Chapter II: The Jews of London¹

Beatrice Webb

In the midst of the chaotic elements of East London, the Jewish Settlement stands out as possessing a distinct religious and social life, and a definite history of its own.

Over 200 years ago a small body of well-to-do Spanish and Portuguese Jews from Amsterdam settled in the neighbourhood of Houndsditch. They were permitted to erect the first English synagogue immediately outside the eastern boundary of the City, and they were allotted a field in the Mile End waste wherein to bury their dead. From that time onward the Jewish Community of the East End increased in numbers and gradually changed in character.

With the slow decay of the unwritten law of social prejudice, whereby the children of Israel had been confined to one district of the metropolis, the aristocratic and cultured Sephardic Jews — direct descendants of the financiers, merchant princes, and learned doctors of Spain and Portugal — moved westward, and were replaced in their old homes by a multitude of down-trodden, poor, and bigoted brethren of the Ashkenazite, or German, branch of the Hebrew race. Thus towards the middle of last century the East End settlement ceased to be the nucleus of a small and select congregation of the chosen people, and became a reservoir for the incoming stream of poverty-stricken foreigners.

For a time the old settlers held aloof from the newcomers, and regarded them as a lower caste, fit only to receive alms. But with the growth of an educated and comparatively wealthy class from out of the ranks of the Ashkenazite congregations, the contemptuous feelings of the Sephardim declined. In 1760, the whole of the Jewish people resident in England (numbering some 8000 souls) were organised under the secular leadership of the London Committee of Deputies of British Jews, a committee consisting of representatives from all the metropolitan and provincial congregations. And whilst the Jews were regarded as aliens by the English law, and while they laboured under manifold industrial and political disabilities, the Board of Deputies was fully recognised by the Imperial Government as a representative body, and possessed very real powers within its own community. The annals of this Board are interesting, for they illustrate the skill, the tenacity, and, above all, the admirable temper with which our Hebrew fellow countrymen have insinuated themselves into the life of the nation, without forsaking the faith of their forefathers or sacrificing as a community the purity of their race. As an organisation the Board of Deputies is still retained, but its importance has naturally declined with the fulfilment of the main object of its existence.

Whilst the Board of Deputies has watched over the interests of its constituents as they have been affected by the Gentile world, the Beth Din (court of judgment) has administered ecclesiastical law within the Jewish community. For the origin of this venerable institution we must seek far back into primitive Hebrew history — into the annals of Biblical Judaism. In more modern times, during the wanderings of Israel among the western nations and the separation of the tribes into small communities, these courts have served a twofold purpose: they have introduced order and discipline within the several communities of the chosen people, and they have obviated the scandal of Jew fighting Jew in the Gentile courts of law.

In England at the present time the Beth Din consists of the Chief Rabbi and two assessors; the court sits twice every week throughout the year. We say that its jurisdiction is ecclesiastical, because justice is administered by a priest, and according to the laws of the Jewish religion. But we must not fail to remember that with the followers of the Law of Moses the term ecclesiastical covers the whole ground of moral duties as well as the minutiae of religious ceremony — includes practical obedience to the ten commandments, as well as conformity to traditional observances. In fact, religion with the orthodox Jew is not simply, or even primarily, a key whereby to unlock existence in a future world; it is a law of life on this earth, sanctioned by the rewards and punishments of this world — peace or distraction, health or disease. Hence it is impossible to define the exact jurisdiction of the Beth Din. On the one hand, the Chief Rabbi and the two assessors regulate the details of religious observance and control the machinery whereby the sanitary and dietary regulations are enforced; on the other hand, they sit as a permanent board of arbitration to all those who are, or feel themselves, aggrieved by another son, or daughter of Israel. Family quarrels, trade and labour disputes, matrimonial differences, wife desertions, even reckless engagements, and breach of promise cases — in short, all the thousand and one disputes, entanglements, defaults and mistakes of every-day life — are brought before the Beth Din to be settled or unravelled by the mingled lights of the Pentateuch, the Talmud, and the native shrewdness of the Hebrew judge.

Akin to the jurisdiction of the Beth Din is the religious registration of all marriages. No Jew can enter into the married state without first obtaining the consent of the Chief Rabbi. In the case of native Jews this permission may be considered as formal; but with immigrants from distant homes, sufficient testimony is required that the parties concerned have not already contracted with other mates the bonds and ties of wedlock.

These institutions are common to the Anglo-Jewish community throughout England.² They are based on a representative system of a somewhat restricted character. Each seat-holder in a recognised synagogue takes part in the election of the Rabbi, wardens, and other officers of the congregation to which he belongs; every synagogue contributing to the communal fund has a right to vote for the Chief Rabbi, the Central Committee of Synagogues, and indirectly for the Board of Deputies.

The Jewish settlement at the East End, however, stands outside the communal life, so far as voting power is concerned — partly on account of its extreme poverty, and partly because of the foreign habits and customs of the vast majority of East End Jews.

For the East End Jews of the working class rarely attend the larger synagogues (except on the Day of Atonement), and most assuredly they are not seat-holders. For the most part the religious-minded form themselves into associations (chevras), which combine the functions of a benefit club for death, sickness, and the solemn rites of mourning with that of public worship and the study of the Talmud. Thirty or forty of these chevras are scattered throughout the Jewish quarters; they are of varying size as congregations, of different degrees of solvency as friendly societies, and of doubtful comfort and sanitation as places of public worship. Usually each chevras is named after the town or district in Russia or Poland from which the majority of its members have emigrated: it is, in fact, from old associations — from ties of relationship or friendship, or, at least, from the memory of a common home — that the new association springs.

Here, early in the morning, or late at night, the devout members meet to recite the morning and evening prayers, or to decipher the sacred books of the Talmud. And it is a curious and touching sight to enter one of the poorer and more wretched of these places on a Sabbath morning. Probably the one you choose will be situated in a small alley or narrow court, or it may be built out in a back yard. To reach the entrance you stumble over broken pavement and household débris; possibly you pick, your way over the rickety bridge connecting it with the cottage property fronting the street. From the outside it appears a long wooden building surmounted by a skylight, very similar in construction to the ordinary sweater's workshop. You enter; the heat and odour convince you that the skylight is not used for ventilation. From behind the trellis of the ' ladies' gallery ' you see at the far end of the room the richly curtained Ark of the Covenant, wherein are laid, attired in gorgeous vestments, the sacred scrolls of the Law. Slightly elevated on a platform in the midst of the congregation, stands the reader or minister, surrounded by the seven who are called up to the reading of the Law from among the congregation. Scarves of white cashmere or silk, softly bordered and fringed, are thrown across the shoulders of the men, and relieve the dusty hue and disguise the Western cut of the clothes they wear. A low, monotonous, but musical-toned recital of Hebrew prayers, each man praying for himself to the God of his fathers, rises from the congregation, whilst the reader intones, with a somewhat louder voice, the recognised portion of the Pentateuch. Add to this rhythmical cadence of numerous voices, the swaying to and fro of the bodies of the worshippers — expressive of the words of personal adoration: ' All my bones exclaim, O Lord, who is like unto Thee ! ' — and you may imagine yourself in a far-off Eastern land. But you are roused from your dreams. Your eye wanders from the men, who form the congregation, to the small body of women who watch behind the trellis. Here, certainly, you have the Western world, in the bright-coloured ostrich feathers, large bustles, and tight-fitting coats of cotton velvet or brocaded satinette. At last you step out, stifled by the heat and dazed by the strange contrast of the old-world memories of a majestic religion and the squalid vulgarity of an East End slum.

And, perchance, if it were permissible to stay after Divine service is over, and if you could follow the quick spoken Jüdisch, you would be still more bewildered by these ' destitute foreigners,' whose condition, according to Mr. Arnold White, ' resembles that of animals.' The women have left; the men are scattered over the benches (maybe there are several who are still muttering their prayers), or they are gathered together in knots, sharpening their intellects with the ingenious points and subtle logic of the Talmudical argument, refreshing their minds from the rich stores of Talmudical wit, or listening with ready helpfulness to the tale of distress of a new-comer from the foreign home.

These chevras supply the social and religious needs of some 12,000 to 15,000 foreign Jews.³ Up to late years their status within the Jewish community has been very similar to that of dissenting bodies in face of a State Church, always excepting nonconformity of creed. No marriages could be celebrated within their precincts, and they were in no way represented on the Central Council of the Ashkenazite organisation of the United Synagogues. And owing to the unsanitary and overcrowded state of the poorest chevras, some among the leaders of the Anglo-Jewish community have thought to discourage the spontaneous multiplication of these small bodies, and to erect a large East End synagogue endowed by the charity of the West. I venture to think that wiser counsels have prevailed. The evils of bad sanitation and overcrowding are easily noted, and still more frequently exaggerated. Philanthropists are apt to forget that different degrees of sanitation and space, like all the other conditions of human existence, are good, bad, or indifferent relatively to the habits and constitutions of those who submit to them. The close and odorous atmosphere of the ordinary chevras is clearly a matter of choice; there is not even the ghost of a ' sweater ' to enforce it. In truth, the family occupying one room, the presser or machinist at work day and night close to a coke fire, would find, in all probability, a palace to worship in draughty and uncomfortable, and out of all harmony and proportion with the rest of existence. On the other hand, it is easy to overlook the unseen influence for good of self-creating, self-supporting, and self-governing communities; small enough to generate public opinion and the practical supervision of private morals, and large enough to stimulate charity, worship, and study by communion and example. These and other arguments have led to the federation of minor synagogues and their partial recognition by the communal authorities. And probably it is only a question of time before the East End chevras are admitted to full representation in the religious organisation of the Ashkenazite community in return for a more responsible attitude with regard to the safety and sanitation of the premises they occupy.

The large City and East End Synagogues meet the religious wants of the middle and lower middle class of East End Jews; the chevras connect a certain number of the more pious and independent minded of the foreign settlers with the communal life; but there remains some 20,000 to 30,000 Jews — men, women, and children — too poor or too indifferent to attend regularly a place of worship, but who nevertheless cling with an almost superstitious tenacity to the habits and customs of their race. This poorest section of the Jewish community is composed, with few exceptions, of foreigners or the children of foreigners. Individuals are constantly rising out of it into other classes, or leaving England for America; but their places are quickly taken by new-comers from Poland and Russia. It forms, therefore, a permanent layer of poverty verging on destitution. Now this class is united to the Jewish middle and upper class by a downward stream of charity and personal service, a benevolence at once so widespread and so thorough-going, that it fully justifies the saying, ' All Israel are brethren.'⁴ Of the many educational and charitable institutions connected with the East End Jewish life, I have only space to mention one — the most talked of and the least understood — the Jewish Board of Guardians.

The title of this institution has been unfortunate, for it has led to a serious misunderstanding. The Christian world has considered the ' Jewish Board of Guardians ' as analogous in function to an English parochial body; the relief it administers has been treated as official or State relief, and therefore by a simple process of deduction its clients have been regarded as belonging to the ordinary pauper class. On the basis of this misleading analogy a calculation has been made of the percentage of the paupei class within the Jewish community; and the communal authorities have been charged with a wholesale pauperisation of the Jewish poor.⁵ A slight sketch of the origin of the Jewish Board of Guardians and of the actual nature of its activity will, I think, suffice to destroy the groundwork of this unmerited accusation.

From the first years of the Jewish settlement in England the influx of poverty-stricken co-religionists has been one of the central problems of Anglo-Jewish life. In 1753 the Great Synagogue tried to check immigration by refusing relief to those who had left their country without due cause. But persecution and social ostracism abroad, increasing liberty and consideration in England, combined with the warm-hearted benevolence of the more fortunate children of Israel for their poorer brethren, were social forces too strong to be curbed by the negative resolution of an official body. Charities increased on all sides, but in a chaotic state, giving rise to the worst forms of pauperism and professional begging. And those who have some experience of the present system of alms-giving practised by Christians of all denominations within the metropolis, and who are able to imagine the effect of that system intensified by a steady influx of destitute foreigners, and by the very practical view the Jews take of the religious precept of charity, will readily conceive the hopelessly demoralised condition of the Jewish poor for the first fifty years of the century. To put an end to this confusing of good and evil, the three City Ashkenazite congregations instituted, in 1858, the Jewish Board of Guardians. It became the Charity Organisation Society of the private benevolence of Hebrew philanthropists; only, from the first, it received generous and loyal support from the whole Jewish community.

Again, if we turn from the origin of the Jewish Board of Guardians to the nature of its work, we shall see that a large proportion of its charitable expenditure is not in any way analogous to the relief administered by a parochial Board. Of the £13,000 to £14,000 expended annually by the Jewish Board in actual relief, only £2000 a year is given away in a form similar to outdoor relief, viz. in fixed allowances, and in tickets for the necessaries of life; £3000 a year is lent for trade and business purposes; £1000 a year is expended in emigration; another £500 in the sanitary inspection of the homes of the poor and in the provision of a workroom for girls. Of the remainder more than 50 per cent may be considered given in the form of business capital of one kind or another, enabling the recipients to raise themselves permanently from the ranks of those who depend on charity for subsistence. Indeed, the practical effect of the relief administered by the Jewish Board, in so far as it affects individuals, is conclusively proved by the striking fact that of the 3313 cases dealt with in the year 1887, only 268 were known to the Board as applicants prior to the year 1886. If we remember the many thousands of cases treated during the Board's existence, we can hardly, in the face of these statistics, describe those relieved by the Jewish Board of Guardians as belonging to the chronically parasitic class of 'paupers.'

Hence if we mean by the word pauper, ' a person supported by State provision,' there are no paupers within the Jewish community, except a few isolated individuals chargeable to the English parochial authorities. If, on the other hand, we choose a wider definition — ' a person so indigent as to depend on charity for maintenance ' — it is impossible to measure the relative extent of pauperism among Christians and Jews of the same class. For the statistics of Jewish charitable relief are, comparatively speaking, definite and complete; but owing to the disorganised state of Christian charity, and owing to the fact that our indigent parasites are to a great extent maintained by the silent aid of the class immediately above them, we can by no possible means arrive at an approximate estimate of the number of persons in our midst who depend on charitable assistance for their livelihood. Who, for instance, would undertake to calculate the number of paupers (in this wider sense of the term) among the population surrounding the docks? Moreover, while all groundwork for the charge of pauperisation is absent, we have conclusive evidence that either from the character of those who take, or from the method of those who give, Jewish charity does not tend to the demoralisation of individual recipients.

But though the accusation of wholesale pauperism brought against the Jewish community cannot be maintained, there is doubtless, from the standpoint of industrial health, a grave objection to the form of relief administered by the Jewish Board of Guardians. Money lent or given for trade purposes fosters the artificial multiplication of small masters, and is one of the direct causes of the sweating system; efficient assistance to the mechanic out of work enables him to exist on reduced or irregular earnings, and thereby lowers the general condition of his class. In truth, there seems no escape from the tragic dilemma of charitable relief. If we help a man to exist without work, we demoralise the individual and encourage the growth of a parasitic or pauper class. If, on the other hand, we raise the recipient permanently from the condition of penury, and enable him to begin again the struggle for existence, we save him at the cost of all those who compete with him (whether they be small masters or wage earners, Jews or Gentiles) for the custom of the manufacturer, the trader, or the consumer; in other words, we increase that very dislocation of industry, the result of which we attempt to mitigate in special instances. Judged by its effect on the industrial development of the whole nation, we are tempted to echo sorrowfully the words of Louise Michel, ' La Philanthropic, c'est une mensonge.'

Before I leave the question of charity and pauperism within the Jewish community, it is needful to notice certain institutions which indirectly have a most pauperising effect, and which would assuredly achieve the utter demoralisation of the Jewish poor if the work they accomplished equalled to any degree the sum of their expenditure — I mean the Christian conversionist societies. Among these the London Society for Promoting Christianity among the Jews is the largest and most influential.

This society enjoys an income of £35,000 a year. On the magnificent premises of Palestine Place (Bethnal Green) it provides a chapel, a Hebrew missionary training institute, and a Hebrew operatives' home. During 1888 twelve Jews were baptized in its chapel, forty children (more than fifty per cent of whom were the children of Christian mothers) were maintained in the school, and twelve Jewish converts supported in the operatives' home. The process of conversion is very simple: board and lodging at a specially \ provided house during the inquiry stage, constant charitable assistance after conversion, and the free education and free maintenance of Jewish children brought up in the Christian faith. In the eloquent words of the Report: — 'The present inmates (Operative Jewish Converts' Institution) appear fully to realise the contrast between their former friendless condition and their present life, in which a comfortable home, wholesome food, respectable clothing, instruction in trade, and reward -money for attention and industry accumulates till they leave the institution.' The society has, however, one complaint against its converts. Inspired by the Jewish spirit of competing with former masters, and anxious to turn to some account their newly-acquired 'talent' of Christianity, the youthful proselytes set up in business on their own account, collecting and spending the subscriptions of zealous Christians, with no respect to the monetary claims or superior authority of the mother society. Hence the East End is sprinkled with small missions, between which and Palestine Place a certain number of professional converts wander in search of the temporal blessings of Christianity. Imagine the temptation to the poverty-stricken inhabitants of the crowded alleys of the Jewish slum ! And yet, in spite of comfortable maintenance in the present and brilliant prospects in the future, the number of converts is infinitesimal, a fact that throws an interesting side-light on the moral tenacity of the Jewish race.

The movement, however, has produced a mischievous reaction within the community. Pious -minded Jews have thought starvation or baptism a too terrible alternative to offer the utterly destitute, and a certain amount of unorganised and pauperising relief is undoubtedly dispensed throughout the East End as a counterblast to missionary enterprise. Moreover, Jewish philanthropists have tried to protect the friendless immigrant (without hope or chance of immediate employment) from the allurements of the Christian missionary by the same means through which they have attempted to save him from the extortions of the professional ' runner.' They have erected a ' Poor Jews' Temporary Shelter,' an institution which last year provided board and lodging for a period of from one to fourteen days to 1322 homeless immigrants. Rightly or wrongly, this institution has been looked upon with disfavour by Christians, and to some extent by Jews (notably by the Jewish Board of Guardians) as likely to attract to England pauper foreigners of the Hebrew race.

I have sketched the principal religious and charitable institutions affecting for good or evil Jewish life at the East End. A far more difficult task lies before me: to give the reader some general idea of the manners and customs of this people; to represent to some slight extent their home and outdoor life, and finally to estimate, however imperfectly, their character and capacity as members of our social and industrial state.

I think I may begin with two statements of a general character: the majority of East End Jews are either foreigners or children of foreigners; and the dominant nationality is Polish or Russian.

With regard to the preponderance of foreigners, I hardly think it will be denied by any one who has studied the available statistics, or who has any personal experience of East End Jewish life.

For statistical material I refer the reader to Mr. Llewellyn Smith's careful and elaborate calculations.⁶ He estimates that out of a total Jewish population of from 60,000 to 70,000 persons, 30,000 were actually born abroad. At least one-half of the remainder must be of foreign parentage. But if the reader distrusts statistics, I would advise him to wander through the Jewish quarter, and listen to the language of the streets; to frequent the sweaters' dens, the gambling clubs, and the chevras; or, if he desires a more graphic experience, to attend a meeting of working-class Jews, and try to make himself understood in his native tongue.

The Polish or Russian nationality of the vast majority of these foreigners is an equally undisputed fact and a natural consequence of the recent outbreak of Judenhetze in Russian Poland and the adjoining territories. It . is, moreover, a fact of great significance in any consideration of the East End Jewish question. For we are accustomed to think, with the old German proverb, ' Every country has the Jew it deserves,' a saying, in our case, inapt, since we receive our Jews ready-made — passed on to us by a foreign nation with a domestic policy diametrically opposed to our own. Before, therefore, we are able to appreciate the present characteristics and future prospects of this stream of Jewish life flowing continuously with more or less rapidity into the great reservoir of the East End Jewish settlement, we must gain some slight idea of the political, industrial, and social conditions governing the source from which it springs.

Alone among the great nations of Europe, Russia has resolutely refused political and industrial freedom to her Jewish subjects. Under the Russian Government oppression and restriction have assumed every conceivable form. No Jew may own land; in some places he may not even rent it; in one part he is not admitted into the learned professions; in another state he may not enter an industrial establishment or take part in a Government contract; while in whole districts of Russia the children of Israel have no right of domicile, and live and trade by the bought connivance of the police authorities, and in daily terror of the petty tyranny of a capricious governor. Deprived of the rights and privileges of citizens, they are subject to the full strain of military conscription, intensified by social insult and religious persecution. And yet, in spite of this systematic oppression, the children of Israel have, up to late years, multiplied in the land of their enemies and prospered exceedingly, until they may be numbered by their millions throughout the Russian Empire; absorbing the more profitable trading, and crowding every profession, mechanical and intellectual, open to Jewish competition. Once again in the history of the world penal legislation has proved a powerless weapon against the superior mental equipment of the Jew; and it has simply forced the untiring energies of the Hebrew race into low channels of parasitic activity, undermining the morality and wellbeing of their Christian fellow-subjects. The Russian Government and the Russian people have slowly grasped this fact, and unwilling to adopt the policy of complete emancipation, they have changed their method of attack. The central authorities, supported by the public opinion of the injured classes, have deliberately encouraged mob -violence of a brutal and revolting character as a costless but efficient means of expulsion. Robbed, outraged, in fear of death and physical torture, the chosen people have swarmed across the Russian frontier, bearing with them, not borrowed 'jewels of silver, and jewels of gold, and raiment,'⁷ but a capacity for the silent evasion of the law, a faculty for secretive and illicit dealing, and mingled feelings of contempt and fear for the Christians amongst whom they have dwelt, and under whose government they have lived for successive generations.

These have been the outward circumstances forming the Polish or Russian Jew. The inner life of the small Hebrew communities bound together by common suffering and mutual helpfulness has developed other qualities, but has also tended in its own way to destroy all friendly and honourable intercourse with surrounding peoples. Social isolation has perfected home life; persecution has intensified religious fervour, an existence of unremitting toil, and a rigid observance of the moral precepts and sanitary and dietary regulations of the Jewish religion have favoured the growth of sobriety, personal purity, and a consequent power of physical endurance. But living among a half-civilised people, and carefully preserved by the Government from the advantages of secular instruction, the Polish and Russian Jews have centered their thoughts and feelings in the literature of their race — in the Old Testament, with its magnificent promises of universal dominion; in the Talmud, with its minute instructions as to the means of gaining it. The child, on its mother's lap, lisps passages from the Talmud; the old man, tottering to the grave, is still searching for the secret of life in ' that stupendous labyrinth of fact, thought, and fancy.' For in those ten volumes of Talmudical lore the orthodox Polish Jew finds not only a storehouse of information and a training-ground for his intellectual and emotional faculties, but the key to all the varied perplexities and manifold troubles of his daily existence. To quote the words of Deutsch, the Talmud, besides comprising the poetry and the science of the people, is ' emphatically a Corpus Juris: an encyclopaedia of law, civil and penal, ecclesiastical and international, human and divine.' Beyond this law the pious Israelite recognises no obligations; the laws and customs of the Christians are so many regulations to be obeyed, evaded, set at naught, or used according to the possibilities and expediences of the hour.

In these facts of past training we see an explanation of the present mental and physical qualities of the majority of East End Jews. The Polish or Russian Jew represents to some extent the concentrated essence of Jewish virtue and Jewish vice; for he has, in his individual experience, epitomised the history of his race in the Christian world. But he can in no sense be considered a fair sample of Jews who have enjoyed the freedom, the culture, and the public spirit of English life. I should wish it, therefore, to be distinctly understood that I do not offer the slight description in the following pages of the manners, customs, and industrial characteristics of East End Jews as a picture of the Jewish community throughout England.

Let us imagine ourselves on board a Hamburg boat steaming slowly up the Thames in the early hours of the morning. In the stern of the vessel we see a mixed crowd of men, women, and children — Polish and Russian Jews, some sitting on their baskets, others with bundles tied up in bright coloured kerchiefs. For the most part they are men between 20 and 40 years of age, of slight and stooping stature, of sallow and pinched countenance, with low foreheads, high cheek bones, and protruding lips. They wear uncouth and dirt-bespattered garments, they mutter to each other in a strange tongue. Scattered among them a few women (their shapely figures and soft skins compare favourably with the sickly appearance of the men), in peasant frocks with shawls thrown lightly over their heads; and here and there a child, with prematurely set features, bright eyes and agile movements. Stamped on the countenance and bearing of the men is a look of stubborn patience; in their eyes an indescribable expression of hunted, suffering animals, lit up now and again by tenderness for the young wife or little child, or sharpened into a quick and furtive perception of surrounding circumstances. You address them kindly, they gaze on you with silent suspicion; a coarse German sailor pushes his way amongst them with oaths and curses; they simply move apart without a murmur, and, judging from their expression, without a resentful feeling; whilst the women pick up their ragged bundles from out of the way of the intruder with an air of deprecating gentleness. The steamer is at rest, the captain awaits the visit of the Custom-house officials. All eyes are strained, searching through the shifting mist and dense forest of masts for the first glimpse of the eagerly-hoped-for relations and friends, for the first sight of the long-dreamt-of city of freedom and prosperity. Presently a boat rows briskly to the side of the vessel; seated in it a young woman with mock sealskin coat, vandyke hat slashed up with blue satin, and surmounted with a yellow ostrich feather and long six-buttoned gloves. She is chaffing the boatman in broken English, and shouts words of welcome and encouragement to the simple bewildered peasant who peers over the side of the vessel with two little ones clasped in either hand. Yes ! that smartly dressed young lady is her daughter. Three years ago the father and the elder child left the quiet Polish village: a long interval of suspense, then a letter telling of an almost hopeless struggle, at last passage money, and here to-day the daughter with her bright warm clothes and cheery self-confidence — in a few hours the comfortably furnished home of a small wholesale orange-dealer in Mitre Street, near to Petticoat Lane.

Seated by the side of the young woman a bearded man, his face furrowed and shoulders bent with work. He is comfortably clothed, and wears a large watch-chain hanging ostentatiously outside his coat. Evidently he is not the father of the girl, for his hands are clenched nervously as he fails to catch sight of the long-expected form; he is simply the presser from the sweater's next door to the orange dealer; and he also can afford the 1 s. fee to board the steamer and meet his wife. Ah! there she is! and a gentle-faced woman, beaming with heightened colour, pushes her way to the side of the vessel, holding up the youngest child with triumphant pride. The elder boy, a lad of ten, fastens his eyes fixedly on his father's watch-chain, tries in vain to pierce the pocket and weigh and measure the watch, calculates quickly the probable value, wonders whether gilded articles are cheaper or dearer in London than in Poland, and registers a silent vow that he will not rest day nor night until he is handling with a possessor's pride a gold chain and watch, similar or superior to that adorning his father's person. Then he prepares with religious reverence to receive his father's blessing.

The scenes at the landing-stage are less idyllic. There are a few relations and friends awaiting the arrival of the small boats filled with emigrants: but the crowd gathered in and about the gin-shop overlooking the narrow entrance of the landing-stage are dock loungers of the lowest type and professional ' runners.' These latter individuals, usually of the Hebrew race, are among the most repulsive of East London parasites; boat after boat touches the landing-stage, they push forward, sieze hold of the bundles or baskets of the new-comers, offer bogus tickets to those who wish to travel forward to America, promise guidance and free lodging to those who hold in their hands addresses of acquaintances in Whitechapel, or who are absolutely friendless. A little man with an official badge (Hebrew Ladies' Protective Society) fights valiantly in their midst for the conduct of unprotected females, and shouts or whispers to the others to go to the Poor Jews' Temporary Shelter in Leman Street. For a few moments it is a scene of indescribable confusion: cries and counter-cries; the hoarse laughter of the dock loungers at the strange garb and broken accent of the poverty-stricken foreigners; the rough swearing of the boatmen at passengers unable to pay the fee for landing. In another ten minutes eighty of the hundred new-comers are dispersed in the back slums of Whitechapel; in another few days, the majority of these, robbed of the little they possess, are turned out of the ' free lodgings ' destitute and friendless.

If we were able to follow the 'greener' into the next scene of his adventures we should find him existing on the charity of a co-religionist or toiling day and night for a small labour-contractor in return for a shake-down, a cup of black coffee, and a hunch of brown bread. This state of dependence, however, does not last. For a time the man works as if he were a slave under the lash, silently, without complaint But in a few months (in the busy season in a few weeks) the master enters his workshop and the man is not at his place. He has left without warning — silently — as he worked without pay. He has learnt his trade and can sell his skill in the open market at the corner of Commercial Street; or possibly a neighbouring sweater, pressed with work, has offered him better terms. A year hence he has joined a chevras, or has become an habitué of a gambling club. And unless he falls a victim to the Jewish passion for gambling, he employs the enforced leisure of the slack season in some form of petty dealing. He is soon in a fair way to become a tiny capitalist — a maker of profit as well as an earner of wage. He has moved out of the back court in which his fellow countrymen are herded together like animals, and is comfortably installed in a model dwelling; the walls of his parlour are decked with prints of Hebrew worthies, or with portraits of prize-fighters and race-horses; his wife wears jewellery and furs on the Sabbath; for their Sunday dinner they eat poultry. He treats his wife with courtesy and tenderness, and they discuss constantly the future of the children. He is never to be seen at the public-house round the corner; but he enjoys a quiet glass of ' rum and shrub ' and a game of cards with a few friends on the Saturday or Sunday evening; and he thinks seriously of season tickets for the People's Palace. He remembers the starvation fare and the long hours of his first place: he remembers, too, the name and address of the wholesale house served by his first master; and presently he appears at the counter and offers to take the work at a lower figure, or secures it through a tip to the foreman. But he no longer kisses the hand of Singer's agent and begs with fawning words for another sewing-machine; neither does he flit to other lodgings in the dead of night at the first threat of the broker. In short, he has become a law-abiding and self-respecting citizen of our great metropolis, and feels himself the equal of a Montefiore or a Rothschild.

The foregoing sketch is typical of the lives of the majority of Polish and Russian Jews from their first appearance in the port of London. Usually they bring with them no ready-made skill of a marketable character. They are set down in an already over-stocked and demoralised labour market; they are surrounded by the drunkenness, immorality, and gambling of the East End streets; they are, in fact, placed in the midst of the very refuse of our civilisation, and yet whether they become boot-makers, tailors, cabinetmakers, glaziers, or dealers, the Jewish inhabitants of East London rise in the social scale; ' as a mass they shift upwards, leaving to the new-comers from foreign lands and to the small section of habitual gamblers the worst-paid work, the most dilapidated workshops, and the dirtiest lodgings.⁸ But this is not all. Originally engaged in the most unskilled branch of the lowest section of each trade, Jewish mechanics (whether we regard them individually or as a class) slowly but surely invade the higher provinces of production, bringing in their train a system of employment and a method of dealing with masters, men, and fellow-workers which arouses the antagonism of English workmen. The East End Jewish problem, therefore, resolves itself into two central questions: — (i) What are the reasons of the Jews' success? (2) Why is that success resented by that part of the Christian community with whom the Jew comes in daily contact? I venture to end this chapter with a few suggestions touching this double-faced enigma of Jewish life.

First we must realise (in comparing the Polish Jew with the English labourer) that the poorest Jew has inherited through the medium of his religion a trained intellect. For within the Judaic Theocracy there are no sharp lines dividing the people into distinct classes with definite economic characteristics such as exist in most Christian nations: viz. a leisure class of landowners, a capitalist class of brain-workers, and a mass of labouring people who up to late years have been considered a lower order, fit only for manual work.

The children of Israel are a nation of priests. Each male child, rich or poor, is a student of the literature of his race. In his earliest childhood he is taught by picturesque rites and ceremonies the history, the laws, and the poetry of his people; in boyhood he masters long passages in an ancient tongue; and in the more pious and rigid communities of Russian Poland the full-grown man spends his leisure in striving to interpret the subtle reasoning and strange fantasies of that great classic of the Hebrews, the Talmud. I do not wish to imply that the bigotted Jew is a ' cultured ' being, if we mean by culture a wide experience of the thoughts and feelings of other times and other races. Far from it. The intellectual vision and the emotional sympathies of the great majority of Polish Jews are narrowed down to the past history and present prospects of their own race. But the mechanical faculties of the intellect — memory, the power of sustained reasoning, and the capacity for elaborate calculation have been persistently cultivated (in orthodox communities) among all classes, and there has resulted a striking equality, and a high though narrow level of intellectual training.

This oneness of type and uniformity of chances, originating in the influence of a unique religion, have been strengthened and maintained by the industrial and political disabilities under which the Jews have laboured through the greater part of the Christian era, and which still exist in Russian Poland. The brutal persecution of the Middle Ages weeded out the inapt and incompetent. Injustice and social isolation, pressing on poor and rich alike, sharpened and narrowed the intellect of Israel, regarded as a whole, to an instrument for grasping by mental agility the good things withheld from them by the brute force of the Christian peoples.

In the Jewish inhabitants of East London we see therefore a race of brain -workers competing with a class of manual labourers. The Polish Jew regards manual work⁹ as the first rung of the social ladder, to be superseded or supplanted on the first opportunity by the estimates of the profit-maker, the transactions of the dealer, or the calculations of the money-lender; and he is only tempted from a life of continual acquisition by that vice of the intellect, gambling.

Besides the possession of a trained intellect, admirably adapted to commerce and finance, there is another, and I am inclined to think a more important factor in the Jew's success. From birth upwards, the pious Israelite (male and female) is subjected to a moral and physical regimen, which, while it favours the full development of the bodily organs, protects them from abuse and disease, and stimulates the growth of physical self-control and mental endurance.¹⁰ For the rites and regulations of the Mosaic law and the more detailed instructions of tradition are in no way similar to the ascetic exercises of the Christian or Buddhist saint seeking spiritual exaltation through the mortification or annihilation of physical instinct. On the contrary, the religious ordinances and sanitary laws of the Jewish religion accentuate the physical aspect of life; they are (as M. Rénan has observed) not a preparation for another world, but a course of training adapted to prolong the life of the individual and to multiply the number of his descendants.

Moreover, the moral precepts of Judaism are centred in the perfection of family life, in obedience towards parents, in self-devotion for children, in the chastity of the girl, in the support and protection of the wife. The poorest Jew cherishes as sacred the maternity of the woman, and seldom degrades her to the position of a worker upon whose exertions he depends for subsistence. Thus Jewish morality, instead of diverting feeling from the service of the body, combines with physical training to develop exclusively that side of man's emotional nature which is inextricably interwoven with the healthful and pleasurable exercise of physical instinct. Hence in the rigidly conforming Jew we have a being at once moral and sensual; a creature endowed with the power of physical endurance, but gifted with a highly-trained and well-regulated appetite for sensuous enjoyment. And with the emotions directed into the well-regulated channels of domestic feeling, the mind remains passionless. Anger, pride, and self-consciousness, with their counterparts of indignation, personal dignity, and sensitiveness, play a small part in the character of the Polish Jew. He suffers oppression and bears ridicule with imperturbable good humour; in the face of insult and abuse he remains silent. For why resent when your object is to overcome? Why bluster and fight when you may manipulate or control in secret?

The result is twofold. As an industrial competitor the Polish Jew is fettered by no definite standard of life:¹¹ it rises and falls with his opportunities; he is not depressed by penury, and he is not demoralised by gain. As a citizen of our many-sided metropolis he is unmoved by those gusts of passion which lead to drunkenness and crime; whilst, on the other hand, he pursues the main purposes of personal existence, undistracted by the humours, illusions, and aspirations arising from the unsatisfied emotions of our more complicated and less disciplined natures. Is it surprising, therefore, that in this nineteenth century, with its ideal of physical health, intellectual acquisition, and material prosperity, the chosen people, with three thousand years of training, should in some instances realise the promise made by Moses to their forefathers: 'Thou shalt drive out nations mightier than thyself, and thou shalt take their land as an inheritance'?

Such, I imagine, are the chief causes of the Jew's success. We need not seek far for the origin of the antagonistic feelings with which the Gentile inhabitants of East London regard Jewish labour and Jewish trade. For the reader will have already perceived that the immigrant Jew, though possessed of many first-class virtues, is deficient in that highest and latest development of human sentiment — social morality.

I do not wish to imply by this that East End Jews resist the laws and defy the conventions of social and commercial life. On the contrary, no one will deny that the children of Israel are the most law-abiding inhabitants of East London. They keep the peace, they pay their debts, and they abide by their contracts; practices in which they are undoubtedly superior to the English and Irish casual labourers among whom they dwell. For the Jew is quick to perceive that 'law and order' and the 'sanctity of contract' are the sine qua non of a full and free competition in the open market. And it is by competition, and by competition alone, that the Jew seeks success. But in the case of the foreign Jews, it is a competition unrestricted by the personal dignity of a definite standard of life, and unchecked by the social feelings of class loyalty and trade integrity. The small manufacturer injures the trade through which he rises to the rank of a capitalist by bad and dishonest production. The petty dealer or small money-lender, imbued with the economic precept of buying in the cheapest and selling in the dearest market, suits his wares and his terms to the weakness, the ignorance, and the vice of his customers; the mechanic, indifferent to the interests of the class to which he temporarily belongs, and intent only on becoming a small master, acknowledges no limit to the process of underbidding fellow-workers, except the exhaustion of his own strength. In short, the foreign Jew totally ignores all social obligations other than keeping the law of the land, the maintenance of his own family, and the charitable relief of co-religionists.

Thus the immigrant Jew, fresh from the sorrowful experiences typical of the history of his race, seems to justify by his existence those strange assumptions which figured for man in the political economy of Ricardo — an Always Enlightened Selfishness, seeking employment or profit with an absolute mobility of body and mind, without pride, without preference, without interests outside the struggle for the existence and welfare of the individual and the family. We see these assumptions verified in the Jewish inhabitants of Whitechapel; and in the Jewish East End trades we may watch the prophetic deduction of the Hebrew economist actually fulfilled — in a perpetually recurring bare subsistence wage for the great majority of manual workers.¹²

Notes

1. Contributed in 1889 to Mr. Charles Booth's Life and Labour of the People (now in vol. iii. of revised edition). The author is indebted to many members of the Jewish community for their never-failing courtesy and help; and especially to the Chief Rabbi (Rev. Hermann Adler) for valuable information concerning the religious and charitable organisation of the East End Jewish Settlement. ↩
2. The Board of Deputies represents all British Jews; but the Sephardic and Ashkenazite communities have each a distinct religious organisation and a separate Chief Rabbi. ↩
3. This figure includes women and children. See evidence of Mr. Joseph Blank (Secretary of the Federation of Minor Synagogues), before the Select Committee on Foreign Immigration, 1889. ↩
4. A complete list of official Jewish Charities will be found in Dickens's London. The ' Free School,' the largest public school in England, is a striking example of the admirable organisation peculiar to Jewish charity. ↩
5. This charge was based on the Report of the Jewish Board of Guardians for 1886; and an alarmist article on the extent of Jewish pauperism appeared in the Spectator, 22nd April 1887. Besides the relief administered by the Jewish Board of Guardians, free funerals were cited as indicative of pauperism. Those who understand the peculiar solemnity of mourning and funeral rites among Jews, and who appreciate the direct and indirect costliness of these, will perceive that a free funeral ' is no more a token of pauperism than a free mass among Catholics or a free sermon among Protestants. The same may be said for the free distribution of the articles of diet needed for the celebration of religious feasts. ↩
6. Charles Booth, Life and Labour of the People (now in vol. iii. of revised edition). Mr. Smith's estimate of foreign Jews is partly based on the statistics of Jewish East End Schools. In the Jewish Free School, for instance, there are 3400 children; 897 of these are foreign-born; 1962 are of foreign extraction, while 541 only are the children of English-born parents. In other East End schools the Jewish children are only divided into two classes — foreign-born and native-born — no distinction being made between children of foreign and of native parents. Mr. Smith has therefore dealt with the first class only, and has not attempted to estimate the population of foreign parentage. A glance at the statistics of the Free School will show the numerical importance of this section of the Jewish population. The latest and most authoritative figures are to be found in Mr. Joseph Jacob's Statistics of the Jewish Population in London, 1873-1893 (London, 1894).↩
7. Exodus xii. 35. ↩
8. 'The Tailoring Trade' in Mr. Charles Booth's Life and Labour of the People (now in vol. iv. of revised edition). ↩
9. It is a mistake to suppose that the Jew is physically unfit for manual work. On the contrary, he is better fitted than the Anglo-Saxon for those trades which require quickness of perception rather than artistic skill, and he will compete sucessfully with the Englishman in forms of manual labour needing physical endurance, and not actual strength of muscle. Hence the Jew's success in the machine-made Coat and Boot and Shoe Trades. ↩
10. From a psychological as well as from an ethical point of view, a detailed study of the sanitary observances of the Jewish religion (more especially those relative to sexual functions) would be extremely interesting. The musical talent which distinguishes the Hebrew race has been ascribed by psychologists to the effect of these observances on successive generations. ↩
11. For further analysis of the economic importance of the customary 'standard of life,' and of its inexplicable variations, see Industrial Democracy, by Sidney and Beatrice Webb (London, 1898), vol. ii. pp. 693-698. ↩
12. The reader wishing to know more of the history, organisation, and characteristics of the Jews in this country may be referred to The Jewish Year Book (London, Simpkin Marshall), a useful annual edited by Mr. Joseph Jacobs. The issue for 1897-8 contains a list of English works of reference on various points connected with the Jews. Mention may be made also of Studies in Jewish Statistics by Joseph Jacobs; the annual reports of the Jewish Board of Guardians and the Russo-Jewish Committee; and the various Parliamentary Papers on Alien Immigration and the Sweating System. ↩