276 Heredity and the Jeiv 



the Sephardic community represents the aristocracy or not, depends 

 upon what one means by the term. If by aristocracy is meant a 

 dominating class of the same stock, or a conquering invading people, 

 then the Sephardim hold, in respect to the Ashkenazim, no position as 

 aristocrats. If, by aristocrats, a class is meant which has, so to speak, 

 precipitated itself from out of the body of the general people by reason 

 of superior mental or physical attainment, then again the Sephardim 

 fail to establish their claim as aristocrats because, since the dispersion, 

 the two sects have never lived in that close commuuion in which such 

 precipitation could occur. On the contrary, the two classes have held 

 themselves rigidly apart up to the last fifty years or so. The original 

 distinction between the two groups would seem to have been essentially 

 geographical. During the Middle Ages the Sephardic Jews lived under 

 far better conditions than their Ashkenazic brethren in Europe, and in 

 that way they were brought into much more intimate contact with 

 general culture than the Ashkenazim who were thrown on their own 

 resources. In this sense, therefore, the Sephardim may be considered 

 aristocrats. 



In point of view of the purity, that is to say the absence of mixture 

 with outside blood, during the last 1800 years, there is no doubt that 

 the Ashkenazim can show a far cleaner bill than the Sephardim who 

 are known to have absorbed in no small quantity both Moorish and 

 Iberian blood, so that the boast of blue-bloodedness comes to have 

 a meaning other than that generally assumed. 



The composite nature of the Jew as he left Palestine has already 

 been stated and the question at once arises, was this complexity 

 increased by intermarriage with European races during his wanderings ? 

 Many autliorities, and recently more especially Fischberg(6), have 

 argued that the Jew has absorbed, during the last two thousand years, 

 blood from all the European stocks. Ripley is assured of it. Whilst it 

 is obviously impossible to prove that there has been no intermixture 

 during the last eighteen hundred years, yet it is, I think, more than 

 probable that that intermixture has been absolutely minimal. The 

 historic evidence is naturally incomplete on either side. Those who 

 think the intermixture was important in quantity point out the well- 

 known fact of the conversion to Judaism of considerable numbers in 

 Rome, but they forget that it was these very Judaised Romans who 

 were the early Christians. Then one is reminded that in the eighth 

 century the kingdom of the Kozars in South Russia was converted to 

 Judaism. This is true, but as Zollschan points out, all we know is. 



