The Man Farthest Down: A Record of Observation and Study in Europe

by Booker T. Washington; Robert Ezra Park

The great majority of the Jews in Cracow still make their homes in a quarter of the city called the "Kazimierz," which gets its name from that of a Polish king who fell in love with a beautiful Jewess some four hundred years ago and, for her sake, made Poland a refuge for the members of her race, who, at that time, were hunted almost like wild beasts in other parts of Europe.

I visited the Kazimierz late one afternoon, when the narrow, dirty, and ill-smelling streets were swarming with their strange brood of slatternly, poverty-stricken, and unhealthy looking inhabitants.

I have been through the Jewish quarter in New York, with its confusion of pushcarts, its swarms of black-eyed children, and its strange old men with gray-brown beards wandering careworn and absorbed through the crowded streets, each anxiously intent on some thought or purpose of his own. The Jewish quarter on the East Side in New York is, however, a pale reflection of the Ghetto in Cracow. For one thing, the Jew in New York, though he retains many of the habits and customs of the country from which he came, seems, in most cases, to be making an earnest effort to make an American of himself; to learn the language, adopt the dress and, as far as possible, the manners of the new country of which he is soon to become, if he is not already, a citizen.

The masses of the Polish Jews, however, still cling tenaciously to the customs of their religion and of the Ghetto in which, for a thousand years or more, they have lived as exiles and, more or less, like prisoners. Instead of seeking to make themselves look like the rest of the people among whom they live, they seem to be making every effort to preserve and emphasize the characters in which they are different from the people about them.

Although I met in Cracow Jews in all the various stages of transition—as far as their dress is concerned—from the traditional Ghetto Jew to the modern literary, professional or business man, nevertheless the majority of the Jews still cling to the long black coat which they were compelled to wear in the Middle Ages. Certain ones have discarded this symbol of exclusiveness, but still wear the long beard, and the side curls in front of their ears, which seem to be especially dear to them, perhaps, because, for some reason I could not understand, they are forbidden to wear them in Russia.

Perhaps it was the effect of the costume, which gave them a strange and alien appearance, but it seemed to me, at first, as if every Jew in Cracow had exactly the same features, the same manner of walking, and the same expression of countenance. As I watched the different figures in the crowded streets more closely, however, I discovered that beneath the peculiar dress and manner many different types of human beings were concealed. There were the pale-browed students, who moved through the crowd with a hurried and abstracted air; there were slender and elegant aristocrats, who, while still wearing the uniform of their race, dressed with a scrupulous correctness and looked at you with an expression which seemed a curious mingling of the humility of the Jew and the scorn of the Pharisee.

There was the commonplace plodding Jew, following humbly in the common ruts of barter and trade and the daily and weekly routine which his religion prescribed. There was the outcast beggar, dirty and wretched, doddering aimlessly along the dirty street or sitting in some doorway, staring disconsolately into the street. There was, also, the dirty, gluttonous, ignorant, and brutal type, on whom neither suffering nor fanaticism seemed to have made any impression, and who, in his Jewish dress and manners, looked like a caricature of his more high-bred neighbour.

I visited the ancient synagogue while I was in Cracow, which they say was built for the Jews by that same Polish king, Kazimierz, who first invited them to take refuge in his country. I saw there the ancient Roll of the Laws and ancient Prayer Book which were brought from Spain when the Jews were expelled from that country.

Nearby the synagogue is the ancient Jewish market. A narrow street leads into an open square in the centre of which is a circular building. Before one of the entrances of this building a man, with the pale brow and delicate features which seem to be a mark of superiority among the people of the Ghetto, was publicly slaughtering geese. The square in which this building stood was surrounded on all sides by rows of little market booths, in front of which groups of men and women were dickering and trading for various small wares. A crowd of women stood about the building in the centre of the square and watched the pale-browed man, who did not seem to relish the job, as he rapidly and dexterously performed the ceremony of cutting the throats of the geese. These were handed to him by a good-natured looking woman, wearing an apron and high boots, red with blood. After the geese were killed they were hung over a pit to drain, while fresh victims were brought from the baskets and crates standing about in the open square. A foul smell from the open pit in which the geese were allowed to bleed filled the square. This did not add to the dignity of the proceedings, but it served to impress them upon my memory.

In one corner of the square I noticed a dull gray-coloured building from which troops of little Jewish children were issuing. It was one of those schools by means of which Jewish teachers, through all the persecutions and dispersions of nineteen centuries, have kept alive the memory of the Jewish history and the Jewish law and so kept the race together. I do not think I know of anything which so illustrates and emphasizes the power of education as the influences which these schools have had upon the Jewish people.