This book began when I was researching my dissertation in the early 1990s. I came across a work on the history of social medicine in the ancient world by Alfred Nossig, a Polish Jewish intellectual who played a key role in founding the Jewish statistical movement in Berlin in the first years of the twentieth century. Nossig's book was fascinating, in large part because it contained ideas and arguments about Judaism and the Jews that were very different from anything I'd encountered before. I set aside the dissertation research for a while, worked through Nossig, and wrote an article on it. I imagined that I could then integrate that research into my dissertation; that, however, did not happen. Yet, having encountered Nossig's work, and then having examined some of the literature that he relied on, I was aware that there existed an entire counter-tradition in Europe that represented Jews and Judaism as vital and healthy, and that linked Jewry in numerous ways to civilization and progress rather than to barbarism and decline (the focus of my first book). The Healthy Jew grew out of this extended fascination with Nossig's book and the larger interpretive tradition he'd built upon.

Any book that takes a decade and a half to research and write owes its existence to a large number of people who make the research and writing possible. It's a great pleasure for me to thank those individuals and institutions for their assistance and support.