Judaism as building based country?

[Snemelc]

Hello,

I thought a bit about how Judaism could survive, and I have an idea: as a building based country.

As this country, you have the main goal of preserving and increasing the jewish population wworldwide. You can form treaties with christian or islamic nations, which would determine, how they treat the jews.
One treaty is, that they allow you to build new buildings in their country, like f.e. a synagogue. These buildins would do three things:
1. It would prevent religious or cultural conversion of the local jews, and maybe even adding a growth modifier to them.
2. It would slowly, very slowly convert other pops to Judaism.
3. It would increase the local tax for the location owner (to represent, how Jews were relatively rich and many rulers did protect them to get their money)

I don't know if something similar was already discussed, and I know, that it would be difficult to historically argue for such a country, but what do you think about this?

 

[Birchinjaro]

Did the migrating Jews ever try to convert other people to their religion? I mean even if they tried i would assume that the local ruler would just kick them out even if it's very slowly, it's also the worst thing you could do as a Latin christian both socially and culturally since you are going against what you have been taught since you were born
I also don't like how this would effectivelly make all jews one massive bloc of people when in reality they not only had in-faith differences but also spoke a different language from each other, the jews that stayed in the middle east would not have been able to communicate in their native tongue with a Jew from Poland or Germany
Overall not woth adding IMO, you already have jews as a minority in many places (and Paradox made sure to represent them in the higher figures often so there's no issue of underrepresentation) and i assume that the jewish faith and Jews in general have their own flavor to whom Christian or Muslim countries can interact with

 

[strattonthebard]

I've seen this idea raised a few times and I think if anything like it were to be implemented it would probably only make sense to have it be the Jewish population of a single country rather than all Jews globally being part of some kind of international government (which obviously has some pretty terrible connotations as to what view of history you're endorsing). And at that point I think it makes more sense to model it with internal politics anyways. I do think that significant minority religions and cultures could have their own estates and be granted certain privileges but I'm not sure if the number of estates is hard coded

 

[Walle Ras]

I've seen this idea raised a few times and I think if anything like it were to be implemented it would probably only make sense to have it be the Jewish population of a single country rather than all Jews globally being part of some kind of international government (which obviously has some pretty terrible connotations as to what view of history you're endorsing). And at that point I think it makes more sense to model it with internal politics anyways. I do think that significant minority religions and cultures could have their own estates and be granted certain privileges but I'm not sure if the number of estates is hard coded

Then j st make us an estate when you pass a law called like kehilos or Jewish autonomu

 

[Kvesir]

"Judaism" doesn't work as a single building based country because the country of "World Jewry" is not and never was a real thing. Jews are not a hive mind, despite all the conspiracy theories.

A more reasonable idea is that each Jewish Kehilah ("community") of a non Jewish country can be a building based country, but that creates a lot of mechanical issues, like do you create a Kehilah for every single country in Europe? What kind of gameplay could it have? It doesn't really have agency beyond building stuff. It definitely won't actively convert non-Jews to Judaism, Jews shouldn't even be allowed to proselytize.

Making Jews an estate is also problematic because Jews are NOT an estate like the peasants, burghers, clergy or nobility. What Jews fundamentally are in non-Jewish countries is an ethnic-religious minority. They can belong to whatever estate their pop type is. To have representation for the relations between Jews and the state you'd need to ask for mechanics that expand on the relationship with specific minorities. Which would, by the way, improve the whole game.

 

[Kvesir]

My main though about how Judaism should survive is that it should be naturally hard to convert, and non-pagan heathens should be naturally hard to convert, and the math behind conversion should follow a logarithmic scaling ao that it leaves behind a small minority that is very hard to convert.

As for how to play as a Jewish country, idk, either start in Ethiopia or attract Jewish migration into a tiny HRE minor until they become the majority there or something.

 

[strattonthebard]

Imo having something similar to estate privileges for cultural and religious minorities would be a good idea, and would honestly help reflect a lot of real life circumstances, like special forms of taxation for non Muslims in many Islamic countries

Imperator: Rome even had something like this although it wasn't super well integrated into the games systems as a whole imo

 

[Polesie Admiral]

Imo having something similar to estate privileges for cultural and religious minorities would be a good idea, and would honestly help reflect a lot of real life circumstances, like special forms of taxation for non Muslims in many Islamic countries

I gave a suggestion that interaction with Jewish pops in european countries would be via laws and privileges, here: https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...ng-jewish-pops-in-eroupean-countries.1744058/

 

[lazprune]

Putting every Jew in the world under one transnational polity is super goofy (at best). Imagine diplomacy: France allies "The Jews" to defeat England so levies from Kaifeng are mobilized? There is a saying "Two Jews, three opinions" that verifies on this very forum when arguing how Judaism should be depicted in another thread, yet for you Jews get to be a single entity? And who will be the head of state? (if you tell me "a secret cabal", I will send you the golem)

This is also why I think SOPs being pan-cultural entities is silly btw, but I don't want to derail too much.

Points 2. and 3. are also nonsense.

 

[Knarraldin]

Judaism is a religion and Jews are pops, there is no such thing as a Jewish nation during this time period. If you want to play a Jewish nation, I'm afraid the only way it makes any sense is if you play something else and convert your nation to Judaism somehow.

My main though about how Judaism should survive is that it should be naturally hard to convert, and non-pagan heathens should be naturally hard to convert, and the math behind conversion should follow a logarithmic scaling ao that it leaves behind a small minority that is very hard to convert.

As for how to play as a Jewish country, idk, either start in Ethiopia or attract Jewish migration into a tiny HRE minor until they become the majority there or something.

It should be basically as difficult to wipe out Judaism as it is to wipe out any minority culture. Want to get rid of them from provinces? Either do it slowly over time via infrastructure, law, and assimilation, and there will probably be some in a bunch of places around your empire anyway, or deport them, which means they go somewhere else and benefit some other country instead of yours (historically, Ukraine and Russia).

 

[Knarraldin]

At the risk of potentially spamming, and at the risk of being "that guy," this seems to me like racist fantasism. Basically everything you said is a modern era stereotype that is the exact opposite of the reality of Judaism during this time period. They were poor backwards secluded tribal peasant subsistence farmers in Russia and Ukraine, for the most part. They frequently converted when entering wider society, they were frequently scapegoated, and they almost never converted anybody outside of their communities to Judaism. This OP is wild.

 

[Kvesir]

They were poor backwards secluded tribal peasant subsistence farmers in Russia and Ukraine

Not at all. There were little to no Jews in Russia and Ukraine at the time, most of the Jews we now know as Ashkenazi lived in central Europe in the 1300s, mostly the HRE, Poland and Hungary, having fled there from the HRE during the crusades. They mostly lived in cities confined to their own quarters because anti-Jewish laws in almost all Catholic countries forbade them from most occupations, from owning land and from participating in serfdom. This was enforced by Papal Bulls and in fact the Jews who lived in the Papal State had it the worst. Ashkenazi Jews were also still the minority among Jews worldwide: there were many more in Iberia and the Middle East at the time.

Since they were urban most Jews were artisans with professions that supplied their own community. It was common practice in Europe to let urban Jewish communities govern themselves and only interact with them for collecting taxes. Due to this status, and the fact they were often expelled from countries and their property was seized, Jews tended to migrate to countries where they were treated better.

But they were literate and they were useful subjects for whatever county granted them protection, namely Poland, as the king Casimir III invited them to settle in Krakow during the black death since Jews were blamed for it and there were pogroms against them. The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth was the most tolerant country for Jews in Europe (aside from the Netherlands): Jews enjoyed more freedoms there and were granted significant autonomy. When Polish nobles came to own the eastern portion of the PLC they often encouraged resettlement of people from the western PLC by granting them lands, and poor urban Jews benefited from this, which formed most of the Jewish shtetls - rural communal villages - in Ukraine and Belarus. The livelihood of these shtetls was always bad but it deteriorated after the Russian Empire conquered the PLC and instituted oppressive laws against the Jews who lived in its former territories, which became known as the Pale of Settlement. Jews were not allowed to live outside the Pale of Settlement in the Russian Empire, except for in Bukhara.

 

[Walle Ras]

Putting every Jew in the world under one transnational polity is super goofy (at best). Imagine diplomacy: France allies "The Jews" to defeat England so levies from Kaifeng are mobilized? There is a saying "Two Jews, three opinions" that verifies on this very forum when arguing how Judaism should be depicted in another thread, yet for you Jews get to be a single entity? And who will be the head of state? (if you tell me "a secret cabal", I will send you the golem)

This is also why I think SOPs being pan-cultural entities is silly btw, but I don't want to derail too much.

Points 2. and 3. are also nonsense.

Me, I am the head state

 

[Mister X]

One of the main reasons why they got screwed so often is because they didn't all function as one single faction and instead had a nasty tendency to be at each others' throats. But I like the idea - it just needs a little polish.

Perhaps, a Jewish "community building" per country - but, it depends on what sort of Jew. Yemenite Jews and Ashkenazis probably will barely recognize each other as fellows. Let's not even get started on the more heterodox ones such as the Karaites. So, you can cheat and have multiple "recognized" Jewish groups, as long as they're of different cultures.

This would allow you to do some mean but historically accurate things, such as giving local Jews the permission to act as financiers, knowing down the line you can just seize their stuff (western European infinite money glitch). It could also in theory have other gameplay implications, but generally, it might just be too bothersome to do it correctly.