Jews,race, and capitalism in the German-Jewish context

The Shoah has effectively brought to an end attempts to define the Jews racially. Yet in the half century before the 1930s, for German Jewish scholars, the racial identity of the Jews was an open question. These scholars were deeply engaged in debates over Jewish collective identity and the contemporary Jewish condition, and in these debates race played a critical role. For these scholars, race and racial theories were normative, and they exploited them for their own intellectual, political, and social purposes. Of special interest is the normative nature of racial discourse as German Jewish scholars adopted it and applied it to examine the nexus of Jews and capitalism. These scholars accepted the notion of a Jewish racial disposition for capitalism, including this notions negative aspects, while they also used it to construct a positive Jewish identity. The history of Jewish engagement with race suggests the need for a more radically historicist approach to the Jewish past, albeit this will be a most difficult scholarly challenge.Id like to thank Gil Anidjar, Nina Caputo, Steven Zipperstein, and an anonymous reviewer for their comments and criticisms of this essay.