Fishberg: Eugenics in Jewish Life 



547 



for his troubles, he usually stopped at 

 nothing in his attempts at doing busi- 

 ness. Jewish folk-lore and literature 

 abound in tales of unscrupulous mar- 

 riage brokers who brought about mar- 

 riages between defectives and cripples. 

 In Zangwill's Children of the Ghetto we 

 find an excellent pen picture of the 

 Schadchen, and many of the novels of 

 Jewish life in Russian, German and 

 Yiddish contain splendid types of this 

 Jewish marriage broker. On the Yid- 

 dish stage he is very frequently por- 

 trayed in his true color. In eastern 

 Europe he is as active at present as he 

 ever was, and among the Jewish immi- 

 grants in London, New York, Philadel- 

 phia, Chicago, etc., he is still doing 

 excellent business. Even among the 

 rich, prosperous and ostensibly as- 

 similated Jews in Berlin, Vienna and 

 Paris, he is now quite often called into 

 service by fathers of marriageable 

 daughters, and by men who are willing 

 to enter a matrimonial alliance with any 

 woman who has money, or is likely to 

 inherit it. This may be one of the 

 important reasons why the proportion 

 of defectives among the rich Jews of 

 Germany is still higher than among the 

 Christians in that country. 



EFFECT OF CHARITY 



Jewnsh charity, proverbially a model 

 which others ought to follow, has no 

 doubt been of great value to those who 

 were in need of help from their fellow- 

 men, expecially during the great calami- 

 ties which often befell the Jews during 

 medieval days, such as massacres, 

 lootings of Jewish quarters, or expulsions 

 which were so frequent during the 

 Middle Ages and have not ceased during 

 the twentieth century in Russia and 

 Rumania. But during peaceful and 

 especially prosperous times, this Jewish 

 philanthropy has been an important 

 dysgenic factor and is undoubtedly 

 responsible in a large measure for much 

 of the degeneracy observed among the 

 Jews of today. 



In medieval times, when charity and 

 philanthropy were practically tmknown 

 among the Christians in Europe, except- 

 ing the little done by the Catholic 

 Church, the Jews were just as active 



in the field of relief of the poor, the sick 

 and the defectives as they are at present. 

 In the treasury of information of Ghetto 

 life, Jewish Life in the Middle Ages, by 

 Israel Abrahams, we find enumerated 

 the various agencies which were active 

 in relieving poverty and pauperism. 

 In the Ghetto of Rome there were so 

 many philanthropic societies that their 

 enumeration occupies several pages of 

 Abrahams' book. They were all active 

 in treating the sick, helping the defec- 

 tives and incidentally encouraging the 

 parenthood of those who, because of 

 physical or mental infirmity, could not 

 help themselves. 



Modern organized charity has made 

 an attempt to work along prophylactic 

 lines, but, as far as I have observed, 

 Jewish philanthropic agencies have not 

 worked very assiduously along eugenic 

 lines. In many Jewish communities in 

 eastern Europe, and in some even in 

 western Europe, there are found socie- 

 ties whose object is marrying every Jew 

 and Jewess, irrespective of his or her 

 physical or mental state. The itinerant 

 Jewish beggar and mendicant, known as 

 the Schnorrer, of whom Zangwill gave 

 us such an excellent picture in one of his 

 works, often begs for a dowry for his 

 daughters. Things reached such a stage 

 that many who had no marriageable 

 daughters begged for alleged ones, and at 

 present many carry with them certifi- 

 cates from the rabbi, or the head of the 

 congregation of their community, to 

 the effect that the bearer has one or 

 more marriageable daughters who need 

 dowry if they are to be saved from 

 celibacy. As I stated already, in east- 

 ern Europe there are even at present 

 societies for just this purpose. 



As far as I know, we have no such 

 societies in New York City, but I have 

 known the case of a philanthropically 

 inclined lady, in fact a director of a 

 highly organized charity society, who 

 spent several hundred dollars imiting 

 two cripples into matrimony, and the 

 newly wedded wife soon conceived and 

 gave birth to a defective child, which 

 she brought to the society asking for an 

 increase in the allowance given her as a 

 "pension." On the whole, the Jewish 

 charitable agencies in Vienna, Berlin, 



