JEWISH PSYCHOPATHOLOGY 265 



different races. If the science of eugenics deserves any practical appli- 

 cation at all, it should insist upon a careful study of the every-day 

 violation of its cardinal principle by a whole race who persistently 

 refuse to practise the very doctrine which is essential to the preserva- 

 tion of a sound and healthy mentality. I refer to the Jews. 



In order to further elucidate the subject and to make good this 

 rather bold assertion, I propose to prove the following propositions: 

 First, the Jews are a highly inbred and psychopathically inclined race. 

 Second, the prevalence of mental affections among them is almost en- 

 tirely due to heredity. 



That the Jews are as a matter of fact racially pure is a statement 

 that must not be taken absolutely in a literal sense. All races have 

 received admixtures of some outside blood, but it is undoubtedly true 

 that, since the time of the prophet Ezra and his campaign for racial 

 purity which was begun at the time of the return from the Babylonian 

 captivity, 536 years before Christ, the central stem of Judah has 

 remained practically free from admixture with other races. Any stu- 

 dent of the old testament can easily substantiate the statement that 

 violations of the law against marriage with the heathen races, by which 

 they were surrounded, were, from that time on, most summarily pun- 

 ished. The feeling against such procedure grew in intensity until, at 

 the time of the fight for the maintenance of Jewish independence under 

 the Maccabees, it had reached such a degree of fervor-? that rabbinical 

 decrees forbade friendly social intercourse with the Gentile on any 

 pretext whatever. There is no doubt but that the Jews inter-married 

 and inbred among themselves on an ever increasing scale clear up to the 

 time of the fall of Jerusalem. 



After the Dispersion, there is some difference of opinion as to the 

 degree with which they maintained the racial purity which they had 

 been over 600 years in establishing. The weight of evidence, however, 

 is all in favor of the view that they did not abandon the time-honored 

 doctrine of racial solidarity. During Eoman times and the dispersion 

 throughout the Mediterranean littoral, the rabbinical decrees were still 

 vindictive in their treatment of the subject. To such extreme lengths 

 did they go, that the Goy or Gentile party to the contract was regarded 

 as having no right at all, but was considered like the slave, as having 

 a status that rendered him incapable of connubium with the Jews. 3 



Those anthropologists who cite the fact that there were a great 

 many converts to Judaism immediately after the fall of Jerusalem, 

 and that the Jews thus received a great deal of Eoman blood into their 

 veins, overlook the fact that these converts were the very ones from 

 whom the Christians in turn drew the majority of their converts. 

 Thus the Judaized Eomans were almost immediately lost to Judaism. 



* Ephraim Feldman, ' ' Intermarriage, Historically Considered, ' ' p. 19. 



