The Healthy Jew: The Symbiosis of Judaism and Modern Medicine (review)

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the conception of the Jews as having unhealthy, diseased bodies was widely held within European—and to some extent general Western—culture. This has been well documented in various publications, perhaps most frequently by Sander Gilman.¹ Mitchell Hart, the author of the book under present review, has also contributed to the literature on Jewish pathology.² But now Hart has written a book about authors who considered Jews to be healthy, covering approximately the century from 1850–1950.

The rise of bacteriology and other subfields of microbiology in the nineteenth century raised awareness in Western societies of germs and other pathogens. Therefore, there arose an interest among attentive populations in what they had to do to be healthy and not succumb to the dangers around them. (Of course, these scientific discoveries led antisemites to now vilify Jews as "bacilli.") In this context, scientists of microbiological discoveries, like Robert Koch and Louis Pasteur, became celebrities. Both non-Jewish writers as well as Jewish ones took a piercing look at Jews and asked why had they survived for so long a time as a "race." (Jews as a race was another new scientific and eventually political preoccupation.) The conclusion was that "ancient Hebrew society had already possessed much of the medical wisdom of modern practitioners" (31).

In this light, there were a number of authors who redefined Moses as a microbiologist and "sanitarian" and urged all Western peoples to follow the hygienic practices he laid out for Jews in his law code. These authors also viewed the rabbis of the Talmudic period and medieval Jewish thinkers as contributing to Jewish health so that as a result Jews were immune to tuberculosis and other illnesses. This immunity, of course, did not exist, although Jews promulgated the allegation as a tool to combat antisemitism. Some Jewish writers even had the goal of rebutting those who "insisted on the racial and cultural superiority of Greeks/Aryans" (55).

In addition, eugenicists and social Darwinists pointed to the longevity of the Jewish race as an example of a people whose laws had sound eugenic principles that had kept them "pure." Abraham, Moses, and the rabbis were translated into ancient versions of the Darwinists and eugenicists, like Francis Galton and Charles Davenport, on the issues of struggle and natural selection and Jewish health and survival. In particular, it was concluded that "the ghetto had prepared Jews for the Darwinian struggle for existence and produced positive eugenic qualities" (132).

I would like to make two comments on Hart's work. The first is that in The Healthy Jew, he unearths some interesting and valuable information about the influence of nineteenth-century biology on the conception of Jews, as well as on a particular variety of antisemitism. But the constant repetition of this information is wearisome. As I thought about writing this review, I could not help ponder that Hart might have better served his audience with a lengthy journal article. He might even have reached a broader audience in the right journal, beyond the borders of Jewish history, where the wider implications of his subject would be more quickly known.

My second comment is that Hart does not address an important issue. The primary and secondary literature on Jews as dirty and diseased is extensive. Hart's evidence of the opposite sometimes relies on long expositions of a few books, in spite of what is in his bibliography. I, and other readers I am sure, would like to know what the balance was. I think Hart is in a good position to write in the future about this, and I hope he does. We know that Nazi antisemitic rhetoric won out for a while in certain important sectors. But ultimately, what impression were German, French, British, and American audiences left with, and what is the legacy of these competing views today?