1 | Racial Characteristics of Modern Jews
Joseph Jacobs

“On the Racial Characteristics of Modern Jews,” in Jewish Statistics: Social, Vital and Anthropometric (London: D. Nutt, 1891).

Joseph Jacobs (1854–1916) was born in Australia and educated in England and Germany. He was professionally involved in a number of academic disciplines, including folklore, anthropology, statistics, history, and archaeology. Jacobs lived in England until 1900, when he traveled to the United States to become one of the editors of The Jewish Encyclopedia. He was one of the earliest advocates and practitioners of a systematic, scientific study of Jews along statistical and racial lines, and he published numerous books and articles related to Jews and race. This selection is from a paper he read before the Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland on February 24, 1885. See the entry in the Encyclopedia Judaica, 9:1235–36.

In the following research I have endeavored to bring together all the data, scientific or historical, which bear on the question of the purity of the Jewish race. I have found it necessary for this purpose to scrutinize somewhat closely many Jewish qualities and habits that have hitherto been regarded as peculiarly the results of race. Most of these, however, have been found to be due to social causes, and cannot therefore be regarded as primarily racial. Nevertheless I trust even the discussion of the secondarily racial qualities of Jews with which this paper opens may not be without interest to students of anthropology. They exhibit, I conceive, a striking example of the influence which the social life of man has on his physical qualities. For a decision on the main question, I have been forced to turn to history, which is on this occasion more than usually Janus-faced.

We have first of all to determine which are the Jews whose racial qualities we are to determine. I have made the following estimate, necessarily rough, of the various classes of persons now living, who may claim to be Jews by religion or by birth, or by both [see table 1.1].¹

[TABLE 1.1]

Notes

^aRohlfs in Petermann “Mittheil,” 1883, p. 213.

^bSerour, “Les Daggatouns,” 1880. I include in this number the Mavambu or Negro-Jews of the Loango Coast (vide Andree, “Volkskunde d. Juden,” 1881, p. 90).

^cCensus of India, 1881, gives 7,952 Jews in British Bombay.

^d“Jüd. Littblt,” 1883, No. 36. The number of Jews in China is unknown.

^eDescendants of Spanish Jews still isolated. Lewin, ibid., No. 30.

^fDescendants of followers of the Jewish “Mahdi,” Sabbathai Zebi. Graetz in “Monatsft,” 1884, Feb.

^gJews forcibly converted to Islam thirty years ago, “Vesillo Israel,” April, 1884.

Besides these, there exist a large number of persons, mostly in Europe, who have Jewish blood in their veins as descendants of Jewish converts. This is specially the case in Spain, where Jewish blood has filtrated through all ranks of society up to the very highest, and the same is said of certain districts of mid-France. The anthropology of Jews can never be satisfactorily settled till careful examination of these various data has shown their resemblances and differences. From the common qualities of classes A and B we can determine qualities due to religion; from those common to A and C, but differing in B, we might draw valuable conclusions as to influences of race. As a matter of fact, for the second and third classes we have practically no data to work with, except the vague impressions of travelers, and we must therefore confine our attention to the two chief divisions of Jews: (1) Sephardim, mostly descendants of the refugees from Spain in 1492, and now residing on the littoral of the Mediterranean;2 and (2) Ashkenazim, dwelling in all the countries inhabited by Teutons or Slavs. The latter form an overwhelming majority (93 percent), and our information about them is tolerably extensive and reliable.

What are the qualities, if any, that we are to regard as racially characteristic of Jews? Much vague declamation has been spoken and written on this subject. All the moral, social, and intellectual qualities of Jews have been spoken of as being theirs by right of birth in its physical sense. Jews differ from others in all these points, it is true, as I have partly shown elsewhere.³ But the differences are due, in my opinion, to the combined effect of their social isolation and of their own traditions and customs, and if they have nowadays any hereditary predisposition toward certain habits and callings, these can only be regarded as secondarily racial, acquired hereditary tendencies which cannot be brought forward as proof of racial purity. If all the Johns and Maries of Europe were to be shut up in ghetti for a couple of centuries they would undoubtedly show peculiarities in habits and thought; they would develop a Johannine psychology, as it were, and most probably, as we shall see, a Johannine biostatics. And there is another reason why the psychological traits of Jews must be omitted for the present from any research which claims to be scientific. Science was to Con dillac a hundred years ago only a well-constructed terminology (une langage bien faite); nowadays science is measurement accurately calculated. Now though I hope to show on some future occasion that the intellectual capacity of Jews, if not absolutely, is yet relatively measurable as compared with that of other Europeans, I should still hesitate to qualify these distinctions as racial in a strict sense. They seem more a matter of temperament, which is at best but the tone of race, and is much more modifiable by education and environment than purely racial characteristics, so that it may happen that widely diverse races—for example, Jews and Frenchmen—may have much the same temperament. Under any circumstances it would be difficult for a Jew to avoid subjective bias in dealing with these matters, and where that bias leads to any assertion of superiority the result is as unsatisfactory from the point of view of science as it is from that of taste. It remains then to consider those qualities of Jews which depend on physical properties, and these have the further advantage of lending themselves to accurate measurement. These are (1) the vital statistics of Jews—marriages, births, deaths, diseases; and (2) their anthropometry or bodily measurements.4

[. . .]

DISCUSSION

The Rev. Dr. Hermann Adler⁵ (Delegate Chief Rabbi) congratulated the President on having chosen a subject of such profound interest to the student of anthropology. He agreed with the view propounded by Mr. Jacobs in his exhaustive paper, that on the whole there had not been any large foreign admixture with the Jewish race. As a theme for further inquiry, he drew attention to the copies in Dr. Wright’s Empire of the Hittites of the representations discovered near Carchemish of the ancient inhabitants of that country. Their features bore an extraordinary resemblance to the inferior Hebraic type, with low forehead, hooked nose, and thick lips. If the hypothesis of Professor Sayce and Dr. Wright were accepted as correct, might the existence of this type, which argued kinship with the Mongolian race, and which differed so materially from the characteristic features of the Semitic race—the expanded forehead and symmetrical lineaments—be traced to intermarriage with the Hittites who are represented in the Bible as descended from Ham?⁶ The dark and the blond type [sic], the speaker believed, should be regarded as original, dating from Bible times and described respectively in Canticles 5:11 and 2 Samuel 6:12. That the existence of the blond type was not due to intermarriage might be proved by the fact that it was to be found among the Jews of North Africa, Syria, Arabia, and Persia, where, owing to the prevalence of fanaticism, mixed marriages had rarely, if ever, taken place. Goethe, a man of science as well as a poet, had pithily summed up the main anthropological characteristic of the Hebrew race in the words: “Es ist das beharrlichste Volk der Erde. Es ist, es war, es wird sein” [“This is the most tenacious Volk in the world. This is how it is, how it was, and how it will be”].

Dr. Behrend7 observed that M. Littré had well said that all springs of human conduct arose from two instincts, that of self-preservation, and the reproductive instinct for the preservation of the race. The rightful cultivation of these two instincts led to the primary desire of all humanity—happiness, and the chief element in human happiness was health. Health, both of body and mind, depended mainly on conduct, not only of the individual, but also from heredity. Therefore we should expect that as conduct (and through conduct, health; and through health, happiness) was the object of religion, a code of religion should lay down laws, which would be a guide of conduct, and thereby conduce to health and happiness. These primary instincts, that of self-preservation and the reproductive instinct, were mainly regulated in the Jewish code by laws concerning diet, circumcision, and sexual relations. The speaker had shown elsewhere at length (in a series of papers “On the Communicability to Man of the Diseases from Animals Used as Food”) that the Hebraic dietary laws preserved [the Jews] from the transmission of such diseases, and especially from the ravages of tuberculosis, which in its various forms was accountable for at least one-fifth of the entire mortality in this country. Sexual relations were regulated in the Hebrew code by laws which aimed at conserving the highest attainable degree of virility, by restraining undue indulgence and ensuring procreation only at a specially healthy period. We need hardly pause to dwell on the enormous advantages [that] such a start in the battle of life must give toward the “survival of the fittest.”

The special biostatic privileges of Jews might be summed up in the proven facts that they married less, had fewer births, died less (that is, lived longer), increased at a greater rate, and had fewer stillborn and illegitimate children than any other race. It was quite unnecessary to repeat the statistics upon these points: they had been given over and over again, by Hoffmann, Kolb, Bergmann, Legoyt, Bernouilli, Lagneau, Loeb, and many others; but it was interesting, and to the Jews vitally instructive, to note that in proportion as they mixed with other races—either of their own accord or by the spread of social tolerance—they lost these biostatic privileges, and the differences became effaced. Thus M. de Bergmann (“Beiträge zur Geschichte der Bevölkerung in Deutschland”) showed that the relation of the sexes among the Jews in Posen had of late become much modified: that while from 1819 to 1864 it was as 111.94 boys to 100 girls, it fell to 106.39 to 100 from 1864 to 1873; similarly, the proportion of illegitimate births among them had increased, showing a relaxation in their adherence to the Mosaic code. In every one of the biostatic privileges they enjoyed, the penalty had to be paid for laxity of observances, and either in their own persons or in their descendants, those who transgressed had to submit to the inexorable law of “being cut off from their own people,” as far as was concerned in their share of the physical advantages of their race.

Mr. F. D. Mocatta8 remarked that in addition to the two greater divisions of the Jewish race, Sephardim (Spanish) and Ashkenazim (German), not to mention the Italian Jews, there were various other families of Jews, such as those of the interior of Morocco, speaking Arabic, and not Spanish; those of Persia and of Yemen; and others. Besides these were large numbers of Jews in various countries, who might be considered not to be of the seed of Abraham, or only to be to a greater or lesser degree crossed with it. Such were the Beni-Israel of Bombay, those of Foo-Choo-Foo (now nearly obliterated), the Riff Jews of the north of Morocco (an armed, warlike set, loosely adhering to Judaism, but differing in physique and habit from other Jews), the nearly black and crispy Malabar Jews, etc. Also the Jews of Southeast Russia in Europe, who speak Russian and are a well-developed, hardy, and generally ruddy race, are probably a different family from those of Poland and Central Russia, who still speak a dialect of German, their ancestors having been driven out of Germany at the period of the Crusades. This family might possibly represent, as the Karaites of the Crimea were often supposed to do, the descendants of the Khozars, a tribe on the Caspian, who about the seventh century founded a state and maintained it for the best part of two centuries, adopting the Jewish religion. All these, so to speak, outlying families of Jews might be regarded as descendants of proselytes, but as they had blended but very little with the general mass of the Jews, they did not much affect the subject then under consideration. In biblical times the Jews frequently made matrimonial alliances with the surrounding populations, and this was a constant theme of the reproach of prophets and reformers, notably of Ezra and Nehemiah. Later on, at the time of the conquest of Titus, when Christianity was only dawning on the Latin world, many Jews were carried to Rome, the bulk being the common people, who were put to labor on public works and often devoured at gladiatorial shows; but some of whom, being scholars and persons of refinement, were admitted into Roman society, and by the purity of their doctrine won over to their philosophy and religion many of the higher classes, notably women, who were becoming tired of the superstitions and worldliness into which the pagan religions had degenerated. This probably led to alliances, and such is M. Renan’s opinion.9 The Jews also, ever prone to adopt the habits and manners of surrounding nations, became lax; Romanized and Hellenized their names, as was evidenced in the Jewish catacombs at Rome; and probably contracted marriages with the people around them. All these sources might have led to an admixture of non-Jewish blood, [but] the extent of such admixture (the alliances being at all times exceptional rather than general, and having become rarer with the persecutions which set in the earlier ages of the Christian Church) was not likely to have essentially modified either the type or the physical or moral characteristics of the Jewish race, which might therefore be regarded for all practical purposes as pure. This was all the more probable since a large number of the issue of such mixed alliances naturally fell back to the dominant religions of the various times and countries, and ceased to have anything to do with Judaism. The speaker said he had not alluded to alliances made between Jews and Oriental peoples, Mohammedans, etc., in earlier times, first because it would be difficult to prove their frequency or the contrary, and second because, these peoples being for the most part Semitic themselves, the changes thus induced would have been far less accentuated.

Sir Joseph Fayrer¹⁰ had no criticisms to make on the erudite papers which had been read that evening, but would ask one or two questions, first remarking that he had known Jews in Calcutta where one member of the family had light hair and gray eyes, another dark hair and complexion. It struck him that the Armenians presented those peculiar characteristics of physiognomy which were usually attributed to the Jew. Was this not simply a question of race, both being Semitic, and should not the so-called Jewish physiognomy rather be called Semitic than be regarded as the special attribute of the Hebrew, as distinct from other Semitic races such as the Armenian? The speaker would ask the learned author of the second paper (Mr. Jacobs) if he could give any information as to the relation of the Afghans to the Jews? They undoubtedly had the physiognomy strongly marked—it was often said they were descendants of the lost tribes, and there was a tribe among them calling themselves Beni-Israel. What was known and accepted among erudite Jews as to the origin of the Afghans? Again, what was the origin of the race of Black Jews on the Malabar coast? Were these not a mixed race, and were they not the result of admixture with the Teluigan races of Southern India? Pure as the Jewish race is, it would seem that it must be recognized that evidences of such admixture with other races did exist, and it would also seem that they had taken more or less of an impression from their surroundings and from the character of the races among which they had settled.

Mr. Lucien Wolf11 did not agree with Mr. Jacobs’s view of the physiological characteristics of Jews. Mr. Jacobs practically denied the existence of these characteristics, whereas the speaker felt inclined not only to assert their existence, but to assert that they were so well defined as to form real race distinctions. This view could be proved by statistics, and figures could also be given to prove the immunity of Jews from phthisis, which Mr. Jacobs contested. The purity of the race could not be demonstrated by anthropological measurements, for, physically, Jews varied enormously. It was different with their vital characteristics, and while we found that these were maintained at a high average, we might rest assured that the race was being conserved. The evidence brought forward by Dr. Neubauer in favor of his view that the Jewish race had not kept itself pure told against the proposition it was intended to support when it was tested by other evidence. Thus it might be asked how was it that, notwithstanding these large accessions to Judaism, the race had not increased, and that in spite of these large infusions of alien blood, so important a vital characteristic as its high reproductive power has not become modified. It must be obvious that had the remarkable multiplying power of the Jews been left unchecked, they must have increased far beyond their present numbers, and if they could receive accessions from other races without diminishing this power, then by this time they ought to have peopled the world. The conclusion must be then that the mixed marriages referred to had not affected the purity of the race. By their tendency to sterility they have periodically carried off the perpetually growing fringe of Judaism, leaving always a pure nucleus to repropagate itself. Thus by bringing to light the fact that mixed marriages were generally sterile, the evidence cited by Dr. Neu-bauer, instead of telling against the purity of the Jewish race revealed the most powerful argument in its favor. Nor was this theory of sterility a theory only. The speaker had investigated a large number of cases of mixed marriages—not quite so many as Mr. Jacobs—and in every single case he had found, if not absolute sterility, at least a falling off in the vital power of the offspring, placing them far below the average obtaining in the Jewish community. This falling off was only postponed sterility, as he had had occasion to prove himself by investigating the history through several generations of a few mixed marriages.

Notes

1. The best enumeration of Jews is by M. I. Loeb, art. “Juifs,” in Saint Martin’s Dictionnaire de Geographie; his chief errors are making the number of Russian Jews too low by a million, and the Falashas 200,000 instead of 50,000.

2. I have reckoned in [sic] with the Sephardim the Italian Jews and those under Moslem rule.

3. Vide my “Studies in Jewish Statistics” (Jewish Chronicle Office). [That essay was published in the same volume—Jewish Statistics—as this selection.]

4. [Omissions from selections are indicated by ellipsis points within square brackets. What follows is a report of the discussion of Jacobs’s paper by members of the audience.]

5. [Hermann Adler (1839–1911) was the chief rabbi of Great Britain from 1891 to 1911.]

6. Note by Mr. Jacobs.—These Jewish-looking “Hittites” were probably the Semitic vassals of the genuine Hittites. Mr. T. Tyler has pointed out to me at the British Museum two types on the monuments, one of Mongolian features and a kind of Chinese tail [queue], the other of the ordinary Semitic type. The latter he conjectures to be the vassals of the former, and thus their Jewish appearance is simply another example of the identity of the Jewish and the Semitic type.

7. [Henry Behrend (1828–1893) was an Anglo-Jewish physician, medical researcher, and hospital adminstrator.]

8. [Frederick David Mocatta (1828–1905) was a prominent communal leader of London Jewry, a philanthropist, and a scholar.]

9. [Ernest Renan (1823–92) was a French philosopher, historian, and theorist of nationalism.]

10. [Joseph Fayrer (1824–1907) was an English physician known principally as an expert on medicine and disease in India.]

11. [Lucien Wolf (1857–1930) was a noted Anglo-Jewish journalist, historian, and activist on behalf of the Jewish community.]