Maurice Fishberg

This article may require cleanup to meet Wikipedia's quality standards. The specific problem is: Rewrite, run-on sentences. Please help improve this article if you can. (June 2025) (Learn how and when to remove this message)

|

Jewish-American physical anthropologist

Maurice Fishberg (August 16, 1872 – August 30, 1934) was a Jewish-American physical anthropologist who specialised in the ethnology of the Jews.[1] Fishberg was born in Kamenetz Podolsky (now Ukraine) and died in New York City.[2]

## Involvement in the American Eugenics Movement and Self-Discreditation

[edit]

After emigrating to the United States in 1889, and, arriving in New York, he studied medicine at the university there. He received his degree from New York University in 1897. Fishberg has been associated with Beth Israel Hospital, New York, and was medical examiner of the United Hebrew Charities of that city.[3] During his time as a medical examiner he recorded skull and nose measurements of Jewish immigrants through which he originally asserted a genetic difference between Jews and non-Jews to describe them as another race along with Joseph Jacobs.[4][5] However, his theories were largely discredited by Franz Boas through the application of the scientific method.

Opposed to the narrow or vertically arranged studies which Maurice Fishberg conducted which completely ignored the Jewish ethnicity, i.e. culture, religion, and even family in the case of adoptions, Franz Boas looked at all of those factors as well as across multiple generations and in multiple geographic locations to determine there to be no discernible genetic difference between Jews and non-Jews. This, combined with the growth of what Max J. Kholer called Hitlerism or later Nazism in Germany, resulted in a national summit where Boas presided as guest of honor. As Maurice Fishberg along with Ellsworth Huntington discredited their prior works before The Judeans[clarification needed] and the Jewish Academy of Sciences on March 4, 1934, Boas emphatically stated that there is no genetic difference between Jew and non-Jew nor any "superior race". Later this discussion was distributed by Congregation B'nai B'rith in Cincinnati, Ohio.[6]

## Works

[edit]

* Physical Anthropology of the Jews (1902)[7]
* "Materials for the Physical Anthropology of the Eastern European Jews by Maurice Fishberg". Memoirs of the American Anthropological Society. Vol. I, 1905–1907\. Lancaster, Pennsylvania: The New Era Printing Company. 1907. pp. 1–147.
* Jews: A Study of Race and Environment (1911)[8]

## References

[edit]

English Wikisource has original works by or about:

Maurice Fishberg

1. ^ Maurice Fishberg, Jewish Encyclopedia
2. ^ Dr. M. Fishberg Dies of Heart Attack at Home
3. ^ https://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/6159-fishberg-maurice
4. ^ "CRANIOMETRY - JewishEncyclopedia.com". jewishencyclopedia.com. Retrieved 2025-06-26.
5. ^ "NOSE - JewishEncyclopedia.com". jewishencyclopedia.com. Retrieved 2025-06-26.
6. ^ https://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/bib264772
7. ^ Hattam, Victoria (2007). In the Shadow of Race: Jews, Latinos, and Immigrant Politics in the United States. University of Chicago Press. p. 194\. ISBN 9780226319230.
8. ^ "Review of Jews: A Study of Race and Environment by Maurice Fishberg". The London Quarterly Review. 116: 159–160\. 1911.

* v
* t
* e

Obsolete definitions of race

* Racism
* Scientific racism
* Pseudoscience

Color terminology|

* Black
* Bronze
* Brown
* Olive
* Red
* White

Concepts|

* Australoid
* Capoid
* Caucasoid
* Alpine
* Arabid
* Armenoid
* Aryan
* Atlantid
* Caspian
* Dinaric
* East Baltic
* Ethiopid
* Hamites
* Indid
* Iranid
* Mediterranean
* Nordic
* Semites
* Turanid
* Malay
* Mongoloid
* Proto-Mongoloid
* Sinodonty and Sundadonty
* Negroid
* Negrito

Sociological|

* in India
* Passing
* Racial discrimination
* Racism
* Racial stereotypes
* Colorism
* Master race
* Nazism and race
* Racial hygiene
* Whiteness studies
* Négritude

Writers|

* Louis Agassiz
* John Baker
* Erwin Baur
* John Beddoe
* Robert Bennett Bean
* François Bernier
* Renato Biasutti
* Johann Friedrich Blumenbach
* Franz Boas
* Daniel Garrison Brinton
* Paul Broca
* Alice Mossie Brues
* Halfdan Bryn
* Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon
* Charles Caldwell
* Petrus Camper
* Samuel A. Cartwright
* Houston Stewart Chamberlain
* Sonia Mary Cole
* Carleton S. Coon
* Georges Cuvier
* Jan Czekanowski
* Charles Davenport
* Joseph Deniker
* Egon Freiherr von Eickstedt
* Anténor Firmin
* Eugen Fischer
* Francis Galton
* Stanley Marion Garn
* Reginald Ruggles Gates
* George Gliddon
* Arthur de Gobineau
* Madison Grant
* John Grattan
* Hans F. K. Günther
* Ernst Haeckel
* Frederick Ludwig Hoffman
* Earnest Hooton
* Julian Huxley
* Thomas Henry Huxley
* Calvin Ira Kephart
* Robert Knox
* Robert E. Kuttner
* Georges Vacher de Lapouge
* Fritz Lenz
* Carl Linnaeus
* Cesare Lombroso
* Bertil Lundman
* Felix von Luschan
* Dominick McCausland
* John Mitchell
* Ashley Montagu
* Lewis H. Morgan
* Samuel George Morton
* Josiah C. Nott
* Karl Pearson
* Roger Pearson
* Oscar Peschel
* Isaac La Peyrère
* Charles Pickering
* Ludwig Hermann Plate
* Alfred Ploetz
* James Cowles Prichard
* Otto Reche
* Gustaf Retzius
* William Z. Ripley
* Alfred Rosenberg
* Benjamin Rush
* Henric Sanielevici
* Heinrich Schmidt
* Ilse Schwidetzky
* Charles Gabriel Seligman
* Giuseppe Sergi
* Samuel Stanhope Smith
* Herbert Spencer
* Morris Steggerda
* Lothrop Stoddard
* William Graham Sumner
* Thomas Griffith Taylor
* Paul Topinard
* John H. Van Evrie
* Otmar Freiherr von Verschuer
* Alexander Winchell
* Ludwig Woltmann

Publications|

* An Essay upon the Causes of the Different Colours of People in Different Climates (1744)
* The Outline of History of Mankind (1785)
* Occasional Discourse on the Negro Question (1849)
* An Essay on the Inequality of the Human Races (1855)
* The Races of Europe (Ripley, 1899)
* The Foundations of the Nineteenth Century (1899)
* Race Life of the Aryan Peoples (1907)
* Heredity in Relation to Eugenics (1911)
* Castes in India (1916)
* The Passing of the Great Race (1916)
* The Rising Tide of Color Against White World-Supremacy (1920)
* The Myth of the Twentieth Century (1930)
* Annihilation of Caste (1936)
* An Investigation of Global Policy with the Yamato Race as Nucleus (1943)
* The Race Question (1950)

Related|

* Ethnogenesis
* Eugenics
* Great chain of being
* History of anthropometry
* Miscegenation
* Monogenism
* Multiracial
* Polygenism
* Pre-Adamite
* Pre-modern conceptions of whiteness

Authority control databases

International|

* ISNI
* VIAF
* FAST
* WorldCat

National|

* Germany
* United States
* Australia
* Czech Republic
* Netherlands
* Norway
* Israel

Academics|

* CiNii

People|

* Trove
* DDB

Other|

* IdRef
* SNAC
* Yale LUX

*[v]: View this template
*[t]: Discuss this template
*[e]: Edit this template