A common custom with both the Turks and the Greeks when they pass a caïque on the water laden with Jews, is to raise one hand, and with outstretched finger to count their number, which is supposed to bring some heavy misfortune on the last of the party. The Jews, who have firm faith in the effect of the spell, writhe with agony as they remark the action, and never fail collectively to yell forth: “May the curse fall back upon yourself!” After which the caïques dart onward, each upon its own errand; the one gay with the subdued mirth of the tormentors, and the other freighted with new and unnecessary bitterness.
The Jews of the East, like their brethren of Europe, are the people of the country who spend their sabbath the most strictly; and who are the most conscientious in the exercise of their religious observances, and the most obedient to its professors. Even accustomed as they are to habits of chicane and extortion, the Jews are seldom guilty of wilful error in their contributions to the National Chest, for relieving the wants of the poorer portion of their people; which is supplied from a tax levied on the provisions consumed by each family, thus falling the most heavily on the wealthiest of their community.
The Levantine Jews individually live in the hope, and with the intention, of terminating their lives at Jerusalem; and, as this speculation is an expensive one, their energies are quickened by the necessity it entails of making a gradual provision for so extensive an outlay; and instances have been frequent in which the father of a family, feeling that from his advanced age and his failing powers, he was no longer able to benefit his children by his personal exertions, has resigned to his sons all his worldly wealth, save the sum necessary to defray the charges of his pilgrimage; and sometimes alone, and, sometimes accompanied by his wife, has bidden a last adieu to his children, and departed to die in the chosen city.
In order not to be ruined by any political convulsion, or beggared by any stretch of despotic power, the Jews have a law regulating the division of their property into three equal proportions. One consists of floating capital; another is secured in jewels; and the third is retained in the coin of the country; an arrangement which proved highly beneficial to that portion of their nation that was compelled from ecclesiastical persecution to evacuate Portugal and Spain, at the instigation of Torquemada and other influential members of the clergy: and to establish themselves in Constantinople; where, through the long series of years which has succeeded, they have retained the language of the countries whence they were banished, with such tenacity, that most of their women are altogether ignorant of the Turkish.
The Constantinopolitan Jews, who wear a dingy-coloured white cap, surrounded by a cotton shawl of a small brown pattern, are raïahs, or vassals to the Porte, and are also distinguishable by their dark purple boots, and black slippers; while those who cover their heads with a calpac, somewhat similar to that of the Greeks, but surmounted by a scarlet rosette at the summit of the crown, are either under foreign protection; or subjects of another country trading temporarily in the Levant, and enjoying all the prerogatives of that portion of the community whose costume they adopt; these invariably wear yellow boots, and slippers similar to those of the Turks. The raïahs, as well as the strangers, are under the jurisdiction of the Grand Rabbin; the difference of their position acting only on their external relations, and not being recognised by their own rulers.
The Levantine Jews formerly visited the infidelity of their women with death; but the present Sultan has forbidden to them the exercise of so severe a law, and the crime is now punished by exile. They marry their sons at fifteen, and their daughters at ten years of age; and if a father desires to chastise his child, he is obliged to obtain the concurrence of the seven Deputy Counsellors, charged with the religious administration of the nation; who refer the matter to the Grand Rabbin; whose order in its turn must, ere it can be made available, receive the sanction of the Porte. The same rule is observed with individuals charged with any crime, save that these are imprisoned during the deliberation.
Having expressed to a friend my desire to visit one of the principal Jewish families, in order to see the costume of their women, of which I had heard a great deal; he accompanied my father and myself to the house of Naim Zornana, with whom he had held some commercial relations. Nothing could be more miserable than the approach to his dwelling; for, in order to reach it, we were compelled to traverse the entire length of the Jew’s Quarter at Galata; nor did the appearance of the house itself, as we crossed a miserable yard into which it opened, tend to give us a very favourable idea of the establishment. The window-shutters were swinging in the wind upon their rusty hinges; the wooden balustrade of a dilapidated terrace, whose latticed roof was overgrown by a magnificent vine, was mouldering to decay; the path to the house was choaked with rubbish; and the timber of which it was built was blackened both by time and fire.
The first flight of stairs that we ascended, together with the rooms on the ground-floor, were quite in keeping with the exterior of the dwelling: but when we reached the foot of the second, we appeared to have been suddenly acted upon by magic: the steps were neatly matted, the walls were dazzlingly white, and at the entrance of the vast salle into which the several apartments opened, lay a handsome Persian carpet. Here we were met by the females of the family, and greeted with the lowliest of all Eastern salutations, ere we were conducted to the scrupulously clean and handsomely arranged saloon appropriated to the reception of visiters.
Never, during my residence in the East, had I looked on any costume which equalled in richness, and, their head-dresses excepted, in elegance, the dress of these Jewish females. It was a scene of the Arabian Nights in action; and for a few moments I was lost in admiration. The mistress of the house stood immediately in front of the sofa on which we were seated: she was a tall stately woman, who looked not as though she belonged to a bowed and rejected race; she had the eagle eye, the prominent nose, and the high pale forehead of her nation, with a glance as fiery as it was keen.
Such as I have described her, she was attired in a full dress of white silk, confined a little above the hips by a broad girdle of wrought gold, clasped with gems; both the girdle and the clasps being between five and six inches in width. Above this robe, she wore a pelisse of dove-coloured cachemire, lined and overlaid with the most costly sables, and worth several hundred pounds; the sleeves were large and loose, and fell back, to reveal the magnificent bracelets which encircled her arms, and the jewelled rings that flashed upon her fingers. Her turban, of the usual enormous size worn by all Jewish women, was formed of the painted muslin handkerchief of the country, but so covered with gems that its pattern was undistinguishable; while, from beneath it, a deep fringe of pearls, dropped with emeralds of immense size and value, fell over her brow, down each side of her face, and ultimately upon her shoulders.