[Dempsey]

Raphael Falk, a professor emeritus of genetics at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem

"The German philosopher Johann Gottfried Herder spoke of the idea of the Volk, the 'folk-nation' that viewed a people as an organic unit. And not just in the cultural sense. In time, this also came to include race. From this movement of the concept of the Volk, you get Zionism developing on the one hand, and German nationalism, which later evolved into Nazism, on the other hand. This is an uncomfortable fact, but a fact nonetheless."

http://www.zionism-israel.com/log/archi ... 00575.html

Book Review: Zionism and the Biology of the Jews, Raphael Falk

Falk, Raphael
Tziyonut vehabiologia shel hayehudim,
Ressler, Tel Aviv 2006
(Hebrew Only)

Genetics and Zionism is a much abused topic. There is always room to create mischief by harnessing "science" to prove or disprove political ideas. We saw one such effort, in the hands of an amateur, when we considered the theories of professor Shlomo Zand about the origin of the Jews. Zand is primarily an ideologue, and invented facts to fit his fancy. He wove a fairy tale that can be believed by the ignorant to support intellectual impudence.

The book before us is of an entirely different caliber. Raphael Falk is an acknowledged expert in human genetics and a reasonably careful scientist. His careful reasoning brings sanity, logic and decency to counter the demagoguery of political argumentation. It is not a perfect book, but Hebrew readers will find it entertaining, informative and insightful. What a pity that Zand's book, but not this one, is being published in English!

The book consists of two parts. It is not always easy reading for enthusiastic Zionists. The first part of the book is devoted to a historical review of the role of race theories in 19th and 20th century European politics, and their influence on the Zionist movement, which is often embarrassing. Falk denies (in a single sentence) that Zionism was based on racist theories, or requires that the Jews be considered a "race," but the great bulk of his argumentation and evidence tends to leave a very bad impression. Falk set up a straw man, and then proceeds to knock it down. But it is not just his straw man. It is a straw man that many accept. Falk is careful to note, but again only in one brief remark, that the early Zionists who held these theories were not racists, and that their notions must be viewed in the intellectual context of their times. Everyone, especially educated people, spoke of "race" in the 19th century, just as everyone believed in the electromagnetic ether. "Race science" was advanced by the most respected biologists and anthropologists and the terminology found its way into every day life. Nobody could foresee that the more or less harmless notions of the 19th century would degenerate into the driving force of genocidal Nazism, and few could understand that the racist notions underlying colonialism were pernicious in themselves. In fact, though some of their ideas may sound "racist" to modern ears, Zionists like Jabotinsky were among the first to understand that colonial peoples were the equals of colonizers and would demand their rights - and that is why he and a few others understood and foresaw the coming conflict between Arab and Jewish nationalism. Nonetheless, the material Falk has assembled is likely to be abused by the usual intellectual vultures who manufacture "Zionist quotes."


In a sense, Raphael Falk's project in writing this book violates his own dictum against mixing science and politics. He tells us that he was uncomfortable with genetic studies that appeared to be trying to give Zionism a genetic or "racial" basis, and wanted to find a way to reconcile his own Zionism with his understanding of genetics. The outcome, the proposition to be proved, is therefore known in advance. That is not a good way to do science. He needn't have bothered. There is no way to prove a political thesis from biological science and no need to do so. Political theories and ideology must prove themselves in the realm of politics, ideology and history. Zionism appears to have done so, in a unique way that is not true of any other 19th century ideology except perhaps democratic liberalism.


http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/776995.html

Culture club

By Dalia Karpel


It was Falk's teacher, Elisheva Goldschmidt, who influenced him to switch direction from lab work on the Drosophila fruit fly to human heredity and the genetics of the populations of Israel. For over 20 years, his field has been the history and philosophy of biology, especially genetics. About 12 years ago, Falk became interested in researching the connection between the Zionist idea and biological theories regarding the Jewish people. What began as a sideline eventually developed into a comprehensive study that is currently being published by Resling Press as a book entitled "Tziyonut vehabiologiya shel hayehudim ("Zionism and the Biology of the Jews").

Raphael Falk, 77, says that he fully understood when he chose his research topics that they were not something that had ever been addressed by academia.

"There's no such thing, the biology of the Jews," he says. "Everyone defines a Jew in a different way. On the question of who is a Jew, Supreme Court Justice Haim Cohn said that whoever defines himself as a Jew is a Jew, while Justice Menachem Elon adhered to the Law of Return, defining a Jew as anyone who was born to a Jewish mother or converted. And yet, the Zionist movement did adopt the view that there is a biology of the Jews."

In 1865 British scholar Francis Galton coined the term "eugenics" (from the Greek meaning "good in birth") to refer to the improvement of the human race.

"The Zionist movement also emphasized the need to preserve the essence of the Jewish people, and in that period, this took on a biological meaning," Falk explains. "The Jews were persecuted because of their religion, their appearance and their sociology. On the one hand, they won emancipation in the 19th century and were no longer supposed to be persecuted because of their religion or occupation, but it was still convenient to say that they were different even though they didn't look different. So it was said that they were different in their biology. Hatred of Jews thus became biological. The term 'anti-Semitic' was also coined at about the same time, around 1870, and was invented by German journalist Wilhelm Mahr, who claimed that the Jews were of a different and peculiar race, the Semitic race, and that this was imprinted on their biology.

Blood and soil

According to Falk, the question of the biological essence of Jewish existence was part and parcel of the realization of the Zionist idea from the beginning. Dr. Arthur Ruppin, head of the Palestine Office of the World Zionist Organization, which purchased lands and established various kinds of settlements, presented the eugenic idea as one of the goals of Zionism. He was convinced that the Jews possessed a biological uniqueness and that settling them in Palestine was vital in order to preserve this. Ruppin wrote in 1923: "Were it not for the Jews' racial affinity with the peoples of the Near East, it would not be possible to justify Zionism."

Falk: "I don't think that these people thought in terms of biology the way we do today. They weren't biologists. When Herzl spoke openly about race he didn't quite understand what he was talking about. Max Nordau, who was a doctor, used the term race, as did figures like Jabotinsky, who was a journalist and a writer, and by the early 20th century was speaking openly about a biological race. Religious Jews saw themselves as a biological entity, as the descendants of the patriarch Abraham, but also accepted converts into their midst. But from the late 19th century on, the Zionists defined Jews in a biological sense with no connection necessarily to religion or culture. This was for the sake of uniting the Jews and saying: Look, we're a race that is also a nation, and like any other nation and race, we deserve our own piece of land. In his writings, Martin Buber, who was liberal and enlightened, defined a nation by means of what the Germans called Blut und Boden (blood and soil). The Zionists also had a concept of 'blood and soil.' Not in the way it developed with the Nazis, but Zionism was certainly a national movement that took people's biology into account."


Dr. Max Nordau, Herzl's associate and a physician and publicist, also adopted the eugenic theories. Nordau contended that for the Jews, life in exile as a separate ethnic group had led them to a state of degeneration in body and soul. He recommended that Jews live in nature and pursue a more physical culture - that Judaism build up some muscles. "He thought that the biology of the Jews needed to be changed via eugenics. That is, to improve the Jewish race by means of selection as is done with plants and animals to ward off degeneration," says Falk.

"The ideas about using positive selection of the human race were very accepted in those years and Ruppin and others mention them. What's more, some also say that in exile the Jewish people underwent selection for good genes by marrying well-off young women to Torah scholars, that this was selection for an improved social and economic class and for high intelligence."

Moshe Glickson, a leader of the General Zionists and chief editor of Haaretz from 1922-1937, wrote: "There are among us a certain type of Zionists, who understood or felt that Zionism is more than just another economic-business enterprise."

Hard to be a Zionist

Falk finds a connection between his research and his own struggles with his personal identity. "In recent years it's been hard for me to be a Zionist," he says. "I grew up in a yekke [German-speaking] home whose Zionism was socio-liberal and idealistic. Since '67, it's become harder and harder for me to be a Zionist. This study was an attempt to grapple with how I can be a Zionist today. Hence, the part of the book that examines Zionism's relationship to the biological problem was a kind of catharsis and now I know how I come to terms with Zionism. The Zionism that in its early stages adopted the biology and eugenics of 19th-century Europe was not nationalist-fundamentalist. Today I despise fundamentalism on the one hand and nationalism on the other."

How is this addressed in your research?

"In the book I wanted to consciously convey that things must be viewed in the context of their time. You can't judge the people of the 1920s and '30s according to the post-Holocaust view of eugenics. In the period I'm discussing, eugenics was an accepted science as a good and important scientific framework. Without question, in that period of the early years of the state, there was terrible paternalism also in relation to the children from Yemen ...

"Zionism also had strong elements of nationalism and colonialism. At the peak of the colonial period, Herzl said that Palestine is empty. Arthur Ruppin imported the Yemenites as foreign workers, as a cheap labor force, which is a terrible thing, but it was also the colonialist outlook of his time. It should be judged in terms of the criteria of the time."

What about the myth of the Jewish genius?

"The question isn't whether it's a myth, but rather whether it has any biological basis. It has no such basis."