In Russia, Jews are not allowed to live outside of what is called the "Pale of Settlement," which includes twelve provinces on the western and southwestern borders which Russia has annexed during the past two hundred years. Only merchants who pay a special license of 1,000 rubles, or about $500, university graduates, and a few others may live outside the pale. A Jew is not even permitted to live in Siberia unless he has been sent there in punishment for crime.
Inside the pale, Jews are not allowed to live outside the cities and incorporated towns. Although Jews are allowed to vote in Russia and send representatives to the Duma, they are not permitted to hold office or to be employed in the public service. They are compelled to pay in addition to the ordinary taxes, which are heavy enough, taxes on the rents they receive from property owned by them, or inheritances, on the meat killed according to the Jewish law, on candles used in some of their religious observances, and on the skull caps they wear during religious services. In spite of this they are excluded from hospitals, schools, and public functions, which, in the pale, are mainly paid for out of the extra taxes imposed upon them.
The most singular thing about it all is that the disabilities under which the Russian Jew now labours are at once removed by baptism. Not only that, but every Jew who allows himself to be sprinkled with holy water, in sign of the renunciation of his religion and his people, receives thirty rubles, "thirty pieces of silver," as a reward.
The Jews whom I saw in Galicia are not subject to any of the medieval restrictions which are imposed upon members of their race in Russia and Roumania. They enjoy, in fact, all the political rights of other races. Nevertheless, Jews in Galicia are said to be poorer than they are in some parts of Russian Poland, although very much better off than in some parts of southern Russia.
Elsewhere in Europe, where they have had their freedom, Jews are as a rule more prosperous than the people by whom they are surrounded. In Berlin, Germany, for instance, where Jews represent 4.88 per cent. of the total population, 15 per cent. of those who had an income of 1,500 marks, or more, were Jews. Statistics show that similar conditions exist in other parts of Europe.[3]