Racial Discourse Of British Jewish Scientists And "Jewish Genetic Disease"(1880-1940)

As we all know,the Jews who have experienced the Holocaust are the biggest victims of racism.This essay focuses on the entanglement between Jews and racism in the half century from the second half of the 19 th century to the outbreak of the Second World War.In order to analyze the contradiction of Jewish thinkers,this paper is divided into three chapters for specific interpretation.The first chapter discusses the formation of “race science” and the construction of “Jewish body”.Since ancient times,people have been using various methods to understand the Jewish difference,and racism has standardized the idea of the eternal existence of Jewish physical difference.Whether the racial thinkers used negative language to describe the “sick” and “fragile” Jewish body,or advocated the Jews’ immunity to certain diseases and their excellent intelligence,they were constantly amplifying the difference of the Jews,so as to excluded them from the mainstream society.This chapter mainly introduces the social background of the Jewish thinkers who participated in the racial discussion,which plays an important role in the following elaboration.Secondly,the second chapter mainly takes Joseph Jacobs and Redcliffe Salaman as examples to analyze the contradictions in their racial thoughts.In the face of the injustice examination of the Jewish body under “racial science” and the growing antisemitism in the society,Jewish social scientists and Jewish doctors also used racial discourse to fight against it.Some of them were assimilators,discussing “Jewish race”in order to change people’s stereotype of Jews and help the Jews assimilate into the mainstream society.And some of them saw the eternal difference of Jews under the guidance of “racial science”,and thought that only belief in “Jewish race” can make them reach their Jewish identity reconciliation.This idea is combined with Zionism,and the most radical Jewish scientists tended to evolve into Zionists.They thought that assimilation is the root of “degeneration” and “morbidity” of Jews,and only by establishing Jewish state could they really revive Jews.However,in the process of using racial discourse,they deliberately and unintentionally belittled some of their compatriots and were caught in the trap of racism.This chapter focuses on the racial issues concerned by Jewish thinkers,analyzes the background and evolution of their racial concepts,and further analyzes the political position behind them.The third chapter focuses on the Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe in the late 19 th century,as well as the Tay-Sachs disease which emerged as the immigration massively on the rise.The influx of immigrants has resulted in the counterattack of xenophobia and antisemitism.Under the influence of racism,the medical community also regarded the Tay-Sachs disease as a “Jewish genetic disease” limited to Jews,which has become another aspect of race science and racial antisemitism.In order to change the image of Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe,the Jewish Board of Guardians,which represented the interests of the Anglo-Jewish middle class,promoted Jewish immigrants to form the concept of self-care by various means.Anxious Jewish social scientists,like their non-Jewish counterparts,joined the nationalist drama as“doctors”,trying to diagnose diseases for the Jewish people and provide scientific“treatment”.After Nazis came to power,the ideas of racism and eugenics came to an abrupt end.Jewish social scientists reflected on the racial discourse and gradually stopped mentioning it.This chapter attempts to discuss the relationship between Jews,Jewish organizations,racism and eugenics movement by taking the case of “racism” of Tay-Sachs disease and the formation of immigrants’ self-care concept.In the end,I will further point out the contradiction of Jewish thinkers towards racism.Although many Jews stopped discussing racism after the Nazis came to power,we also saw the fatal attraction of the concept of “race” from the Zionists like Salaman:under the background of the increasing assimilation of British Jews in the late 19 th century,the racial discourse emphasizing the biological heredity,common emotion and family button can describe the relationship between Jews better than the religious language,so as to satisfy the need to construct Jewish identity.To pay attention to the understanding of racism by Jews is not to prove the correctness or authenticity of racism,nor to imply that Jews really constitute a “race”,but to excavate the complex aspects of Jewish thought and refocus on these ignored Jewish thinkers in history.In this way,we can not only understand contradiction of Jewish thinkers better,but also realize that when Jewish scientists used racial discourse as a weapon against antisemitism,they lost their objective neutrality as a reviewer.And racism,the sword,pointed to the Jews themselves at the end.The purpose of discussing the penetration of racial discourse in medicine and science,as well as the Jews’ acceptance and application of it,is not to criticize any party,but to reexamine the scientific and medical truth with monopolistic authority,to warn us to use scientific weapons cautiously and to improve the system of scientific ethics.