trate them fully ; but their result is, that the votaries of Judaism
may he divided into two broadly-marked and distinct types, viz.
the one above mentioned, and another distinguished' by lank and
tall tramé, clear blue eye, very white and freckled skin, and yellow-
reddish hair.
Not merely in Barbary, Arabia, Bokhara, Hindostán and China,
have numberless converts to Judaism mingled their blood with the
pure Abrahamie stock ; hut, at several periods of temporary prosperity,
and in various parts of Europe also, during the middle ages,
Indo-germanic and Slavonian families, adopting Mosaic institutes,
freely intermixed with Israelites ; and hence, through amalgamation,
arise all noticeable divergencies from the well-known standard type.
Poland seems to. be the focus of this fusion of Jews with the G-erman
and Sarmatian races ;612 but some descendants of these multifarious
unions, exiled from Spain, form at this day large classes in Algeria ;
and, whilst they are rare in Egypt and Syria, I can attest their frequency
at Rhodes, Smyrna, and Constantinople. But, as a special
instance of the false deductions that would be drawn from them
(were philology not to be controlled by physiological criteria combined
with history), while at Rhodes and Smyrna the outdoor language of
these Israelites is Greek, and at Constantinople Turkish,— their
domestic- speech is Spanish, and their literature in the same tongue
printed with Hebrew letters ! The rationale is, they descend from
the Jews driven out of Spain during the XVTth century, where they
must have absorbed a goodly portion of Gothic, or perhaps Yandal,
blood prior to their exode. Indeed, upon surveying the infinitude
of diverse languages, habits, dresses, and contradictory institutions;
contracted by the Jewish type in every country of the earth, and the
consequent clashings of each national synagogue upon points of religious
doctrine among Khakhamlm educated in different countries,
should wealth ever enable Europeanized Jews to re-purchase Jerusalem,
and to , collect their brethren there from all regions of the earth,
I much fear the result would he hut a repetition of the “ confusion
of Babel.” Apart from identity of physical conformation, subject to
the exceptions above noticed, there could be but one test (and that
latterly made doubtful)613 through which such incongruous elements
could fraternize; and like a Council at Ephesus, this Sanhedrim
612 Boky de St . Vincent, Anthropologie de VAfrique Française, 1845, pp. 12, 15, 17-8:—
E ozet, Voyage dans la Régence d'Alger, Paris 4to, 1833 ; II, pp. 210-35. The learfied author
of Genesis of the Earth and of Man (1856, pp. 69, 123) supposes that the frequency of these
fair-skinned yellow-haired Jews in the E a s t“ has not been mentioned by any writer.’* Here
are two witnesses in the meanwhile.
sls Bekthekand (Médecine et Hygiène des Arabes, Paris, 1855; p . 313, note), on changes
in Circumcision.
would soon dissolve in uproar, affording to Gentiles a spectacle
similar to, and edifying as, that of the Conventicle of Dordrecht :
“ Dordrachi Synodus nodus.
Chorus integer aeger. .
Conyentus ventus, , t 1
Sessio.stramen, Amen.”
Very singular is it, nevertheless, that the people whose xenolasia,
or hatred to foreigners, has been so instinctive since their post-Babylonian
history, should have become in language the most cosmopolitan.
Thus Josephus says, that they who learned many tongues
were not esteemed in Judea ; and Origen testifies that, in his time,
the Jews did not trouble themselves about Grecians or their tenets.
In the Mishna, Jewish children are forbidden to acquire Greek.614
“ The postille, annexed to the text of the Misnah, contains a malediction,
pronounced against him who. keeps a hog, or teaches his son
Greek; as if it was equally impure to feed an unclean beast, and to
give men a good education :” but exile forced the Rabbis to relax
such inhibitions, during the 11th century, after R. Solomon of Barr
celona ; and now it would be difficult to define Israelitish characteristics
more aptly than by “ Judaismus polyglottus,” did not the original
Abrahamie type,—owing to a recognized law in breeding, that
the many, effacing by degrees the few., invariably return to their
normal physique—vindicate its right to he called the purest, cceteris
paribus, of all nations upon earth.
Again, among Shemitish examples, there are multitudes of pure-
blooded Arabs in Afghanistan and Bokbàra, few of whom except
their Moolahs preserve, their Arabian dialect;616 but have adopted
the alien idioms of the country, whilst preserving their Arabic physique
during about 1000 years. In Asia, these metamorphoses of
tongue coupled with preservation of type are' innumerable. There
are white Kalmuks (Telenggout) in Siberia, whose physiognomy is
wholly Mongol : hut speaking Turkish, they are evidently a Mongolian
family which, losing its own tongue, has adopted a Turkish dialect.
616 If one were to attempt a specification of the hybrid grada-
514 B asnage, pp. 405, 608-9. A very singular question, bearing upon oranioscopy, is
asked in the oid Talmud (Schabbas), viz. : “ Quare sunt capita Babyloniorum rotunda
[MoGeLGiLOTi] ?”— J oh. Boxtorfi p ., Lexicon Chaldaicum Talm. et Rabbin., 1629, p. 1435.
The fact is {supra, Chap. II, figs. 39, 40), they are round.
615 K hanikoff, Bokhara, its Amir and People, trans]. De Bode, London, 8vo., 1845 ; pp.
67-80: — Malcolm, History of Persia, London, 4to., 1815; p. 277 :— Mo r ie r , Second Journey
through Persia, London, 4to., 1818; i. pp. 47-8. On the absurdity of Jews being the
ancestors of the Tadjiks of Bokhara, or the Pushtaneh of Cabul, read K ennedy, Question
of the supposed Lost Tribes of ' Israel, ¡London, 8vo, 1855, p. 51.
618 K lapro th, Magasin Asiatique, No. I. :—See all kinds of similar transpositions between
race and tongue in Desmoulins, passim.