Among the Arabs, his kinsmen, he is a stranger; for although in speech, dress and bearing he is like them, in thought and feeling he is above them; yet the coarsest Mohammedan servant will pronounce the word “Yahudi,” with all the scorn of a superior and all the hatred of an enemy.
His features have not changed since the time when Egyptian artists drew with crude touch on their temple walls the story of the stranger’s coming, his slavery and his exodus.
Wherever you find him, among the Arabs of North Africa or among the Danes of Northern Germany, he still bears the marks of his race, with the flame of Sinai in his look and the fire of the Southland on his cheek.
In Africa he is most numerous in Morocco, where 300,000 souls struggle for daily bread and are hated according to their number; while in Egypt where once he was found in largest numbers, now only about 10,000 Jews live.
The whole number for Africa does not exceed half a million; in Asia he is 200,000 strong or weak, in America above 2,000,000, while Europe has given him room enough to grow into 7,000,000. Between 10,000,000 or 11,000,000 is about the whole number of Jews now in existence, with the city of New York as the largest Jewish centre in the world, having no less than 600,000 of the faithful.
To describe the Jews in their varied environments means to draw many pictures and yet one; for while they differ widely according to the degree of civilization by which they are surrounded, certain characteristics remain the same.
Everywhere the Jew becomes outwardly like his masters—but often remains unlike them in his spiritual life and in those deeper things which express themselves spontaneously and which are too well grounded in his nature to be wiped out entirely by the mere touch of the stranger.
Physically he is usually smaller and weaker, has brown or gray eyes and dark hair, although not seldom it is red and curly. Among the Europeans his head and neck are always large; but his face is the smallest.
There are a vivaciousness in his manner, a rather emphatic and constant gesticulation, and a certain something in his speech which always mark him, and mark him unmistakably, the Jew.
He quickly reciprocates both good and evil, and is regarded with apprehension because of his aggressiveness; for as both friend and foe he is intense. Where an inch of approach is granted he may want an ell, while where he hates he does not hate in moderation. His business shrewdness is proverbial, although it is not his native genius for the proverb current in the Orient: “It takes one Jew to cheat three Christians, it takes one Armenian to cheat ten Jews, it takes one Greek to cheat twenty Armenians,” while no more correct than such generalities are likely to be, proves the assertion that he is not the champion in the chief game of life.