Why did the Jew survive the onslaughts of Time? Jewish Eugenics.

[MikeWB]

Jewish Eugenics

by Rabbi Max Reichler

Who knows the cause of Israel's survival? Why did the Jew survive the onslaughts of Time, when others, numerically and politically stronger, succumbed? Obedience to the Law of Life, declares the modern student of eugenics, was the saving quality which rendered the Jewish race immune from disease and destruction. "The Jews, ancient and modern," says Dr. Stanton Coit, "have always understood the science of eugenics, and have governed themselves in accordance with it; hence the preservation of the Jewish race."[1]

I. Jewish Attitude

To be sure, eugenics as a science could hardly have existed among the ancient Jews; but many eugenic rules were certainly incorporated in the large collection of Biblical and Rabbinical laws. Indeed there are clear indications of a conscious effort to utilize all influences that might improve the inborn qualities of the Jewish race, and to guard against any practice that might vitiate the purity of the race, or "impair the racial qualities of future generations" either physically, mentally, or morally.[2] The Jew approached the matter of sex relationship neither with the horror of the prude, nor with the passionate eagerness of the pagan, but with the sane and sound attitude of the far-seeing prophet. His goal was the creation of the ideal home, which to him meant the abode of purity and happiness, the source of strength and vigor for body and mind.[3]

II. Home of the Pure Bloods

The very founder of the Jewish race, the patriarch Abraham, recognized the importance of certain inherited qualities, and insisted that the wife of his "only beloved son" should not come from "the daughters of the Canaanites," but from the seed of a superior stock.[4] In justifying this seemingly narrow view of our patriarch, one of the Rabbis significantly suggests: "Even if the wheat of your own clime does not appear to be of the best, its seeds will prove more productive than others not suitable to that particular soil."[5]

This contention is eugenically correct. Davenport tells of a settlement worker of this city who made special inquiry concerning a certain unruly and criminally inclined section of his territory, and found that the offenders came from one village in Calabria, known as "the home of the brigands."[6] Just as there is a home of the brigands, so there may be "a home of the pure bloods."

Eugenicists also claim that though consanguineous marriages are in most cases injurious to the progeny, yet where relatives possess "valuable characters, whether apparent or not, marriages between them might be encouraged, as a means of rendering permanent a rare and valuable family trait, which might otherwise be much less likely to become an established characteristic."[7] Abraham's servant, Eliezer, so the Midrash states, desired to offer his own daughter to Isaac, but his master sternly rebuked him, saying:

"Thou art cursed, and my son is blessed, and it does not behoove the cursed to mate with the blessed, and thus deteriorate the quality of the race."[8]

III.Early Marriages

The aim of eugenics is to encourage the reproduction of the good and "blessed" human protoplasm and the elimination of the impure and "cursed" human protoplasm. According to Francis Galton, it is "to check the birthrate of the unfit, and to further the productivity of the fit by early marriages and the rearing of healthful children."

The Rabbis may or may not have had such a definite purpose in mind, but their Halachic legislation and Haggadic observations naturally tended to bring about the same results. Early marriages were praised as most desirable. Rabbi Ishmael claimed that God was greatly displeased with the man who did not marry before the age of twenty.[9] Rav Hunah refused to see Rav Hammuna, a man of great repute (adam gadol), after the former discovered that his visitor was a bachelor.[10] "He who is not married," runs a Talmudic saying, "is destitute of all joy, blessing, and happiness."[11] "He has no conception of the sweetness of life"[12]; indeed "he cannot be regarded as a man at all."[13]

IV. Reproduction

Among the seven types not acceptable before God are included both the unmarried man and the married man without children.[14] A man without children experiences death in life,[15] and surely deserves our pity when he departs from this earth.[16] For only he is dead who leaves no son behind to continue his work, while he who leaves even one worthy son is not really dead but merely sleeps.[17] He who does not contribute his share to the reproduction of the race, reduces the divine type,[18] causes the Shechinah to depart from Israel,[19] and is guilty of murder.[20] The duty of reproduction is incumbent on all, both young and old.[21] The Rabbis, like the eugenists of to-day, measured the success of a marriage by the number and quality of the offspring. In their judgments the main objects of marriage were the reproduction of the human race (leshem piryah veribyah), and the augmentation of the favored stock (lethikun havlad).[22] Hence they advised that an extremely tall man should not marry an extremely tall woman, lest the children be awkwardly tall; nor should one of short stature marry a woman of the same size, lest their offspring be dwarfed. For the same reason, the intermarriage between blonds or between dark-complexioned people was not countenanced.[23] A number of precautions in sexual relations were prescribed in order to prevent the birth of defectives, such as lepers,[24] epileptics,[25] the deaf and the dumb, the lame and the blind.[26]

V. Intelligent Love

Raba advised every young man not to marry a girl before he knew all about her immediate family, especially about her brothers, for "children usually inherit the traits of their mother's brothers."[27] "Take your time," counsels a Talmudic proverb, "before you ask a woman to be your wife";[28] in other words, "fall in love intelligently." Other well-known Rabbinic maxims are: "a man drinketh not out of a cup which he hath not inspected,"[29] and "a bride whose eyes are defective, ought to undergo a general physical examination."[30]

In the opinion of Rabbi Jonathan both Eliezer, the servant of Abraham, and Saul, king of Israel, acted most indiscreetly by treating marriage in a rather frivolous manner. Eliezer said: "Behold the virgin which will say drink, and I will also draw for the camels, that is the woman whom the Lord hath appointed for my master's son." Suppose that woman had some physical defects, would she have been a suitable mate for Isaac?

Similarly Saul proclaimed: "The man who killeth Goliath, the king will give him his daughter." If that man had been a slave or possessed other hereditary defects, would Saul have sanctioned the marriage?[31]

VI.Non-Eugenic Marriages

The attempt to limit the multiplication of the undesirable elements in the jewish race, resulted in three kinds of prohibitions. First, prohibition against the marriage of defectives by reason of heredity (pesul yocyesin); secondly, the prohibition against the marriage of personal defectives (debar shebagufon); thirdly, the prohibition against consanguineous marriages (ervah).[32] Besides the prohibition against defective marriages mentioned in the Mosaic code,[33] the Talmud forbade on to marry into a confirmed leprous or epileptic family,[34] or to marry a woman who had buried three husbands.[35] The union between an old man and a young girl was condemned in unequivocal terms.[36] Persons or families manifesting continuous antagonism to each other were advised not to intermarry.[37] Great, in the eyes of the Rabbis, was the offense of him who married a woman from an element classed among the unfit. His act was as reprehensible as if he had dug up every fertile field in existence and sown it with salt.[38] A quintuple transgression was his,[39] for which he will be bound hand and foot by Elijah, the great purifier,[40] and flogged by God himself. "Woe unto him who deteriorates the quality of his children and defiles the purity of his family," is the verdict of Elijah endorsed by God.[41] On the other hand, the mating of two persons possessing unique and noble traits cannot but result in the establishment of superior and influential families.[42] When God will cause his Shechinah to dwell in Israel, only such which scrupulously preserved the purity of their families, will be privileged to witness the manifestation of the Holy

Spirit.[43]

VII. Psychical Eugenics

The distinctive feature, however, of Jewish eugenics lies in the greater emphasis laid on the psychical well-being of posterity, in contradistinction to the merely physical well-being which is the chief concern of modern eugenists. At the Congress of Eugenics recently held at London, one of our modern eugenists, Professor Samuel C. Smith of the University of Minnesota, exclaimed: "if I were to choose my own father, I would rather have a robust burglar than a consumptive bishop."

The Rabbis, on the other hand, tell us that when the question came up whether or not the Gibeonites should be permitted to intermarry with the children of Israel, David tested them, in order to ascertain not so much their physical fitness but rather their psychical fitness, and found them wanting. He discovered that they did not possess the three "unit characters" peculiar to Israel, namely: sympathy, modesty and philanthropy. He there fore thought it eugenically inadvisable to allow their mating with a spiritually better-developed stock.[44] Rabbi Levi enumerates nine undesirable psychical qualities which ought to be eliminated from amongst the Jewish race.[45]

VIII.            Eugenics and Religion

The Jew took his spiritual mission as representing a "kingdom of priests and a holy kingdom" quite seriously, and used all possible eugenic means to preserve those rare emotional and spiritual qualities developed during centuries of slow progress and unfolding. Intuitively he felt the truth, so well express by a modern student of eugenics, that "Religion would be a more effective thing, if everybody had a healthy emotional nature; but it can do nothing with natures that have not the elements of love, loyalty and devotion."[46] The Rabbis would say: Religion can do nothing with natures that have not the elements of sympathy, modesty and philanthropy. Hence they urged that a man should be willing to offer all his possessions for the opportunity of marrying a member of a psychically well-developed family.[47]

The marriage between the offspring of inferior stock and that of superior stock, such as the marriage between a scholar and the daughter of an am- haarez, or between an am-haarez and the daughter of a scholar, was considered extremely undesirable, and was condemned very strongly.[48] Moreover, no Rabbi or Talmid Chacham was allowed to take part in the celebration of such a non-eugenic union.[49]

An historical case is cited by Rabbi Eliezer to prove that one should always select his soul-mate from amongst the spiritually better- developed families. Moses married a daughter of Jethro, a heathen priest, and the result was that one of his grandsons, Jonathan, became an idolatrous priest. Aaron, on the other hand, married the daughter of Abinadab, and history records the name of his grandson Phinehas as the hero who defended the honor and purity of Israel.[50]

Parents living normal and righteous lives are not only a blessing to themselves, but also to their children and children's children, until the end of all generations; while parents living abnormal and immoral lives bring ruin and calamity not only on themselves, but also on their children and children's children, to the end of all generations.[51]

IX. Heredity

A parallel to the "rough eugenic ideal" of marrying "health, wealth and wisdom"[52] is found in the words of Rabbi Akiba, who claims that "a father bequeaths to his child beauty, health, wealth, wisdom and longevity."[53] Similarly, ugliness, sickness, poverty, stupidity and the tendency to premature death, are transmitted from father to offspring.[54] Hence we are told that when Moses desired to know why some of the righteous suffer in health and material prosperity, while others prosper and reap success; and again, why some of the wicked suffer, while others enjoy success and material wee-being; God explained that the righteous and wicked who thrive and flourish, are usually the descendants of righteous parents, while those who suffer and fail materially are the descendants of wicked parents.[55]

X. Priceless Heritage

Thus the Rabbis recognized the fact that both physical and psychical qualities were inherited, and endeavored by direct precept and law, as well as by indirect advice and admonition, to preserve and improve the inborn, wholesome qualities of the Jewish race. It is true that they were willing to concede that "a pure-bred individual may be produced by a hybrid mated with a pure bred," for they found examples of that nature in Ruth the Moabitess, Naamah the Ammonitess,[56] Hezekiah and Mordecai.[57] As a general eugenic rule, however, they maintained that one cannot produce "a clean thing out of an unclean," and discouraged any kind of intermarriage even with proselytes.[58] Their ideal was a race healthy in body and in spirit, pure and undefiled, devoid of any admixture of inferior human protoplasm.[59]

Such an ideal, though apparently narrow and chauvinistic, has its eugenic value, as the following suggestive quotation from a well-known eugenist clearly indicates. "Families in which good and noble qualities of mind and body have become hereditary, form a natural aristocracy; and if such families take pride in recording their pedigrees, marry among themselves, and establish a predominant fertility, they can assure success and position to the majority of their descendants in any political future. They can become the guardians and trustees of a sound inborn heritage, which, incorruptible and undefiled, they can preserve in purity and vigor throughout whatever period of ignorance and decay may be in store for the nation at large. Neglect to hand on undimmed the priceless germinal qualities which such families possess, can be regarded only as betrayal of a sacred trust."[60]

I discovered this article in an internet search and published it in Mankind Quarterly, Spring, 2001. It was subsequently reproduced in a number of internet sites.

 


[1] Cf. Also: Social Direction of Human Evolution, by Prof. William E.

Kellicott, 1911, p. 231.

[2] Sir Francis Galton defines eugenics as "the science which deals with all influences that improve the inborn qualities of the race."

[3] Cf. Ps. Cxxviii, 3-4. The National Conference on Race Betterment which met recently at Battle Creek declared that "the core of race betterment consists in promoting more and better homes."

[4] Gen. Xxiv, 3-4.

[5] Ber. Rabbah 59, 11.

[6] Heredity in Relation to Eugenics, by Charles B. Davenport, New York, 1911, p. 183.

[7] Social Direction of Human Evolution, p. 154; Heredity in Relation to Eugenics, p. 185. The Biblical expression "a bone of my bones" (Gen. Ii, 23), refers, according to the Rabbis, to a man who marries one of his relatives. (Bereshith Rabbah 18,5). The marriage between uncle and niece is also recommended. (Yebamoth 63b).

[8] Ber. Rabbah 59, 12; cf. Gen. ix, 25-26.

[9] Kiddushin 29b.

[10] Ibid.

[11] Midrash Lekach Tob, Gen. 2, ed. Buber p. 21.

[12] Ber. Rabbah ch. 17.

[13] Yalkut Gen. ii, 23.

[14] Pesachim 113b.

[15] Nedarim 64b.

[16] M. K. 27b.

[17] B. B. 110b.

[18] Yebamoth 63b.

[19] Ibid. 64a.

[20] Ibid 63b, 64a.

[21] Ibid 62b. Cf. Koheleth Rabbah 7, 8, also Social Direction of Human Evolution, p. 124, concerning pathological defects of first born and earlier members of the family.

[22] Cf. Tur Eben Haezer ch.25.

[23] Bechoroth 45b.

[24] Sifra, Mezora ch. 3.

[25] Pesachim 112b.

[26] Nedarim 20a.

[27] B. B. 110a.

[28] Yebamoth 63a.

[29] Kethuboth 75b.

[30] Shir Hashirim Rabbah 4, 1-3; cf. Taanith 24a.

[31] Taanith 4a.

[32] Tur Eben Haezer, Piryah Veribyah, ch. 4.

[33] Deuteronomy xxiii, 2.

[34] Yebamoth 64a.

[35] Niddah 64a. It is interesting to note that a late authority insists that the same rule should apply to a man who buried three wives. Cf. Beer Heteb to Eben Haezer, Ishoth 9, 2.

[36] Sanhedrin 76a; cf. also Yebamoth 106b and Ruth Rabbah 3, 10.

[37] Kiddushin 71b. Cf. Heredity in Relation to Eugenics, p.8, where the suggestion is made that the curious antipathy of red-hairled persons of the opposite sexes for each other, may be an eugenic antipathy.

[38] Kiddushin 70a.

[39] Aboth Derabbi Nathan, ch. 26.

[40] Cf. Kiddushin 71a.

[41] Kiddushin 70a.

[42] Bamidbar Rabbah 3,4.

[43] Kiddushin 70b.

[44] Yebamoth 79a.

[45] Nedarim 20b.

[46] Heredity in Relation to Eugenics, p. 225.

[47] Pesachim 49b.

[48] Kiddushin 49b; cf. also Pesachim 49b.

[49] Pesachiim 49b.

[50] B. B. 109b.

[51] Yoma 87a.

[52] Heredity in Relation to Eugenics, p.8.

[53] Eduyoth 2, 9.

[54] Yer. Kiddushin 1,7.

[55] Berachoth 7a.

[56] Yebamoth 63a.

[57] Bamidbar Rabbah, Chukath, ch. 19.

[58] Pesachim 112b, Kiddushin 70b.

[59] Yer. Kilayim ch. 1.

[60] See Social Direction of Human Evolution, p. 238.

[maz]

A little more in this but from a modern perspective: Eugenics in Israel: Did Jews try to improve the human race too? Ha'aretz took the story down, not available on the Internet Archive but story in full is at Prison Planet. Since it's harder to find then some articles, I think it deserves a full post.

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1085596.html

http://forum.prisonplanet.com/index.php ... c=110399.0

In 1944, psychiatrist Kurt Levinstein gave a lecture at a Tel Aviv conference, where he advocated preventing people with various mental and neurological disorders - such as alcoholism, manic depression and epilepsy - from bringing children into the world.

The means he proposed - prohibition of marriage, contraception, abortion and sterilization - were acceptable in Europe and the United States in the first decades of the 20th century, within the framework of eugenics: the science aimed at improving the human race.

In the 1930s, the Nazis used these same methods in the early stages of their plan to strengthen the Aryan race. Levinstein was aware, of course, of the dubious political connotations implicit in his recommendations, but believed the solid and salutary principles of eugenics could be isolated from their use by the Nazis.
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Recent research by historian Rakefet Zalashik on the history of psychiatry in Palestine during the Mandate period and following the founding of the state shows that Levinstein was far from a lone voice. Indeed, she claims in her 2008 book, "Ad Nefesh: Refugees, Immigrants, Newcomers and the Israeli Psychiatric Establishment" (Hakibbutz Hameuchad; in Hebrew), that the eugenics-based concept of "social engineering" was part of the psychiatric mainstream here from the 1930s through the 1950s.

Jewish psychiatrists in Israel were not the only ones who tried to distinguish between the science of eugenics, which they held to be useful, and the Nazis' application of it. What set the local experts apart was that they actually studied the foundations of the theory in Germany before immigrating to Palestine, directly from the scientists who supported using eugenics to forcibly sterilize mentally ill and physically disabled Germans - and subsequently to justify their murder. Within a few years, the German scientists were using the same justification for killing Jews.

Many of the Jewish psychiatrists subscribed to their German colleagues' conception of the Jews as a race, relying on the theory that was developed in Europe, says Zalashik. However, upon their arrival in Palestine, they encountered Jews of different types and began to distinguish between the race of European Jews, and that of the Sephardi and Mizrahi Jews (of Middle Eastern and North African origin).

Thus, for example, psychiatrist Avraham Rabinovich, who worked in the Ezrat Nashim facility in Jerusalem and later managed a mental institution in Bnei Brak, drew a distinction in his patient reports from 1921-1928 between the general population, and Jews of Bukharan, Georgian and Persian descent, whom he referred to as "primitive races."

In explaining why the latter were less affected by mental illness, he wrote: "Their consciousness, with its meager content, does not place any special demands on life, and it slavishly submits to the outward conditions, and for this reason, does not enter into confrontation and so gives rise to a relatively very small percentage of functional illnesses in the nervous system and in terms of mental illness in particular."

The views of these psychiatrists meshed with the goals of the Zionist movement, which at the time propounded a policy of selective immigration.

"Eugenics was a part of the national philosophy of most of [the local] psychiatrists," says Zalashik. "The theory was that a healthy nation was needed in order to fulfill the Zionist vision in Israel. There was a powerful economic aspect to this view of things - the idea being to prevent people who were perceived as a burden on society from bringing children into the world. And homosexuals and frigid women also fell into this category."

Psychiatrist Kochinsky, for one, argued in 1938 in the journal Harefuah that the findings of a census of the mentally ill in Palestine should serve primarily as "a basis for methods to improve the race."

Zalashik maintains that such outlooks, as well as other false and harmful assumptions upon which Israeli psychiatry was based in its early years, led to the adoption of inappropriate and sometimes cruel forms of treatment, whose effects on the mental health system in the country are still being felt today.

In her new book, Zalashik chronicles the history of the psychiatric community, which began to take shape in the 1930s with the arrival of dozens of Jewish psychiatrists from German-speaking countries following the Nazis' rise to power. According to her research, at the end of 1933, there were only three psychiatrists working in this country; by the end of World War II, that number had grown to 70. These psychiatrists were influenced by the hypotheses and findings of extensive research conducted in the countries of their birth regarding mental disorders unique to Jews, which was part of the Germans' attempt to explain "the Jewish problem" in biological and medical terms.

"Both Jewish and non-Jewish doctors were wont to think that Jews had a greater tendency to develop mental illness than others," says Zalashik. "The debate was about whether this was because of race, or environmental factors: The Jews said that Jews suffer from mental illnesses because they endured hardship and pogroms, and live in cities where there is more stress and tension than in rural areas. The non-Jews reached the same conclusion, but based it on the argument that Jews were different biologically and genetically."

Zalashik contends that the question of whether the basic premise is accurate is irrelevant to historians. "What's relevant is that the Jewish minority, particularly in Germany, went from being considered a social problem to a medical problem."

Upon immigrating to Israel, the Jewish psychiatrists did not give up the theories in which they had been educated; instead, they adapted them to the newfound situation.

Zalashik: "If, in Europe, the tendency to develop mental illness was said to attest to the Jews' inferiority, then in Palestine it showed the superiority of the pioneers over the Jews from the Old Yishuv [pre-state community]: The psychiatrists said the pioneers came from civilization, and that civilized people suffer from more mental illness than people of the Old Yishuv who lived in a rural environment."

The psychiatrists further maintained that the pioneers tended to develop mental illnesses due to the stress involved in migration and also because of their young age (20-30), known to be a prime period for mental disorders.

One of the main solutions proposed by the psychiatrists was social engineering of the Jewish public in Israel or, as they called it, "mental hygiene." Up until his immigration to Israel in the 1930s, Martin Pappenheim, who ran the neurological department of the city hospital in Vienna from 1921-1923, represented the Austrian branch of the International League for Mental Hygiene - a movement founded in 1908 with the aim of reducing poverty, crime and morbidity by means of drastic preventive measures. In 1935, Pappenheim, together with Dr. Mordechai Brachiahu, founded the association's branch in Palestine.

One of the main arguments in favor of eugenics was the economic benefit it would bring. According to Pappenheim, his association's activity was intended to reduce "the unproductive costs of maintaining the unskilled ... which burden the nation's budget," and to redirect resources to preserving the health of the working population.

Unwanted pregnancies

The recommendations of Pappenheim and his colleagues were partially implemented in the 1930s. In Tel Aviv and Jaffa, "advice stations" for Jews were set up to provide guidance to couples before and after marriage, so as to prevent unwanted pregnancies by those carrying "unhealthy" genetic baggage.

In 1942, Kochinsky gave a lecture on "population policy and psychopathology" at the second conference of the Neuro-Psychiatric Society. He told his audience that of the 200 people he'd treated at the Beit Strauss hygiene center in Tel Aviv, 48 percent had "mental illnesses" with a genetic component, and that these carriers ought not to bear children. These disorders included a whole spectrum of problems, ranging from suicidal tendencies to frigidity and sexual dysfunction. In wake of these "worrisome findings," Kochinsky proposed that a nationwide census be conducted to chart the likelihood of the country's inhabitants to develop mental illnesses, so that measures could be taken to fortify the Jewish race.

Psychiatrists were not the only ones tempted by the allure of eugenics; other doctors in the country, including senior health officials, also tried to adopt its methods. Among the most prominent of these figures during the Mandate was Dr. Yosef Meir, who served for 30 years as chairman of the Clalit health maintenance organization (Kfar Sava's Meir Hospital is named for him). In 1934, in a front-page article in "Ha'em Vehayeled" ("Mother and Child"), a guide for parents put out by the HMO, Dr. Meir wrote the following:

"Who is entitled to bear children? The search for a correct answer to this question is the concern of eugenics, the science of improving the human race and protecting it from degeneration. This science is still young, but its positive results are already of major importance ... Is it not our duty to ensure that our nation shall have sons who are healthy and whole in body and mind?" And he went on to write: "For us, eugenics - in general, and in particular for the sake of guarding against the transmission of hereditary illnesses - has even greater value than it does for other nations! ... Doctors, aficionados of sport, and those active on the national scene must spread the idea: Do not have children if you are not certain that they will be healthy in body and mind!"

"There's a difference between a regular clinic and a eugenic clinic of the kind that were established here," Zalashik notes. "When you come to a regular clinic, the objective is to heal you or to provide some kind of means to ease your suffering. When you come to a eugenic clinic, there are other considerations at work: The caregiver is seeking to heal the Jewish people, to create people with the physical and emotional stamina to fulfill the national vision. Because prevention is a very important element, when a handicapped child was born, for example, they would try to convince the parents not to conceive again."

Aside from such counseling for married couples, support was also provided for sterilization procedures for the mentally ill. Zalashik found a letter from Yehuda Nadibi, the Tel Aviv municipal secretary, to the chief medical officer of the Mandate government, asking him to have a mentally ill woman committed to the psychiatric hospital in Bethlehem - or else he would instruct that she be sterilized. The woman was hospitalized, but then left on a furlough and became pregnant. The social services department in the municipality complained about the financial expense that would be caused by the pregnancy, and asked why the hospital hadn't sterilized her.

Selection committees

The German-Jewish psychiatrists were not unaware of the similarity between their recommendations and the Nazi policy that was implemented at the very same time. Kurt Levinstein even concluded a 1944 lecture with a quote from the German psychiatrist and geneticist Hans Luxenburger, who was involved in legislating eugenic methods in the Third Reich and sought to find scientific proof for the hereditary component of mental illness, in order to promote the government's sterilization initiatives.

"A person in whom hereditary mental illness has not been prevented or cured," quoted Levinstein, "presents just as great a danger to the race as a regular patient, at the height of his suffering ... Eugenic prophylaxis is the only prophylaxis and the ideal prophylaxis for hereditary illnesses."

Levinstein stressed that Luxenburger said these things before the Nazis came to power and, like his fellow Jewish psychiatrists, he sought to differentiate between the Nazi usage and the Zionist usage of eugenic theories. "[The Jewish psychiatrists] argued that it was good science of which the Nazis made evil use in creating a hierarchy of races and annihilating entire peoples," says Zalashik. "They thought of it as an important and effective means of fortifying the nation's health."

The attempts to strengthen the Jewish race by means of controlling births continued after the founding of the state and into the 1950s. In August 1952, a decision was passed by the World Congress of Jewish Physicians to establish a scientific institute dedicated to issues of eugenics in Israel. The institute was never established; eugenic theories were beginning to be abandoned by then, once their basic premises had been proven false and perhaps also as a result of the increased growth and diversity of the psychiatric establishment.

Local Zionist institutions also sought to exert control over the Jewish public's health by means of limitations on immigration. From 1918-1919, offices were opened in various countries, and screened those seeking to move to Palestine. In 1921, an immigration department was founded with the purpose of handling candidates for immigration until their arrival in this country. In the mid-1920s, medical selection committees were established in the immigration offices; in addition, examinations were conducted at the country's ports and in the quarantine facilities run by the Mandatory health authorities.

This selection continued after the Nazis came to power. In late November 1933, Henrietta Szold, then chairwoman of the Youth Aliya department of the Jewish Agency, wrote to Dr. George Landauer, director of the Agency's German division, asking him to oversee the medical examinations of immigration candidates at the Berlin office - since some Jews who'd received certificates had subsequently ended up dependent on Palestine's welfare services due to health problems. Reports about several such cases were circulated among the three organizations involved in emigration from Germany: the Jewish National Committee, the United Committee for the Settlement of German Jews in Palestine (founded in 1932) and the German section of the Jewish Agency.

Selective immigration was officially halted with the enactment of the Law of Return in 1950, which recognized the right of every Jew to immigrate to Israel. But Zalashik asserts that traces of the eugenic viewpoint are still to be found within the Israeli medical system.

"Israel is a superpower in terms of pre-pregnancy tests and abortions," she says. "Abortions are performed here on the slightest pretext, including [correctable] aesthetic flaws such as a cleft palate. The notion that there are some babies that shouldn't be born is part of the eugenic philosophy."

Eugenics wasn't the only dubious theory the German-Jewish psychiatrists brought with them, Zalashik adds: They also adopted German psychiatry's conception of trauma and its method of treating victims of emotional shock.

Many psychiatrists in the young state believed that the psyche of Jews was more resilient due to the persecution they endured throughout history. In 1957, Fishel Shneorson published an article in the journal Niv Harofeh, about the emotional fortitude of Holocaust survivors. He argued that there was a lower rate of mental illness among survivors who immigrated to Palestine/Israel than among those who settled elsewhere.

The theory, widely accepted by psychiatrists here at the time, was that the conditions in this country - the absence of anti-Semitism, combined with the survivors' participation in fighting for and building the nation - had a salutary effect on their mental health. Because of this, psychiatrists tended to attribute a large portion of Holocaust survivors' complaints to immigration difficulties and inter-familial issues, rather than to diagnose them as emotional problems and treat them accordingly.

The dismissive attitude toward the effect of the Holocaust experience is evident in the case of one Romanian-born Jew, who was admitted in 1955 to Jerusalem's Talbieh Psychiatric Hospital to see whether he was suffering from a psychiatric problem. He was described as "possessing borderline intelligence, very weak social understanding and an infantile personality," and diagnosed as suffering from depression, anxiety, insecurity and aggression.

Zalashik: "The therapists devoted three whole pages to the patient's life history, from his childhood up to his hospitalization, but this was all they had to say about his wartime experience: 'In 1941, during the war, the patient was taken to the labor camps and was separated from his family. In the camps he did not suffer from any illnesses. After his release from the concentration camps in 1945, he returned to Romania and learned that his entire family had been wiped out.'"

'Compensation neurosis'

The psychiatrists' attitude toward the survivors' trauma took on added significance in 1952, with the signing of the reparations agreement between Germany and Israel. According to the law in Germany, survivors were entitled to seek compensation for damages caused them by the Nazi persecution. Israeli psychiatrists were asked to write professional opinions about the demands for compensation. Survivors who were not former citizens of Germany, or were not part of the German cultural milieu, were entitled to seek a disability pension from the Israeli Finance Ministry and from the National Insurance Institute, and medical opinions were required for this as well.

Zalashik concludes that instead of using this opportunity to take a closer look at the survivors' psyches and recognize their mental anguish, the psychiatrists primarily saw themselves as the guardians of the state coffers, and were disinclined to acknowledge the psychological harm wrought by the Nazis. And when they did recognize it, they tended to assign the person in question a minimal level of disability.

Psychiatrist Kurt Blumenthal went so far as to claim that many survivors were just pretending to have mental problems, when he wrote in 1953 about "compensation neurosis" or "purposeful neurosis," which was ostensibly characterized by an attempt to portray oneself as having suffered great damage in order to increase compensation one would receive. Psychiatrist Julius Baumetz, director of a Jerusalem mental health station, implored his colleagues to do their utmost to put an immediate end to such allegedly neurosis-driven demands, lest survivors' conditions deteriorate to a state of "infantile dependence."

"The Israeli psychiatrists betrayed their role when they decided to worry more about the state coffers than about their patients," says Zalashik. "When people came to them complaining about nightmares, they told them they were making it up. One German psychiatrist I interviewed said that he was horrified by the opinions he received from Israeli therapists. He said they were so outdated and non-specific that they were harmful to the patients. The theories upon which they were based - i.e., that trauma does not cause any long-term change in personality - were already considered outmoded in Germany in those years."

Zalashik says this atmosphere made it easier for the Health Ministry to decide that mentally ill Holocaust survivors should be treated in private psychiatric institutions instead of by the public health care system. Survivors were kept in these institutions for decades. Eventually, these facilities became hostels; to this day, they are home to about 700 Holocaust survivors.

Another reason this approach in treatment was adopted concerns the status of the psychiatrists themselves, Zalashik believes: "The ones who came from Germany had very different outlooks than that of the Eastern European Zionist establishment that controlled the health system. Many of them had not done a residency, and the medical establishment was not keen to absorb them. Instead of integrating them into the public psychiatric institutions, they let them open private institutions. Once the government discovered that keeping a patient in these institutions was cheaper than keeping him in the public health institutions, it encouraged their proliferation and treatment of the mentally disabled in those frameworks."

Dr. Motti Mark, who headed the Health Ministry's department of mental health services from 1991-1996 and from 1999-2001, worked to close down the private institutions and to transfer their occupants to appropriate government institutions, hostels or community treatment facilities. He becomes visibly emotional when relating how appalled he was when he first encountered them: "[The authorities] created a separate health system for mental patients. I discovered that there were places that they called hospitals, which were actually just like shelters you would find in the United States. These places sprang up outside the big cities wherever there was an abandoned barracks or prison, and they put the patients with the most severe distress there.

"In every abandoned location, the Health Ministry found external solutions, which were supposed to be like complete hospitals, but with an auxiliary doctor or neurologist, who tried to provide full treatment to people with a whole range of problems - anxiety, loneliness, post-traumatic depression - but also nutritional and intestinal problems. In 1991, in one such institution, I saw 30 or 40 people lying in one big room in very poor conditions. I didn't know that such things existed in Israel."

Threat of lobotomy

Zalashik, who today lives in New York, earned a bachelor's degree in general history and sociology from Tel Aviv University. As a student, she also ran a club affiliated with the Hadash (socialist) movement in Tel Aviv. After completing a master's degree in German history, she wrote her master's thesis on the father of German psychiatry, Johann Christian Reil, and began researching the history of psychiatry in the United States. She came to research the subject for her current book after an Israeli friend, a psychiatric social worker, told her that nurses in the hospital where he works often threaten patients who annoy them by saying: "If you don't behave nicely, we'll give you a lobotomy."

A lobotomy is a procedure in which a needle is inserted into the brain via the eye socket and the frontal lobes of the brain are destroyed. The method is based on the presumption that these lobes are the emotional centers of the nervous system, and their neutralizing dulls the emotional response that is troubling the mental patient.

Israeli practitioners continued to recommend insulin therapy for many years after its dangerous effects were documented, including some cases of mortality. While the use of insulin therapy was on the decline in most countries by the first half of the 1950s, it did not start to fade in Israel until the 1960s. In May 1952, for example, a doctor from Talbieh hospital praised insulin therapy, calling it "one of the most effective therapies in the spectrum of modern treatments for schizophrenia." In 1970, nine private mental health institutions (nearly one-third of all those in Israel), were still using insulin therapy.

"Apparently, it is possible to experiment with electroshock, which costs less than insulin and can be done at the Ezrat Nashim Hospital in Jerusalem," the woman wrote. "The treatment must last for three months and afterward there are two possibilities: Either we see that the patients are completely cured, or we see there is no remedy for them at all and transfer them to the hospital in Bnei Brak."

Says Zalashik, "In the early stages, when a new therapy is adopted, there is tremendous enthusiasm and euphoria, and reports of a success rate of 90 percent or higher. Later on, the reports become more reserved, and the question is asked whether the therapy was really helping all the patients or only some. In the third stage, someone declares that these therapies are not working, and at the same time a new therapy arises.

"Some of these therapies were completely unjustified to begin with; the theory upon which insulin therapy was based was nonsense. Part of the justification to use them had to do with the status of the psychiatrists themselves within the medical profession: While doctors in other fields were presenting impressive achievements and discoveries, the psychiatrists were stuck with chronically ill patients who did not respond to any treatment.

Essentially, they knew very little about 'their' diseases, and were unable to show proof of success. They felt it was better to do something than to do nothing. Beyond that, some of the therapies raise serious ethical questions: A lobotomy irreversibly changes someone's personality. This wasn't just the wrong treatment. It was a radical move that turned people into zombies."

Mark attributes the use of such treatment to the fact that Israeli psychiatry was lagging behind the rest of the world.

"Until the 1980s, I think that Israeli psychiatry was 10 or 20 years behind what was happening in the West," he notes. "This derived, for one thing, from the language gap. The therapists of German origin implemented a European psychiatry which had disappeared after World War II, and they were unfamiliar with the therapeutic advances that occurred primarily in English-speaking countries. It wasn't until the late 1980s or early 1990s that psychiatric treatment in Israel fell into line with standard practice in the rest of the world."

[ahaze]

Back in March, when extremist Jews went ape-shit over the possibility of Bar Refaeli marrying Leonardo DiCaprio for fear she would "harm future generations", I stopped to wonder how deep the roots ran of such a supremacist posture, and the articles here from MikeWB and maz just took me deeper down the rabbit hole than my imaginings ran.  Thank you (I think).  And here's the tabloid news comprehension of the same issue (airbrushed for maximum consumption, wouldn't want to trouble the masses with sordid details about cursed human protoplasm).

Jewish extremists to model Bar Refaeli: Don't marry DiCaprio

Jewish extremists have urged supermodel Bar Refaeli not to marry her actor boyfriend, Leonardo DiCaprio, because it would dilute the Jewish race, according to media reports.

In a letter to Refaeli, far-rightist Baruch Marzel wrote on behalf of nationalist group Lehava, which aims to fight assimilation among Jews: "It is not by chance that you were born Jewish.


"Your grandmother and her grandmother did not dream that one of their descendants would one day remove the family's future generations from the Jewish people," the letter continued. "Assimilation has forever been one of the enemies of the Jewish people."

Lehava in Hebrew means "flame" but it is also an acronym for "Preventing Assimilation in the Holy Land." According to the group's Facebook page, it aims to provde assistance to Jewish girls in relationships with non-Jews, and especially Arabs.

Marzel told Refaeli that he "has nothing against Mr. DiCaprio, who I have no doubt is a talented actor." Still, he urged Refaeli: "Come to your senses, look forward and back too - and not only the present. Don't marry Leonardo DiCaprio, don't harm the future generations."

_http://www.haaretz.com/news/jewish-extremists-to-model-bar-refaeli-don-t-marry-dicaprio-1.266457

[ahaze]

This almost deserves a post of its own, but given this recent thread examining ideologies driving Jewish eugenics it helps flesh out the reality pretty well.  Watch out for horny Jews too hot and bothered to qualify whether their quicky candidate is goy or not or you too could be guilty of "rape by deception".

Lying for sex means jail time in Israel

Lying for sex. It happens all the time.

Yet a married Palestinian man has been ordered jailed for 18 months for having sex with an Israeli woman after giving her the impression he too was Jewish, as well as single and interested in a relationship.

His conviction of "rape by deception" has drawn charges of racism and questions about whether courts should be delving into this fraught topic.

Saber Qashor, a 30-year-old father of two, says he was approached by the woman in September 2008 on a downtown Jerusalem street where he had parked his motorcycle, and introduced himself as "Dudu," a common Israeli Jewish nickname.

Within half an hour they were having sex in a Jerusalem office building stairwell.

After nearly two months, he was arrested and told the woman had accused him of forcible rape. Last week, he was sentenced to prison and fined 10,000 shekels ($2,500) for "rape by deception," an offense that may be unique to the Israeli legal code.

Rape by deception was written into the law to protect women from sexual predators, but some argue that Qashor's act doesn't count - that he was simply doing what so many men and women do for sex.

"It seems to me a dangerous decision," said Professor Zeev Segal, legal analyst for the Israeli newspaper Haaretz. "The law should not enter into the delicate domain of relations between men and women."

Having already spent nearly two years under house arrest, Qashor remains there while he pursues an appeal that his lawyer says may reach the Supreme Court this week.

The original indictment claimed forcible rape but the Jerusalem District Court accepted the sex was consensual and a plea bargain reduced the charge to "rape by deception."

"If she hadn't thought the accused was a single Jewish man interested in a serious romantic relationship, she would not have cooperated," Judge Zvi Segal wrote in sentencing Qashor. The court must protect the public from "sophisticated and slick-tongued criminals who would lead innocent victims astray, at the unbearable price of the sanctity of their bodies and souls."

While Qashor has readily given his version of events to the media, almost nothing is known about the plaintiff, identified only as M.T. All Israeli rape cases are heard behind closed doors, and court records are sealed. Qashor said the woman was in her 20s, but there was no independent confirmation.

Given the animosity between Jews and Arabs in Israel, Qashor's conviction elicited accusations of racism in newspaper columns and on talk shows.

"This is a case where it is obviously not rape but fraud, and it smells of racism," said historian and commentator Tom Segev. "It's a real ugly example of how basic values in this country are deteriorating."

Speaking to The Associated Press from his home in east Jerusalem, the sector captured by Israel from Jordan in the 1967 Mideast war, Qashor denied telling the woman he was Jewish, saying the Hebrew name he gave her was a nickname from childhood - a practice not unheard of among Palestinians. He speaks fluent Hebrew with no Arabic accent.

"I said my name is Dudu and she asked if I was married or single and I said single," said Qashor. "I didn't tell her I was a Jew."

He said he has kept the details from his wife and that his marriage is surviving.

The law has existed for decades, but legal experts recall it only being invoked once - in 2008 to convict a Jewish man who impersonated a Housing Ministry official to solicit sex with financially stricken women by promising to get them public housing and increased government payouts.

Dana Pugach, head of the Noga Legal Center for crime victims, suggests the law sometimes takes things too far.

"I think that women still need protection," she said. "But I do think criminal law shouldn't interfere in every case. I think white lies should be permitted in a way. Lying, unfortunately, is a natural part of human relationships and not every lie can be indicted. But defining the limits would be difficult. Logic should be applied to every case."

In this case, however, the complaint was taken seriously because the woman initially accused Qashor of forcible rape, "Not because he was an Arab, not because he pretended to be Jewish, but because she complained about being raped," she said.

No other country is known to have a law like Israel's.

In Spain, rape by deception is a crime only where the person involved is under 16. A bill before the Massachusetts state legislature would target those who employ deceit - and not just physical force - to engage in sex. But it's aimed at sociopaths, not people who falsely boast of being doctors or sports stars, says its sponsor, Rep. Peter Koutoujian.

_http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2012465240_apmlisraelrapebydeception.html