| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 106.3

You have not been recognized as a subscriber to the AHR online. About 272 words from this article are provided below; about 605 words remain.

If you are a individual member of the American Historical Association, you may:: • login here if you have already registered for online access.; • Or if you're already logged in register your subscription.
• Set up your online account for the first time. AHA members can go to the AHA individual membership section to locate their member numbers.
If you are not a member of the American Historical Association, you can:: • Join the AHA and receive many member benefits including print and electronic issues of the American Historical Review.
• Purchase a research pass to gain two hour access to the entire History Cooperative web site. You will have full access to current issues of the American Historical Review (104.3-present). Note: the Research Pass does not provide access to JSTOR's holdings of the American Historical Review.
Instititutions can:: • Subscribe to this journal and receive print and electronic issues.
• Activate your existing subscription so that we recognize your IP number ranges.

| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 106.3 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Comparative/World

Mitchell B. Hart. Social Science and the Politics of Modern Jewish Identity. (Stanford Studies in Jewish History and Culture.) Stanford: Stanford University Press. 2000. Pp. viii, 340. $55.00.

In 1901, Max Nordau declared to his comrades at the Fifth Zionist Congress in Basel that "an exact statistical research of the Jewish people is an uppermost necessity for the Zionist movement" (p. 29). The following year witnessed the founding of the Verein für jüdische Statistik, dedicated to quantifying knowledge about world Jewry in the spirit of objectivity, science, and truth. In 1903, this organization's publication, Jüdische Statistik, announced a truth of the new century: "statistics . . . is the only, indispensable foundation for the understanding of human groups" (p. 28). The declarations of Nordau and Jüdische Statistik encapsulate the grand twentieth-century enterprise of Jewish statistical research, premised on the latest developments in social science and directed to the evaluation and reconstruction of modern Jewry. 1

In an inspired and judicious monograph, Mitchell B. Hart tells an intriguing story about the politicization and intellectualization of numbers since the late nineteenth century. Highlighting the period 1880–1930, Hart's study focuses on the intricate conjunction of social science and Zionism. From the start, politics guided the collection of Jewish statistics in Germany. Zionists at first, and Nazis later, had the most to gain from numbers that suggested the "degeneration" of Jewish people in modern societies. By focusing especially on declining fertility, the "master pathology" of modern Jewry (p. 74), and the related subjects of intermarriage and conversion, Zionist social scientists easily argued that assimilation meant the ultimate disappearance of the Jews. . . .

There are about 605 more words in this article. Please log in (or, if you are not yet an authorized user, please go to the User Setup page) to gain full access rights. Or if you're already logged in register your subscription.