RACE AND ANTI-SEMITISM Dilemmas of Jewish Difference: Reflections on Contemporary Research into Jewish Origins and Types from an Anglo-Jewish Historical Perspective GAVIN SCHAFFER This article interrogates scientific theories concerning Jewish origins and racial difference, setting contemporary research on these contentious subjects in the context of Anglo-Jewish scholarship from the inter-war period. In particular, it explores academic discussion and debate about how to respond to Nazism, focusing on conflict between two senior British scholars of Jews, Charles Singer (1876–1960) and Redcliffe Salaman (1874–1955), who argued about the extent and implications of Jewish/non-Jewish racial difference. These inter-war debates then provide the context for an analysis of the proliferation of contemporary research into Jewish origins and difference. Ultimately, it contends that research of this nature, like its historical antecedents, remains inextricably tied to ideological considerations, and that personal beliefs continue to render the study of the Jewish past and present as contentious as it was in the inter-war period. In 2009, London’s Jews’ Free School (JFS) found itself at the centre of national controversy over its admissions policy. A year before, on the recommendation of Britain’s Chief Rabbi, Jonathon Sacks, the school had declined entry to a pupil whose mother was a non-Orthodox convert to Judaism. 1 Although the woman’s conversion had been endorsed by comparable Israeli rabbinic authorities, it was deemed insufficiently rigorous according to the strictures of the Chief Rabbi’s rabbinic court in London, the Beth Din. Consequently, the woman’s child was considered non-Jewish according to the principle of matrilineal descendency which sits at the core of Orthodox Jewry’s concept of religious inheritance, and JFS refused admission. 2 The family responded with a legal challenge, arguing that the school’s decision was based on a perception of (the mother’s) ethnicity in breach of the 1976 Race Relations Act. 3 After a series of rulings, Electronic Offprint Jewish Culture and History, Vol.12, No.1&2 (Summer/Autumn 2010), pp.75–94 PUBLISHED BY VALLENTINE MITCHELL, LONDON Copyright © 2010 Vallentine Mitchell