278 Heredity and the Jew 



Ethnologists may be said to agree that the Jew is not racially pure, 

 but on the other hand they have to admit that the Jews constitute 

 a definite people in something more than a political sense, and that they 

 possess though not a uniform, still a distinguishing type. 



Nothing is more confusing than the varied accounts of the shapes 

 of head, nose, eyes, and colour of the hair of Jews in different countries, 

 and if one's only acquaintance with Jews were through the literature 

 of anthropology one would be inclined to think that the " chosen 

 people " had no existence apart from books, and the imagination of the 

 anti-Semites. It is with no small degree of comfort therefore, that one 

 finds Ripley(12)^ making the following statement. "Who has not, on 

 the other hand, acquired a distinct concept of a Jewish face and of 

 a distinctly Jewish type ? Could such a patent fact escape observation 

 for a minute ? " Again Weissenberg(14) says " The Jew in an anthropo- 

 logical sense forms no specific type, but the facial expression is 

 absolutely characteristic." Fischberg is not so whole hearted as to the 

 general occurrence of this characteristic facial expression but he does 

 recognise it and considers it not strictly a physical trait but rather 

 an expression of the soul. Others will tell us that this Jewish expression, 

 so impossible to define, is merely an emblem of the ceaseless wanderings 

 and the countless agonies of the Jew — of the tausend-jdhrigen Schmerz, as 

 Heine calls it. Others again tell us it exists because the Jew is landless, 

 and if only he were once more back in his native land the facial type 

 would vanish. All, however, practically agree that whether blonde or 

 dark, tall or short, long headed or round headed, the Jew is a Jew 

 because he looks like one. The peculiar facial expression is at least 

 not the outcome of recent times. We have evidence of the greatest 

 antiquity. In the Assyrian sculptures, 800 B.C., are depicted Jewish 

 prisoners who are thoroughly Jewish (PI. XXXVI. and PI. XXXVII. fig. 1) 

 and Petrie(ll) has brought home from Memphis terra-cotta heads dating 

 500 B.C. of Jews at once recognisable by their Jewishness. On a forest 

 roll of the pre-expulsion times in England, is a pen and ink sketch, or 

 one might rather say a caricature of a certain Aaron, "Son of the Devil," 

 dated 1277 which, crude though it is, hits off a distinctly Jewish type 

 (PI. XXXVII. fig. 2). The great master Rembrandt has given us numerous 

 drawings of Jews. He was mamly attracted by the Sephardic Jews, 

 but whatever the shape of their face may be, the curious expression 

 that we recognise as Jewish, never escaped the artist. More interesting 

 than the examples given of the persistence of this facial expression 



1 Loc. cit. p. 399. 



