280 Heredity and the Jew 



uncommon amongst Teutonic people. However it may be brought 

 about, there is no doubt that the character of Jewishness is a real one. 

 Weissenberg(15) relates that he put several hundred photographs of 

 Russians and Russian-Jews without peculiar dress or other distinguishing 

 feature before two scientific friends, one a Jew, the other a native 

 Russian. His Jewish friend picked out 70 °/^ of the Jewish subjects 

 correctly and the Russian 50 %. If so high a percentage of Jews 

 could be identified by their looks alone in a photograph it is not 

 surprising that the opinion is current that the Jew may be recognised 

 wherever he goes. Notwithstanding the fact that the great majority 

 of Jews look Jewish, it cannot be denied that one meets, not rarely, 

 individuals, perhaps more often men than women, who do not exhibit 

 this type and who are either indistinguishable or at least practically 

 indistinguishable from North Europeans. It is relying on these 

 apparently non-Jewish faces, that Fischberg and others have rashly 

 assumed that they are the direct results of mixture with the surrounding 

 people. I think I shall be able to offer some evidence which will show 

 that this view is untenable. 



Impressed with the great frequency and the distinctiveness of the 

 Jewish type of face, it occurred to me that this character might form 

 excellent material for research on Mendelian lines. Intermarriage 

 to-day with the English is very common in Anglo-Jewry, and one had 

 only to follow out such cases of mixed marriage to obtain results 

 comparable to those the genetic student has been obtaining in plants 

 and animals. My method has been to collect personally, as far as 

 possible, all cases of mixed marriage and to obtain the assistance of 

 those on whom I could rely, and whose duty it was merely to state 

 whether they considered the children of the mixed marriages of their 

 acquaintance as Jewish or Gentile in appeai-ance. Most of my 

 observers were quite ignorant of the purpose of my examination and 

 of the results I expected, whilst none were conversant with Mendelian 

 or other theories of heredity. All who have assisted me have been 

 themselves Jews and I have noted a distinct tendency on their part to 

 claim, wherever possible, a Jewish type of face for the children they 

 have examined, and although, as I shall show, the results are entirely in 

 the opposite direction, yet what error there is, is distinctly towards 

 increasing the number of supposed Jewish faces in the offspring of 

 mixed marriage. Wherever possible, I have seen the children myself 

 or have obtained photographs, but in at least half of them, I have had 

 to rely on others. In doing so I have been rather encouraged than 



