Richard Francis Burton

“ Many Jews who have neither the time nor the will to visit Jerusalem pay considerable sums for vicarious prayers there offered by their co-­religionists, and the contributions are collected throughout Europe by appointed emissaries like the begging friars of the Catholic world. This dole, distributed alike and indiscriminately to all who occupy the four Holy Cities, brings many idle and worthless persons together, and promotes early and improvident marriages, every child being a source of additional increase. ”

“ Many of the Sephardím are shopkeepers, trading chiefly in stuffs and hardwares. There are many minor differences between them and the Ashkenazím, such as the contents and the arrangement of their ritual, the constitution of their meetings, the mode of reading the service, their music, and even their cursive form of the square Hebrew character. The Maghrabis, or Western Jews, chiefly living in North‐western Africa, rank elsewhere as Sephardím; at Jerusalem, however, they are considered a separate sect, and have their own chief doctor. ”

“ Those who know the codes of the Talmud and of the Safed School, which are still, despite certain petty struggles, the life‐light of Judaism, will have no trouble in replying. A people whose highest ideas of religious existence are the superstitious sanctification of Sabbath, the washing of hands, the blowing of ram’s horns, the saving rite of circum­cision, and the thousand external functions compen­sating for moral delinquencies, with Abraham sitting at the gate of Hell to keep it closed for Jews ”

“ Knowing that his doctor can excommunicate him, and, what is more to the purpose, starve him and his family, not a Jew dare object to, though he will loudly complain of, a system of hypocrisy and peculation. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ The Ashkenazím speak a kind of Jew‐German, garbled with Hebrew and other foreign words. Their dress is a long robe like a dressing‐gown, and a low­-crowned hat of felt or beaver; the lank love‐lock hanging down either cheek, and the eccentrically clipped fur caps, which, despite the burning sun,
[p. 51]
they everywhere don for the Sabbath and for feast-­days, make their appearance not a little comical. In the Holy Land they are mostly petty traders and craftsmen, supported in part by the Hallorkah, or alms. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Those of the Moroccan interior use Arabic. The dress is Oriental, and in the Holy Land they still wear the black turban ordained by the sumptuary laws of El Hakim (circa A.D. 1000) . In physical appearance they are somewhat more prepossessing than the Ashkenazím, who are out­numbering them in Syria and Palestine, and are gradually ousting them. Officially they retain their position; the Hakhám Bashí, or chief doctor, is the only Jewish official recognized by the Turkish Government and representing the community in
[p. 49]
the Majlis, or town council. ”

“ And as a rule the almsgiving of the Israelite, so exceptionally liberal
[p. 52]
throughout Western Europe, becomes mean and niggardly throughout the Holy Land. In the absence of coin sufficiently small, the wealthy Hebrews of Jerusalem have invented a system of tin bits, which the mendicant must collect till sufficiently numerous to be changed for currency. Whenever there is a famine in the country, pauper Jews receive probably the least assistance from their fellows dwelling within the same walls.
The Ashkenazím are divided into religious sects and social communities. ”

“ This power, half European and half Asiatic, greatly indebted withal for her success in life to the mixture which she despises, has the immense advantage of a peculiar and homogeneous creed, in which she believes with childish ardour and which she preaches with virile energy. To her, conquest is not mere increase of area, of physical growth. ”

“ There is still a large colony at Aden, where the English authorities have found nothing to complain of them. Formerly there were many at Damascus; now they have left it en masse: the Protestant cemetery occupies part of their old burial‐ground, whose gravestones are distinguished from those of the Jews. In Syria they are mostly confined to Jerusalem, where till lately they numbered seven families (thirty‐five souls) . Their single, poor syna­gogue, a small cellar‐like chamber, which dates back,
[p. 57]
they say, for many centuries, lies opposite the big new building of the orthodox. ”

“ The civilized world would never endure the presence of a creed which says to man, “Hate thy neighbour unless he be one of ye,” or of a code written in blood, not in ink, which visits the least infractions of the Rabbinical laws with exorcism and excommunication, with stoning and flogging to death.1 A year of such spectacles
1 It has been well remarked that no Hebrew citizen was ever condemned to exile. ”

“ They will travel by night over difficult and dangerous paths, whereas their congeners tremble to quit the city walls; and they can endure extremes of heat and cold, of hunger and thirst, which might be fatal to any soft Syrian who would imitate them. The Ashkenazím of the Holy Land are in a word “men”; the Sephardím are not. “The Spanish and Portu­guese Jews are of far higher and more intellectual type than the English and German,” says Dr. ”

“ Much vice, misery, and ill‐feeling are engendered by the present system of bounty, which leaves much behind when passing through the hands of doctors re­sponsible to no one for the money they receive. These men live in comfort and even luxury; the terrorism, physical as well as spiritual, with which they inspire their congregations, renders them ab­solutely unassailable. ”

“ 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 ”

“ Relying upon their new nationality, they addict themselves openly to usury and to other transactions of a doubtful and often of a dishonourable character. A determination to protect the whole community from religious persecution, allowing the Sultan to treat their commercial and civic affairs on the same footing as all the rest of his subjects, would be much more just, and would probably remedy not a few evils. In the year 1840 the Northern Jews mustered few at Damascus, and even now they are not numerous ”

“ Whilst professing to be guided only by the Talmud, they in reality follow the teaching of some chosen Guter Jude. The Khasidím are particular in the observance of Jewish customs, especially such as relate to the Sabbath. They shake themselves violently and cry aloud during prayers; at other times they are much addicted to dancing, singing, and deep drinking. ”

“ Much im­portance is attached by this sect to works of charity; in this way they are guided by the Yad ha‐Khazakah, or “strong hand” of Maimonides, who assigns eight steps or grades to the golden ladder of charity. The Parushím and Khasidím combine in various propor­tions; for instance, in Tiberias all are Khasidím except the doctor, who is a Parushi.
The Khabad, or third sect, suggests in name the Ebionites, or Jewish Nazarenes, who hold the “great teacher of Nazareth” to be the Messiah, but merely human; this sect, however, has apparently died out. ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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. ”

“ It openly
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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. ”

“ 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 prayer, in fact, has become a mere formula.1 Still, with six millions of souls, which will presently become nine, there can be no difficulty in finding volunteers like those who now garrison the four Holy Cities—­Jerusalem and Hebron, Tiberias and Safed. A single million of souls would give the Israelite complete command over the Land of Promise in the widest ”

“ 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 ”

“ These Puritans, claiming descent from the Ten Tribes who took no part in the Cruci­fixion, are scattered throughout Arabia, with Bagdad for a centre; and they are most numerous in Russia, and Poland, where they could boast that for four centuries none of their number had ever been found guilty of a serious crime. Henderson the traveller numbers some four thousand of them in the Crimea with their Cohens, or priests. At Pentecost, they read, we are told, as Ha‐phatorah, or conclusions of the day, Joel ii. 28—32, whereas other Jews stop at ver. ”