Fishberg: Eugenics in Jewish Life 



549 



place among the Jews who have as- 

 similated in western countries. They 

 do not cultivate, nor do they support 

 learning, scholarship and the arts to 

 the same extent as they did in past 

 generations. It can no more be said 

 that the arts and sciences are their 

 ideals; their aims appear to be more 

 material, if not altogether sorchd. In 

 the United States Jewish philanthropy 

 is very active in the direction of help- 

 ing the poor and helpless and incident- 

 ally the pauper, the shiftless, the 

 defective and the degenerate. But it 

 is a striking fact that they make no 

 effort in the direction of encouraging 

 the exceptionally able or promising; 

 there is no Jewish society to help the 

 exceptionally bright, the talented and 

 the promising among the Jewish youth 

 in this city. In fact, the fund formerly 

 available for such purposes has for 

 some reason been diverted in other 

 directions. I shall not enter into de- 

 tails about the ideals of marriage among 

 the prosperous Jews in this city. All 

 I shall mention is that marriage with a 

 scholar is not given preference by rich 

 parents, as was the case with their 

 ancestors, but they look out for the 

 possession of worldly goods by prospec- 

 tive husbands for their daughters. 



The result is that while we have 

 many prosperous and rich Jews in this 

 country, there are very few savants 

 whose ancestors have lived in the 

 .United States for two or more genera- 

 tions. Nearly all the workers in the 

 fields of literature, arts and sciences, 

 of Jewish faith or origin, were born in 

 Europe, and even the great rabbis are 

 not natives of the United States. This 

 may be attributed in a great measure 

 to the changes in the ideals of marriage 

 which have taken place among the 

 Jews in the United States during the 

 last two or three generations. On the 

 other hand, the intensive philanthropy, 

 to which they still adhere, assures the 

 perpetuation of many strains which are 

 undesirable, to say the least. 



From what I know of conditions in 

 western Europe, it appears to me that 

 they are drifting in the same direction. 

 While among the Jews the support of 

 the arts, literature and sciences is, on 

 the whole, much more evident and sub- 



stantial than among the Christians of 

 the same social and economic status, 

 it is not along eugenic lines, not having 

 the tendency to improve the inborn 

 qualities of future generations by the 

 encouragement of marriage and parent- 

 hood of the intellectually superior. 

 On the other hand, because they no 

 more adhere to certain ordinances and 

 superstitions about marriage, they no 

 more encourage the marriage and par- 

 enthood of the physically and mentally 

 strains to the extent their ancestors did. 

 We may, therefore, expect that the 

 number of defective Jews will in the near 

 future not be higher among them than is 

 found among the peoples around them. 



CONCLUSION 



I believe I have proved in this article 

 that the extraordinary number of ex- 

 ceptionally capable and talented Jews, 

 as well as the excessive number of 

 physical and mental defective among 

 them, owe their origin to a great extent 

 to special and peculiar selective agencies. 

 Their marriage laws and customs were 

 effective in securing the augmentation 

 of the favored stock, in increasing the 

 number of individuals who are inhe- 

 rently above average in mental, intel- 

 lectual and moral qualities. Giving 

 preference in marriage to the scholar, 

 encouraging him in his efforts, and often 

 endowing him, the Jews have followed 

 sane ideals in respect to marriage and 

 procreation of favored stock. But some 

 features of Jewish life, habits and cus- 

 toms have also been effective in enhanc- 

 ing the multiplication of the physically 

 and mentally defective, and as a result 

 we have at present an excessive number 

 of persons who are of inferior stock 

 among them. Especially must be em- 

 phasized their methods of distributing 

 relief to the poor and afflicted as a dys- 

 genic agency, responsible for a con- 

 siderable proportion of the failures en- 

 countered among the modern Jews. 

 However, with the recent adaptation 

 of the mode of life, habits and customs 

 of their non-Jewish neighbors, these 

 peculiarities are gradually being effaced. 

 Whether the loss thus sustained in the 

 number of capable Jews is compen- 

 sated by the decrease in the number of 

 defectives depends on the point of view. 



