On the Trail of the Immigrant

by Edward Alfred Steiner

They may be beaten, kicked and spit upon at any time without being able to protect themselves or even having the spirit to do it.

The women are unusually handsome and some of the homes are splendidly furnished and are hospitably opened to the traveller. The same conditions existed in Algiers until it passed under the rule of France, when the Jews asserted their superiority and became landowners, manufacturers and business men, so that nearly half of the property in Algiers is said to be in their hands, for which they are again beginning to feel hatred and persecution.

The Egyptian Jews are found only in the two cities of Cairo and Alexandria; but they have followed the victorious arms of England and have entered the heart of Africa where in Khartum and the fabled Timbuctoo there are Jewish communities.

In Asia Minor the largest Jewish population outside of Jerusalem is in Smyrna; where there are over thirty thousand in the city and vicinity. These Jews, like those of Morocco, are descendants of Spanish fugitives and are considered, even by their enemies, honest and industrious, performing the commonest and hardest labour.

Jerusalem remains to this day the unhappiest city in the world for the Jew, who sees in it his glorious past and his present shame, and who must feel the pangs of persecution most in the city in which once he was master and lord.

Highly interesting is the story of the Jews in China. That they existed there, was known as early as the sixteenth century when the Jesuit, Ricci, found them in Khai Fung Fu, the old capital of Honan.

How they came to China is not definitely known, but according to Chinese history they came as far back as 58 B. C.

In 1848 they were found by some English missionaries, who reported their synagogues in ruins and the Jews unable to read the one scroll of the law which remained. At present there are only about twenty families left, and but a few years ago, a number of Jews came from the interior to Shanghai, to be taught Hebrew by the English Jews and to have the rite of circumcision performed.

The real Jewish world, and that which touches our own each day is in the eastern part of Europe; in Hungary, Poland, Russia and Roumania.

While most of the Jews in the south of Europe and Asia are the descendants of Spanish Jews, from whom they inherit a peculiar language and certain tendencies of worship and belief,—those of Eastern Europe are nearly all under the cultural influences of Germany, whose language they speak, in a more or less corrupt form. They left Germany because of the persecutions of the middle ages and settled among the Slavs, where they have lived for many centuries; never quite sure of an abiding place, and suffering ever recurring persecutions of varying degrees of intensity.