Fishberg: Eugenics in Jewish Life 



545 



ing the more laudable course, but no 

 one should marry before he is thirteen." 

 According to the Talmud, a Jew who 

 has not entered matrimony at twenty 

 is damned, and the rabbis frequently 

 compelled delinquents to marry. 



The medieval Jews, and those in 

 Poland as late as the middle of the 

 nineteenth century, followed the Rab- 

 binical ordinances implicitly. Most of 

 the Jewesses were married before they 

 reached the age of sixteen, and the 

 husbands were not much older on the 

 average. The oriental Jews are even 

 at present apt to marry as early, and I 

 saw in Algeria and Tunisia Jewish 

 couples the combined age of whom was 

 hardly over thirty. At present in 

 Europe and in America such early 

 marriages are exceedingly rare; indeed, 

 it appears from statistical evidence 

 gathered in various countries that the 

 average age of Jews at marriage is even 

 higher than that of the Christians 

 among whom they live. 



I do not know of any other social 

 or religious aggregate that encouraged 

 and practiced positive eugenic life to 

 such an extent as the Jews did in the 

 Ghetto. Most of the Rabbinical teach- 

 ings are teeming with positive eugenic 

 suggestions^ and one is inclined to say 

 that the rabbis anticipated Galton by 

 about sixteen hundred years. They 

 deprecated the marriage of a woman 

 for her wealth, and urged that the 

 daughter of the respectable family is 

 most desirable for a good Jew; especi- 

 ally should the brothers of the bride 

 be good and respectable men, for the 

 character of the children is greatly 

 dependent on the qualities of the 

 mother, according to the rabbis. 



The Talmud advises a good Jew to 

 sell all he has in order to marry the 

 daughter of a learned man. A mar- 

 riage between the daughter of a priest, 

 or of a learned man, and an ignoramus 

 will not be successful, and all the 

 promises of the prophets will be ful- 

 filled upon him who gives his daughter in 

 marriage to a learned man. The fami- 

 lies most desirable for matrimonial 



alliances are classified by the rabbis in 

 the following order: Those of the 

 scholar; the most prominent man in 

 the community (what Galton calls 

 "civic worth"); the head of the com- 

 munity; the head of the congregation; 

 the collector of charity; the teacher of 

 children; while the children of an ig- 

 noramus are to be avoided, and one 

 should not give his daughters to such 

 persons. 



PREMIUM ON INTELLECT 



It is thus evident that the Rabbinical 

 laws, which guided the orthodox Jew 

 in his matrimonial affairs, place most 

 reliance on the intellectual attainments 

 of the contracting parties and their 

 parents, thus increasing the chances of 

 productivity of the best stock. In 

 other words, guided by these Rabbinical 

 teachings, the medieval Jews' ideals of 

 marriage centered themselves in the intel- 

 lect of the prospective sons and daughters- 

 in-law, and also that oj their parents. 

 They apparently were great believers in 

 the potency of heredity and acted accord- 

 ingly. The rich sought young men 

 with attainments in learning, and when 

 they could not find suitable young 

 scholars among those in their own 

 social and economic status, they did 

 not hesitate to take poor but learned 

 young men for their daughters. 



The rich and the learned thus formed 

 castes among the Jews almost as strin- 

 gent as those of India, abstaining from 

 intermarriage with the poor to a certain 

 extent, and especially and emphatic- 

 ally with the ignorant and lowly. The 

 ideal of the rich Jew in the Ghetto has 

 always been to give his daughter in 

 marriage to a rabbi, and there were 

 very few rich families which have not 

 attained this ideal with at least one 

 daughter. Even if the son-in-law was 

 not expected to practice his profession 

 and went into business after marriage, 

 his diploma to the effect that he was 

 sufficiently learned in the law to be 

 qualified as a rabbi was sufficient to 

 place him in the category of aristocrats. 



Riches alone was not Yichus, or 



- An outline of the eugenic aspects of Jewish life prior to the dispersion was given in "Jewish 

 Eugenics," Jourx.\l of Heredity, VIII, pp. 72-74, February, 1917. 



