Description
Book SynopsisWhy did the social sciences become an integral part of Jewish scholarship beginning in the late nineteenth century? What part did this new scholarship play in the ongoing debate over emancipation and assimilation, Zionism and diasporism, the nature of Jewish identity, and the problem of Jewish continuity and survival. To answer these questions, this book traces the emergence and development of an organized Jewish social science in central Europe, and explores the increasing importance of statistics and other social science modes of analysis for Jewish elites throughout Europe and in the United States.
The author locates the initial impetus for an organized, institutionalized Jewish social science in the Zionist movement, as Zionists looked to the social sciences to provide them with the knowledge of contemporary Jewish life deemed necessary for nationalist revival. In particular, the social sciences offered empirical evidence of the ambiguous condition of Jewry in the diaspora
Trade Review
"Hart has made a significant contribution to European Jewish history, to the social scientific study of Jews, and to the intellectual history of the social sciences in his innovative study of the politics of modern Jewish identity within the newly developed field of Jewish social sciences." -- The Journal of Interdisciplinary History
"Considering the technical nature of many of the sources, Hart's book is quite readable and in many ways, exciting." Relgious Studies Review
"Hart's work provides both a critical contribution to understanding the Jewish social scientific debate as it was framed during its formative decades, and an essential context for the present debates." -- Studies in Contemporary Jewry
Table of Contents
Introduction; 1. 'Wir mussen mehr wissen': institutional and ideological foundations of a Jewish statistics; 2. The bureau for Jewish statistics and the development of Jewish social science 1904-1931; 3. The wages of modernity: fertility, intermarriage, and the debate over Jewish decline; 4. The pathological circle: medical images and statistics in Jewish social science; 5. The diaspora as cure: non-zionist uses of social science; 6. Measuring and picturing Jews: racial anthropology and iconography; 7. National economy and the debate over Jewish regeneration; Conclusion: a usable knowledge; Notes; Bibliography; Index.
