JEWISH SOCIAL SCIENCE AND THE ANALYSIS OF JEWISH STATISTICS IN THE EARLY TWENTIETH CENTURY

Abstract

The late nineteenth century saw the multiplication of statistical studies on Jewish populations. This literature is now known as “Jewish Statistics” or “Jewish Social Science” (JSS). This article focuses on the articles published inZeitschrift für Demographie und Statistik der Juden (Journal for Demography and Statistics of the Jews, ZDSJ). TheZDSJwas the main journal in JSS and appeared from 1905 until 1931.Existing scholarship on JSS has either focused on the influence of Zionism (Hart 2000) or eugenics and race theory (Efron 1994). This article proposes to relate JSS to the history of economics and statistics. As is suggested by the intellectual profile of the main contributors to theZDSJ, we argue that JSS was a by-product of the German historical school in economics. Though JSS was intended for a mostly Jewish audience, its organization and methods were clearly inspired by those of German economists.