Iris Idelson-Shein Goethe University, Frankfurt

Confronting Colour: Jews and Whiteness around 1800

Workshop on the Sciences of Man circa 1800 Goethe Universität, Frankfurt Germany Rauischholzhausen 13th -16th October 2013

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**All translations are my own unless otherwise stated. 1 Aphra Behn, “Oroonoko,” 1688, repr. in Oroonoko, The Rover and Other Works (London, 1992), 121.

2 For an overview of eighteenth century attitudes towards physical variety, see: Roxann Wheeler, The Complexion of

Race: Categories of Difference in Eighteenth-Century British Culture (Philadelphia, 2000), esp. 3–9, 21–28, 30–33;

Dror Wahrman, The Making of the Modern Self: Identity and Culture in Eighteenth-Century England (New Haven,

2004), esp. 83–126; Mark Harrison, Climates and Constitutions: Health, Race, Environment and British Imperialism

in India: 1600–1850 (New York, 1999). 3 For a discussion of these changes in various national contexts, see, e.g., Wheeler, Complexion of Race, 3–9, 21–28,

30–33; Wahrman, Modern Self, 104–26; Susanne Zantop, Colonial Fantasies: Conquest, Family and Nation in

Precolonial Germany, 1770–1870 (Durham, NC, 1997), 66–80; Mark Harrison, Climates and Constitutions: Health,

Race, Environment and British Imperialism in India: 1600–1850 (New York, 1999), 92–110.

4 Baruch Lindau, Reshit limudim (Berlin, 1788), [4]. Lindau’s “bluff” was exposed as early as 1797, when Pinchas

Horowitz, himself a rather frequent borrower from other writers’ works (amongst them, ironically, Lindau), claimed

that Reshit limudim was in fact no more than a wholesale translation of Raff’s work. More recently, Horowitz’s

claims have been corroborated by Tal Kogman who, in an extensive comparison between Lindau’s book and its

German source, shows how the bulk of scientific detail which appears in Reshit limudim was translated from Raff’s

Naturgeschichte für Kinder originally published in 1778. See: Pinchas Horowitz, Sefer ha-brit ha-shalem (1797;

repr. Jerusalem, 1990), 199; Tal Kogman, “Yeẓirat dimuyey ha-yeda ba-araẓot dovrot ha-germanit bi-tkufat ha-

haskalah” (Ph.D. diss., Tel Aviv University, 2000), 54–62. See also Noah Rosenblum, Iyuney sifrut ve-hagut mi-

shilhey ha-meah ha-shmoneh-esreh ad yameynu (Jerusalem, 1989), 6. See also, however, my discussion of Lindau’s

use of Buffon, Büsching and Linnaeus in: Idelson-Shein, Difference of a Different Kind, 117-124. 5 For a discussion of maskilic translational norms, see: Zohar Shavit, “Literary Interference between German and

Jewish-Hebrew Children’s Literature During the Enlightenment: The Case of Campe,” Poetics Today (Children’s

Literature) 13, no. 1 (1992): 52–53; “From Friedländer’s Lesebuch to the Jewish Campe: The Beginning of Hebrew

Children’s Literature in Germany,” Leo Baeck Institute Yearbook 33 (1988): 402, 407, 410; Gideon Toury, “Hebrew

[Translation] Tradition,” in Routledge Encyclopedia of Translation Studies, ed. Mona Baker (New York, 1998), 443;

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Descriptive Translation Studies and Beyond (Amsterdam, 1995), 132–3; Yehudah Friedlander and Chaim Shoham,

Introduction to Mot Adam, by Friedrich Klopstock, trans. Ẓvi Ben-David (Prague, 1817), 7–8. 6 See, Kogman, Magaim beyn-tarbutiyim be-tekstim shel ha-haskalah al madaey ha-teva,” in Ha-haskalah li-

gvaneyhah: Iyunim ḥadashim be-toldot ha-haskalah u-sifrutah, ed. Shmuel Feiner and Israel Bartal (Jerusalem,

2005), 32–35. 7 Idelson-Shein, Difference of a Different Kind, 117-128.

8 Lindau, Reshit limudim, 74b.

9 Baruch Shenfeld, “Ha-adam,” Bikurey ha-itim (1825): 86.

10 Johann Gottfried Herder, “Letters for the Advancement of Humanity - tenth collection,” 1793-7. Repr. in

Philosophical Writings, trans. Michael N. Forster (Cambridge, 2002), 383; Johann Georg Zimmermann, An Essay

on National Pride (1758; repr. London, 1805), 20; Henri Grégoire, De la littérature des nègres (Paris, 1808), 28;

Samson Bloch, Sefer sheviley olam, 2 parts (1822–1828; repr. Warsaw, 1894), 7a; Moshe Mendelssohn-Frankfurt,

Meẓiat ha-areẓ ha-ḥadashah kolel kol ha-gevurot ve-ha-maasim asher naasu le-et mezo ha-areẓ ha-zot (Altona,

1807), 31, 34. On Brown, see: Sander Gilman, “The Figure of the Black in German Aesthetic Theory,” Eighteenth-

Century Studies 8, no. 4 (1975): 382. 11

Stanley Diamond, In Search of the Primitive (New Brunswick, 1974), 109-10. 12

Kogman, Dimuyey ha-yeda, 66-70. There is a certain degree of anachronism in using the term “polygenism” in the

context of late-eighteenth-century thought. In fact, the term was introduced only during the second half of the

nineteenth-century. However, since the term has become commonplace in eighteenth-century studies, it is used here

without quotation marks. 13

Buffon “Variétés dans l’espèce humaine,” 1748–1778, repr. in De l’homme (Paris, 1971), 303-304. See discussion

in: Martin, The White African Body: A Cultural and Literary Exploration (New-York, 2002), 41-43. 14

[Anon.], “Négres blancs,” 1765. In Encyclopédie, ou dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers..

Ed. Denis Diderot and Jean le Rond D’Alembert, 11:79. Repr. University of Chicago: ARTFL Encyclopédie Projet

(Winter 2008 Edition). The author cites also other widespread explanations for the phenomenon, such as the effects

of maternal imagination, or the possibility that the albinos are the product of an unnatural union between African

women and apes. For a discussion of these and similar theories, see: Julia V. Douthwaite, The Wild Girl, Natural

Man and the Monster: Dangerous Experiments in the Age of Enlightenment (Chicago, 2002), 207. 15

William Nicholson (ed.), The British Encyclopedia or Dictionary of Arts and Sciences, Vol. IV, (London, 1809),

[238]. 16

John Hawkesworth, An Account of the Voyages undertaken by the order of his present Majesty for making

Discoveries in the Southern Hemisphere (Dublin, 1775), 3:23. 17

Virey, “Négre,” in Nouveau Dictionnaire d'Histoire Naturelle, vol. 22 (Paris, 1818), 459 . 18

For a discussion of the importance of other anatomical traits besides skin colour in turn of the century scientific

discourse, see: Wheeler, Complexion of Race, 295. 19

Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks (1952. Repr. London, 1986), 18. 20

It should be noted that Ben Elijah’s source text was not Buffon’s original Histoire naturelle but rather a children’s

adaptation produced in 1778 by the Italian pedagogue Giovanni Ferry di San Constante. The above quotation is

taken from Ferry’s adaptation, see: Génie de M. de Buffon (Paris, 1778), 132-133. On Ben Elijah and his source text,

see: Idelson-Shein, “‘Their Eyes Shall Behold Strange Things’: Abraham Ben Elijah

of Vilna Encounters the Spirit of Mr. Buffon.” AJS Review 36, no. 2, (2012): 295-322. 21

[Abraham ben Elijah of Vilna], Gevulot areẓ (Berlin, 1801), 4b.