It’s not about having higher I.Q.s.
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An eminent Lithuanian rabbi is annoyed that his yeshiva students devote their lunch breaks to playing soccer instead of discussing Torah. The students, intent on convincing their rav of the game’s beauty, invite him to watch a professional match. At halftime, they ask what he thinks.
“I have solved your problem,” the rabbi says.
“How?”
“Give one ball to each side, and they will have nothing to fight over.”
I have this (apocryphal) anecdote from Norman Lebrecht’s new book, “Genius & Anxiety,” an erudite and delightful study of the intellectual achievements and nerve-wracked lives of Jewish thinkers, artists, and entrepreneurs between 1847 and 1947. Sarah Bernhardt and Franz Kafka; Albert Einstein and Rosalind Franklin; Benjamin Disraeli and (sigh) Karl Marx — how is it that a people who never amounted even to one-third of 1 percent of the world’s population contributed so seminally to so many of its most pathbreaking ideas and innovations?
The common answer is that Jews are, or tend to be, smart. When it comes to Ashkenazi Jews, it’s true. “Ashkenazi Jews have the highest average I.Q. of any ethnic group for which there are reliable data,” noted one 2005 paper. “During the 20th century, they made up about 3 percent of the U.S. population but won 27 percent of the U.S. Nobel science prizes and 25 percent of the ACM Turing awards. They account for more than half of world chess champions.”
But the “Jews are smart” explanation obscures more than it illuminates. Aside from the perennial nature-or-nurture question of why so many Ashkenazi Jews have higher I.Q.s, there is the more difficult question of why that intelligence was so often matched by such bracing originality and high-minded purpose. One can apply a prodigious intellect in the service of prosaic things — formulating a war plan, for instance, or constructing a ship. One can also apply brilliance in the service of a mistake or a crime, like managing a planned economy or robbing a bank.
But as the story of the Lithuanian rabbi suggests, Jewish genius operates differently. It is prone to question the premise and rethink the concept; to ask why (or why not?) as often as how; to see the absurd in the mundane and the sublime in the absurd. Ashkenazi Jews might have a marginal advantage over their gentile peers when it comes to thinking better. Where their advantage more often lies is in thinking different.
Where do these habits of mind come from?
There is a religious tradition that, unlike some others, asks the believer not only to observe and obey but also to discuss and disagree. There is the never-quite-comfortable status of Jews in places where they are the minority — intimately familiar with the customs of the country while maintaining a critical distance from them. There is a moral belief, “incarnate in the Jewish people” according to Einstein, that “the life of the individual only has value [insofar] as it aids in making the life of every living thing nobler and more beautiful.”
And there is the understanding, born of repeated exile, that everything that seems solid and valuable is ultimately perishable, while everything that is intangible — knowledge most of all — is potentially everlasting.
“We had been well off, but that was all we got out,” the late financier Felix Rohatyn recalled of his narrow escape, with a few hidden gold coins, from the Nazis as a child in World War II. “Ever since, I’ve had the feeling that the only permanent wealth is what you carry around in your head.” If the greatest Jewish minds seem to have no walls, it may be because, for Jews, the walls have so often come tumbling down.
These explanations for Jewish brilliance aren’t necessarily definitive. Nor are they exclusive to the Jews.
At its best, the American university can still be a place of relentless intellectual challenge rather than ideological conformity and social groupthink. At its best, the United States can still be the country that respects, and sometimes rewards, all manner of heresies that outrage polite society and contradict established belief. At its best, the West can honor the principle of racial, religious and ethnic pluralism not as a grudging accommodation to strangers but as an affirmation of its own diverse identity. In that sense, what makes Jews special is that they aren’t. They are representational.
The West, however, is not at its best. It’s no surprise that Jew hatred has made a comeback, albeit under new guises. Anti-Zionism has taken the place of anti-Semitism as a political program directed against Jews. Globalists have taken the place of rootless cosmopolitans as the shadowy agents of economic iniquity. Jews have been murdered by white nationalists and black “Hebrews.” Hate crimes against Orthodox Jews have become an almost daily fact of life in New York City.
Jews of the late 19th century would have been familiar with the hatreds. Jews of the early 21st century should recognize where they could lead. What’s not secret about Jewish genius is that it’s a terribly fragile flower.
Olympic medals
I mean gimme a break. I read articles like this every day. No other group can boast of achievements like this. “Who is the Israeli who won 10 gold medals.” https://blog.nli.org.il/en/agnes-keleti/?fbclid=IwAR3nz7DKTgNyOS9u2aKJgeWMzsSPcaQb0e7q-gh2ANtR_QZxbzSDAxjvx6E#.XhdnS22FFUl.twitter
Sounds like a lot of bull to me. We are obviously a racial group. We have everything to be proud of. And every reason to believe we will be targeted on racial grounds. We need the same protections as other endangered racial groups.
Jewish high IQ is overstated.. Using a Bell curve there is a 5-10% in the genius level 60% in the average and the rest quite stupid. for a 1000 years, Jews didn’t intermarry with gentiles and many first-cousin marriages, meaning in a small gene pool it can be considered inbreeding, Jewish scholars were considered prime picks and the top of the top were selected from birth to marry into most scholarly families (selective mating and breeding). Negative aspects are genetic Jewish diseases.. While most Ashkenazi males based on DNA have ME origins most Females not and again based on DNA studies most Jewish females have Gentile origins. Spanish Jewry the very opposite most have ME origins both male and female. During the crusades, there was a bottleneck and Ashkenazi Jews were reduced to around only 25K A very small gene pool.
Jewish DNA – Genetic Research and The Origins of the Jewish People
Jewish DNA – The Kohanim Gene and the Lost Tribes of Israel
@ Edgar G.: I doubt it. I believe that nurture, not nature, is what is most impostant in determining character. I don’t exclude the possibility that Nature and genetics could be a factor. So far, scientists have not been able to identify specific genes or gnomes that govern human intelligence or behavior. Perhaps some day that will change and we will know more.
Over the years, I have a number of people that I think were intelligent, but not great achievers–including myself!
@ Edgar G.: Thanks, Edgar. And by the way, happy “Gregorian” New Year to you and your family.
Yes, I was just speculating about Moshe DeLeon’s motives for claiming that the ancient sage Shimon Bar Yochai was the author of his book. But I don’t know what else we can do, since Moshe has been dead for seven hundred years, and we have no way of getting into his head. So I offered up several possible “scenarios,” not necessarily consistent with each other, to explain his behavior.
I don’t know whether or not he ever vigorously defended his claim that Shimon Bar-Yochai wrote the Zohar, and wrote letters to people trying to prove this. That might shed some light on his motivations. My gut feeling is that he only claimed to have “found” a manuscript written by Bar-Yochai (why should anyone believe that a manuscript written in Palestine 1,000 years ago would turn up in Spain?) to stir up interest in the work, not because he expected or even wanted people to believe that Bar-Yochai, and not himself, was the author. Writers are usually vain about their work and eager to take credit for it, so as to receive recognition and acclaim. But I admit that I am just speculating and could be wrong.
@ Adam Dalgliesh:
Yes I know about Nachmanides and Pablo Christiani. I ‘ve read much about the public “disputations”…As far as I recall, the Jews never lost one, although often “declared” defeated…..The wonderful triumph of Christianity over Judaism.
You seem to be retreating little by little, from your original position that Moshe was claiming to be in mystical, spiritual contact with Bar Yochai (at least I read it this way) ….whatever his reason for claiming it. Your mention of the plentiful anachronistic authorships came later. Of course I knew all about this “custom” both in Jewish and Christian literature. And you are only speculating.. Nothing to get us into an argument about, just an enjoyable clarification of different approachs.
I admire the way you fight for your positions, in the last several months. You were often too deferential. I like this mind-set much better. Not that it’s any business of mine, but I thought I’d like to tell you..
The jist of what I am arguing is that the Zohar is a serious philosophical and theological work that should be respected and studied as such. The fact that the author used the literary convention of attributing his work to an ancient sage rather than taking credit for it himself (at least not openly) is not a reason to dismiss the Zohar as a mere fake or fraud.
@ Edgar G.:
Yet another reason why DeLeon attributed his work to an ancient Jewish sage was to avoid arrest and persecution. In the thirteenth century, one of the Popes had decreed that all of the post-Biblical writings, including the Talmud, were heretical, and ordered them burned. In Spain, there had been a forced disputation between Nachmanides and a Jewish renegade who called himself Pablo Christiani on the merits of the two faiths. The King of Castille declared Nachmanides to be the winner, and even awrded him a monetary prize. But the enraged Church authorities forced the king to banish Nachmanides from the realm. He fled to the land of Israel, where he founded a shul and spent his last years.
All this occurred only a few years before the Zohar was written and then published in manuscript. DeLeon probably feared the church would declare him to be a dangerous “heretic” and impose on him the same fate as Nachmanides. Attributing his book to an ancient worthy may have been an attempt by DeLeon to shield himself from persecution.
@ Adam Dallgiesh:
Are not “character traits” (which is merely a semantic description/explanation..) governed to a very large extent by our genetic makeup…??
@ Edgar G.:Edgar, very few scholars believe that the author of the Zohar, Moses de Leon, was a Shabtai Zevi type. Zevi left behind no writings. The Zohar is a very long, complex and coherent treatise. Moses deLeon never claimed to be the Messiah.
In the long posts that were deleted, I explained that both the Jewish scriptures, the Christian “apocrypha,” the Christian New Testament scriptures and the “pseudepigrapha” (the Apocrapha and Pseudepigrapha are books written by Jews in the so-called “intertestimental” period between the Jewish and Christian New Testament scriptures) all contain books that are attributed to individuals who were actually long deceased when these books were written, if they had ever existed at all. The authors claimed to be these deceased or possibly mythical individuals partly to give their writings authority in the minds of their readers, but also perhaps to conceal their identities to avoid arrest for “heresy” or “sedition.” Possibly DeLeon was influenced by this “tradition” when he attributed his book to Shimon Bar Yochai. Bar Yochai is described in the Talmud as a mystical seer with secret knowledge of heavenly matters revealed to him directly by Hashem. But he left behind no writings, and the Talmud, doesn’t present much detail about his doctrines.
My theory of the case is that DeLeon was writing “in the name of” Bar Yochai in order to claim that he had mystical insights into the nature of the universe similar to those that Shimon was said to have possessed, and that therefore his book should have authority in the minds of his readers. On the one hand DeLeon was claiming to be a great sage himself, while at the same time appearing to be modest, only a disciple and follower of a long deceased seer.
If he really wanted to conceal his authorship and not receive credit for the book, he could have worked much harder at it than he did.
@ Adam Dalgliesh:
My understanding of speaking or writing “in the name of”… is a bit different from yours. My firmly held (until now) understanding was, that when a sage said or wrote something “in the name of “,,,, he had been taught by him whose opinions he was quoting, or a student of his, or, at the very least, the known beliefs and traditions of the school founded by the original, whose dictums were revered as “Torah”,
I do not believe that 12 centuries could have passed in this case, although the renowned Babylonian Academies that produced the most accepted Talmud, lasted a whopping 3-400 years, This mystical instinct that comes on people, reminds me always of that mashuggena.. Shabtai Tzvi..(and his criminal successors,-like Jacob Frank- who still has followers today) .who, as you know declared revelations for himself, but when threatened , became converted to Islam,-no problem, and died in Istanbul at about 50. He caused the deaths of hundreds of thousands of desperate-to-believe, adherents..
{{The Moshiach concept was concocted by revered ancient figures, who were so desperate to believe that G-G Himself would not abandon His People….but Lift Them Up … “with a strong Hand and an Outstretched Arm”….,to triumph over their enemies…(this itself shows the deplorable, suffering condition of the People then)… but morphed over time, into just a mental disorder, well known medically today, but then supposedly a message from G-D….(But it also lent itself to fakery, and gypsy-style mysticism)…. with no basis of fact….pure wishful thinking in it’s most see-through, gaseous way.. Has caused the deaths of untold numbers of innocent , deluded Jews, grasping at straws.}}
@ Edgar G.: The list of what I was trying to write when my posts disappeared was the Moses De Leon was merely trying to invoke the name of Shimon Bar Yochai as the author of the Zohar, not because he didn’t want people to know he was the author, but because he was claiming to be writing in the spirit of Bar-Yochai, who is described in the Talmud as a mystic to whom God had revealed secret knowledge about his own essence and the spiritual realms.
He was thus writing ‘in the name of” Bar Yochai,” as the Talmudic rabbis often said they were doing in order to say they were speaking in the spirit of the deceased rabbinic sages who had been their teachers and mentors.
I don’t think that DeLeon was a deliberately deceitful person or a “plagiarist.”
@ Edgar G.: I have repeatedly tried to post detailed answers to this post, Edgar, but each time I have tried, my posts have mysteriously disappeared before I could finish them. Some sort of mysterious supernatural intervention? Who knows.
@ Robert_k:
There are about 10-12 centuries separating Bar Yochai and De Leon, therefore I woold take his assertion of Bar Yochai’s influence with a large spoon of salt. And consider, the enormous upheavals in Jewish life during all of this lengthy period. Communities massacred, or forced to immediately migrate to more friendly territories and much more, shedding belongings all the way… you know what I am talking about if you know anything about our history
High expectations of parents and teachers greatly help students with the ability to succeed in school. This traditional of Jews but NOT only Jews.
High intelligent people have the ability to take a complex situation or subject and simplify it. Those with lower intelligence do the opposite.
Those with high intelligence, high energy and persistence are much more likely to be successful.
Brett Stevens has embarrassed himself with this half-sassed written article. Then it is not the first time he has done this.
@ Edgar G.: My own view is that most people in this world who achieve great things, whether Jews or Gentiles. are not geniuses, and I even have some doubts as to whether the concept of “genius” in meaningful at all. Most great achievers, in my view, get to where they are in life through a mixture of a solid education,ambition, persistence, refusal to be deterred by initial failures, and hard work, not by any extraordinary, out- of- the -nomal range intellect. Some may even have only average genetically-inherited intelligence. What sets them apart from equally intelligent people are these character traits, not extraordinary or unusual brilliance.
We Jews are disproportionately represented among the rich, the famous, the high achievers in all fields, not because we are “genetically” more intelligent than Gentiles, but because we are more likely to possess these exceptional character traits than most Gentiles. And we possess these character traits mainly because they are instilled in us by our parents from our earliest chidhood, and in some instances because we send our children to elite schools which also instill these values.
@ Edgar G.:
@ Robert_k: You are right, Edgar and Robert K. I looked the matter up, and most scholars who are not strictly Orthodox agree that Moses deLeon is the probable author.
Some scholars think, however, that he may have drawn on older oral traditions and even “plaigiarized” from earlier rabbinic authorities, so that the doctrines he proclaimed may not have been entirely his own, but rather reflected the thinking of an already formed, although undocumented, kabbalist school of Spanish Jews, of which he was a member.
Most ultra-Orthodox and Hasidic Jews accept at face value that the book was authored by Shomon Bar-Yohai in the second century AD, as De Leon always claimed.
Some Modern Orhtodox scholars have opined that whoever wrote it, it is a valid source of kabbalistic wisdom.
The Zohar?s was claimed by Moses Deleon to have been authored by the Mishnaic Mystic Sage Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai and discovered by him but there are some Jews and prominent Rabbinic authorities who claim that it is a forgery such as Rabbi Yaakov Emden and the Dor Dea faction of Yemenite Jews. They point to such things as gross historical anachronisms in the work and words of late or contemporary origin in the Zohar work. But it seems that the majority of the mainstream religious Jews accept Moses De Leon’s claim at face value.
@ Adam Dalgliesh:
It was I think Moshe de Leon who wrote the Zohar. although it’s a bit dim in my memory and I could be wrong. I’ m not saying that Marchman is a Jew but questioning if he is… and if yes, then he’s one of the not -very-bright ones….of whom there are plenty, believe me. Yet in my single school class in our Dublin Jewish Elementary school, out of maybe a class of say from 25-30-35 or so (can’t remember but likely rather fewer) , I’d bet that nearly 20 made big names for themselves, at least 5-6 internationally that I actually know of, and the others nationally.
Yes I accept about Maimonides and Nachmanides and the very few others. Maybe a hundred altogether. Or even many less than that. I’m just guessing. We know about Maimonides and Co. because our histories always mention him, but VERY FEW other, mainly those you’ve named. But there were at least hundreds of thousands of Sephardim and MIzrachim… What geniuses came from them…? Who knows. Likely some, but none I’ve heard of other than those you mentioned and a few more.
Oh yes, Baruch Spinoza came from a Sephardi family I seem to recall. As did nearly all the Jews living in the Low Lands. They must have been the ones who did most of the enormously rich Flanders trade with England for many years before Spinoza, and were the “pioneers” who returned secretly, and stealthily to England during the time of Oliver Cromwell…. although, to this very day, they have never had official permission to return. So THAT must have taken SOME genius or three to plan , arrange and manage all that.
Getting back to the Sephardim and MIzrachim living in backward countries, thinking about it, it would have required a certain amount of (shall we call it) genius to have lived in those sordid, deadly conditions and stayed alive–though many didn’t.
*** I thought that Benjamin of Tudela was a traveller who visited many countries, and wrote about them….Does that take genius..I don’t know…?. Was Marco Polo a genius??. Or Bartoleme De Las Casas…? I just thought of anther traveler… Eldad HaDani, whom I read abut years and years ago as a kid.***
NYT cuts dubious study from op-ed seemingly arguing Jewish genetic superiority
The vast majority of US Jews are Democrats — not too bright. Schumer, Schiff, Soros (full-blooded Jewish)… Certainly outstanding people, one and all; but with many screws loose.
Karl Marx had idiotic ideas; but Mao Tse Tung, the “super-intelligent”) Chinaman, bit Marx’s hook, line & sinker… as if to prove that the Jews can be really stupid, but the Chinese can be more stupid. Millions of Chinese people died because of Mao.
Frankly, nobody on earth is especilaly brilliant. God takes care of all of us, in spite of ourselves.
Chag sameach Hanukkah.
@ Edgar G.: Edgar, many of Stephens’ critics have views far worse than his. Thanks for the tip about Marchman.
In spite of the oppression they were subject to, I believe that there were many Sephardi and Mizrachi Jews who had solid accomplishments. After all, Maimonides, Nachmanides, Benjamin of Tudela, the probable author of the Zohar (can’t remember his name) were all Sephardim.
@ Adam Dalgliesh:
Tim Marchman (is he too, a Jew, -not bright) doesn’t know what hes talking about. The explanation is glaringly obvious The Sephardi and Mizrachi Jews were living in very backward, 3rd world countries all through the centuries, ahd were barely tolerated, and treated with absolutely NO respect in any way, degraded and despised.
(Of course there were small pockets of Jews who made themselves needed, as craftsmen, tailors, jewelers etc)..
Where literacy itself was a scarce commodity….. Places where scribes, did most of the writing… until the modern era when education became standard almost everywhere. But even this took very many years…before a flush toilet was recognised as being not a water supply, but for other purposes. .
Some of these individuals cited by Stephens as geniuses have questionable credentials. Karl Marx’s economic forecasts were all proven to be wrong, as capitalism thrived and did not collapse as he predicted. His ideas were all derived from other people. His belief in a “dialectic” at work in history was derived from Hegel; his belief that there were collective rights, but not individual rights, was derived from the “Young Hegelians.” His antisemitism was derived mainly from Proudhon. His economic and political theories were derived from the English philosophers James Harrington, John Locke, William Godwin, and David Riccardo. He was a synthesizer, not an original thinker. His theories were all wrong, both factually and ethically; and they have inflicted enormous harm on humanity, even in countries extremely remote geographically and culturally from his own, such as China and North Korea.
“Genius” Freud claimed that women suffered from “penis envy,” that the Jews killed Moses (even the Christian antsemites never claimed that) and that General Ulysses S. Grant and numerous other U.S. high government officials were implicated in the murder of Abraham Lincoln–but later repressed the memory of their complicity. He organized a group of his fellow psychoanalysts into a secret society–in effect, a cult–and required them to avoid any contact with those psychanalysts who disagreed with him on some theoretical points. He wrote to a fellow psychoanalyst that he considered himself not a man of science or medicine but a “conquistador,” referring to the Spanish plunderers and rapists of the New World. Not a genius, but a crackpot.
Even Einstein’s genius has been questioned by some biographers. These writers claim that Einstein derived most of his theories, including his theories of relativity, from his first wife, who was a Serb, not a Jew. He treated her abominably, divorced her and never showed her an ounce of gratitude. As child, he did badly in school. His grades only improved when his parents demanded that he buckle down and apply himself to his studies. A typical overcompensating overachiever.
@ Sebastien Zorn:
Similarity between Chinese and Jews may be because of both being descended from ancient civilizations and cultures, respect for elders, family closeness, focus on education, and practice of traditions. As a Canadian expat living in China for more than 13 years I have been witness to it.
@ Sebastien Zorn: Good point, Sebastien.
In the U.S, I think Asians are in the top tier academically, especially Koreans and Chinese. Certainly true in classical music, internationally, now, whereas a generation ago it was Jews.
I don’t believe that Jews possess any special “genius.” Most Jewish achievement is a result of overcompensation by individuals whose parents told them it was their duty to do well at school, and go on to be successful in a business or profession. And so they dutifully fulfilled their parents’ wishes and became ambitious upwardly mobile strivers.
Theodore Herzl encountered many Jews of this sort with impressive credentials and professional status who were not especially bright. He refered to this phenomenon as our “overproduction of average minds.” He attributed the fact that so few of these Jewish professionals and executives showed any interest in Zionism to this phenomenon.
Jews often acquire impressive skill sets and do well for themselves as individuals. But when it comes to grasping the collective interest of Jews as a people, very few Jews show even elementary common sense, much less genius. However much we may wish to deny it, most, although not all, obeyed Nazi orders to move to Nazi-established ghettoes, and then went like sheep onto the trains that took them to the gas chambers.
Israeli Jews today appease their enemies, while carrying on futile, debilitating vendettas with each other. Here too, they show no sign of genius.
Ambition, persistence and an enterprising spirit is one thing; genius, or even above-average intelligence is another.
i disagree. He’s a schmuck not a putz.
…and yet this putz is still willing to accept a check from the New York Times.