a Wandervolk driven from place to place

"By far the worst off were the Betteljuden (beggar Jews). Since they had no money to buy any kind of "protection", they were homeless or vagrant. Religious strictures did not permit them to become  mercenaries, as did the poorest runaways serfs. As one observer noted in 1783, these Jews had no alternatives but to "roam through life as beggars or be rogues."  Many were lifelong nomads, descended apparently from several generations of beggars. Born on the road, they depended on theft or charity. Accompanied by their ragged families, they traveled the contryside in swarms, a Wandervolk driven from place to place and, like the Gypsies, regarded as outlaws, or Gauner, that is, scamps, parasites, rogues, and thieves. in 1712, a traveler reported: "The begging hordes at times make the highways disgusting, particularly when one reaches their encampments where they are sunning themselves in a wood or behind a fence." A rare document from 1773 concerns a fifteen-year-old Jewish girl named Frommet who had been sold by her vagrant parents as a housemaid. She was standing trial in Frankfurt for murdering her employer with a hatchet. The plea submitted in her "defense" stated: "Who does not remember seeing such a horde of wretched creatures, vagrant Landjuden [country Jews] with their children, carrying their entire possessions on their humps? And seeing them pass by, who has not promptly noticed the scant difference between them and cattle?"

The cities usually denied the vagrants access; some were admitted for one night only but required to stay in poorhouses maintained by a local Jewish community. Jewish almsgiving afforded some material help. Hospitality was occasionally made available to the needy, especially on the Sabbath. The tradition of solidarity was deeply ingrained among Jews, but the huge increase in homelessness and vagrancy during the eighteenth century was bringing about its collapse."

   

                               Amos Elon, The Pity Of It All - A portrait of the German-Jewish Epoch 1743 -1933, Picador, 2002, pp. 29-30.