Are Jews smart?
Looking at Israel’s suicidal policies, the answer is not self-evident.
Yet, even those policies can be called smart if we recognize that they aim at normalizing Jews, making them assimilate into a typical nation-state, not a national state of Jews.
Learned ancient anti-Semites frequently taunt Jews for being useless to humanity. Compared to Egypt, Greece, or Rome, Jews brought nothing to the world. Most other nations did not benefit humanity, either, but at least they do not position themselves as proudly different. But even in antiquity, Jews were renowned for their commercial skills. In Alexandria, a highly developed and probably expensive city, Jews occupied the largest quarter. In Roman Europe, Jewish communities were so important that magistrates frequently donated to synagogues for political reasons; we know that from inscriptions.
Jewish input into the arts and sciences is a new and short-lived phenomenon. Only since the late eighteenth century have a significant number of Jews left their traces in the ocean of human knowledge. Whom have we given the world in the previous three thousand years? Spinoza, a second-tier philosopher, a handful of less famous baptized outcasts, and that’s it.
Besides our history of commerce, we have strong evidence that Jews were smart all along: the rabbinical literature.
Tens of thousands of bright minds invented and crunched the tiniest legal aspects of Judaism. Their intellectual activity could be called useless and even religiously misplaced, but by any measure it has been huge. From the age of three or five every Jewish male learns sacred texts. Most Jews learn to interpret them. The amount of memorization is staggering. Until their old age, Jews continue reading the holy books, studying commentaries, or at least reciting long prayers by heart. The synchronic environment is very conducive to intellectual development.
The evolutionary processes has always played a role, too, both natural and sexual selection. Intellectual achievements in rabbinical studies were rewarded with profitable marriage.
Smart Jews left more offspring than average, if not at birth than in terms of survival to adulthood.
Rabbinical families married into each other, producing the intellectual creme of society. It is from such an intellectual background that Jewish Nobel Prize winners have sprung. They could have made decent rabbis if they had properly applied their intellectual abilities, but they opted for secular professions—and succeeded in them.
A similar process can be seen in Japan and possibly in Korea, where an age-old prowess in arts has translated into the outstanding achievements in engineering.
That situation need not continue. The price for many geniuses is many stupid Jews. Jewish genius correlates significantly with obsessive-compulsive disorder, and in such people abnormal intellectual abilities are mostly manifested at a young age; long education and conscription diminish this creative window. Other nations compete with Jews for prominence: there are a hundred times more Indians and Chinese than Jews, so even if geniuses among those nations are a hundred times fewer than among Jews, the absolute number of Nobel Prize winners, for example, will be the same. Just as education spreads into Asia, Jews will be far outnumbered in prized intellectual positions. Not impossibly, competition may be looming even in Africa.
Just as other nations become educated, Jewish intellectual development is being devastated. Most people forgo the excellent rabbinical learning that taught memorizing and analytical skills to their grandfathers.
Atheistic education is no match for the rabbinical venue, or Jews wouldn’t be smarter than the people of Western nations. Atheistic schools differ critically from yeshivas in their educational approach. In schools, it is pass-and-forget; hardly any adult recalls anything from any school course. Knowledge gained this way is often forgotten hours after the exam. The amount of material memorized is meager: only the portion relevant for current exam has to be kept in the active memory, and everything else can safely be forgotten. Analytical skills are not taught at all: schoolchildren are not presented with anything resembling rabbinical discourses and legal problems. Atheistic pupils do not argue lemmas based on a variety of approaches which range from metaphor to analogy to lexicology to formal logic.
Competition has faded. No longer do Jews need to intellectually superior to confront quotas in universities and hostility in the workplace. They are welcome everywhere, even the silly of them, and the government takes care of the outright stupid.
Natural selection has been abandoned. In a social welfare state, worthless spongers often produce the largest families. Excellent healthcare allows them to leave more offspring than the intellectually capable and busy Jews.
Sexual selection has taken odd turns. Polls show that by far most Israeli atheists would prefer that their daughter marry a Christian rather than a rabbinical scholar. Pretty looks are more important marriage qualities than intellect. Romance outweighs rational choice.
Before the rabbis, Jews were an insignificant Middle Eastern nation. In Israel, Jews are heading toward a similar outcome.
Looking at Israel’s suicidal policies, the answer is not self-evident.
Yet, even those policies can be called smart if we recognize that they aim at normalizing Jews, making them assimilate into a typical nation-state, not a national state of Jews.
Learned ancient anti-Semites frequently taunt Jews for being useless to humanity. Compared to Egypt, Greece, or Rome, Jews brought nothing to the world. Most other nations did not benefit humanity, either, but at least they do not position themselves as proudly different. But even in antiquity, Jews were renowned for their commercial skills. In Alexandria, a highly developed and probably expensive city, Jews occupied the largest quarter. In Roman Europe, Jewish communities were so important that magistrates frequently donated to synagogues for political reasons; we know that from inscriptions.
Jewish input into the arts and sciences is a new and short-lived phenomenon. Only since the late eighteenth century have a significant number of Jews left their traces in the ocean of human knowledge. Whom have we given the world in the previous three thousand years? Spinoza, a second-tier philosopher, a handful of less famous baptized outcasts, and that’s it.
Besides our history of commerce, we have strong evidence that Jews were smart all along: the rabbinical literature.
Tens of thousands of bright minds invented and crunched the tiniest legal aspects of Judaism. Their intellectual activity could be called useless and even religiously misplaced, but by any measure it has been huge. From the age of three or five every Jewish male learns sacred texts. Most Jews learn to interpret them. The amount of memorization is staggering. Until their old age, Jews continue reading the holy books, studying commentaries, or at least reciting long prayers by heart. The synchronic environment is very conducive to intellectual development.
The evolutionary processes has always played a role, too, both natural and sexual selection. Intellectual achievements in rabbinical studies were rewarded with profitable marriage.
Smart Jews left more offspring than average, if not at birth than in terms of survival to adulthood.
Rabbinical families married into each other, producing the intellectual creme of society. It is from such an intellectual background that Jewish Nobel Prize winners have sprung. They could have made decent rabbis if they had properly applied their intellectual abilities, but they opted for secular professions—and succeeded in them.
A similar process can be seen in Japan and possibly in Korea, where an age-old prowess in arts has translated into the outstanding achievements in engineering.
That situation need not continue. The price for many geniuses is many stupid Jews. Jewish genius correlates significantly with obsessive-compulsive disorder, and in such people abnormal intellectual abilities are mostly manifested at a young age; long education and conscription diminish this creative window. Other nations compete with Jews for prominence: there are a hundred times more Indians and Chinese than Jews, so even if geniuses among those nations are a hundred times fewer than among Jews, the absolute number of Nobel Prize winners, for example, will be the same. Just as education spreads into Asia, Jews will be far outnumbered in prized intellectual positions. Not impossibly, competition may be looming even in Africa.
Just as other nations become educated, Jewish intellectual development is being devastated. Most people forgo the excellent rabbinical learning that taught memorizing and analytical skills to their grandfathers.
Atheistic education is no match for the rabbinical venue, or Jews wouldn’t be smarter than the people of Western nations. Atheistic schools differ critically from yeshivas in their educational approach. In schools, it is pass-and-forget; hardly any adult recalls anything from any school course. Knowledge gained this way is often forgotten hours after the exam. The amount of material memorized is meager: only the portion relevant for current exam has to be kept in the active memory, and everything else can safely be forgotten. Analytical skills are not taught at all: schoolchildren are not presented with anything resembling rabbinical discourses and legal problems. Atheistic pupils do not argue lemmas based on a variety of approaches which range from metaphor to analogy to lexicology to formal logic.
Competition has faded. No longer do Jews need to intellectually superior to confront quotas in universities and hostility in the workplace. They are welcome everywhere, even the silly of them, and the government takes care of the outright stupid.
Natural selection has been abandoned. In a social welfare state, worthless spongers often produce the largest families. Excellent healthcare allows them to leave more offspring than the intellectually capable and busy Jews.
Sexual selection has taken odd turns. Polls show that by far most Israeli atheists would prefer that their daughter marry a Christian rather than a rabbinical scholar. Pretty looks are more important marriage qualities than intellect. Romance outweighs rational choice.
Before the rabbis, Jews were an insignificant Middle Eastern nation. In Israel, Jews are heading toward a similar outcome.
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