Today’s word of the day, thanks to the Word Guru email, is kindred. As a noun, it means “one’s family or relatives.” As an adjective, it means “similar in nature or character; related by qualities.”

The word entered the language “c. 1200, perhaps late Old English, kinraden, ‘family, lineage; race, nation, tribe, people; kinsfolk, blood relations,’ compound of kin (q.v.) + -rede (see -red). With unetymological first -d- (17c.) probably for phonetic reasons (see D) but perhaps encouraged by kind (n.). As an adjective, 1520s, from the noun” (https://www.etymonline.com/search?q=kindred).

Kin is from “Old English cynn ‘family; race; kind, sort, rank; nature’ (also ‘gender, sex,’ a sense obsolete since Middle English), from Proto-Germanic *kunja- ‘family’ (source also of Old Frisian kenn, Old Saxon kunni ‘kin, kind, race, tribe,’ Old Norse kyn, Old High German chunni ‘kin, race;’ Danish kjön, Swedish kön, Middle Dutch, Dutch kunne ‘sex, gender;’ Gothic kuni ‘family, race,’ Old Norse kundr ‘son,’ German Kind ‘child’), from PIE root *gene- ‘give birth, beget,’ with derivatives referring to procreation and familial and tribal groups” (https://www.etymonline.com/word/kin). Kind also has the sense of “natural,” hence Hamlet’s description of Claudius as “a little more than kin and less than kind” (Act 1, scene 2).

The word-forming element -red, which means “’condition or state of,’” is “from Old English -rede, from ræden ‘condition, rule, reckoning,’ a suffixed form of ræd ‘to advise, rule’ (see rede). Common in Old English, less so in Middle English but still active in word-formation. It is analogous to -hood, which has replaced it in brotherhood, neighborhood, etc.; it survives in about 25 words” (https://www.etymonline.com/word/-red). The word ræd used as an adjective appears twice in the name of the Anglo-Saxon king who is known today as Æthelred the Unready (966-1016; r. 978-1013, 1014-1016), though that epithet is unfair. His name, made of æðele (meaning ‘noble’) and ræd (meaning ‘counsel’) means something like “well advised.” The epithet Unræd means, basically, ‘ill-advised” or “no counsel.”  Thus his name was good counsel the ill counseled. Of course, in our word for the day the –red affix means “condition.”

It turns out that May 10 is a popular date for one certain kind of activity.

According to On This Day (https://www.onthisday.com/events/may/10), on May 10 of 1267, the Vienna Council, in Vienna, Austria, “the Council of Vienna revived the ancient ecclesiastical decrees concerning the Jews. These decrees fostered hatred against the Jews” (https://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/14699-vienna). Jews may have lived in Vienna prior to 1194, but the first known Jew to live there was named Shlom (or Solomon), who was made head of the mint by Duke Leopold VI. For some time after that, Jews were generally in charge of the money in Vienna, a fact which gave them a fair amount of power. Jews were allowed to lend money at interest to the businessmen in the city, and they were actually allowed to charge a very high interest rate, the kind of interest rate that would be labeled usurious today. The problem for these burghers was that Christians were forbidden, by canon law, from lending money at interest, and some Christians generally did not lend money. This is the central issue in Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice. The fact that Christians became indebted to Jews made the Christians resentful.

Again according to On This Day, “Jews in England are imprisoned on charges of coin clipping and counterfeiting.” Coin clipping was the practice of trimming a bit off the edge of a coin so that the silver could be melted down. One could not, obviously, make very much off of clipping one coin, but if one clipped a lot of coins, one could do okay. The English government, under King Edward I, became concerned about coin clipping and began to investigate it. Initially the focus was on Christians, but eventually the Jewish community was blamed. 600 Jews, out of a national population of about 3000, were sent to the Tower of London, and about 300 were executed (https://www.hrp.org.uk/tower-of-london/history-and-stories/jewish-medieval-history-at-the-tower-of-london/#gs.ln59q1). In 1290 Edward issued the Proclamation of Expulsion, which forced all the Jews in England to leave. Jews were not officially allowed to return to England until the 1650s, under the Puritan government during the Interregnum.

On this date in 1427, the Jews were banished from Bern, Switzerland. The Jews had had an on-again, off-again relationship with the Christians in Bern during the Middle Ages. They had devoted themselves primarily to finance and pawn-broking, again because of the restrictions against lending money at interest for Christians. They were expelled first in 1294 upon the pretext of having kidnapped and murdered a boy (this kind of “blood libel” appeared in many European towns and cities during the Middle Ages). Many Jews were expelled or murdered in 1349; the Black Death had hit Europe in 1348, and many cities blamed the Jews. But Jews were again invited into Bern because, again, they could provide banking services that Christians frequently couldn’t provide. But by 1427, the Christians were again tired of the Jews because they owed the Jews money.

On this date in 1948, fighters with the Muslim Brotherhood began another assault on Kfar Darom. They had attacked the town earlier in 1948, and May 10 was mostly scouting and preparation for another assault on the town. This was part of the 1947-48 Palestine War, a war started in response to the UN’s vision of creating two states in Palestine, one for the Palestinian Muslims and one for the Jews in their ancient, traditional homeland. But the Palestinians and their supporters in the surrounding Muslim countries did not approve of Jews having their own country, so they began a war. The Jewish homeland was, of course, the UN’s response to the murder of millions of Jews in the Holocaust.

There are many, many other instances of Jews being expelled or mistreated in European countries throughout the Middle Ages and beyond. It is not as if Adolph Hitler invented the antipathy toward the Jews. And Jew hatred continues to this day, frequently using the same kinds of arguments used in the Middle Ages—the Jews are miserly, they cheat people financially, they kill children (the blood libel). The anti-Semitic students we see on our college campuses today share a kindred spirit with the burghers of 13^th century Vienna and 15^th century Bern.

Today’s image is of Licoricia of Winchester, and her story is worth sharing: “Perhaps the most famous Jewish prisoner at the Tower was Licoricia of Winchester. Licoricia was the most prominent female Jewish financier in medieval England and one of the richest moneylenders in Winchester. Moneylending was one of the few occupations open to Jews at this time, as Christians were not supposed to lend money at interest.

“When Licoricia’s husband, David of Oxford, died in 1244 she was imprisoned in the Tower of London. King Henry III wanted to collect the death duties owed to him; one third of the estates of all Jews who died in England was forfeit to the Crown. The King seized David’s debts and Licoricia had to pay the huge sum of 5,000 marks to regain them.

“After her release from the Tower, Licoricia continued to expand her business. Her clients included the Royal Family, the aristocracy, and the Church. In 1277 Licoricia and Alice of Bicton, her Christian maid, were found stabbed to death in their home. The motivation and perpetrator of the crime remains a mystery”( https://www.hrp.org.uk/tower-of-london/history-and-stories/jewish-medieval-history-at-the-tower-of-london/#gs.ln59q1).