ARE JEWS JEWS? 505 



proof, by the method of difference, of the comparatively pure descent 

 of the rest of the Jews, for neither the Karaites, who are the de- 

 scendants of the Chozars, nor the Falashas show any of the charac- 

 teristic Jewish features or expression. 



Those who contest the purity of the Jewish race lay great stress 

 upon the Chozars as forming the nucleus of the Russian Polish 

 Jews, who are, as is well known, a predominant majority among 

 present-day Jews, probably ninety per cent of whom either dwell 

 in the Russian dominions or are descended from former inhabitants 

 of old Poland. Yet against this is the absence of any reference 

 to Jews in Poland during the time the Chozars flourished (eighth 

 to eleventh centuries), while the very speech of the Polish Jews — - 

 the so-called " Yiddish," really archaic German mixed with He- 

 brew — indicates their true source, the German kingdoms and prin- 

 cipalities. Professor Ripley throws some doubt upon the possi- 

 bility of such large numbers as those of the Polish Jews having 

 been derived from Germany. Nowadays there are probably five 

 millions of Jews in the regions once possessed by Poland, but the 

 remarkable fertility of Jews is one of the most striking characteris- 

 tics of their vital statistics, to which, indeed, Professor Ripley has 

 called attention in his remarks upon their vitality. The develop- 

 ment of a generation depends, as is well known, upon the relative 

 number of deaths under five years of age, and it is just at this period 

 that Jewish mortality presents so favorable an aspect, owing to the 

 care of Jewish mothers and the absence of alcoholism among the 

 fathers. I have estimated that the Jewish population of the world 

 in 1730 (six generations ago) was only 1,300,000, whereas at the 

 present moment it is at least nine times as much. If one could 

 assume the same rate of progress to have existed through the middle 

 ages the Jewish population in the fourteenth century would have 

 been not much more than 25,000. Such a rate of progress is, how- 

 ever, extremely unlikely, considering the large losses by persecu- 

 tion, which in Poland alone, during the disastrous Cossack inroads 

 between 1648 and 1656, is said to have removed no less than 

 180,000 Jews. But, making every allowance for this disturbance 

 in the rate of progress, it would have been quite possible for 50,000 

 Jews who had migrated to Poland in the thirteenth and fourteenth 

 centuries to increase to over half a million at the beginning of the 

 eighteenth. Americans, who have seen nearly half a million Rus- 

 sian Jews land upon their shores within the last twenty years after 

 crossing nearly half the world, need not be incredulous as to the pos- 

 sibility of one tenth of that numberpassing over the borders between 

 Germany and Poland in a couple of centuries during the middle 

 ages, when, if means of transit were less numerous, intensity of 



