his mistresses being passed onto jews or to him from them.

An example of such is the case of Therese who he had as his mistress for a rather long time and who in Naples had taken a jew from England named Mendez as her lover in lieu of Casanova (with the latter having no problem with the arrangement): indeed he even spent the evening gambling with Mendez amicably after the latter had imparted knowledge of his sexual escapades with Therese to him.

The essential point here is that Casanova was not in any way shape or form predisposed by so-called 'socio-cultural prejudices' to exaggerate or lie about jews, but rather because he associated so closely with them: he actually gives us a significant amount of useful evidence about the behaviour of the jews in the eighteenth century in Italy, Germany and France.

Having established this then we can move on to Casanova's comments about the jews in his Memoirs ore broadly.

In them he frequently points out that jews were money-lenders par excellence and also closely associated with the pawn broker industry: one such example is when he notes that saw a jew named Gabriel Schalon who was a notorious money-lender (and who Casanova knew well) to frivolous and feckless young men (i.e., a prototypical jew of the Shylock mould) and in another he refers to a jew named M. Boaz who he borrowed money from.

Other such notes refer to his borrowing everything from jewellery to furniture to bespoke confectionery to clothes from various jewish pawnbrokers as well as pawn similar items back to them.

However one of his more interesting notices is that he refers to the jews of Venice having the money-lending business in that city-state entirely in their hands (one of whom he later mentions was called Treves), which is in itself a credible statement given that Casanova doesn't credit it as being the case everywhere in Italy, but only specifically in Venice. That is notable because it means that Casanova isn't simply casting aspersions about jews, but rather is making a measured and specific statement based on his well-known and extensive personal knowledge of that city.

Therefore it is reasonable to take the position that at the very least jews dominated Venetian banking at the time to which Casanova is referring and at worst completely controlled it.

A related point to which Casanova frequently refers is the materialistic nature of the jews and how they are obsessed with extracting as much wealth from their clients as possible.

Examples that Casanova gives of this are Leah's father Moses who sold Casanova himself two overpriced horses and wanted to sell him overpriced rings, which his daughter Leah captivated and proverbially 'cock-teased' Casanova into consenting to purchase. In a similar experience Casanova recounts another jewish merchant paid him 3,000 sequins (then the Venetian currency) for a ring worth 1,000 sequins, because the jew believed he could sell it on for far more to other gentiles.

Another point that Casanova regularly brings up is the physical cowardliness and unhealthy nature of the jews. An example of this is his relating the story of a duke he knew who confronted a jew (who was the manager of an opera theatre) in the street for deceiving and seducing a teenage Italian girl by telling her that she would get to dance in one of his performances if she became his mistress.

Said duke then punched the jew when the latter tried to claim it was all a lie and this jewish manager proceeded to fold up on the cobbles and blubber hysterically. The duke naturally had no little contempt for such unmanly behaviour and left him to cry his heart out, while the jew then proceeded to try and press charges against the duke with the police only for that to fail as well.

Another example in this particular context is the jewish convert to Christianity (and the son of a famed Talmudist according to Casanova) named Guarienti: who acted as the art agent of the King of Poland and who was outrageously fat since he spent nearly all day every day either eating or in bed. Casanova naturally though Guarienti an absolute imbecile for this behaviour, but it does suggest that there is a lack of manliness in the jews that Casanova met and wrote about.

Casanova asserted the jews were physically cowardly, outrageously fat and lazy and/or interested only in manipulating and sexually seducing non-jews for their own personal advantage. These are all likely to be true since all these aspects of jewish behaviour are still a significant part of jewish culture today (i.e., exercise being regarded as goyische [something only non-jews do] and manipulation is simply chutzpah, while sexual seduction is the much discussed art of schmoozing).

The interesting thing about that is how frequently Casanova refers to jews deliberately seducing non-jews as we have seen with the case of Therese and the jew from England called Mendez. Another instance of such is Casanova's mention of another of his mistresses named Juliette; who became a profession courtesan aged fourteen and lived with a wealthy jew in Venice before being passed around a succession of wealthy patrons including Casanova himself.

This suggests that wealthy jews in Casanova's time were in the habit of engaging non-jewish mistresses in the tradition of the jewish desire for the shiksa (i.e., lust-inducing non-jewish women who seek to entrap male jews in halakhically forbidden sexual relationships as part of a devilish attack on the jewish emunah [i.e., religious community]) and regarded them as a literal prostitutes who they could use, abuse and dispose of as they wished.

While conversely, as Casanova notes as an aside, jewish fathers were very relaxed about jewish girls having sexual relationships with non-jewish men for the simple reason that the child of such a relationship is considered halakhically jewish (since jewishness in Judaism is generally transmitted matrilineally), which may at least somewhat account of Casanova's own avowed interested in jewish girls because they were... shall we say... less likely to have angry parents who wanted vengeance than non-jewish girls.

Thus we can see that Casanova gives us good evidence for several different aspects of contemporary jewish behaviour, which are primarily negative in their general thrust but yet it is also clear that Casanova is hardly a hostile witness as he tended towards positivity about jews when he thought it warranted (as has been demonstrated above).

To end this short summary of Casanova's views on the jews I thought I'd reproduce a brief quote from him to show just how much he was aware of the classic jewish view of non-jews (to his general credit) in that he quoted 'in Hebrew the passages in the Old Testament, where the Jews are bidden to do all possible harm to the Gentiles, whom they were to curse every day.'

Well done him.