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

34 Concerning Racial Theory

250 Robert Weltsch (1891–1982) was a Zionist writer and editor. He was born in Prague, which was then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. In 1920 he was appointed editor of Die jüdische Rundschau, the official organ of the Zionist Federation of Germany. He remained in that position until 1938, when he emigrated to Palestine. See the entry in the Encyclopedia Judaica, 2nd edition, 21:9–10. Zionism rests on the fact that all Jews around the world feel some sense of belonging together as Jews. This feeling of unity, which is rooted in the historical origins of contemporary conditions, generates not only a historical but also a living connection, which one might designate as nation, Volk, tribe, race, or whatever one likes. Someone can always come along and say, for instance: “I understand the word ‘nation’ to refer only to those groups that share a common language; thus, the Jews are not a nation.” The fool! He assumes he has contributed something vital, while he has only ventured into a question of terminology. May whoever has the time and inclination enter such a discussion. However, those who are interested in getting to the essence of things will not pay much attention to words. When it comes to the unity of the Jews, there is one irrefutable proof: the consciousness of this unity, which is an inner experience that every individual Jew possesses. I have an insurmountable mistrust of any attempt to trace back an intellectual or spiritual disposition to material causes; the same holds true for all racial theories , which derive consciousness from anthropological facts and thereby seek to ground consciousness in natural science. As if such a spiritual fact requires a “natural scientific” foundation, as if its very existence were not in itself the most powerful proof! It was one of the most pathetic errors of an age, worshiping natural science as its false god, to seek to explain the wonder of the human spirit by means of zoology. It is also true that in the past half-century, not a year has passed without some racial theory being overturned and a new one put in its place; yet human consciousness remains unstirred by such things. If, on occasion , a particular racial theory, such as Chamberlain’s, found its way into public 34 | Concerning Racial Theory Robert Weltsch “Gelegentlich einer Rassentheorie,” Die Welt 17, no. 12 (1913): 365–67. “Concerning Racial Theory” | 251 opinion [literally, into the thinking of the Volk], this was not a consequence of its (nonexistent) scientific nature; rather, it was a consequence of the fact that it corresponded with the instincts of the Volk, out of which it may even have been derived. I recently got hold of a book [called] The Racial Traits of the Jews, by Dr. Maurice Fishberg.47 The author says in the introduction: “For the scientific anthropologist race is a biological concept, which means in general the same thing it does for the zoologist and the botanist: a group of animals or plants connected by common descent. The primary or most important indicator of race is type— similarity or uniformity.” He then warns against the confusion of race with “ethnic unity” and goes on to say: “That I will encounter opposition in circles that take a common or shared religion to be a mark of racial identity is as irrelevant to me as is the opposition I anticipate from certain European racial thinkers who see race not merely as a zoological category, but also as a historical and ethnic one.” Considering these programmatic statements, I would have expected to have agreed with the author: for isn’t he very insightful, sticking with what he knows best, zoology? The fact that the Jews ought not to be conceived of as an independent “race,” but only as “a genealogical unity, which can no longer be accounted for anthropologically but merely historically” had, of course, been already established by Zollschan. And yet [Fishberg’s] entire book again offers proof of the nonexistence of the Jews as a race, and ends with the following stupefying sentence: “Judaism was and remains a religion—it was never a race.” Quite a zoological conclusion indeed! The book offers an abundance of extremely interesting material. It deals in specificchapterswithanumberofallegedracialtraits,anddemonstratesthrough a comparison of different Jewish types that one would not be able to speak of any homogeneity. Anthropological traits such as skin color, cranial size, body shape; physiological characteristics such as...