Social Hygiene of the Jews

Felix Theilhaber

1927–1930

For Jews, social hygiene embraces the entire domain of religious laws and customs of Judaism on maintaining the purity and health of the body. These traditions partially, and certainly at their core, go back to very ancient times in the life of the people. To the extent that compliance with health-promoting codes of conduct was not left to an…

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Creator Bio

Felix Theilhaber

1884–1956

A physician by training, Felix Theilhaber was a pioneering sexologist and early sociologist and demographer of German Jewry. In books, pamphlets, and papers, he campaigned for sexual reform, especially the liberalization of abortion and the legalization of contraception. A Zionist and “race scientist,” in 1911 he published Der Untergang der deutschen Juden, a provocative demographic study of the decline and degeneration of German Jewry that pointed to a falling birth rate and rising rates of conversion and intermarriage to bolster its case. In his view, German Jewry had no future. In 1935, he left Germany for Palestine, where he founded a health insurance company and acted as its medical director.

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