Jews and Race: Writings on Identity and Difference, 1880–1940

10 The Jewish Racial Problem

76 Samuel Weissenberg (1867–1928) was born in Elizabethgrad, in the Ukraine. He was a celebrated physician and anthropologist, whose research on the physical measurement of Jews in southern Russia was awarded a gold medal by the Moscow Society for Natural Sciences. In addition to anthropological work on the Jews, Weissenberg published essays on Jewish folklore, proverbs, and music. His major work was Wachstum des Menschen nach Alter, Geschlecht und Rasse (Human growth as related to age, sex, and race), 1911. See the entry in the Encyclopedia Judaica, 16:417–18. Also see John Efron, Defenders of the Race: Jewish Doctors and Race Science in Fin-de-Siècle Europe (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994), chapter 5. Ten years ago I concluded my work on the Jews of southern Russia with the following words: “At any rate, it will not be possible to offer a definitive answer to the question of the anthropological status of the Jews until research on the Jews in Western Europe, Asia, and Africa has been done. Such important research, undertaken following unified principles, will allow, it is to be hoped, a primordial type (Urtypus) of Jew to be discovered; with such a standard in hand, we can then more easily appraise the anthropological status of individual groups as well as their relation to the whole. The gain [in knowledge] to be had from this investigation will be my greatest reward.” Since then I have waited in vain for such a reward, and my wish for such an anthropological investigation into non-European Jewry has remained just that: a wish. How much we nonetheless still need such research I will show in what follows. Over the past decade there have, it is true, appeared numerous works specifically devoted to the anthropology of the Jews; yet only one among them has been devoted to Sephardic Jews. And so I believe I am justified in repeating my plea more urgently. What makes the Jewish racial problem particularly interesting is the curious result that follows from all of the anthropological studies: the Jews, though 10 | The Jewish Racial Problem Samuel Weissenberg “Das jüdische Rassenproblem,” Zeitschrift für Demographie und Statistik der Juden 1, no. 5 (1905): 4–8. “The Jewish Racial Problem” | 77 known as Semites, have nothing in common with the latter. We are mainly referring here to the shape of the head: Semites possess long, dolichocephalic skulls; Jews short and brachycephalic ones. My research had led me to the following conclusion, which the subsequent work of other authors only confirmed: although the Jews represent a conglomerate of different types, nonetheless we can see one type emerge, which generally dominates and which allows all of Eastern European Jewry to be considered, anthropologically, as more or less a unified mass. This type can be described in the following way: The southern Russian Jews (like all Eastern European Jews in general) are, when they are evaluated along the lines of their most predominant type, of average size and of the brunet color type; their head form is sub-brachycephalic; the face is more oval, in its lower part somewhat tapered in shape, chameprosopic. They have a rather flat forehead, often relatively prominent cheekbones and straight jaws. The eyes are level; the nose is leptorhine,40 more narrow above than below, generally somewhat large and rather prominent ; its shape is predominantly straight. The lips are regular; the mouth relatively wide, the ears of average size. This type is fundamentally different from the true Semitic type, the Arab, in its chief characteristics—the head form and facial features. In order to make this quite apparent, allow me to reproduce here Topinard’s description of the Arab type: The Arab type is one of the most beautiful in the world, said Larrey. His skull, seen as a whole, forms a perfectly regular oval. His complexion remains perfectly white when it has not been subjected to the effects of the atmosphere, but bronzes easily, his hair and his beard are smooth and jet black, the limits of his hairline are distinctly defined; his eyes are black; his palpebral [eyelid] openings elongated, almond-shaped, and bordered by long black eyelashes; his forehead is slightly elevated; the curve of his nose and his receding chin, however, lend his profile a shape more rounded than straight. His superciliary [eyebrow] arches as well as his glabella [area between eyebrows] are not very developed; the root of his nose...