IS THERE A JEWISH RACE?

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LV, Issue 148, 9 November 1912, Page 9

IS THERE A JEWISH RACE?

ax author's claim. What would seem to be a prc.ty radical doctrine is promulgated by lj/. Maurice Kishbcrg in u recent nook on "The Jews: A Stmly in Race and Knvironluent.'' In it lie conclude.:; from a study of' tlie .lews in various countries that there is no pure Jewish race, but that everywhere the Jews have so mingled with the people among whom I bey have lived for centuries as to slmw many of their characteristics. It lias usually been believed that the -lews are a Alining example of the preservation of a racial type by social isolation. It is true that we are apt to speak of Herman, Portuguese or Polish Jews as if they were racially different, but this difference has been commonly held to consist chiefly in language. The Jew is a Jew, we have been accustomed to think, how ever lie talks or dresses. Dr. Fishberg, however, sees in this recognition of difference a real racial alteration in each case, and he fortifies his position by observation and exact measurement. It could not oc expected that such a position would go unchallenged. In the Popular Science .Monthly. Dr. Abrani Lipsky takes up the cudgels on behalf of Jewish racial purity. J)r. Fisliberg's position is iirst stated as follows: "lie believes that the Jews are destined to be assimilated by the races among whom they live in ' Europe and America, and it is apparently in order to facilitate this manifest destiny that he arrays all the arguments lie can muster tending to show that the Jews are not a pure race. There are certain physical traits generally assumed by anthropologists to be distinctive of race. Dr. Fishberg finds that in these respects the Jews are not different from the races among whom they live. Certain other characteristics of a moral, social and vital or physiological nature, often ascribed to the Jews, are either denied existence or attributed by the author to economic and social status rather than to race. The chief physical eharacteris-

tic relied upon to distinguish races are stature, head-form and color. As to stature, Dr. Fishberg shows that the Jews rise and fall with the people in the land of their nativity, being short where the Gentiles are short, and tall where they are tall, though never quite as tall. ... . As to head-form, Dr. Fishberg is more decided. The heads of European, Caucasian, African and Arabian Jews vary in shape. Some are long, some are broad, some are round. Only the commingling of the blood of different races could have produced these differences, argues the author." According to Lipsky, however, Dr. Fishberg is not quite fair in this contention. In Eastern Europe, where the •lews are not a race. On another page the this uniformity is not taken to indicate uniformity of race, since the Gentiles in those regions have also uniform heads. That is to say, remarks the critic: "When Jewish heads are various in shape, it proves that the Wood of various races Hows in their veins, and when

their heads do not vary much in shape, the same tiling is proved. On one page Dr. Fishberg writes as if head-form were an unchangeable racial characteristic; on that page—since the heads of Jews in Europe, Africa and Asia vary—the Jews are not a race for the opposite reason, namely, because 80 per cent, of them have heads of the same shapesince it happens that the many Gentile races living in the same part of the world also have similar heads!" Other arguments, relating to matters of detail into which there is no space here to enter, arc similarly disallowed by Dr. Lipsky. But, after all, he -thinks, these arguments are hardly worth while, for apparently it is Dr. Fishberg's opininion not only that the Jews are not at the present time a pure race, but that they never were one—in Dr. Lipsky's phrase, that "the Jews never were Jews" at all. We read:

"It would seem, oll'-liand, that lie (Dr. Fishberg) wished to convince us of the fact that the people now called Jews are not descendants of the same original stock. -Ethnologieally,' he says, 'there is practically no difference between Jews and other Europeans. Both consist of conglomerations of various racial elements blended together in a manner that makes it impossible to disentangle the components, or even the predominant race, out of the ethnic chaos.' But if his aim were to prove this, what was the use of wasting so much zeal and labor? On one page we arc told, 'One thing is certain, however, the original stock of the Jews was not made up of a single and homogeneous race, as is supposed by some." And again, on the same page, we read that the Bible itself records inter-marriages between Jews, and Gentiles, and 'that some of these races were not of Semitic stock has been established recently by archaeological research.' Why was it necessary to produce more evidence; why worry about blonds and long heads and short heads, if the, Jews never were Jews?" "But why should we be concerned whether the Jews are. or ever were, a •pyre, .race'? What is a pure race? Would Dr. Fishberg know one if he saw one? If there.ever were a pure race how did it come into existence? Was it born pure, or did it issue pure from the hand of God? -Religion,' says Dr. Fishberg, -the Jewish as well as the Christian and Mohammedan, with the assistance of the State, artificially created the types of the Jew at the beginning of the nineteenth century. There is nothing unusual that an isolated community should evolve peculiar character' istics.' Does Dr. Fishberg know any other way than isolation by which races acquire peculiar characters? The Jews of remote antiquity seem to have had characters sulllcienlly peculiar to cause themselves to be known as Jews. Mow did they get those characters? Was anything but isolation ever the cause of such peculiarities? How did the American Indians, the Anglo-Saxons, the Kthiopians get their peculiar characters? Does Dr. Fishberg imagine they inherited them in an uninterrupted line of descent from a primordial group or pair that had them since first there were men on earth? ....

" 'Pure races' are anthropological postulates, like the atoms of physicists, which serve a scientific purpose, but never can lie brought in to decide practical questions of politics or engineering. Dr. Fishberg tries to use the conception of a 'pure race' in such an illegitimate manner. In his eagerness he falls repeatedly, as we have seen, into inconsistencies unbecoming, to say the least, in a scientific work. After a candid perusal of it. one has to declare in true Irish fashion that the arguments do not prove that the Jews are not a pure race, and even if they did. it would make no practical dill'ereiu-i' to anyone or anything."