A hundred years ago
From the 'Spectator', 18 April 1868—The Jewish Chronicle, a sound authority on such a point, clears up a doubt which has long hung over Mr. Dis- raeli's relation to Judaism. Both his father and mother,—the latter "a scion of the Bassevis,"- were Sephardim. pure Hebrews in faith and race, and his grandfather and grandmother rest in the Jewish cemetery at Mile End. Mr. Disraeli him- self "was admitted into the communion of Israel," but his father quarrelled with the synagogue, failed to teach his child Judaism, and little Benjamin grew up into a Christian as well as a ruler. The Chronicle might have cleared up another point still obscure in the Premier's biography. What is his name, or rather what was his grandfather's when he assumed that of Disraeli? It is noteworthy that Mr. Disraeli, while always exalting his race as the highest on the globe, dwells constantly on the superiority of the Sephardim, the Jews who have never quitted the Mediterranean, to all other Hebrews.
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