Bernard Lazare

[...] to those who assert the purity of the Aryan race, we have pointed out that this race, like all races, was the product of countless interminglings. Without even mentioning prehistoric times, we have shown that the Persian, Macedonian and Roman conquests exacerbated the ethnological confusion that grew even further in Europe during the invasions. The so-called Indo-Germanic races, already burdened with alluvial deposits, mixed with the Chudes, the Ongrians and the Uro-Altaic peoples. Those Europeans who believe themselves to be direct descendants of the Aryan ancestors do not think about the diverse countries these ancestors crossed during their long exoduses, nor about all the peoples they brought with them, nor about all those they found settled wherever they stayed, peoples of unknown races and uncertain origin, obscure and unknown tribes whose blood still flows in the veins of men who call themselves the heirs of the legendary and noble Aryans, just as the blood of the yellow Dacyans and the black Dravidians flows beneath the skin of the white Aryo-Indians.

But the idea of Semitic superiority is no more justified than the idea of Aryan superiority, and yet it has been supported with equal plausibility. There have been theorists who have asserted, and even proved, that the Semites were the flower of humanity and that everything good in Aryanism came from them; surely one day, if it has not already happened, the patriotism of some ethnologist will demonstrate with the same evidence that the Turanian must occupy the highest rank in history and anthropology.

Today, those who consider themselves the highest embodiment of Semitism, the Jews, contribute to perpetuating this belief in racial inequality and hierarchy. Ethnological prejudice is universal, and those who suffer from it are its most tenacious defenders. Anti-Semites and philosemites unite to defend the same doctrines; they only disagree when it comes to attributing supremacy. While anti-Semites accuse Jews of belonging to a foreign and vile race, Jews consider themselves to be a chosen and superior race; they attach the utmost importance to their nobility and antiquity, and even today they are still prey to patriotic pride. Although they are no longer a people, although they protest against those who want to see them as representatives of a nation encamped among foreign nations, they nevertheless retain this vain conviction deep within themselves and are thus similar to chauvinists in all countries. Like them, the Jew claims to be of pure origin, without any better evidence to support this pretence, and we must closely examine the assertion of Israel's enemies and of Israel itself: namely, that the Jews are the most united, the most stable, the most impenetrable, and the most unyielding people.

We lack the documents needed to determine the ethnology of the nomadic Bene Israel [« children of Israel » in Hebrew], but it is likely that the twelve tribes which, according to tradition, made up this people, did not belong to a single stock; they were undoubtedly heterogeneous tribes because, like other nations, the Jewish nation cannot boast, despite its legends, of having been created by a single couple, and the common conception that the Hebrew tribe was divided into sub-tribes is only a legendary and traditional conception, that of Genesis, which has been mistakenly accepted by some historians writing about the Hebrews. Already composed of diverse units, among which were undoubtedly Turanian and Kushite groups, i.e. yellow and black, the Jews added other foreign elements during their stay in Egypt and in the land of Canaan, which they conquered. Later, Gog and Magog, the Scythians, coming under Josiah to the gates of Jerusalem, may have left their mark on Israel.

But it was from the first captivity onwards that intermingling increased. “During the Babylonian captivity,” says Maimonides, “the Israelites mingled with all kinds of foreign races and had children who, thanks to these alliances, formed a kind of new confusion of languages.” And yet this Babylonia, in which there were cities such as Mahuza, almost entirely populated by Persians converted to Judaism, was considered to contain Jews of a purer race than the Jews of Palestine. “As for the purity of the race,” said an old proverb, “the difference between the Jews of the Roman provinces and those of Judea is as noticeable as the difference between poor-quality dough and fine flour dough; but Judea itself is like poor-quality dough compared to Babylonia.” 

Judea had experienced many vicissitudes. It had always been a country of passage for Egypt and Assyria; then, when the Jews returned from captivity, they allied themselves with the Samaritans, the Edomites and the Moabites. After the conquest of Idumea by Hyrcanus, there had been Jewish and Idumean alliances, and during the war with Rome, the Latin victors had, it was claimed, fathered sons. “Are we quite sure,” Rabbi Ulla said melancholically to Judah ben Yehisquil, “that we are not descended from the pagans who, after the capture of Jerusalem, dishonoured the young girls of Zion?” 

But what most favoured the introduction of foreign blood into the Israelite nation was proselytism. The Jews were a people of propagandists par excellence, and from the construction of the Second Temple onwards, especially after the dispersion, their zeal was considerable. They were indeed those of whom the Gospel says that they ran “through land and sea to make proselytes,” and Rabbi Eliezer could rightly exclaim: “Why did God scatter Israel among the nations? To recruit proselytes everywhere.” There is abundant evidence of this proselytising zeal among the Jews, and during the first centuries before the Christian era, Judaism spread with the same power that later characterised Christianity and Islam. In Rome, Alexandria, Antioch, almost all the Jews were converted Gentiles. Damascus and Cyprus were centres of intermixing of people, as I have already shown. Moreover, the Hasmonean conquerors forced the defeated Syrians to be circumcised; kings, bringing their subjects with them, converted, as did the family of Adiabene, and in certain districts of Palestine itself, the population was very mixed, as in Galilee, in that ‘circle of Gentiles’ where Jesus was to be born. 

[…]

Thus, this Jewish race, presented by Jews and anti-Semites as the most unassailable and homogeneous of races, is in fact highly diverse. Anthropologists could first divide it into two distinct groups: dolichocephalics and brachycephalics. The first type includes Sephardic Jews, Spanish and Portuguese Jews, as well as most Jews from Italy and southern France; the second type includes Ashkenazi Jews, i.e. Polish, Russian and German Jews. But the Sephardim and Ashkenazim are not the only two known varieties of Jews; there are many more. 

In Africa, there are Jewish farmers and nomads, allied with the Kabyles and Berbers near Sétif, Guelma and Biskra, on the borders of Morocco; they travel in caravans as far as Timbuktu, and some of their tribes on the edge of the Sahara are black tribes, such as the Daggatouns, just as the Falacha Jews of Abyssinia are black. In India, there are white Jews in Bombay and black Jews in Cochin, but the white Jews have Melanesian blood. They settled in India in the fifth century, after the persecutions of the Persian king Pheroches, who drove them out of Baghdad; however, their settlement is reported to date back further: to the arrival of the Jews in China, that is, before Jesus. As for the Jews of China, they are not only related to the Chinese who surround them, but they have also adopted the practices of the religion of Confucius. 

Thus, the Jew has been constantly transformed by the different environments in which he has lived. He has changed because the various languages he has spoken have introduced different and opposing concepts into him. He has not remained a united and homogeneous people; on the contrary, he is now the most heterogeneous of all peoples, the one with the greatest variety, and this so-called race, whose stability and resilience are praised by both friends and enemies alike, presents us with the most diverse and contrasting types, ranging from white Jews to black Jews, including yellow Jews, not to mention secondary divisions such as blond or red-haired Jews and brown-haired Jews with black hair. 

Consequently, the ethnological grievance of anti-Semites has no serious or real basis. 

The opposition between Aryans and Semites is artificial; it is not true to say that the Aryan race and the Semitic race are pure races, and that the Jews were a single, unchanging people. Semitic blood mixed with Aryan blood, and Aryan blood with Semitic blood. Aryans and Semites have both received the addition of Turanian blood and Chamite, Negro or Negroid blood, and in the Babel of nationalities and races that the world currently is, the concern of those who seek to recognise which of their neighbours are Aryan, Turanian and Semitic is a futile one.