266 TEE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



Likewise the alleged conversion of the Chazars, a Tartar tribe of Bussia, 

 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. 4 



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 tend- 

 ency to encourage mixed marriages. Although it is manifestly impos- 

 sible 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 investi- 

 gated extensively the results of immigration upon the ethnic composi- 

 tion 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. 5 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. 6 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. 7 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. 



* W. D. Morrison, ' ' The Jews under Eoman Bule, ' ' p. 413. 



8 M. Victor Safford, private communication, June 29, 1912. 



•William Hirsch, "Keligion and Civilization," p. 579. 



7 Joseph Jacobs, ' ' Studies in Jewish Statistics, ' ' Appendix, p. 4. 



