“There is no real difference between the Rumanian Jews and the Jews of Galicia or Bohemia; nor can they in their turn be separated from the Jews of Germany, of France, or of England. The dirty, greasy usurers of Rumania are the humble brethren of the financiers of London and Frankfort, and that the Jews are a great power in Europe is incontestable. What are, it may be asked, the secrets of their power? They are religion, the capacity for making money, and internal union. A ceremonial, and therefore an exclusive religion, a religion that binds together its members by rites that seem strange to the rest of the world, has a strong hold upon those who are within the fold. They are like the tenants of a beleaguered fort cut off from the rest of mankind, and obliged to protect themselves and help each other. But religion is not enough to raise a race into eminence. The Jews and the Parsees are eminent, not only because they circumcise their sons, or light fires on the tops of their houses, but because they make money. The money they have gives them consequence; but it is not only the money itself that does this; it is the qualities that go to making money which raise them--the patience, the good sense, the capacity for holding on when others are frightened, the daring to make a stroke when the risk is sufficient to appal. And the Jews are not only religious and rich; they are bound together by intimate ties. The inner world of Judaism is that of a democracy. The millionaire never dreams of despising, or failing to aid, his poorest and most degraded brother. The kindness of Jews for Jews is unfailing, spontaneous, and unaffected. The shabbiest hat-buyer or orange-seller of Houndsditch is as sure of having the means provided for him of keeping the sacred feast of the Passover as if he lived in a Piccadilly mansion. To the eyes of the Jews even the most degraded of Jews do not seem so degraded as they do in the eyes of the outer world. The poorest have perhaps possessions which redeem them in the eyes of their brethren; and many of the lowest, greasiest, and most unattractive Hebrews who walk about the streets in search of old clothes or skins are known by their co-religionists to be able to repeat by rote portions of the sacred volumes by the hour at a time. To all these permanent causes of Jewish eminence there must, however, be added one that has had only time to develop itself since extreme bigotry has died away, and since in Western Europe the Jews have been treated, first with contemptuous toleration, then with cold respect, and, finally, when they are very, very rich, with servile adoration.