ABSTRACT
Throughout his numerous writings in the sphere of culture, in marked contradiction to his works in the sphere of physical anthropology, Boas never mentions the Jews. This discrepancy raises a number of questions. How is this connected to his aims in the spheres of cultural and physical anthropology? And how is this connected to his support of Jewish assimilation? The social sciences of the latter part of the nineteenth century attempted to defi ne the relations between cultures and peoples. Throughout his career, Franz Boas developed three independent but interconnected variables for the study of distinct anthropological groups: geography, race, and culture.1
