But though they may be ugly, or even horrible, they are not vulgar like the Jews at Brighton; they trail behind them too many primeval traditions and laborious loyalties, along with their grand though often greasy robes of bronze or purple velvet.

They often wear on their heads that odd turban of fur worn by the Rabbis in the pictures of Rembrandt.
And indeed that great name is not irrelevant; for the whole truth at the back of Zionism is in the difference between the picture of a Jew by Rembrandt and a picture of a Jew by Sargent.
For Rembrandt the Rabbi was, in a special and double sense, a distinguished figure.

He was something distinct from the world of the artist, who drew a Rabbi as he would a Brahmin.

But Sargent had to treat his sitters as solid citizens of England or America; and consequently his pictures are direct provocations to a pogrom.
But the light that Rembrandt loved falls not irreverently on the strange hairy haloes that can still be seen on the shaven heads of the Jews of Jerusalem.

And I should be sorry for any pogrom that brought down any of their grey wisps or whiskers in sorrow to the grave.
The whole scene indeed, seriousness apart, might be regarded as a fantasia for barbers; for the different ways of dressing the hair would alone serve as symbols of different races and religions.
Thus the Greek priests of the Orthodox Church, bearded and robed in black with black towers upon their heads, have for some strange reason their hair bound up behind like a woman's.