Defining “the Jew” in the Age of Eugenics: American Jewish Physicians and Biological Jewishness in the Early 20th Century

The arrival of millions of new Jewish immigrants, as well as the rise of the eugenics movement, led to an increase in antisemitic sentiment in the United States in the early 20th century. American Jewish physicians, like other Jews, represented a wide range of ideologies regarding how this frightening trend should be addressed at home and globally, running the gamut from religious orthodoxy, to Jewish immigration to Palestine, to Jewish autonomous communities in the United States, to the complete integration of Jews with their fellow Americans. Unlike most American Jews, however, they were especially well equipped to couple these recommendations with their authority on Jewish biology, directly countering the scientific racism of eugenicists. This insider knowledge, along with the high esteem medical men were held by Jews at the time, made the voices of American Jewish physicians central to the community’s answer to “The Jewish Question” in the United States. While they disagreed on some biological nuances, early 20th century American physicians were broadly united in their resistance to a hereditarian notion of Jewishness: that Jewishness was biologically inscribed and that the Jewish body was inevitably distinct from the rest of the human race. By delving into the published writings, personal correspondences, and diary entries of ideologically diverse Jewish physicians, I will show how in contradistinction to their post WWII counterparts, early 20th century American Jewish physicians, regardless of their politics, saw delegitimizing the biological basis for Jewishness as imperative towards securing their community’s future.