Sir Richard Francis Burton

The Jew, The Gypsy and El Islam


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of the Appendix on Human Sacrifice among the Sephardím or Eastern Jews and the murder of Padre Tomaso, I have (as before stated) preferred to hold it over to publishing it in a mutilated form.

       Table of Contents

       GENERAL OPINION OF THE JEW

       Table of Contents

      The ethnologist and the student of general history are urgently invited to consider the annals and the physical and intellectual aspects of the children of Israel, perhaps the most interesting subject that can occupy their attention. The Jew, like the Gypsy, stands alone, isolated by character, if not by blessing. Traditionally, or rather according to its own tradition, the oldest family on earth, it is at the same time that which possesses the most abundant vitality. Its indestructible and irrepressible life-power enables this nation without a country to maintain an undying nationality and to nourish a sentiment of caste with a strength and a pertinacity unparalleled in the annals of patriotism. The people that drove the Jews from Judæa, the empires which effaced the kingdoms of Israel and Judah from the map of the world, have utterly perished. The descendants of the conquering Romans are undistinguishable from the rest of mankind. But, eighteen hundred years after the Fall of Jerusalem, the dispersed Jewish people have a distinct existence, are a power in every European capital, conduct the financial operations of nations and governments, and are to be found wherever civilization has extended and commerce has penetrated; in fact, it has made all the world its home.

      One obstacle to a matured and detailed ethnological study of the Jew is the difficulty of becoming familiar with a people scattered over the two hemispheres. Though the race is one, the two great factors blood and climate have shown it to be anything but immutable, either in physique or in character. Compare, for instance, the two extremes—the Tatar-faced Karaïte of the Crimea with the Semitic features of Morocco, the blond lovelocks of Aden and the fiery ringlets of Germany with the greasy, black hair of Houndsditch. And as bodily form differs greatly, there is perhaps a still greater distinction in mental characteristics: we can hardly believe the peaceful and industrious Dutch Jew a brother of the fanatic and ferocious Hebrew who haunts the rugged Highlands of Safed in the Holy Land. Yet though these differences constitute almost a series of sub-races, there is one essentially great quality which cements and combines the whole house of Israel.

      The vigour, the vital force, and the mental capacity of other peoples are found to improve by intermixture; the more composite their character, the greater their strength and energy. But for generation after generation the Jews have preserved, in marriage at least, the purity of their blood. In countries where they form but a small percentage of the population the range of choice must necessarily be very limited, and from the very beginning of his history the Jew, like his half-brother the Arab, always married, or was expected to marry, his first cousin. A well-known traveller of the present day has proved that this can be done with impunity only by unmixed races of men, and that the larger the amount of mixture in blood the greater will be the amount of deformity in physique and morale to be expected from the offspring. Consanguineous marriages are dangerous in England, and far more dangerous, as De Hone has proved, in Massachusetts. Yet the kings of Persia intermarried with their sisters, and the Samaritan branch of the Jews is so closely connected that first cousins are almost sisters.

      Physically and mentally the Jewish man and woman are equal in all respects to their Gentile neighbours, and in some particulars are superior to them. The women of the better class are strongly and symmetrically shaped; and although their beauty of feature is not that admired by the Christian eye, debility and deformity are exceptionally rare. In grace of form and in charm of manner they are far superior to their husbands and brothers, and indeed this everywhere appears to be a sub-characteristic racial feature. They are nowhere remarkably distinguished for chastity, and in some places, Morocco for instance, their immorality is proverbial. Their grand physique does not age like that of the natives of the strange countries which they colonize and where Europeans readily degenerate, they preserve youth for ten years longer than their rivals, they become mothers immediately after puberty, and they bear children to a far later age. Their customs allow them to limit the family, not by deleterious drugs and dangerous operations, but by the simple process of prolonging the period of lactation, and barrenness is rare amongst them as in the days when it was looked upon as a curse. There is scarcely any part of the habitable globe, from the Highlands of Abyssinia to the Lowlands of Jamaica, in which the Jewish people cannot be acclimatized more readily and more rapidly than the other races of Europe—also the result of blood comparatively free from that intermixture which brings forward the inherent defects of both parents.

      The Jews also enjoy a comparative immunity from various forms of disease which are the scourge of other races. Pulmonary and scrofulous complaints are rare amongst them; leprosy and elephantiasis are almost extinct; and despite their impurity in person and the exceptional filth of their dwelling-places, they are less liable to be swept away by cholera and plague than the natives of the countries which are habitually ravaged by those epidemics. They seldom suffer from the usual infectious results, even where the women are so unchaste that honour seems as unknown to them as honesty to the men.

      Physiologists have asked, How is this phenomenon to be accounted for? Why is the duration of life greater among the Jews than among the other races of Europe? Is it the result of superior organization or of obedience to the ceremonial law? The researches of those who have made these questions their special study supply but one satisfactory or sufficient answer, and it may be summed up in six words—a prodigious superiority of vital power. And all the laws attributed to the theistic secularism of Moses were issued with one object—namely, that of hardening and tempering the race to an extent which even Sparta ignored. The ancient Jew was more than half a Bedawin, and not being an equestrian race his annual journeys to and from Jerusalem were mostly made on foot. His diet was carefully regulated, and his year was a succession of fasts and feasts, as indeed it is now, but not to such an extent as formerly. The results were simply the destruction of all the weaklings and the survival of the fittest.