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The title of Sander Gilman's latest book is beguiling. An immediate thought was that it was a collection of biographical sketches of the greatest Jewish geniuses from the biblical days down through the present times. I would have known better if I had given more thought to the author. Gilman, who is the Henry R. Luce Professor of the Liberal Arts in Human Biology at the University of Chicago, appears to have struck a vein of literary and sociological gold, so to speak, whose depths seem to be bottomless. Specifically, it is the heuristic tool of biological racism that is used in the study and understanding of anti-Semitism. Karl Marx viewed human phenomena through the prism of the vagaries of capitalism, and Sigmund Freud through the vicissitudes of the instinctual drives. Biological racism is now added to the scholarly armamentarium of sociological endeavors.
Gilman has written numerous, or should I say voluminous, books on the subject of biological racism and its role in the formation and perpetuation of anti-Semitism. All his studies are noteworthy for their magnificent scholarship and meticulous detail. Smart Jews is no exception. Using what has been called the world's longest running hatred, anti-Semitism, as his subject matter, Gilman delves into the intricacies and varieties of distorted perception of the Jews by Gentiles. His specific focus is on the 19th-century biological racism that permeated European thought, feeling, and behavior not only among the lower classes but also among the highly literate and scientific intelligentsia as well. Jews were perceived as the embodiment of evil, physically malformed, crafty, manipulative, and the bearers and spreaders of the most devastating illnesses that afflict mankind. The fact that circumcision was a crucial aspect of the Jewish religion made for an inexhaustible