Sunday 3 August 2008
7:30pm
Beth Weizmann
Community Centre
306 Hawthorn Rd
Caufield Melbourne Australia
Beginning with the Berlin Haskalah, or Jewish Enlightenment, Jewish medical practitioners outlined a vision for a healthy Jewish future, and sought to introduce changes in such things as the Jewish diet, child-care, and burial practices. This was part of an overall program of Jewish physical regeneration, designed to prepare the Jewish masses for political emancipation. Having produced large numbers of physicians (and scientists), the character of German Jewry rapidly changed between 1800 and 1900 from a traditional and observant community to one that was secular, scientific and skeptical. This talk will trace that process and shed light on how medicine came to occupy such an exalted place among Jews that it became known as a quintessentially "Jewish" profession.
John Efron, holds the Koret Chair in Jewish History at UC-Berkeley, and is
Director of Berkeley's Institute of European Studies. A native of Melbourne
he has studied at Monash, the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, and finally earned
a Ph.D. at Columbia University. In addition to many articles, his books include:
Medicine and the German Jews: A History (Yale University Press, 2001); and Defenders
of the Race: Jewish Doctors and Race Science in Fin-de-Siècle Europe
(Yale University Press, 1994). His most recent book is The Jews: A History (Prentice
Hall) and he is currently at work on another volume entitled, Orientalism and
the Jews in the Age of Empire.