From Mohels to Mein Kampf: Syphilis and the Construction of Jewish Identification
From Mohels to Mein Kampf: Syphilis and the Construction of Jewish Identification
This chapter chronicles how the construction of Judentum became increasingly infected with representations of syphilis from the earliest epidemic outbreaks in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries to the Third Reich. It examines how this confluence was shaped by such factors as: documented syphilis transmissions from mohels (ritual circumcisers) to infants, presumed and actual associations of Jews with white slavery and prostitution, the linkage of Jews to money, the medical diagnosis and treatment of venereal disease by Jewish doctors, telegony and other animal-breeding lore, and theories about the threats of syphilis and interracial sexuality to heredity. The fateful conjunction of antisemitic representation, syphilis, diseased reproduction, and the threatened destruction of the German people is brought to light in extensive analyses of Arthur Dinter's Sin Against the Blood and Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf.
Keywords: antisemitism, Arthur Dinter, heredity, Adolf Hitler, medicine, mohel, ritual circumciser, money, prostitution, reproduction, syphilis
Fordham Scholarship Online requires a subscription or purchase to access the full text of books within the service. Public users can however freely search the site and view the abstracts and keywords for each book and chapter.
Please, subscribe or login to access full text content.
If you think you should have access to this title, please contact your librarian.
To troubleshoot, please check our FAQs , and if you can't find the answer there, please contact us .