The Healthy Jew

Mitchell B. Hart is Associate Professor of History at the University of Florida. His first book, Social Science and the Politics of Modern Jewish Identity (2000), won the Salo Baron Award for Best First Book in Jewish Studies, presented by the American Academy of Jewish Research.

• Introduction; 'Links in a long chain': Jews, Judaism, health and hygiene; 1. 'Tis a little people, but it has done great things': the role of health and medicine in modern Jewish apologetics; 2. Moses the microbiologist: Alfred Nossig's The Social Hygiene of the Jews; 3. Healthy Hebrews, healthy Jews: the Bible as a sanitary code in Anglo-American medical literature; 4. From ghetto to jungle: eugenics, social Darwinism, and the reinterpretation of Jewish history; 5. TB or not TB, that was a Jewish question: kashrut and the prevention of tuberculosis; 6. 'Then what advantage does the Jew have?': Judaism as a model for Christian health; 7. Conclusion.

'This is a unique work, an essential and path-breaking book of exquisite detail and quality. Written in a highly accessible and effective narrative prose, The Healthy Jew ask that we rethink the place and value of Jews and Judaism in the Western medical, scientific and, ultimately, political imagination. It does so through the patient and meticulous accumulation of discursive elements, each of which is endowed with implacable force. This is, to my mind, a highly original and singularly illuminating book.' Gil Anidjar, Columbia University