“These people—so exclusive, so intensely national, so intimately linked together—have shown the most astonishing aptitude for identifying themselves with the several countries in which they have cast their fortunes. An English Jew is an Englishman, admires English habits and English education, makes an excellent magistrate, plays to perfection the part of a squire, and even exercises discreetly the power which, with its inexhaustible oddity, the English law gives him, while it denies it to the members of the largest Christian sect, and presents incumbents to livings so as to please the most fastidious bishops. The French Jews were stout friends of France during the war—served as volunteers in the defence of Paris, and opened their purses to the national wants, and their houses to the suffering French. The German Jews were as stout Germans in their turn; and in war, as in peace, they are always ready to show themselves Germans as well as Jews. It is the combination of the qualities of both nations that is now raising the foremost of the German Jews to their high rank in the world of wealth. In that world, to be a German is to be a trader whom it is very hard to rival, to be a Jew is to be an operator whom it is impossible to beat; but to be a German Jew is to be a prince and captain among the people.
“In this way the Jews have managed to overcome much of the antipathy which would naturally attach to men of an alien race and an alien religion. The English Jew is not seen to be standing aloof from England and Englishmen. But it is impossible there should not be some sort of social barrier between the Jew and the Christian. They cannot intermarry except for special political or other cogent reasons, and it necessarily chills the kindness and intimacy of family intercourse when all the young people know that friendship can never grow into anything else. In order to overcome this obstacle many wealthy Jews have chosen to abjure their religion and enrol their households in the Christian communion. But the more high-minded and high-spirited among them shrink from doing this, and accept, and even glory in, the position into which they were born. Fortunately for himself and for England, a kind friend determined the religion of Mr. Disraeli before he was old enough to judge for himself, and in his maturer years he has been able conscientiously to adopt what he terms the doctrines of the School of Galilee. If they are not decoyed into Christianity by their social aspirations, Jews are unassailable, for the most part, by the force of either persecution or argument; and although there are some conversions to be attributed to Christian reasoning or Christian gold, they are probably counterbalanced by the accessions to Judaism of Christian women who marry Jewish husbands. The Jews therefore lead, and must lead, on the whole a family life marked by something of reserve and isolation. But the disadvantages they have thus to endure are not without their compensative advantages. Their family life by being secluded has gained in warmth and dignity.[23] In very few families is there so much thoughtfulness, consideration, parental and fraternal affection, reverence for age, and care for the young as in Jewish families. The women too have been ennobled, not degraded, by being thrown on themselves and on their families for their sphere of thought and action. They are almost always thoroughly instructed in business, and capable of taking a part in great affairs; for it has been the custom of their race to consider the wife the helpmate—the sharer in every transaction that establishes the position or enhances the comfort of the family. Leisure, activity of mind, and the desire to hand on the torch of instruction from the women of one generation to those of another, inspire Jewesses with a zeal for education, a love of refinement, and a sympathy with art. Homes of the best type are of course to be taken as the standard when it is inquired what are the characteristics of a race as seen at its best; and European family life has few things equal to show to the family life of the highest type of Jews. Their isolation, again, makes most of the men liberal and free from the prejudices of class, just as their connexion with their dispersed brethren relieves them from the pressure of insular narrowness. But, as Mr. Bright remarks, religious bigotry is slow to die away altogether; and even in educated English society there are few Christians who do not think themselves entitled to approach a Jew with a sense of secret superiority. If a Jew is ostentatious or obtrudes his wealth, if his women are loaded with jewellery, if he talks the slang of the sporting world in order to show what a fine creature he is, society is as right to put him down as to put down any Christian like him. But the philanthropists who invited Mr. Bright to attend their meeting may be profitably invited to search their own hearts, and ask themselves whether they are quite free from that feeling that the best Jew is never the equal of the worst Christian, which is at the root of the Rumanian riots,[24] and which certainly is entirely out of keeping with the tenets and teaching of the School of Galilee.”
FOOTNOTES:
[14] Here out of sixty thousand souls the Jews number forty thousand, but to prevent taxation they have arranged with the Turkish authorities never to exceed eleven thousand five hundred. [Since this was written (1873) the whole population of Salonika has increased rapidly, and now (1897) numbers 150,000, of whom about 60,000 are Jews, 30,000 Turks, 30,000 Serbs, 15,000 Greeks, and 4,000 Zinzers.]
[15] No religious census has lately been taken in England and Wales; the above therefore is only a conjecture. In 1853 the Jews of Great Britain were set down at 30,000; of these 25,000 were resident in London, and 5,000 elsewhere. The yearly deaths were 560, which at the average rate of mortality would give a maximum of 25,000. Of this total, 5,000 belonged to the upper or educated class, 8,000 to the middle orders, and 12,000 represented the lower ranks. [In 1890 the Jews of Great Britain and Ireland were estimated at over 93,000, of whom 67,500 were resident in London. It may be of interest to add that in 1896 the entire Jewish population was calculated at 6,505,000, thus distributed over the globe: Europe 5,500,000; Asia 260,000; Africa 430,000; America 300,000; Australia 15,000. See A. H. Keane, Population, Races, and Languages of the World, in the Church Missionary Atlas, New (eighth) edition. London, 1896.]
[16] At this moment there is a traffic far fouler and more terrible than any Coolie-hunting in African slave-export—extending from Lemberg to India and China.
[17] The essential superiority of the Jew over Nakhrím, or strangers, is carefully kept up by the Gavním, or luminaries, of the Jewish Law. During the preparations for Sabbath one of the prayers is: “Blessed art Thou, O Lord, who hast made distinction between things sacred and profane, between light and darkness, between Israel and other nations.” On the New Year’s Day (Rosh ha-Shanah) the housemaster says at supper: “Blessed art Thou, O Lord, who didst select us from all other people, and exalt us above all other nations, and sanctify us with Thy commandments, … for Thou didst select us, and sanctify us from all other people. … Blessed art Thou, O Lord, the Sanctifier of Israel,” etc. At the Passover they repeat the same, adding, “Blessed art Thou, O Lord, the Sanctifier of Israel and the times.” During the Feast of Pentecost they pray, “Blessed art Thou, O Lord, who hast selected us above all other people, and exalted us above all other nations, and sanctified us with Thy commandments. … Our Lord is exalted—He is the first and the last, He desired and chose us, and delivered to us the Law.”
Such are a few of the passages which are still approved of by learned and reverend Jews, “the stars of the evening twilight of their race.” These pretensions are evidently misplaced at the end of the nineteenth century. Their effects are remarkable upon the feeble brains of certain Christians, who, in conversation and missionary matters, have been thrown much in Jewish society, and who end by thoroughly believing all these absurd claims. A Gentile writes about them: “In addressing the posterity of the Patriarchs on such a theme [incredulity], well may I avail myself of the words held sacred by their fellow-citizens, not of their race, while I repeat the assertion that a Hebrew infidel—an infidel amongst the ‘Israelites, to whom appertained the adoption, and the glory, and the covenants,’ and to whom were committed the oracles of God’—the only open eye of the world when all the rest