“JEWISH” BLACKNESS (This is what the Hebrews really looked like) “…In which mountain there dwell four or five thousand Jews, and are more black than any other color, and if they can get a moor into their hands, they skin him alive” SOURCE; (Ludovico di Varthema; The Travels of Ludovico Di Varthema in Egypt, Syria, Arabia Deserta and Arabia Felix, in Persia, India, and Ethiopia. A. D. 1503 to 1508) “Going back to the path-breaking work of Sander L. Gilman in the late 1980s, scholars often assert that “a strong European tradition, dating back to the Middle Ages, maintained that the Jews were ‘black’ or at least swarthy” (Melamed 2003, p. 31) The word Swarthy or Swart derives from ‘Schwarz’ or ‘Schwartz’ which means “to be black; black man, and negro SOURCE; (Flügel-Schmidt-Tanger, a Dictionary of the English and German Languages for Home and School; 1905) “In medieval literature a theory prevailed in which the Jews were part of the black race, or were at least dark-skinned” (Shavit 2001, p. 182) “The general ‘look’ of the Jew was considered to be like that of the black” (Parfitt 2013, p. 6) “Jewish blackness sometimes means that the Jews were quite literally seen as black” (Gilman 1994, p. 372) “The general consensus of the ethnological literature of the late nineteenth century was that the Jews were ‘black’ or, at least, ‘swarthy’” (Gilman 1994, p. 368) Scottish ethnologist Robert Knox (1793–1862), writes explicitly about “the African character of the Jew” (quoted in Gilman 1994, p. 372) Knox considers the “Jewish, Coptic and Gipsy races” to be “the dark races of man” (Knox 1850, p. 300) “The purest of the Jewish race is a dark tawny, yellow-coloured person, with jet-black hair and eyes seemingly coloured”—the Jews for Knox definitely are (what is nowadays called) so called Blacks: “there is no mistaking the race when pure: it is Egyptian, that is, African” (Knox 1850, p. 300)
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