338 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



THE RACIAL GEOGRAPHY OF EUROPE. 



A SOCIOLOGICAL STUDY. 



{Lowell Institute Lectures, 1896.) 

 By WILLIAM Z. RIPLEY, Ph. D., 



ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF SOCIOLOGY, MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY; LECTURER 

 IN ANTHROPO-GEOGRAPIIY AT COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY'. 



SUPPLEMENT.— THE JEWS (continued). 



TRADITION has long divided the Jewish people into two dis- 

 tinct branches: the Sephardim, or southern, and the Ashkena- 

 zim or north, European. Mediaeval legend among the Jews them- 

 selves traced the descent of the first from the tribe of Jndah; the sec- 

 ond, from that of Benjamin. The Sephardim are mainly the remnants 

 of the former Spanish and Portuguese Jews. They constitute in 

 their own eyes an aristocracy of the nation. They are found prima- 

 rily to-day in Africa; in the Balkan states, where they are known as 

 Spagnuoli; less purely in France and Italy. A small colony in Lon- 

 don and Amsterdam still holds itself aloof from all communion and 

 intercourse with its brethren. The Ashkenazim branch is numer- 

 ically far more important, for the German, Russian, and Polish Jews 

 comprise over nine tenths of the people, as we have already seen in 

 our preceding article. 



Early observers all describe these two branches of the Jews as 

 very different in appearance. Vogt, in his Lectures on Man, as- 

 sumes the Polish type to be descended from Hindu sources, while 

 the Spanish alone he held to be truly Semitic. Weisbach * gives 

 us the best description of the Sephardim Jew as to-day found at 

 Constantinople. He is slender in habit, he says; almost without 

 exception the head is " exquisitely ' : elongated and narrow, the 

 face a long oval; the nose hooked and prominent, but thin and 

 finely chiseled; hair and eyes generally dark, sometimes, however, 

 tending to a reddish blond. This rufous tendency in the Oriental 

 Jew is emphasized by many observers. Dr. Beddoe f found red 

 hair as frequent in the Orient as in Saxon England, although later 

 results do not fully bear it out.:}: This description of a reddish Ori- 

 ental type corresponds certainly to the early representations of the 

 Saviour; it is the type, in features, perhaps, rather than hair, 

 painted by Rembrandt — the Sephardim in Amsterdam being fa- 

 miliar to him, and appealing to the artist in preference to the Ash- 



* 1877, p. 214. t 1861 1>, PP- 22 ? and 331 - 



% Gliick, 1896 a. Jacobs, 1890, p. 82, did not find a trace of it in the Sephardim con- 

 gregation in London. See Andree, 1878, in this connection. 



