“Das jüdische Rassenproblem,” Zeitschrift für Demographie und Statistik der Juden 1, no. 5 (1905): 4–8.
Samuel Weissenberg (1867–1928) was born in Elizabethgrad, in the Ukraine. He was a celebrated physician and anthropologist, whose research on the physical measurement of Jews in southern Russia was awarded a gold medal by the Moscow Society for Natural Sciences. In addition to anthropological work on the Jews, Weissenberg published essays on Jewish folklore, proverbs, and music. His major work was Wachstum des Menschen nach Alter, Geschlecht und Rasse (Human growth as related to age, sex, and race), 1911. See the entry in the Encyclopedia Judaica, 16:417–18. Also see John Efron, Defenders of the Race: Jewish Doctors and Race Science in Fin-de-Siècle Europe (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994), chapter 5.
Ten years ago I concluded my work on the Jews of southern Russia with the following words: “At any rate, it will not be possible to offer a definitive answer to the question of the anthropological status of the Jews until research on the Jews in Western Europe, Asia, and Africa has been done. Such important research, undertaken following unified principles, will allow, it is to be hoped, a primordial type (Urtypus) of Jew to be discovered; with such a standard in hand, we can then more easily appraise the anthropological status of individual groups as well as their relation to the whole. The gain [in knowledge] to be had from this investigation will be my greatest reward.”
Since then I have waited in vain for such a reward, and my wish for such an anthropological investigation into non-European Jewry has remained just that: a wish. How much we nonetheless still need such research I will show in what follows. Over the past decade there have, it is true, appeared numerous works specifically devoted to the anthropology of the Jews; yet only one among them has been devoted to Sephardic Jews. And so I believe I am justified in repeating my plea more urgently.
What makes the Jewish racial problem particularly interesting is the curious result that follows from all of the anthropological studies: the Jews, though known as Semites, have nothing in common with the latter. We are mainly referring here to the shape of the head: Semites possess long, dolichocephalic skulls; Jews short and brachycephalic ones.
My research had led me to the following conclusion, which the subsequent work of other authors only confirmed: although the Jews represent a conglomerate of different types, nonetheless we can see one type emerge, which generally dominates and which allows all of Eastern European Jewry to be considered, anthropologically, as more or less a unified mass. This type can be described in the following way: The southern Russian Jews (like all Eastern European Jews in general) are, when they are evaluated along the lines of their most predominant type, of average size and of the brunet color type; their head form is sub-brachycephalic; the face is more oval, in its lower part somewhat tapered in shape, chameprosopic. They have a rather flat forehead, often relatively prominent cheekbones and straight jaws. The eyes are level; the nose is leptorhine,40 more narrow above than below, generally somewhat large and rather prominent; its shape is predominantly straight. The lips are regular; the mouth relatively wide, the ears of average size. This type is fundamentally different from the true Semitic type, the Arab, in its chief characteristics—the head form and facial features. In order to make this quite apparent, allow me to reproduce here Topinard’s description of the Arab type:
The Arab type is one of the most beautiful in the world, said Larrey. His skull, seen as a whole, forms a perfectly regular oval. His complexion remains perfectly white when it has not been subjected to the effects of the atmosphere, but bronzes easily, his hair and his beard are smooth and jet black, the limits of his hairline are distinctly defined; his eyes are black; his palpebral [eyelid] openings elongated, almond-shaped, and bordered by long black eyelashes; his forehead is slightly elevated; the curve of his nose and his receding chin, however, lend his profile a shape more rounded than straight. His superciliary [eyebrow] arches as well as his glabella [area between eyebrows] are not very developed; the root of his nose is not very indented, in such a way that the forehead and the edge of the nose follow one another in an almost straight line. His nose is aquiline, and the tip is detached from the nostrils and descends below them hooking like an eagle’s beak. The cheekbones do not jut out; the mouth is small; the teeth are white and vertical; the ears well made, rather small, and close to the head.
His height is a little below the average in Arabia and a little below in Algeria. He is lean, sinewy, loose-necked, and small-boned. He is subdolichocephalic (index of 76.3 on the living individual, 74.0 on the skull), a moderate leptorhine (45.5) and mesoseme (88.6).41
Even the first researchers in this area noticed the fundamental differences between the two types, as well as the total transformation and distancing of the Jewish from the Semitic type. One attempt to explain this fact was to propose that within Jewry there actually existed two types, one next to the other: the first was the primordial, genuine, Semitic type, represented by the numerically quite small group of Southern European and African Jews—the Sephardim; the second, meanwhile, was represented by a nongenuine, highly [racially] intermixed Eastern European Jewry (Vogt, Weisbach, Blechman, Stieda, Hovelacque, Andree).
However, the measurements done by [Joseph] Jacobs on several Sephardic Jews in England yielded the unexpected fact that they, too, were short-headed.
Convinced of the invariability of the Jewish type from ancient times until the present, and thoroughly obsessed with the idea of Jewish short-headedness, a number of other authors (Alsberg, von Luschan, Jacques) on the other hand have tried to use these as proof of a strong intermixture of foreign blood even in ancient Palestine. This view has found its clearest expression and scientific explanation in the work of von Luschan. His conclusion is as follows: “The modern Jews are an amalgamation: in the first place, of the Aryan Amorites, second of genuine Semites, and third and foremost of the descendants of the ancient Hittites. Next to these three most important elements of Jewishness (Judentums), other intermixings—which were at least possible and certainly did occur in the course of several thousand years of Diaspora—are negligible.”
Von Luschan’s position is shared in general by Judt, who strove in his recently published book to bring everything that has been published on the Jewish racial question under one roof. Unfortunately, the entire book is marred by a certain bias toward historical data, which is also reflected in the rather superficial treatment and arbitrary interpretation of the anthropometrical materials.
Just how deeply the prejudice regarding the short-headedness of Jews has penetrated the minds [of researchers] can be seen in the fact that [Maurice] Fishberg has attributed the long-headedness of African Jews to their exclusion from the original short-headed [Jewish] type.
Is the general short-headedness of the Jews an actual, well-established fact?
As I have already remarked, we are unfortunately lacking in ample examinations of the so-called Sephardic Jews; yet even the few studies we do possess illustrate clearly enough that the [racial] composition of the latter is quite different.
[. . .]
In any case, Judt’s bold claim that there is no difference to be observed in the structure of the heads between Ashkenazim and Sepharidm is not in the least true.
This becomes even clearer when we look at the few Jewish skulls we have, which are furthermore scattered across many museums, which makes studying them all the more difficult.
In Table II I have gathered together all the material I had access to, and I do not believe I have failed to consider anything of true significance.42 I have myself researched and measured the skulls from Sliwno and Yamboli (Turkey) that are found in the anthropological museum in Moscow, and I can only confirm what Ikow has already proposed—that they are dolichocephalic. In order to highlight what is most significant, I have brought together in Table III [not included in this book] the data on these same skulls according to age and land of origin, and divided them into two larger groups by allowing myself to add, considering the general short-headedness of the Jews, the number of the medium-headed to that of the long-headed.
From these two tables we can draw the following two conclusions, which are highly significant for the Jewish racial problem: (1) The skulls from antiquity are almost all dolichocephalic, while three-quarters of those from the Middle Ages are brachycephalic. A complete reformation [of the skull] shape occurred, whose cause surely must be sought in intermixtures that took place on a wide scale. (2) Sephardic skulls evince a remarkable uniformity of type, and are almost without exception dolichocephalic, while half of the skulls of Eastern European Jews are brachycephalic. This brachycephalicity must have some connection to that of the medieval skulls. The only Caucasian skull is brachycephalic.
These two conclusions mandate a third: The ancient Israelites, who were most likely long-headed—just as all Semites are—came into contact, in the Diaspora, first with the short-headed Caucasians and Alpine Europeans, and second with the long-headed [populations] of the Mediterranean. Although the first group was transformed, the second maintained the ancient type.
Further research is necessary, however, to determine whether these conclusions can be confirmed or rebutted. Without such research, all further work in this area would be a wasted effort.
40. [Leptorhine means having a narrow nose.]
41. [Mesoseme means having a medium orbital index. The extract is in French in the German text; the translation here is by Shaina Hammerman.]
42. [Table II, which is not included in this book, contains comparative information on cranial measurements, organized around the following categories: country of origin; gender; total number; percentage of dolichocephalic, mesocephalic, and brachycephalic; average size; and the scholarly source of the information.]