Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 82.djvu/270

266 Likewise the alleged conversion of the Chazars, a Tartar tribe of Russia, was in reality confined to the ruling classes and their immediate court dependents, the main body of the people remaining free from the admixture with the Jewish proselytes.

During the middle ages the Christians themselves put a ban on intermarriage and thus the rule against its practise was doubly enforced.

Since the time of Napoleon and the consequent removal of the political disabilities of the Jews, there has been no increasing tendency to take outsiders into the Jewish fold. Even in New York, where the social and business relations between Jew and Gentile are perhaps closer than in any other city in the world, there is practically no tendency to encourage mixed marriages. Although it is manifestly impossible to obtain exact figures upon this subject, all the obtainable data go to support the view that the inbreeding is going on here as much as in any other place in the world. M. Victor Safford, who has investigated extensively the results of immigration upon the ethnic composition of our population, has said that a study of the marriage certificates in New York City, while not giving sufficient grounds to absolutely prove the contention that intermarriage between Jew and Gentile is rare, does, nevertheless, justify the belief that such is the case. The children resulting from such marriages almost invariably marry either Jews or persons who, like themselves, are only half Jews. Thus, what little departure there is from the principle against mixed marriages has no tendency to introduce fresh blood into the central stem. Hirsch has said that if all the Jews had remained Jews since the time of Christ that there would be 100,000,000 in the world to-day. If we grant the truth of this rough approximation, it only serves to show that the result of all this "marrying out" has been an ever-increasing practise of inbreeding in the pure central stock. When we consider that the total number of the race is small, being probably not much over 12,000,000 altogether, we can easily see that there is not enough variety of blood among the members of the different Jewish families to avoid frequent consanguineous marriages.

Theoretically, the Jews are compelled to observe marriage customs which result in racial incest. Practically, it is well known that they really do marry their own cousins much more than do the people of other races. Jacobs says that they are probably three times as guilty in this respect as others. I think we must concede the point that they are a highly inbred and closely related race. This fact undoubtedly accounts for the very strong racial characteristics which they possess.