The Jew at home: impressions of a summer and autumn spent with him . ntirely benton making a little money for himself, whoseshops in the large and commercial towns arealways the meanest—in a word, whose everyad ion is calculated to foster and keep alive thathatred or race - prejudice which has existedagainst him ever since he first turned up inEgypt. He has schools for his children in theseRussian towns; but apparently it is chiefly thatthey may learn Hebrew, a language which therest of the people can not understand, the knowl-edge of which marks them more than ever as arace apart. Little as I
The Jew at home: impressions of a summer and autumn spent with him . ntirely benton making a little money for himself, whoseshops in the large and commercial towns arealways the meanest—in a word, whose everyad ion is calculated to foster and keep alive thathatred or race - prejudice which has existedagainst him ever since he first turned up inEgypt. He has schools for his children in theseRussian towns; but apparently it is chiefly thatthey may learn Hebrew, a language which therest of the people can not understand, the knowl-edge of which marks them more than ever as arace apart. Little as I saw of Russia, I was fortunateenough to go to both a great Jewish and agreat Christian center. To Kieff the peasantpilgrims come to-day, inspired by a religious fer-vor which I do not believe was ever surpassedin the middle ages, while the barbaric splendorand magnificence of the churches would impress Iln TRiissla. 83 tlie least impressionalle. BerdicLeff, too, is agreat pilgrimage place for the Jew. There thejnlgrims crowd, n()t from any l<jve of religion,. Burgaining in the Ijazuar, IJurilitliuif. Ijut eager to barter ami to ]m\. Kieff is filledwith beauty, Berdicheff with misery. In thisgieat city of one hundred thousand people, nine- 84 Ubc Jew at Ibome. ty thousand of wliora are Jews, there are onlytwo buildings which are worthy of the leastattention—the Roman Catholic and the Russianchurches. The rest of the town is completelygiven over to the great bazaars in which thebig fairs are held. The churches even stiugglewith the Jewish shops, which have burrowedunderneath them and have been carried up tothe very doors. Among almost every people,except these Jews, the business man has a pridein his shop, a pride which, though it may onlyexpress itself in an attempt to be more gaudyand pretentious than his rival or his neighbor, isat least healthy. But the Jew is without allsuch feeling. In a huge trading center likeBerdicheff, where the largest Jewish fair in theworld,
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Keywords: ., bo, bookcentury1800, bookdecade1890, booksubjectjews, bookyear1892
