The Jewish Body

From a well-known doctor and anthropologist comes a history of the Jewish people from bris to burial. Konner takes the measure of the "Jewish body," stopping along the way to contemplate sex, circumcision, menstruation, and even those most elusive and controversial of microscopic markers--Jewish genes.

Melvin Konner, Ph.D., M.D., and the author of nine books, is a Samuel Candler Dobbs Professor of Anthropology at Emory University in Atlanta, where he teaches in the anthropology, human biology, and Jewish studies programs. He has written for The New York Times, The New York Times Magazine, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, Science, and The New England Journal of Medicine.

Preface • ix
Prologue • 3
 
1. God’s Body • 13
2. “The Fruitful Cut” • 20
3. Greeks and Jews • 35
4. Adam’s Rib? • 48
5. Dangerous Bodies • 61
6. God’s Beard • 71
7. “Hath Not a Jew Eyes?” • 81
8. Race and Destiny • 89
9. Surviving • 109
10. The Body Returns • 117
11. Tough Jews • 144
12. The Trowel and the Sword • 154
13. The Eye of the Beholder • 164
14. Bodily Fictions • 185
15. Jewish Power • 207
16. Deborah’s Daughters • 217
17. Jewish Genes? • 225
 
Epilogue • 244
For Further Reading • 257
Notes • 259
Acknowledgments • 271
Chronology • 274