This surprising similarity of head form between the Jews of North and South Europe bears hard upon the long-accepted theory that the Sephardim is dolichocephalic, thereby remaining true to the original Semitic type borne to-day by the Arabs. It has quite universally been accepted that the two branches of the Jews differed most materially in head form. From the facial dissimilarity of the two a correlative difference in head form was a gratuitous inference. Dr. Beddoe observes that in Turkey the Spagnuoli "seemed" to him to be more dolichocephalic. A few years later Barnard Davis (1867) "suspected" a diversity, but had only three Italian skulls to judge from, so that his testimony counts for little. Then Weisbach (1877) referred to the "exquisitely" long heads of the Spagnuoli, but his data show a different result. Ikof, with his small series of crania from Constantinople, is the only observer who got a result which accords in any degree with what we know of the head form of the modern Semitic peoples. On the other hand, Glück in Bosnia and Livi in Italy find no other sign of long-headedness than a slight drop in index of a point or two. Jacobs, in England, whose methods, as Topinard has observed, are radically defective, gives no averages for his Sephardim, but they appear to include about eleven per cent less pure long-headed types than even their Ashkenazim brethren in London. This, it will be noted, is the exact opposite of what might normally be expected. This tedious summary forces us inevitably to the conclusion that, while a long-headed type of Sephardim Jews may exist, the law is very far from being satisfactorily established.

Thus, from a study of our primary characteristic—the proportions of the head—we find our modern Jews endowed with a relatively much broader head than that of the average Englishman, for example: while the best living representative of the Semitic race, the Arab, has a head which is even longer and narrower than our own type. It is, in short, one of the longest known, being in every way distinctly African. The only modern Jews who even approach this type would seem to be those who actually reside to-day in Africa, as in the case of our two portrait types from that region. Two possible explanations are open to us: either the great body of the Jews in Europe to-day—certainly all the Ashkenazim, who form upward of ninety per cent of the nation, and quite probably the Sephardim also, except possibly those in Africa—have departed widely from the parental type in Palestine; or else the original Semitic type was broad-headed, and, by inference, distinctly Asiatic in derivation; in which case it is the modern Arab which has deviated from its original pattern. Ikof is the only authority who boldly faces this dilemma, and chooses the Asiatic hypothesis with his eyes open.[19] Which, we leave it to the reader to decide, would be the more likely to vary—the wandering Jew, ever driven from place to place by constant persecution, and constantly exposed to the vicissitudes of life in densely populated cities, the natural habitat of the people, as we have said; or the equally nomadic Arab, who, however, seems to be invariable in type, whether in Algeria, Morocco, the Canary Islands, or Arabia Felix itself? There can be but one answer, it seems to us. The original Semitic stock must have been in origin strongly dolichocephalic—that is to say, African as the Arabs are to-day; from which it follows, naturally, that about nine tenths of the living Jews are as widely different in head form from the parent stock to-day as they well could be. The boasted purity of descent of the Jews is, then, a myth. Renan (1883) is right, after all, in his assertion that the ethnographic significance of the word Jew, for the Russian and Danubian branch at least, long ago ceased to exist. Or, as Lombroso observes, the modern Jews are physically more Aryan than Semitic, after all. They have unconsciously taken on to a large extent the physical traits of the people among whom their lot has been thrown. In Algiers they have remained long-headed like their neighbors, for, even if they intermarried, no tendency to deviation in head form would be provoked. If, on the other hand, they settled in Piedmont, Austria, or Russia, with their moderately round-headed populations, they became in time assimilated to the type of these neighbors as well.

Nothing is simpler than to substantiate the argument of a constant intercourse and intermixture of Jews with the Christians about them all through history, from the original exodus of the forty thousand (?) from Jerusalem after the destruction of the second temple. At this time the Jewish nation as a political entity ceased to exist. An important consideration to be borne in mind in this connection, as Neubauer suggests very aptly, is that opposition to mixed marriages was primarily a prejudice of religion and not of race. It was dissipated on the conversion of the Gentile to Judaism. In fact, in the early days of Judaism marriage with a nonbeliever was not invalid at all, as it afterward became, according to the Jewish code. Thus Josephus, speaking of the Jews at Antioch, mentions that they made many converts, receiving them into their community. An extraordinary number of conversions to Judaism undoubtedly took place during the second century after Christ. As to the extent of intermarriage which ensued during the middle ages discussion is still rife. Renan, Neubauer, and others interpret the various rigid prohibitions against intermarriage of Jews with Christians—as, for example, at the church councils of 538, 589, at Toledo, and of 743 at Rome—to mean the prevalent danger of such practices becoming general; while Jacobs, Andree, and others are inclined to place a lower estimate upon their importance. Two wholesale conversions are known to have taken place: the classical one of the Khozars, in South Russia, during the reign of Charlemagne, and that of the Falashas, who were neighboring Arab tribes in Yemen. Jacobs has ably shown, however, the relatively slight importance of these. It is probable that the greatest amount of infusion of Christian blood must have taken place, in any event, not so much through such striking conversions, as insidiously through clandestine or irregular marriages.

Jewish Types.

We find, for example, much prohibitive legislation against the employment of Christian servants by Jews. This was directed against the danger of conversion to Judaism, by the master, with consequent intermarriage. It is not likely that these prohibitions were of much avail, for, despite stringent laws in Hungary, for example, we find the archbishop of that country reporting in 1229 that many Jews were illegally living with Christian wives, and that conversions by thousands were taking place. In any case, no protection for slaves was ever afforded. The confinement of the Jews strictly to the Ghettos during the later centuries would naturally discourage such intermixture of blood, as also the increasing popular hatred between Jew and Christian; but, on the other hand, the greater degree of tolerance enjoyed by the Israelites even during this present century would be competent speedily to produce great results. Jacobs has strenuously, although perhaps somewhat inconclusively, argued in favor of a substantial purity of the Jews by means of a number of other data—such as, for example, by a study of the relative frequency of Jewish names, by the supposed relative infecundity of mixed marriages, and the like. Experience and the facts of everyday observation, on the other hand, tend to confirm us in the belief that racially no purity of descent is to be supposed for an instant. Consider the evidence of names, for example. We may admit a considerable purity, perhaps, to the Cohns and Cohens, legitimate descendants of the Cohanim, the sons of Aaron, early priests of the temple. Their marital relations were safeguarded against infusion of foreign blood in every possible way. The name is, perhaps, in its various forms, the most frequent among Jews to-day. But how shall we account for the equally pure Jewish names in origin, such as Davis, Harris, Phillips, and Hart? How did they ever stray so far from their original ethnic and religious significance, unless the marital bars were lowered to a large degree? Some of them certainly claim a foremost position numerically in our Christian English directories. We have an interesting case of indefinite Jewish delimitation in our portraits. The middle portrait at page [341] is certainly a Jewish type. Dr. Bertholon writes me that all who saw it immediately asserted it to be a Jew. Yet the man was a professed Mussulman, in fact, even though his face was against him.

There is, as we have sought to prove, no single uniform type of head peculiar to the Jewish people which may be regarded as in any sense racially hereditary. Is this true also of the face? Our first statement encounters no popular disapproval, for most of us never, perhaps, happened to think of this head form as characteristic. But the face, the features! Is this another case of science running counter to popular belief?

The first characteristic to impress itself upon the layman is that the Jew is generally a brunette. All scientific observers corroborate this impression, agreeing in that the dark hair and eyes of this people really constitute a distinct racial trait. About two thirds of the Ashkenazim branch in Galicia and Russia, where the general population is relatively quite blond, is of the brunette type, this being especially marked in the darker color of the hair. For example, Majer and Kopernicki,[20] in Galicia, found dark hair to be about twice as frequent as the light. Elkind,[21] in Warsaw, finds about three fifths of the men dark. In Bosnia, Glück's observations on the Sephardim type gave him only two light-haired men out of fifty-five. In Germany and Austria[22] this brunette tendency is likewise strongly emphasized. Pure brunette types are twice as frequent in the latter country, and three times as frequent in Germany, among Jewish as among Christian school children. Facts also seem to bear out the theory, to which we have already alluded, that the Oriental Jews betray a slightly greater blond tendency, thus inclining to rufous. In Germany also the blond tendency becomes appreciably more frequent in Alsace-Lorraine, a former center of gravity of the nation, as the map in our previous article has shown. This comparative blondness of the Alsatian Jew is not new, for in 1861 the origin of these same blondes was matter of controversy. Broca believed them to be of northern derivation, while Pruner Bey traced them from a blondish Eastern source. The English Jews seem also to be slightly lighter than their continental brethren, even despite their presumably greater proportion of Sephardim, who are supposed to be peculiarly dark. As to the relative red blondness of the Oriental Jew, the early observations of Dr. Beddoe, and those of Langerhans (1873) as to the blue eyes and red-brown hair of the Druses of Lebanon, do not seem to be borne out; or, as Jacobs puts it, the "argument may be dismissed with costs." Certainly the living Semites are dark enough in type, and the evidence of the sacred books bears out the same theory of an original dark type. Thus "black" and "hair" are commonly synonymous in the early Semitic languages. In any case, whatever the color in the past, we have seen that science corroborates the popular impression that the Jews as a people are distinctively of a brunette type. This constitutes one of the principal traits by which they may be almost invariably identified. It is not without interest to notice that this brunetteness is more accentuated, oftentimes, among the women, who are, the world over, persistent conservators of the primitive physical characteristics of a people.[23]

Secondly, as to the nose. Popularly the humped or hook nose constitutes the most distinctive feature of the Jewish face. Observations among the Jews, in their most populous centers, do not, however, bear out the theory. Thus Majer and Kopernicki (1885), in their extended series, found only nine per cent of the hooked type—no greater frequency than among the Poles; a fact which Weissenberg confirms as to the relative scarcity of the convex nose in profile among his South Russian Jews. He agrees, however, that the nose is often large, thick, and prominent. Weisbach (1877) measured the facial features of nineteen Jews, and found the largest noses in a long series of people from all over the earth; exceeded in length, in fact, by the Patagonians alone. The hooked nose is, indeed, sometimes frequent outside the Jewish people. Olechnowicz found, for example, over a third of the noses of the gentry in southeast Poland to be of this hooked variety. Running the eye over our carefully chosen series of portraits, selected for us as typical from four quarters of Europe—Algeria, Russia, Bosnia, and the confines of Asia—representing the African, Balkan Spagnuoli, and Russian Ashkenazim varieties, visual impression will also confirm our deduction. The Jewish nose is not so often truly convex in profile. Nevertheless, it must be confessed that it gives a hooked impression. This seems to be due to a peculiar "tucking up of the wings," as Dr. Beddoe expresses it. Herein lies the real distinctive quality about it, rather than in any convexity of outline. In fact, it often renders a nose concave in profile, immediately recognizable as Jewish. Jacobs[24] has ingeniously described this "nostrility," as he calls it, by the following diagrams: Write, he says, a figure 6 with a long tail (Fig. 1); now remove the turn of the twist, and much of the Jewishness disappears; and it vanishes entirely when we draw the lower continuation horizontally, as in Fig. 3. Behold the transformation! The Jew has turned Roman beyond a doubt. What have we proved, then? That there is in reality such a phenomenon as a Jewish nose, even though it be differently constituted from our first assumption. A moment's inspection of our series of portraits will convince the skeptic that this trait, next to the prevalent dark hair and eyes and the swarthy skin, is the most distinctive among the chosen people.