The Healthy Jew

Reviews / Votes

'This is a unique work, an essential and path-breaking book of exquisite detail and quality. Written in a highly accessible and effective narrative prose, The Healthy Jew ask that we rethink the place and value of Jews and Judaism in the Western medical, scientific and, ultimately, political imagination. It does so through the patient and meticulous accumulation of discursive elements, each of which is endowed with implacable force. This is, to my mind, a highly original and singularly illuminating book.' Gil Anidjar, Columbia University 'Mitchell Hart's The Healthy Jew is an excellent and well-researched book, brimming with information and insight. While historically rigorous, it is also an entertaining look at a very unusual development in modern Jewish cultural history. It is written with great flair - and with occasional flashes of wit. Yet the topic is a serious one, and Hart has the historical sophistication to register its broader, more theoretical ramifications.' Peter Eli Gordon, Harvard University 'The past decade or so has seen a tremendous amount of scholarship on the Jewish body, almost all of it focusing on disease and degeneration. Mitchell Hart does not challenge the importance or the validity of this scholarship. Instead, he argues that it presents an incomplete picture. Hart's book challenges what has become a very dominant paradigm in Jewish cultural studies. This book introduces an element of complexity and ambivalence that has heretofore been missing from scholarship about representations of the Jews.' Alan Steinweis, University of Nebraska