Читать книгу The Jew, The Gypsy and El Islam - Sir Richard Francis Burton - Страница 9

[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 of mankind had darkness for their portion, or the light of dreams—is indeed a frightful, a portentous phenomenon!” Yet such as they are they number hundreds of thousands, and the spread of absolute infidelity is enormously on the increase.

[18] The journey of this eminent philanthropist to Alexandria in 1840 was a very remarkable one, all things considered. In 1855 he again visited “the East,” with the especial object of ameliorating the condition of his co-religionists in the Holy Land; and it is a favourite subject to conjecture how much, or how little, of the true state of things he was allowed to know. He certainly learned nothing from his Damascus host, the late Ishak Haim Farkhi, a Jew under French protection. Nor is it believed that he gained much knowledge of the true state of affairs at Jerusalem. For instance, the almshouses built outside the city under his trusteeship are occupied by the friends of the Scribes and those who pay court to them, not by the destitute for whom they were intended. When the venerable philanthropist paid his last visit, a collection of the poorest and the most miserable of the community was hurriedly installed there, and after his departure was as summarily ejected. The public has not forgotten his trip to Morocco, which, however, if matters progress as they do now, may eventually be regretted by his protégés.

[19] [I have retained 729, the date given by Burton, although Muhammad died in 732 from the effects of the experiment.]

[20] Upon the sanguineo-oleaginous expression of the Jews and the consequent pendency of the epiglottis, see “A Cause of Diminished Longevity among the Jews,” by Sir Duncan Gibb, Bart, M.A., M.D., LL.D., Article 10, Journal of Anthropology, No. 1, July, 1870, pp. 94–97. It exactly describes many of the Jews of Syria and Palestine.

[21] This is a complete misnomer applied to Christianity, which it confuses with the Rabbinical Schools of Tiberias and Safed.

[22] [The year would be 1873.]

[23] The Jewish family is still in England what it is all over the East, the chief defence of the individual against society. Hence the strong affections between relations. And for the same reason Jews are excellent parents—it can hardly be otherwise when the son is expected to liberate his father and mother from Sheol.

[24] This is a very small fibre of a very pretty root.