JEWS—SUPERSTITIONS
We read in the New Testament of Jews scattered all over the Roman Empire. The same is true of them to-day in Turkey. Their principal resorts are Constantinople, Smyrna, Salonica, and the other great towns.
Some are original colonists, principally from Palestine; others are exiles from Spain in 1493. Common vicissitudes with the Moors, who had also been ejected from Spain, created sympathy for them in the Moslem world, and, to the honour of the Turk let it be told, they were offered a shelter and a home. These immigrants introduced with them the jargon which they had employed in Spain, and which consists of a mixture of Hebrew and Spanish, and is known as Judeo-Spanish. To it have been grafted a number of Italian and Turkish words, and it has been adopted as the common vernacular of both classes of Jews above mentioned.
