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243 Die Welt, started by Theodor Herzl in 1897, was the first official journal or newspaper of the Zionist movement. berlin At a gathering of the Central Organization of German Citizens of the Jewish Faith44 Tuesday evening, the Berlin anthropologist Dr. [Felix] v[on] Luschan gave a talk on this theme [of the racial identity of the Jews] in the Oberlichtsaal [skylit hall] of the Philharmonia, which was so overcrowded it had eventually to be closed off. His starting point was the question of the relationship of the Jews to the Semites, and how the latter then relate to other races; at the same time, he emphasized that the concept of race remains very unclear, and that it is generally questionable whether a pure race actually exists. One speaks therefore with greater certainty about human groups, which are constituted through a common language, religious and political unity, and specific physical traits. The ethnology of Near Eastern peoples has now been completely determined. In certain isolated high mountain valleys, one finds tribes that are thoroughly similar somatically, and whose appearance has remained unchanged for many thousands of years. Among Semitic-speaking groups from antiquity, we recognize the Babylonians, Assyrians, and the large groups of Hebrews, Phoenicians, and Aramaeans, who 1,000 years before Christ invented alphabetic writing. The types, however, branch off one from another. One can certainly differentiate the actual Bedouins, who are small-nosed and long-headed, from the Syrians, with their short, high skulls and their large noses. They are not related to one another. Only the Bedouins are racially pure, having come to Syria long before Mohammad, to impose their culture upon the indigenous, pre-Semitic population, remnants of which can still be traced today. He [von 32 | The Racial Identity of the Jews “Die Rassenzugehörigkeit der Juden,” unsigned editorial, Die Welt 16, no. 44 (1912): 1356. 44. [The Centralverein deutscher Staatsbürger jüdischen Glaubens (or cv) was founded in 1893 in Berlin. The cv was the most prominent liberal organization of German Jewry, dedicated to representing and defending the interests of German Jews.] 244 | P O L I T I C S , P O L E M I C S , A N D A P O LO G E T I C S Luschan] mentioned a specific inscription from a collection of ancient inscriptions in which the Hittites are designated as farmers who had been subjugated by a Semitic dynasty. On a relief displaying the king of this dynasty, he is shown to have had the same side locks still worn by Orthodox Jews today. Regarding the crania of the Jews, measurements mainly done on the living have indicated the existence of two types—one that is high and short, the other long and low; and one finds that with regard to mixed marriages, one type of these two will usually recur in a pure way in the children. A comparison of the shapes of the skulls of Jews, Greeks, and Turks shows these types to have almost parallel shapes. One can therefore not speak of a Jewish type, but merely of an Oriental type. Concluding, the speaker discussed the future of the Jews, which in his opinion will proceed along parallel lines with that of urban European civilization. Just as tuberculosis, alcoholism,and syphilis decimate city dwellers, and only the influx of new blood from rural areas meliorates this, so it shall be with the Jews. The greater their distance from the ghetto, the more they lose their social, anthropological , and racial-hygienic particularities. To the extent that they give up their exemplary family life in the ghetto, they will be destroyed by the same infectious diseases [as affect non-Jews]. In addition to this, the Jews have adopted the two-child system just as have the Christians. For the Jews, the uncultured East represents what the rural countryside does for the big city. He [von Luschan] declared Zionism, which he indicated to have barely understood at first, to be the same sort of fanatical arrogance that characterizes the antisemites. Christians and Jews have common interests; they are both fighting against what is damaging [their] culture. The Jews are heirs to an ancient and venerable culture; they are our co-workers and brothers in arms in a struggle for the highest goods of mankind, progress, and freedom of the mind. [. . .] We will set aside the scientific side of the Jewish racial problem and address ourselves only to Professor Luschan...

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