The Hebrews.
With regard to the Hebrews I am prepared to assert, having been to Morocco myself, that those of Constantinople have nothing in common with their fellows of the northern coast of Africa, where observing experts say they have discovered in all its primitive purity the original Oriental type of Hebrew beauty. In the hope of finding some traces of this same beauty, I summoned up all my courage and thoroughly explored the vast Ghetto of Balata, which winds like an unclean reptile along the banks of the Golden Horn. I penetrated into the most wretched purlieus, among hovels “encrusted with mould” like the shores of the Dantesque pool; through passageways which nothing would induce me to enter again except on stilts, and, holding my nose; I peered through windows hung with filthy rags into dark, malodorous rooms; paused before damp courtyards exhaling a smell of mould and decay strong enough to take one’s breath away; pushed my way through groups of scrofulous children; brushed up against horrible old men who looked as though they had died of the plague and come to life again; avoiding now a dog covered with sores, now a pool of black mud, dodging under rows of loathsome rags hung from greasy cords, or stumbling over heaps of decaying stuff whose smell was enough to make one faint outright. And, after all, my heroism met with no reward. Among all the many women whom I encountered wearing the national kalpak—an article resembling a sort of elongated turban, covering the hair and ears—I saw, it is true, some faces in which could be discovered that delicate regularity of feature and the expression of gentle resignation which are supposed to characterize the Constantinopolitan Jewess; some vague profiles of a Rebecca or a Rachel, with almond-shaped eyes full of a soft sweetness; an occasional graceful, erect figure standing in Raphaelesque attitude in an open doorway, with one delicate hand resting lightly on the curly head of a child; but for the most part my investigations revealed nothing but discouraging evidences of the degradation of the race. What a contrast between those pinched faces and the piercing eyes, brilliant coloring, and well-rounded forms which aroused my admiration a year later in the Mellà of Tangiers and Fez!
And the men—thin, yellow, stunted, all their vitality seems centred in their bright cunning eyes, never still for a moment, but which roll restlessly about as though constantly attracted by the sound of chinking money.
At this point I am quite prepared to hear my kind critics among the Israelites—who have already rapped me over the knuckles in regard to their co-religionists of Morocco—take up the burden of their song, laying all the blame of the degeneration and degradation of the Hebrews of Constantinople at the door of the Turkish oppressor. But it should be remembered that the other non-Mussulman subjects of the Porte are all on a precisely similar footing, both political and civil, with themselves; and, even were it otherwise, they would find some difficulty in proving that the filthy habits, early marriages, and complete abandonment of every sort of hard work, considered as primal causes of that degeneration, are the logical results of the loss of liberty and independence. And should they assert that it is not so much Turkish oppression as the universal scorn and petty persecutions which they have had to endure on all hands that have brought about such complete loss of self-respect, let them pause and first ask themselves if the exact opposite may not be nearer the truth, and the general obloquy in which they are held be not so much the cause as the result of their manner of life; and then, instead of trying to cover up the sore, themselves be the ones to apply the knife.