Note 19 — ESSAY III. PROGRESSIVE JUDAISM.

I cannot but think that too much has been made, particularly under the influence of the modern mania for “heredity,” of the exceptional character of the Jewish race. Of course, the Jews are a most remarkable people, so vigorous physically as to be able to colonize either India or Greenland, and after a thousand years of Ghetto existence to remain (to the confusion of all sanitation-mongers) the healthiest race in Europe. On the mental side, their multifarious gifts and their indomitable sturdiness are no less admirable. But their fidelity to their race and religion is not unmatched. Not to speak of the miserable Gypsies, the Parsees offer a more singular spectacle; for their members have always been a handful compared to the Jews (not above 150,000 at the utmost), and during the ten ages of their exile they have exhibited a spirit of concession towards the customs of their neighbors which has left the actual dogmas of their religion the sole bond of their national integrity. They worshipped the One good God under the law of Zoroaster three, perhaps four, millenniums ago, and they worship Him faithfully still, though a mere remnant of a race, dwelling in the midst of idolaters, and with no distinctive badgelike circumcision, no haughty disdain of “Gentile” nations, no hope of a restoration to their own land. Their priests have been illiterate and despised, not erudite and honored rabbis. Their sacred books have twice become obsolete in language, and incomprehensible both to clergy and laity. Their Prophet has faded into an abstraction. But their faith in Ahura-Mazda, the “Wise Creator,” the “Rich in Love,” remains as clear to-day among them as when it first rose upon the Bactrian plains in the morning of the world. The virtues of truth, chastity, industry, and beneficence inculcated by the Zend-Avesta, and attributed by the Greek historians to their ancestors of the age of Cyrus, are still noticeable among them in marked contrast to their Hindu neighbors; as are likewise their muscular strength and hardy frames. Even as regards their commercial aptitudes, the Parsees offer a singular parallel to the Jews. The Times remarked some years ago that out of the 150,000 Parsees there were an incredible number of very wealthy men, and six were actual millionaires. One of the last, Sir Jamsetjee Jeejebhoy, gave away in his lifetime the sum of £700,000 sterling in charities to men of every religion.