'Scientific monstrosity' yet 'occasionally convenient': Cecil Roth and the idea of race

Abstract

ABSTRACT Cecil Roth was one of the leading British historians of Jewry of the twentieth century. During the 1930s he became directly involved in the work of communal defence and, in particular, in attempts to counter Nazi racist propaganda. Publications such as the Jewish Contribution to Civilisation directly engaged with the Nazis' accusation that Jews were culturally degenerate, often by claiming baptised Jews as part of the positive cultural legacy of Jewishness. Lawson's article is both an exposition and a critique of Roth's search for the 'Jewish genius', embodied by such historical characters as Baruch Spinoza, Benjamin Disraeli and even Karl Marx. It demonstrates that Roth's attempt to expose biological racism as a 'scientific monstrosity' actually involved his own knowing adoption and thus acceptance of the very category of 'race' that he sought to expose as fallacious. Ultimately Roth even developed a new racial construct, the 'Anglo-Jewish race', for the purposes of strengthening Jewish resolve and identity in England. That even those involved directly in the effort to undermine racism in the public sphere could not entirely escape its basic paradigm suggests the deep roots of race thinking in Britain in the first half of the twentieth century.