How Odd of God

(The following is an execerpt from the book, “How odd of God-An Introduction to the Jews”, by Dr. Browne , Other exerpts from Dr. Borwne’s fscinating new work will appear in this space from time to time.)

ARE THE JEWS A RACE?

All sober anthropologists seem point that we Jews can in no sense be described as a distinct race. In blood as in bone and flesh we are so varied among ourselves, and so like the various poeples in whose midst we various peoples in whose midst we have dwelt, that at the very most we can be described as a multinplicity of racial blends. And there can be but one way of accounting for this multiplicity: wherever we have lived we have interbred with our neighbors.That may come to the ordinary Je as a most unsavory deduction. Even Jews of intelligence have tended to fight shy of it. They are reluctant to surrender the flattering belief that their lineage is “pure”, and that the blood of the Bilbe worthies runs unpolluted in their veins. And some among them-for istance the late Joseph Jacobs-have tried to explain away the gross physical dissimilarities among Jews by saying that these may be due to articicial selection. They argue that in a region where the general population was prevailingly blond, the Jews there tended to breed among themselves toward blondness. They did this, it is explained, both for “protective coloration” and alos becamuse it was only natural for them to adopt the prejudices of the presupposes that the Jews started out impure, or otherwise how could they have had in them the cpacity for developing blondness?

Besides, how is the variation in a hidden trait like “blood-grouping” to be accounted for on the basis of such articicial selection? Even if it be granted that we Jews consciously strove to look like the Gentiles, it is inconceiveable that we aspired to make our blood capable of transfusing with theirs. For transfustions were not thought of until only a few years ago, and no one even suspected the existence of the four differenct types of human blood on which seroloists now base so much of their rescarc.

And in any case, if selection if capable of producing the variety seen among the Jews, then the whole concept of race has no meaning. If a people can without interbreeding become blond in one region, sawrthy in another, yellow in a third, and black in a fourth, then heredity counts for alomst nothing. It is environment that is all-important.

But obviously environment is of only limited potency, and certain traits are unmistakably carried in the seed. Therefore; offensive as it may be to sentimentalishs, there is no avoiding the conclusion that the Jews (like the Gentiles) are products of interbreeding. No matter how porudly seclusive we may have been throughout the past, there was no deeping foreign blood from seeping into our families. And once it got in it could not easily get out again, for our continued seclusiveness made almost charmed circles of those families. Each foreign strain remanined captive and was ploughed in unitl it became pervasive; and if it was refreshed with sufficient frequency, it finally became dominant.

Thus perhaps is explained the existence of Jewish groups which are definitely “colored”. For example, there are the Bene- Israel of India, who are indisputably Jews and yet unmistakably hindus. I have visited their schools and synagogues in and around Bombay, and have gone into their home and joined in their celebrations. So far as observance of the Holy Law is concerned they are the counterpart of Orthodox Jews throughout the rest of the world. Yet in coloring, features, and stature most of them were (to me) indistinguishable for the people surounding them. This, they assured me, was solely because I was a stranger, A native, they said, would hav no difficultv in recognizing them as members of a non-Hindu race. For, according to the claim of these Bene-Israel, they are by heredity pure white, and only their long residence in India has made them take on the likeness of their neighbors. They are all descended, they maintain, from a company of Jewish traders who were wecked on the Indian coast more than a thousand years ago. And, says one of their historians:

“The sudden degradation from the happy lot which the Bene Israels enjoyed at home, to state of utter destitution caused by shipwreck; the removal of their residence from a cool province like Palestine to the hot regions of India; the deterioration from their high mode of living in their mother-country to that ot the poorest one on the Konkan [coast] ; the change in their food from dainties to dry morsels; the removal from palatial buildings to wretched huts; the alteration in their dress from scarlet and crimson to rough country-made clothes; and the uneasiness caused by the dread of being killed or perecuted in a stange land-all these tended to mar the beauty of skin and hair.”*

There is something very sad about that naive explanation. It reveals how profoundly those Hindu Jews have been affected by the prejudice of their white overlords. But, reluctant as one may be to rob them of their dear illustion, the fact remains that so gross a physical change cannot be accounted for solely by climate and povery. The Bene-Israel may indeed hav their orighing in an ancient colony of Jewish traders, for we know that there was a chain of we know that there was a chain of such colonies all the way from Gaul to China in the Dark Ages. But though the descendants of those colonists may have held themselves aloof from the natives around them-a practice not especially difficult in that caste-ridden country-nevertheless it was impossible for them of keep their stck absolutely pure. The primitive Aryans who invade India were also white, and it is said that they developed the whole idea of caste primarily in order to prevent intermarrage with the blacks whom they found there. (The word for caste in Sanskrit is varnu, meadnign “color”). But just as the stratagem failed in their case, so also did it fail in the case of these Jews. For laws are no match for lust.

One need only inquire into the traditional customs of the Bene-Israel to see how all efforts at segrgation could not but be frustated. At some unknown time in the past the community split up into two distinct castes, one called gor, “white”, because its members were reputedly of pure lineage, and the other called kala, “black”, becasue its members were known to be half-breeds. To this day there are sharp restraints on intermarriage between the two groups, and until a generation ago the “whites” would not even eat together with the “blacks”, and would no count them as part of the quorum in synagogue services. Yet the members of both groups are now equally dark-skinned and only by prying into a Bene Israelite’s family history can one tell if he belongs to ne caste or the other. If as far back as seven generations ago one of his ancestors was a Hindu, he is considered a kala. If, however, the barsinister is eight generations old, then the taint is considered removed, and he becomes eligible to marry a goro. And thus we see one of the overt ways in which the “white” caste took on its dark pigmentation. In the couse of the centuries so much native blood seeped through the Kala into the goro group that finally the whole community took on the native coloring.

A similar history probably accounts for the black skins and frizzy harir of the Falasha Jews in Abyssinia-there are said to be fifty thousand of them there today-and for the yellow kins and almond eyes of the remaining Cjomese becaise their immigrant ancestors happened to settle among peoples who were not Caucasians, that these groups appear so unlike the bulk of Jewry. So far, however as admixture of blood is concerned, probably no greater degree of it exists in them than in any others. On the contrary, since the Jewish stock was markedly brunette to begin with, it must have taken a great deal more cross-breeding to produce the blond Jews so common in Europe, than those blck Jews in Africa and India, or those yellow Jews in China. But the precise degree of admixture is unimportant. All that counts if that admixture is universal, and that hereditarily every Jew is part Gentile-even as every Gentile is part Jew. Therefore it is preposterous to try to explan (and sanction) the hostility between them on the ground that it is dictated by “instincts of race.”There is indisputably acleavage between the two groups, but it is no more due to their blood than to the stars.

* The quotation is from a lengthy article written by and anonymous Bene-Israelite and printed, apparently, in one of the periodicls which the group used to publish, (interminttently) some years ago. Unfortunartely I have is only in the form of clippings pasted into an old scnapbook given me, together with many other documents, by the late Khan Bahadur Jacob B Israel, when I isited Bone bay last year.