The Jew, The Gypsy and El Islam. Sir Richard Francis Burton
in the city.
The Samaritans are now found only at Nablús, the classical Neapolis, or new town. They claim descent from Ephraim and Manasseh, whilst their Cohens are of course Levites; the orthodox opprobriously call them Kúthím, or Babylonians, and despite physical evidence utterly deny their Jewish consanguinity. All contact with them is defiling, as though they were Gentiles. The total is now forty families, or a hundred and thirty-five souls; they will not intermarry with any but their own people; the birth of males, contrary to what might be expected, outnumbers that of females in the proportion of eighty to fifty-five, and consequently the “undying dogmatism” is threatened with dying out. The little sect owes its fame in Europe to the three well-known codices which every stranger hastens to inspect. According to their Hakháms, whilst repeating the Talmud they study the Targum of R. Levi. They keep their Passover by solar computation, not lunar, like the Hebrews; for instance, in 1871 the former held the feast on May 3, and the latter on April 5. Moreover, they still sacrifice and eat their Paschal Lamb upon Mount Gerizim.
Jerusalem is sometimes visited by some of the “Black Jews” of Malabar and Western India, concerning whom so much absurdity has been written. The “White Jews” of India have a tradition according to which their ancestors, numbering ten thousand souls, emigrated Eastward about a.d. 70, and settled about Cranganore on the Malabar coast. Here they remained till a.d. 1565, when they were driven into the interior by the Portuguese. As no synagogue can be founded without a minimum congregation of ten free and adult males, the white Jews when necessary simply bought back their nine Hindu slaves, manumitted them, circumcised and bathed them, and thus obtained their wishes. The “Reformed British Jews,” mostly Ashkenazím, who date from the 7th of Ellúl, a.m. 5601 (August 24, 1841), and whose prayer-book is edited by their minister, the Rev. Mr. Marks, are hardly likely to make way in “the East” with such ultra-Karaïte doctrine as “the sufficiency of the Law of Moses for the guidance of Israel,” and with their opposition to the divinity of the traditions contained in the Mishnah; and in the Jerusalem and Babylonian Talmuds they would only be included in the host
Of petulant, capricious sects,
The maggots of corrupted texts.
There is little to say concerning the physical peculiarities of the Eastern Jew, who in all the salient points of form and feature remarkably resembles his brother of Houndsditch and the Minories. Here and there the lines are less curved, the profile is straight and high, whilst there are a few local varieties like the fair hair and olive-coloured eyes of Dalmatia. The highest type contains a certain softness of expression, with that decisive cast of mouth and chin which may be seen in the London policeman and in the backwoodsman of the Far West. Although centuries of oppression have necessarily given to the many that cringing, deprecating glance, that shifting look which painfully suggests a tame beast expecting a blow, yet we still find both amongst the Ashkenazím and the Sephardím red Jews and black Jews; fierce-eyed, dark-browed, and hollow-cheeked, with piercing acuteness of glance, and an almost reckless look of purpose. Greed and craft, and even ferocity, are to be read in such faces, but rarely weakness, and never imbecility; roughness, unculture, and coarseness are there, not vulgarity, nor want of energy; and the Christian physiognomy by their side looks commonplace when contrasted with those features so full of concentration and vigorous meaning.
These are the same men as those who under happier auspices organize such worldwide institutions as the Alliance Israëlite Universelle, with its heart in Paris and its limbs extending far and wide on the earth, whilst increasing organization proposes to extend them farther and wider. Its object is simply to promote concerted action amongst the Jews scattered about both hemispheres; to effect unity and community in all matters interesting to the Jewish body politic; to forward the interest of its friends, and to effect the ruin of its enemies. Thus it will eventually absorb by taking under its charge such detached institutions as the Khagal, or Communal Government of the Hebrews in Russia. It is the fashion to praise the organization of the Jesuits, the Freemasons, the Carbonari, the Mormons, and other bodies, who have an esoteric system underlying the exoteric form. As far as my knowledge goes, none can be compared with that of the Jews, because those are local and partial, whereas these are all but universal.
Such men easily become the warriors of commerce, bringing to the battle of interests, the campaign of life, all that boldness and resolution, that persistence and heroism, that subtlety and unscrupulousness which the Patriarchs and the Maccabees carried out into the personal conflict of sword and spear. They become the great potentates of finance and capital, who have agents and reporters in every chief centre of the world; who know every project, what is to flourish and what is to founder; what enterprise is to be effectual, and what is to fail. If a seaport want a dock, a city require a bulwark, or a country demand a railway or a loan, they are ever ready to furnish each and all. And as a rule they are not unfair, they are not mean; indeed there is often a certain generosity in their conditions. But they always bargain for something besides money. They stipulate, for instance, that this man should be allowed to participate in these profits, that another should be excluded from those advantages; their interests are so various and so widespread that they need political power everywhere, and as they must have it so they will have it. One offence, one deadly sin, never forgiven, never forgotten, is insubordination in the ranks, however trifling. Let a secondary firm attempt to throw off the yoke by launching out, for instance, into an enterprise unauthorized by the Great House; straightway its credit is assailed, its acceptances are dishonoured, its ruin is assured. Such are the arts which have enabled the Jew to arrive at his present position. And he may confidently look forward to the time when the whole financial system, not only of Europe from one end to the other, but of the whole world, will be in the hands of a few crafty capitalists, whose immense wealth shall, with a few pulsations of the telegraph, unthrone dynasties and determine the destinies of nations.
It remains now only to touch upon the future prospects of the Jewish race. This important consideration is still subject to two widely different opinions.
The first, which may be called the vapid utterance of the so-called Liberal School, speaks as follows: “In this century we are battering down the ponderous walls of prejudice which nations and sects have erected in past times, for the separation of themselves from their neighbours, or as a coign of vantage from which to hurl offensive weapons at them. Roman Catholic and Jewish emancipation have been conceded, though tardily, and we may fairly hope that in the next generation our political, social, and commercial relations with our fellow-men will be conducted without regard to their religious belief or their ethnological origin.” The trifling objection to this “harmonious and tolerant state of things” is that, though the Christian may give up his faith and race, the Jew, however readily he may throw overboard the former, will cling to the latter with greater tenacity, as it will be the very root and main foundation of his power.
The second is the Judophobic or Roman Catholic view of the supremacy of Jewish influence in the governments and the diplomacy of Europe. It openly confesses its dread of Judaic encroachments, and it goes the full length of declaring that, unless the course of events be changed by some quasi-miraculous agency, the triumph of the Israelite over Christian civilization is inevitable—in fact, that Judaism, the oldest and exclusive form of the great Semitic faith, will at least outlive, if it does not subdue and survive, Christianity, whose triumph has been over an alien race of Aryans. “Gold,” it argues, “is the master of the world, and the Jewish people are becoming masters of the gold. By means of gold they can spread corruption far and wide, and thus control the destinies of Europe and of the world.” For the last quarter of a century the dominant Church in France seems to have occupied itself in disseminating these ideas, and the number of books published by the alarmists and replied to by Jewish authors is far from inconsiderable. Witness the names of MM. Tousseuel, Bédarride, Th. Halliz, Rev. P. Ratisbonne, and A. C. de Medelsheim, without specifying the contributors to the Union Israëlite and the Archives Israëlites of Paris—a sufficient proof of the interest which this question has excited, and of the ability with which it has been discussed in France.
But these are generalisms which require the specification of particulars. Where, however, the field is so extensive, we must limit ourselves to the most running survey of Europe and the Holy Land. Throughout this continent the career of the Jew is at once thriving and promising.