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Full text of "The Chosen People
"
See other formats
THE CHOSEN PEOPLE
A Study of Jewish Intelligence
and Achievement
Richard Lynn
Advance Praise for The Chosen People
“Even as we attain greater and greater insights into the tangled web of
‘nature’ and ‘nurture,’ society stubbornly refuses to concede humankind’s
conformity as an animal species to the ongoing process of evolution. It
instead imposes a mythological worldview almost entirely divorced from
science: indeed, we see no contradiction in celebrating cultural diversity
while simultaneously suppressing even a mention of genetic variance.
“Undaunted, Richard Lynn has with The Chosen People accomplished
a yeoman’s task in summing up work done thus far on Jewish intelligence.
Given the disparate nature of the many studies that he cites, therelationship
of intelligence to IQ is often problematic, and intelligence itself is but
one piece in a complex mosaic, but this courageous and dispassionate
book provides a platform for the study of a topic that is of considerable
importance on the scientific plane, and—for the sophisticated reader—of
even greater importance in the world of politics.”
John Glad, author of Jewish Eugenics
“In The Chosen People, Professor Lynn has shown once again his
talent for combining exhaustive research with daring scholarship. He is
also an engaging writer, which is a quality in short supply among those
who do detailed statistical work. Like his earlier books, this monograph
should be read by anyone who is interested in the relation between
innate intelligence and professional and social achievements. We ignore
this historically significant subject at our peril and at the cost of future
generations.”
Paul E. Gottfried, Elizabethtown College
“Professor Richard Lynn’s work addresses dispassionately and
objectively the question of why Jews have been so remarkably successful
as intellectuals and in professional and managerial life. Using a wealth of
statistics and commentary from many different countries and societies,
he demonstrates their success over and over again. Because of the odious
uses to which the Nazis and their ilk put eugenically-based arguments,
Jews and others have often been reluctant to engage in debating this
question. Professor Lynn shows that this question ought to be addressed,
and that it can be addressed objectively by philo-semites favourable to
the Jews as well as by anti-semites who are hostile to them.”
William D. Rubinstein, University of Aberystwyth
The Chosen
People
A Study of Jewish Intelligence
and Achievement
Richard Lynn
WSP
Washington Summit Publishers
A National Policy Institute Book
2011
© 2011 by Richard Lynn. All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted
in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other
electronic or mechanical methods, or by any information storage and
retrieval system, without prior written permission from the publisher, except
for brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other non-
commercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, write
to the publisher at the address below.
Washington Summit Publishers
P. O. Box 1676
Whitefish, MT 59937
email: info@WashSummit.com
web: www.WashSummit.com
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data:
Lynn, Richard, 1930—
The chosen people: a study of Jewish intelligence and achievement/
Richard Lynn.—1st ed.
p.cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-59368-036-7
I. 1. Jewish history 2. Human genetics 3. Human evolution I. Title.
2011932717
Printed in the United States of America
10987654321
To Joyce ,
Ho tante cose che ti voglio dire
O una sola,
Ma grande come il mare,
Come il mare profonda ed infinita...
Sei il mio amore e tutta la mia vita.
Mimi, La Bohème
Acknowledgements
Many thanks to Louis Andrews and Richard Spencer (and his
colleagues) for their expert editing; to all my Jewish friends for
their comments and input; and to my wife, Joyce, for allowing me to
disappear to my study to work on the book.
Richard Lynn
Bodrum, Turkey, 2011
Contents
Introduction
The Four Jewish Peoples
Australia
Austria and Hungary
Benelux
Britain
Canada
Denmark
France
. Germany
. Israel
. Italy
13. Latin America
14. Poland, Lithuania, and Latvia
15. Russia
16. South Africa
17. Switzerland
18. The Balkans
19. United States
20.Theories of Jewish Intelligence
21. Conclusions
References
Index
Biographical information
kvenaunpopn
Hr
Dr
111
117
131
149
181
191
203
213
237
245
253
271
315
341
361
389
407
CHAPTER 1
Introduction
1. Jewish Intelligence
2. Jewish Achievement in Historical Times
3. Jewish Achievements in Different Domains
4. Theories of Jewish Success
5. Definition of Intelligence
Fe the early 19th century, the Jews have been a remarkably successful
people. Up to this time, Jews were discriminated against throughout
virtually the whole of Europe, and their opportunities for achievement were
severely limited. Except in the Balkans, they were not permitted to attend
universities; they thus could not acquire the qualifications to practice as
physicians and lawyers nor the education and skills required for success
in science and mathematics. Most Jews in Eastern, Central, and Northern
Europe spoke Yiddish, so they could not achieve much in philosophy and
literature in a language that Gentile Europeans could understand.
In the first decade of the 19th century, the Jews were emancipated
in France, and then throughout much of Europe, by Napoleon; during
the course of the century, Jews were further emancipated in Britain,
Russia, and Poland. Freed from the former restrictions, from the
middle decades of the century on, Jews began to do conspicuously
2 THE CHOSEN PEOPLE
well in banking, commerce, industry, the professions, science, and the
arts throughout Europe.
In the late 19th century, the great majority of Jews lived in the Russian
Empire that included the Baltic States and the eastern half of present day
Poland. They suffered severe pogroms from 1881 onward, and most of
them immigrated to the countries of Central and Western Europe, the
United States, and elsewhere in the Western world. They arrived as
penniless refugees unable to speak the languages of their new countries;
they were the “huddled masses” from the most backward region of
Europe. Yet by the middle decades of the 20th century, the children
and grandchildren of these immigrants were doing far better than their
Gentile hosts on all indices of socioeconomic status and earnings and
outperforming them by several orders of magnitude in obtaining elite
academic distinctions for intellectual achievement.
In numerous countries throughout the world, Jews have become
massively overrepresented in the professions, the universities, among
business leaders, and the very rich. At the highest levels of intellectual
achievement, Jews have won 27 percent of the A. M. Turing Awards that
have been given annually from 1966 to 2009 for contributions of lasting
and major technical importance to computer science. Jews have been
about half of the world’s chess grandmasters and champions: between
1851 and 1986 there were 15 world chess champions, and seven of
these were Jewish—Steinitz, Botvinnik, Smyslov, Tal, Spassky, Fischer,
and Kasparov (Cranberg & Albert, 1988; Rubinstein, 2004). Another
cognitively demanding game is bridge. It has been estimated that more
than half of the outstanding American bridge players and theoreticians
have been Jewish (Storfer, 1990). The pinnacle of intellectual
achievement in science and literature is the Nobel Prize. Jews have been
hugely overrepresented among Nobel Prize winners. In the period from
1901-1962, 16 percent of Nobel Prize winners for science were Jewish
(Weyl & Possony, 1963, p. 143). Estimating the world population of Jews
in 1938 at 18 million and the world population of European Gentiles at
718 million, Jews were overrepresented by a factor of approximately 6.6."
The purpose of this book is to document and explain such
achievements. We shall be concerned with the theme that the remarkable
Jewish successes can be largely explained by their high intelligence. This
will take us into the further questions of why Jews have high intelligence,
whether this is true of all Jews, and whether other qualities, such as a
Inroduction 3
strong work ethic, also contribute to Jewish achievement. It is a strange
fact that in the numerous books and articles that have been concerned
with Jewish success in recent years, virtually none of them mention the
high Jewish intelligence.
1. Jewish Intelligence
In the middle decades of the 19th century, people began to observe
that Jews are outstandingly successful and speculate that this is
attributable to their intellect. In 1847, Lord Ashley, speaking in the
British House of Commons, observed:
The Jews are a people of very powerful intellect.... [They]
presented...in proportion to their numbers, a far larger list of men
of genius and learning than could be exhibited by any Gentile
country. Music, poetry, medicine, astronomy, occupied their
attention, and in every field they were more than a match for their
competitors. (Vital, 1999, p. 179)
A few years later in France, the Count de Gobineau (1853)
discussed the cultural and intellectual achievements of different
peoples and concluded that the Aryans (Northern Europeans) and the
Jews were the two most intelligent peoples. Francis Galton (1869, p.
47) also believed the Jews were a highly intelligent people, writing
in Hereditary Genius that they “appear to be rich in families of high
intellectual breeds.” Inthe United States, the physician Madison Marsh
(1974, p. 343) discussed the Jews’ “high average intelligence,” and in
1898, Mark Twain (1985, p. 12) wrote that the Jew’s “contribution
to the world’s list of great names in literature, science, art, music,
finance, medicine, and abstruse learning is way out of proportion to
the weakness of his numbers.”
In the 20th century, a number of people reiterated the conclusion
that the Jews have done well because they are highly intelligent. During
World War I, the British writer John Fraser (1915, pp. 30-31), in his book
The Conquering Jew, advanced the thesis that the principal reason for
Jewish achievement is that Jews are more intelligent than Gentiles: “in
alertness and knowledge... the Jew is the superior of the Christian.”
Fraser approvingly quotes a contemporary who avered,
4 THE CHOSEN PEOPLE
the struggle between the sons of the North, with their blond hair
and sluggish intellects, and the sons of the Orient, with their black
eyes, is an unequal one.
Fraser concludes,
if the Russian dispassionately spoke his mind, I think he would
admit that his dislike of the Jew is not so much racial or religious—
though these play great parts—as a recognition that the Jew is his
superior, and in a conflict of wits will get the better of him.
Writing four years later, Joseph Jacobs (1919, pp. 55-57) gave an
account that attributed the Jews’ success in Germany to their intelligence:
[A] determinate number of Jews at the present time will produce
a larger number of ‘geniuses’ (whether inventive or not, I will not
say) than any equal number of men of other races. It seems highly
probable, for example, that German Jews at the present moment
are quantitatively (not necessarily qualitatively) at the head of
European intellect.
In the same year, Thorstein Veblen (1919) also asserted that the
secret of Jewish success lies in their high intelligence. He wrote of the
“intellectual preeminence of Jews in modern Europe” (p. 35). His theory
to account for this was that Jews are detached from the host societies
in which they live. This frees them from the constraint of conventional
ideas and allows them to think creatively. He argued (plausibly enough)
that creative scientific achievement requires “a degree of exemption from
hard and fast preconceptions, a sceptical animus, and release from the
dead hand of conventional finality.” Jews have this exemption:
Itis by the loss of allegiance...that he finds himself in the vanguard of
American inquiry.... [H]e becomes the disturber of the intellectual
peace, but only at the cost of becoming an intellectual wayfaring
man, a wanderer in the intellectual no-man’s land, seeking another
place to rest.
He concluded with the logical inference that Jews would cease to be
creative if and when they acquired their own homeland in Israel and were
no longer rootless wanderers. Perhaps he would have changed his mind
about this theory if he had lived to see the award of Nobel Prizes to six
Israelis (see Chapter 11).
Inroduction 5
With the development of intelligence tests in the first decade of the
20th century, evidence on the intelligence of the Jews began to accumulate
that substantiated the theory that Jews have high IQs. Studies showing
this began to be published in the 1920s in Britain and the United States,
and more studies confirming this in the United States were published
from time to time throughout the 2oth century. In the 1960s a landmark
book was published by Nathaniel Weyl and Stefan Possony (1963). A
further book by Weyl (1966) brought together the evidence of the high
Jewish IQ and achievement and discussed the reasons for this.
By the 1990s, it began to be confidently asserted that Jews have a high
IQ. For example, Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray (1994, p. 275)
have written, “Whenever the subject of group differences comes up one of
the questions sure to be asked is ‘Are Jews really smarter than everyone
else?” Their answer was that Ashkenazi Jews obtained an average IQ of
112.6 on the AFQT in relation to 100 for Whites. Others who have reviewed
the evidence on Jewish intelligence and concluded that Jews have a high
IQ include Kevin MacDonald (1994, pp. 188—190); Hans Eysenck (1995, p.
159): “as far as Jews are concerned, there is no question that they score very
highly on IQ tests”; and Michael Levin, a philosophy professor at the City
University of New York, who has written: “in every society in which they
have participated, Jews have eventually been recognised (and disliked for)
their exceptional talent” (1997, p. 132).
Numerous studies have shown that intelligence is a major
determinant of economic and intellectual achievement. In a classical
study, Christopher Jencks (1972) estimated that there is a correlation
of 0.310 between IQ and income for men in the United States. This
result has been confirmed and extended by a study in Britain showing
that for a national sample of people whose intelligence was obtained
at the age of eight years and whose income was obtained at the age
43, there were correlations between IQ and income of 0.368 for men
(n=1280) and 0.317 for women (n=1085) (Irwing & Lynn, 2006).
Many further studies showing that IQ is a substantial determinant
of educational and intellectual attainment are summarized in IQ and
Global Inequality (Lynn and Vanhanen, 2006). As all this is quite
well known, and despite the accumulation of studies showing that
Jews have a high IQ, it is curious that the high Jewish IQ has almost
invariably been ignored by historians, sociologists, and economists
who have written on the high achievements of the Jews, and even by
6 THE CHOSEN PEOPLE
psychologists who have written on intelligence. Numerous historians,
sociologists, and economists have documented the high achievements
of the Jews in various countries and suggested reasons for this, but
virtually none of them have suggested that the explanation may be
that Jews have a high IQ. There is no entry for intelligence in the 17
volume Encyclopedia Judaica, and only one paper on the intelligence
of the Jews has been published in the Jewish Journal of Sociology
and the Jewish journal Commentary.
2. Jewish Achievement in Historical Times
The Jews of Palestine before the Christian era do not appear
to have been exceptionally gifted. They did not produce the great
cultural and intellectual achievements of the Greeks. It is a disputed
question whether the Jews have been exceptionally successful and
disproportionately represented among the intellectually gifted for
most of the last 2000 years or whether the high Jewish achievement
did not appear until Jews were emancipated in the 19th century. One
of those who have asserted that the high Jewish achievement is a
recent phenomenon was Bertrand Russell (1945, p. 323), who wrote,
Throughout the Middle Ages, Jews had no part in the culture of
Christian countries, and were too severely persecuted to be able to
make contributions to civilization, beyond supplying capital for the
building of cathedrals and such enterprises.
In an attempt to answer this question, studies that have quantified
Jewish achievement in different historical periods are summarized in
Table 1.1. Jewish achievements are expressed as Jewish Achievement
Quotients (AQs). These AQs have been calculated as the percentages
of outstandingly gifted Jews in relation to their population numbers,
as compared with the percentages of European Gentiles in relation
to their population numbers, and the percentages of Jews expressed
as a ratio of the percentage of European Gentiles. For instance, if two
percent of Jews were found to be outstandingly gifted as compared with
one percent of European Gentiles, Jews would have an Achievement
Quotient of 2. We use this measure of Jewish achievement on
numerous occasions throughout this book.
Inroduction 7
Row 1 in Table 1.1 gives the first historical evidence for Jewish
achievement and comes from medieval times. The data are taken
from Sarton (1948) who identified 626 gifted scientists living between
1150 and 1300 AD. Of these 95, approximately 16 percent were
Jewish. Raphael Patai (1977) has estimated the numbers of Jews
and Gentiles in Europe at this time and calculated that Jews were
32-fold overrepresented in relation to the non-Jewish population in
the countries in which scientific work was carried out at that period,
giving the Jews an Achievement Quotient of 32.
Table 1.1. Achievement Quotients of European Jews from 1150 to 1985
Years AQ |Reference
=
1150-1300 32.0 | Patai, 1971
1000-1492 18.0 |Patai, 1971
1830-1879 8.7 | Berry, 1999
1880-1929 16.6 | Berry, 1999
1830-1910 6.9 | Murray, 2003
1900-1950 6.0 | Murray, 2003
1950-2000 12.0 |Murray, 2003
1901-1962 6.5 | Weyl & Possony, 1963
oo [OINI |A o |»
1901-1985 8.0 | Patai and Patai, 1989
Row 2 also comes from the medieval period, but is confined
to scientific achievement in Spain. Patai (1977) has estimated that
Jews were overrepresented among gifted scientists by a factor of
18 to 1, giving them an Achievement Quotient of 18. In this study
the time period ends in 1492 with the expulsion of the Jews from
Spain in that year. How seriously can these figures be taken? Not
very, according to Murray (2003, p. 275), who observes, “few of
those 626 are important enough in the broader sweep of scientific
history to warrant a mention.” I am inclined to agree. During this
period, Jewish men were nearly all literate while most Gentile men
were not. Because of this situation, proportionately more Jews wrote
books on scientific subjects. But these were largely translations and
commentaries on Arabic and Greek texts. Can anyone think of a
single Jewish scientist or mathematician of any distinction during
8 THE CHOSEN PEOPLE
these years from 1150 and 1492, let alone one to compare with the
Greek giants such as Aristotle, Pythagoras, Euclid, and Ptolemy? I
would therefore follow Murray and place a large question mark over
Patai’s conclusions on high Jewish achievement in medieval Europe.
It has not proved possible to find any studies of Jewish
achievement during the three and a half centuries from 1492 to 1830.
The next study, carried out by Colin Berry (1999), is for those
born between 1830 and 1929; it is summarized in rows 3 and 4 of
Table 1.1. Berry began by assembling a list of 1,352 outstandingly
talented men of European ethnicity, born between 1830 and 1929, in
the fields of engineering, astronomy, physics, chemistry, medicine,
mathematics, literature, painting, and music. These were selected
on a variety of criteria including the award of Nobel Prizes for
Science and Literature and listing in reference works of those who
had achieved eminence. Of the total number (1,352), 220 were
Jewish. He then calculated the proportion of Jews and Gentile
Europeans in relation to their numbers in the world for those born
between 1830 and 1879 and between 1880 and 1930. The results
showed that Jews were overrepresented in both periods in all nine
fields and especially strongly in literature and in music. The Jewish
Achievement Quotients were 8.7 for the first period and 16.6 for the
second. Notice that the Jewish Achievement Quotient approximately
doubled between the two periods.
Berry’s paper attracted little or no attention and was not noticed
by Murray (2003) in his monumental study of outstanding individuals
in world achievement from the year 800 to 2000 AD. Murray analyses
these by country, race, religion, and sex. Heprovides estimates of Jewish
achievements, in relation to Gentile Europeans, for three periods.
Rows 5 through 7 give his results for the period from 1870-2000
(Murray, 2003, pp. 279, 283). Row 5 gives an Achievement Quotient
of 6.9 for Jewish achievements in music, science, art, philosophy and
literature for those born between 1830 and 1910. (Murray presents
the data for those aged 40 during the years 1870-1950, and hence
to make his data comparable with those of Berry the period of
their births is shown.) It will be seen that the Jewish Achievement
Quotients found by Berry and Murray are in fairly close agreement
(8.7 and 6.9) considering that some difference should be expected as
a result of different samples and time periods. Murray was apparently
Inroduction 9
unaware of Berry’s work, so the two calculations were evidently made
independently. Row 6 gives a Jewish Achievement Quotient of 6.0
based on the award of Nobel Prizes in Science and Literature during
the period 1901 (the first year in which the prizes were awarded) to
1950 (these people would have been born roughly between 1850-
1900). Row 7 gives a Jewish Achievement Quotient of 12.0 based on
the award of Nobel Prizes in Science and Literature during the second
half of the 20th century (1951-2000) and who would have been born
roughly between 1900-1950.
Rows 8 and 9 give further estimates of Jewish Achievement
Quotients also based on the award of Nobel prizes. Row 8 gives a Jewish
Achievement Quotient of 6.5 for science derived from an analysis of
Nobel Prize winners for Physics, Chemistry and Medice during the
years 1901 to 1962, calculated by Nathaniel Weyl and Stefan Possony
(1963). They found that 225 prizes were awarded and estimate that
the world population of European peoples, including those in North
America and Australasia as well as in Europe, was approximately 718
million. This can be expressed as a rate of 31.3 per 100 million. They
estimate the world Jewish population in 1938 at 18 million and that
36 percent of Nobel Prize winners were Jewish, representing a rate
of 203 per 100 million. Thus, Jews were approximately 6.5 to one
overrepresented. The Jewish Achievement Quotient of 6.5 is closely
similar to the 6.0 calculated by Murray for most of the same period
(1901-1950), although Murray’s figure includes the Literature Prize.
Row 9 gives a Jewish Achievement Quotient of 8.1 based on all Nobel
prizes (including those for Economics, Literature, and Peace, as well
as for Science) awarded over the years 1901-1985 as calculated by
Raphael and Jennifer Patai (Patai & Patai, 1989). They calculated that
of the 541 prizes awarded, 91 were won by Jews. They do not attempt
to estimate the ratio of Jewish to non-Jewish European Prize winners.
This can be done using the same methodology as Weyl and Possony.
If we adopt Weyl and Possony’s estimate that the world population of
European peoples was 718 million, the rate of Prize winners was 75
per 100 million. A reasonable estimate for the numbers of Jews for
this period would be 15 million, since the numbers of Jews declined
from approximately 18 million in 1938 to approximately 12 million for
the period 1945-1985. Using this estimate, the rate of Jewish Nobel
Prize winners was 667 per 100 million. Jews are thus overrepresented
by a ratio of 8:1.
10 THE CHOSEN PEOPLE
There are four comments to be made on the Jewish Achievement
Quotients set out in Table 1.1. First, they all show that in all the studies
Jews have been considerably overrepresented among outstandingly
gifted individuals. Second, the Jewish Achievement Quotients for the
medieval periods given in rows 1 and 2 are higher at 30 and 18 than
any of those of the last two centuries from 1800 to 2000. However,
we have noted that the high Jewish Achievement Quotients for the
medieval period must be regarded with skepticism. There were
no outstanding Jews during this period, and Gentile learning and
scholarship were at a low ebb. Europe was emerging from the Dark
Ages while among the Jewish communities, learning and scholarship
flourished in these years. It was only from around the year 1200 that
universities began to be founded in Europe for Gentiles, and it was
largely these that nurtured Gentile European achievements over the
next eight centuries.
Third, the Jewish Achievement Quotients in the two centuries from
1800 to 2000 are reasonably consistent, lying between 6.0 and 16.6.
Some of these differences are no doubt sampling and measurement
errors. Sampling errors arise because Jewish Achievement Quotients
are higher in some fields than in others (they are particularly high in
philosophy), so they will vary according to which fields are included in
the calculation. Measurement errors may also be present because of
errors in identifying Jews.
Fourth, there seems to be a real trend for the Jewish Achievement
Quotients to increase during the last two centuries. This is found in
the studies by Berry and Murray. Berry’s calculations show the Jewish
Achievement Quotients approximately doubled from 8.7 among those
born between 1830 and 1879 to 16.6 among those born between 1880
and 1939. Similarly, Murray’s calculations also show that Jewish
Achievement Quotients doubled from 6.0 among those who received
Nobel prizes between 1901 and 1950 to 12.0 among those who received
Nobel prizes between 1950 and 2000. We shall find these results
replicated in many countries. They are explained by Jews taking two
or three generations to establish themselves fully in Gentile societies.
In the first half of the 19th century, Jews were prohibited in most
countries from entering universities, music academies, and art colleges,
and this handicapped them for achievement in science, philosophy,
music, and art, and possibly in literature, for which a university or
Inroduction 11
college education provides the foundation for achievement. In France
and the Netherlands, Jews were permitted to enter universities in the
1790s, but it was not until 1848 that this was allowed in the Austro-
Hungarian Empire and some of the German and Italian states; and
it was not until 1871 that Jews were allowed to attend universities in
England. In the United States, Jews were not given full civil rights at
the state level until 1868.
3. Jewish Achievements in Different Domains
Are Jews exceptionally talented in all intellectual domains or
only in some? Both Berry and Murray present data on this question
and their calculations are shown in Table 1.2. Berry’s and Murray’s
calculations for 1870-1950 (born 1830-1910) are derived from their
inventories of gifted individuals, while Murray’s calculations for
1951-2000 are based on Nobel Prizes.
Table 1.2. Achievement Quotients of European Jews at
various time periods
Lee en es ee De
Astronomy 1.2 3.4 1.0 -
Biology - - 8.0 -
Chemistry 3.5 5.3 6.0 10.1
Earth Science - - 3.0 -
Economics - - - 45.0
Engineering 1.2 1.8 3.0 -
Mathematics 10.5 9.6 12.0 -
Medicine 5.5 10.5 8.0 14.1
Music 37.1 20.8 5.0 -
Literature 6.9 8.1 4.0 71
Painting 7.41 6.3 5.0 -
Philosophy - - 14.0 -
Physics 4.2 10.1 9.0 14.1
12 THE CHosEn PEOPLE
Five conclusions can be drawn from these results. First, Jews
are better than Gentiles at everything intellectual. Second, the Berry
1880-1929 and Murray 1870-1950 data are closely similar, except
for music and literature. Third, Jews are much more overrepresented
among gifted musicians in Berry’s results, where they have
Achievement Quotients of 37.1 and 20.8; this is not confirmed by
Murray’s data, in which the Jewish Achievement Quotient is only 5.0
and is slightly lower than in most other domains. Fourth, there is a
suggestion that the Jewish Achievement Quotient in mathematics
is rather higher than in other domains. Mathematics is the highest
Jewish Achievement Quotient in Berry’s 1830-1879 data, apart from
music. Mathematics is the third highest Jewish Achievement Quotient
in Berry’s 1880-1929 data, below medicine and music, and is second
highest in Murray’s 1870-1950 data, in which the highest Jewish
Achievement Quotient is in philosophy. Fifth, the Jewish Achievement
Quotient of 45.0 for economics based on Nobel Prizes which have been
awarded since 1969 is clearly very high and is considered to be valid.
These results suggest that Jews may have a special aptitude for the
abstract thinking required for mathematics, philosophy, and physics,
and possibly also for economics, much of which is quite mathematical.
Jews do less well in astronomy, engineering, and painting, and possibly
in literature, although even in these, they do better than Gentiles.
4. Theories of Jewish Success
By the first two decades of the 20th century, it had become
increasinglyobvioustomanypeoplethatJewshavebeen exceptionally
successful; theories began to be advanced to explain Jewish success.
A few people proposed that Jews are more intelligent than Gentiles,
as noted in section 1, but most people preferred other theories. Five
principal theories have been advanced to explain Jewish success.
These are (a) strong motivation theory; (b) family and ethnic
networks; (c) marginal man theory; (d) special aptitudes theory;
and (e) luck. Several writers have asserted that Jewish success is
attributable to more than one of these characteristics.
(a) Strong Work Motivation Theory. This states that Jews are
strongly motivated to work hard and achieve success. Some have
asserted that Jews have a strong form of the Protestant or Puritan
Inroduction 13
work ethic, a commitment to work as a moral and religious obligation,
which was proposed by Weber as the source of the economic advance
of the Protestant nations from the 17th to the 19th centuries. Houston
Stewart Chamberlain (1912, pp. 492-493) asserted that the principal
reason why Jews had become “a disproportionately important and in
many spheres actually dominant constituent of our life” is that Jews
have an innate “abnormally developed will,” by which he probably
meant what today we would call strong motivation.
The German historian Werner Sombart (1919) attributed the
Jewish success to their religion fostering a strong work ethic that gave
them exceptional will power. He described this as des Eigennutzes
(self-interest) and Abstraktheit ihrer Geistesbeschaffenheit (it is
difficult to extract any meaning from this concept); literally it can be
translated “the abstractness of their nature and spirit”; Mosse’s (1987)
translator renders it “abstract mentality.” (My German friends assure
me that it does not mean “a talent for abstract thought” or “thinking in
abstractions,” or anything associated with intelligence). Sombart also
proposed that because Jews have been nomads for many centuries
and generally had no land or property, they valued money and this
ultimately led to their pre-eminence in banking.
In Russia in the 1920s, it was so obvious that Jews were prominent
among the elite that people began to discuss why this should be. In
1929, Russian Larin published a book on this question and advanced the
explanation that the hard life of Jews in previous centuries had produced
“exceptional energy” (Slezkine, 2004, p. 252).
A variant of this theory is that Jews have a strong work ethic. This has
received some confirmation from a study carried out in the United States by
Gerhard Lenski (1963). He concluded that Jews are like White Protestants
in possessing “individualistic, competitive patterns of thought and action
linked with the middle class and historically associated with the Protestant
ethic or its secular counterpart, the spirit of capitalism.” Catholics and
Blacks, he argued, have “the collectivist, security oriented working class
patterns of action, historically opposed to the Protestant ethic.”
A further variant of the strong work motivation theory is that Jews
attach a high valuation to success. This has become a cultural norm
in Jewish families. Parents bring up their children to achieve and
socialize them to value success. Thus,
14 THE CHOSEN PEOPLE
Success is so vitally important to the Jewish family ethos that we
can hardly overemphasize it.... [W]e cannot hope to understand
the Jewish family without understanding the place that success
for men (and recently for women) plays in the system. (Herz &
Rozen, 1982, p. 306)
Jews attach a lot of importance to study and education and this
socializes the children for educational and academic success: “Jewish
youth used to spend long years bent over their books in an attempt
to break out of the narrow circle of restrictions” (Slezkine, 2004, p.
252). Suzanne Rutland (1988, p. 259), writing on the success of Jews
in Australia, has proposed that one of the reasons for this is that
they “were highly motivated to create a new and more secure life for
themselves,” which gave them “the willingness to work hard.”
The Harvard historian Stephan Thernstrom and his wife assert
that the achievements of the Jews are “the product of cultural values
that they have brought with them and transmitted from generation to
generation over a very long time” (Thernstrom & Thernstrom, 2003,
p. 98), although they fail to give any evidence that Jews have the
requisite cultural values for educational and socioeconomic success.
Gary Becker, the Nobel Prize winner for economics, is another who has
pondered the problem of why Jews have done so well and concluded,
The high achievement and low fertility of Jewish families are
explained by high marginal rates of return to investments in the
health, education, and other human capital of their children that
lower the price of quality relative to quantity. (Becker, 1981, p. 110)
Translated from economists’ jargon, this means that Jews have
fewer children and devote more effort to their health care and to
giving them a good education. He does not offer any explanations for
why Jews do this but we are left to infer that this is part of their values.
(b) Strong Family and Ethnic Networks. Houston Stewart
Chamberlain (1912, pp. 492-493) asserted that the Jewish religion
(Judaism) inculcated “the idea of physical race-unity and race purity”
that leads Jews to support each other through strong family and ethnic
networks theory. In 1929, Larin proposed that because Jews have
been discriminated against for many centuries, they have developed
“an unusually strong sense of solidarity and a predisposition towards
mutual help and support.” Yuri Slezkine (2004), who quoted this
Inroduction 15
opinion, agreed and has confidently asserted, “there is no doubt that
their entrepreneurial success has been due to a combination of internal
solidarity and external strangeness” (Slezkine, 2004, pp. 43, 252). Itis
not clear whether this trait was envisioned as genetic or cultural.
(c) Marginal Man Theory. This theory was advanced by Thorstein
Veblen. David Hollinger (2002, p. 145-146), who has described
Veblen as “the most creative American social theorist of the early 20th
century,” summarizes his theory as follows:
The partial liberation of Jews from traditional Judaism yields
a sceptical temper. The combination of withdrawal from Jewish
tradition and only partial assimilation into Gentile society endows
the intellectual Jew with the virtue of detachment. Skeptical,
estranged, alienated, the liberated Jew was ideally suited for
a career in science and scholarship. This Marginal Man, this
‘wanderer in the intellectual no-man’s land’ could see ‘unmediated
facts’ that were less readily observed by minds still clouded by
Judaism, Christianity, local customs, tribal idols, or other pre-
modern forms of reference.
There are several reasons for regarding Veblen’s theory as
implausible. First, as we shall see repeatedly throughout this book,
Jews are good at everything, not only at science, for which a “skeptical
temper” and “detachment” may be required. Second, as Jews ceased
to be marginal in the second half of the 20th century, their success in
all walks of life increased in the United States and Britain, as shown in
the chapters on these two countries.
(d) Special Aptitudes. Several writers have proposed that Jews
possess a number of special aptitudes that have been ingredients of
success. High creativity has sometimes been advanced. For instance,
the historian Lewis Bernstein Napier (1934, p. xx) attributed German
anti-Semitism to the Jewish superiority and the inability of Germans
to compete:
[T]he German is methodical, crude, constructive mainly in the
mechanical sense, extremely submissive to authority, a rebel or
a fighter only by order from above... [whereas] the Jew, of the
Oriental or Mediterranean race, is creative, pliable, individualistic,
restless and undisciplined.
16 THE CHOSEN PEOPLE
Napier seems to be groping towards the idea that Jews are more
creative than Gentiles, but it is difficult to say whether he had any
notion that they may be more intelligent. Rutland suggests that Jews
have strong imagination, a concept akin to creativity:
[I]magination is another essential ingredient in business success
as new products must be conceived, new ways of doing things
conjured up, and ways round problems solved. As a result of
persecution and discrimination, Jews have always tended to be
innovators and have come up with new ideas in science, commerce
and industry, as well as in the arts. (1988, p. 261)
Daniel Moynihan (the former United States Senator) and Nathan
Glazer (the Harvard sociologist) (1970, p. 153) have discussed why
Jews have done so well in real estate in New York. They advanced
the thesis that Jews have “exceptional skill in financial and business
management, derived from a long history in business, that has
unquestionably served many Jews well in a field that is incredibly
complex and laden with pitfalls” (Moynihan and Glazer 1970, p. 153).
It did not apparently occur to them that this “exceptional skill in
financial and business management” could be an expression of high
intelligence. They seemed to believe that it is a particular kind of
aptitude independent of intelligence and, presumably, transmitted
down the generations according to Lamarckian principles of the
inheritance of acquired characteristics.
The British historian Paul Johnson has written,
The great Jewish strength lay in the ability to take quick advantage
of new opportunities, to recognise an unprecedented situation
when it arose and devise methods of handling it. Christians had
long learned how to deal with conventional financial problems, but
they were slow to react to novelty. (2004, p. 253)
There is of course no special ability “to take quick advantage of new
opportunities.” The ability he describes is intelligence.
The American historian Stephen Steinberg (1981) suggests that
Jewish craft and trading skills and high literacy level were the main
factors accounting for Jewish success, but these, too, are expressions
of intelligence.
Why have Jews been so good at chess? William D. Rubinstein
(2004) has discussed this and begins by suggesting,
Inroduction 17
great ability at chess appears to be an innate gift ofsome kind. There
is universal agreement among experts that by constant practice,
study, and lessons with outstanding players someone can improve...
but that it is impossible to improve dramatically if the inherent
ability is lacking—just as it is impossible for a tennis player to
improve enough by practice to compete in the finals at Wimbledon
unless he or she possesses the innate tennis ability of a great player
(2004, p. 36).... It may be therefore that Jews are genetically good
at chess” (p. 39).
This is very likely true in so far as Jews have a high level of
general intelligence and some of them devote this to chess. Good
chess players have high intelligence that they have directed into
acquiring expertise at the game. An investigation I carried out in
collaboration with Marcel Frydman of the University of Mons in
Belgium (Frydman & Lynn, 1992) of 33 tournament level young
chess players aged 8-13 found that they had an average IQ of
121, proving that a high IQ is required to do well in chess. Aljosha
Neubauer (2006) ofthe University of Graz in Austria has also found
that tournament standard chess players have high IQs.
(e) Luck. A. Godley (2007) asserts that the socioeconomic success
of Jews who migrated to Britain and the United States between 1881
and 1914 has been largely due to luck. According to this account,
Jews were just lucky that they went into the garment industry and
that this happened to expand in the middle and later decades of
the 20th century. This is surely the least plausible explanation for
Jewish successes. It can hardly be luck that has made Jews in many
countries the highest earning ethnic group, greatly overrepresented
in the professions, among top chess and bridge champions, and
among Nobel Prize winners.
(f). Multifactor theories. Many of those who have written on
Jewish success have proposed multifactor theories incorporating
several attributes. The American sociologist Paul Burnstein (2007)
proposes five explanations of why Jews have done so well. These are
getting more education and working long hours, faith that
emphasizes pursuits in this world as opposed to the afterlife,
mutual assistance through the self-help organizations they
long maintained in the Diaspora, marginality that made them
18 THE CHOSEN PEOPLE
skeptical of conventional ideas and stimulated creativity that led
to intellectual eminence and, often, economic success, and social
capital, the ability to secure benefits through membership in
networks and other social structures.
The Irish economist Cormac O’Grada attibutes Jewish success
to “bourgeois virtues such as sobriety, a desire to succeed, a dislike
of violence, an emphasis on education and learning, and high self-
esteem” (O’Grada, 2006, p. 162).
Neither of these eclectics mentions intelligence as a factor in
Jewish success.
5. Definition of Intelligence
The nature of intelligence is poorly understood by those who
have proposed that Jews have special aptitudes such as “problem
solving” (Rutland, 1988, p. 261), the ability “to take quick advantage
of new opportunities” (Johnson, 2004, p. 253), and “exceptional skill
in financial and business management” (Moynihan & Glazer, 1970,
p. 153). All these aptitudes are expressions of intelligence directed
into particular fields. There is a virtually universal consensus among
psychologists that intelligence is best conceptualized as a single broad
construct that determines the efficiency of problem solving, learning
and remembering in all areas. A useful definition of intelligence
was provided by a committee set up by the American Psychological
Association in 1995 under the chairmanship of Ulrich Neisser and
consisting of 11 American psychologists whose mandate was to
produce a report on what is generally known and accepted about
intelligence. The definition of intelligence proposed by the Task Force
was that intelligence is the ability “to understand complex ideas, to
adapt effectively to the environment, to learn from experience, to
engage in various forms of reasoning, to overcome obstacles by taking
thought” (Neisser, 1996, p. 1). Intelligence is a determinant of success
in a huge range of activites: “a century of research has shown that
General Mental Ability is predictive of socioeconomic achievement,
academic achievement, health-related behaviors, social outcomes,
occupational status and even death” (Ones, Viswesvaran, & Dilchert,
2005, p. 431). This is precisely the ability that Jews have displayed
since their emancipation in the early 19th century and which it is
Inroduction 19
the objective of this book to suggest has been largely responsible for
Jewish success.
However, achievement is not only determined by general
intelligence. There are also different kinds of intelligence, notably in
particular verbal and spatial abilities, that contribute to achievement
in different fields; it is a peculiarity of Jews that they tend to be much
stronger on verbal than on spatial ability. The consequence of this
is that they tend to do particularly well in fields requiring strong
verbal abilities such as law. Achievement is also determined by other
attributes than intelligence, such as strong work motivation and
family and ethnic networks. The question of whether these have also
contributed to Jewish success will be discussed in the last chapter.
NOTE
* Since 1969, the Sveriges Riksbank (Swedish Central Bank) has recognized
excellence in economics by awarding the Prize in Economic Sciences in
Memory of Alfred Nobel. Though technically not equivalent to the Nobel
Prize, it is often referred to as such. For the purposes of this book, no
distinction is made between the separate but related awards. All Nobel Prize
winners have been compiled from the Prize website and cross-referenced
for Jews with the Israel Science and Technology Database, http://www.
science.co.il/Nobel.asp
CHAPTER 2
The Four Jewish Peoples
1. The Mizrahim
2. The Sephardim
3. The Ashkenazim
4. The Ethiopian Jews
5. Genetic Differentiation after the Diaspora
6. Differences in Intelligence among the Four Jewish Peoples
n Chapter 1, we considered the intelligence and achievements of the
Jews as if these were a single and homogeneous people. In reality,
however, there are four Jewish peoples. These are the Mizrahim, the
Sephardim, the Ashkenazim, and the Ethiopian Jews. There are also a
few small Jewish sects in India.
1. The Mizrahim
The Mizrahim are the Jews of the Near East, the Middle East, and
North Africa. They are sometimes known as the Oriental Jews, but this
term is misleading since many of them come from North Africa. They
are also sometimes aggregated with the Jews of Spain and Portugal
and collectively called the Sephardim, but this is misleading because
22 THE CHOSEN PEOPLE
of their different histories. Many of the Mizrahim are descendants of
the Jews of the first diaspora that occurred in the sixth century BC,
when a number of them migrated to Babylon, broadly coterminous
with contemporary Iraq. In the subsequent diasporas, others settled
in Yemen, Syria, Iran, and elsewhere in the Near East and the Middle
East where over the centuries, they became “Arabized in their language
and habits” (Ma’oz, 2000, p. 108). Others settled in Egypt. During the
Roman occupation of North Africa some groups of Jews migrated
westward into Tunisia, Algeria, and Morocco.
In the seventh and eighth centuries AD, the Arabs conquered the
Near East, Middle East and North Africa. Under Arab rule “Jewish
life and culture flourished, despite periodic oppression” (Kosmin,
Goldberg, Shain, & Bruk, 1999, p. 5). In Iraq, the Jews occupied
a wealthy quarter of the new city of Baghdad, which the Abbasid
dynasty founded in 762 as their capital. Here “the Jews provided
court doctors and officials.... In 1170 it was estimated that there
were about 40,000 Jews living there in the city.” The scholars had
the most prestige: “the phrase ‘not of scholarly families being of
merchants’ was dismissive... the head of each academy came from
one of six families” (Johnson, 2004, pp. 176, 181).
In North Africa, “a centre of Jewish prosperity was Kairouan in
Tunisia; in the eighth century an academy was founded there and for
the next 250 years it was one of the great centres of Jewish scholarship.
Jews supplied the court with doctors, astronomers, and officials”
(Johnson, 2004, p. 177).
In 1516, the Ottomans, from their base in Turkey and capital
Istanbul, gained control of most of the Near and Middle East, including
present day Syria, Lebanon, and Palestine. In the 17th century, the
Ottomans extended their empire to include Georgia, Armenia,
Iraq, Syria, the whole of North Africa, and the southern part of the
Balkans. Many towns and cities in the Ottoman Empire had Jewish
populations. Those with the greatest numbers of Jews were Baghdad
and Jerusalem.
The Ottomans ruled these territories until the early 20th century.
In the early 19th century, there were about 80,000 Jews in the
Ottoman Empire in the Near East and North Africa. By 1900, there
were about 400,000 Jews in the Near East and North Africa. The
greatest number of Jews was in Baghdad, where there were about
The Four Jewish Peoples 23
52,000 (Montgomery, 1902). Egypt’s 1907 census recorded 38,635
Jews living in the country. A much higher percentage of Jews than
of Muslims were literate (44 percent as compared with four percent)
(Landau, 2000).
The Ottomans provided a generally benign environment for Jews
and other non-Muslims in their African and Asian territories, as well
as in their European dominions in the Balkans: “the Ottoman Levant
did not see much anti-Semitism” (Benbassa and Rodrigue, 1995, p.
159); and “Jews fared better under Muslims than under Christian and
pagan rule” (Entine, 2007, p. 174). In the 19th century,
a noticeable number of Jews held senior positions in commerce
and finance as merchants, bankers, and treasury officials; Jews
periodically served as physicians, interpreters, and advisers in the
courts of sultans and provincial governors.... In addition to good
economic conditions (and personal achievements), for centuries
Jewsenjoyed aconsiderable degree ofcommunal autonomy (during
the nineteenth century this was formalized as part of the reforms
in the millet system) in matters of religious worship, jurisdiction in
issues relating to personal status, the levying of certain taxes, and
managing educational and welfare institutions. (Ma’oz, 2000, pp.
108-9)
For the most part, Jews did not challenge Muslim supremacy,
and relations between the two groups were not hostile. Jews were,
however, “occasionally subject to oppression, extortion and violence
by both local authorities and segments of the Muslim population”
(Ma’oz, 2000, p. 114).
2. The Sephardim
The Sephardim are the descendants of the Jews who lived for
many centuries in Spain and Portugal. Jews settled in Spain in the
first three centuries AD, when it was part of the Roman Empire.
After the fall of Rome, Spain was occupied by the Visigoths, under
whose rule “systematic anti-Semitism was pursued.... Throughout
the seventh century, Jews were flogged, executed, had their property
confiscated, were subject to ruinous taxes, forbidden to trade, and, at
times, dragged to the baptismal font” (Johnson, 2004, p. 177). The
24 THE CHOSEN PEOPLE
Arabs invaded Spain in 711 and rapidly conquered the whole country.
Arab rule lasted for 783 years until 1492. For the first 300 or so years,
the Arabs “treated the Jews with extraordinary favour and tolerance...
Jews were not only craftsmen and traders but doctors.” The capital city
of Cordoba became the “leading centre of Jewish culture in the world”
(Johnson, 2004, p. 177). “The Jewish elite in Spain were tax farmers
over the centuries” (Benbassa & Rodrigue, 1995, p. 37). However,
in 1013 “the primitive Berber Moslems took Cordoba.... Prominent
Jews were assassinated. At Grenada there was a massacre of Jews”
(Johnson, 2004, p. 177). During the next four centuries, the Jews were
persecuted and a number of them fled to France or to North Africa.
The most famous of the Jewish scholars in Spain in the early
medieval period was Moses Maimonides (1135-1204). He was born
and grew up in Cordoba, but to escape persecution, moved to Fostat
(Cairo) in Egypt, where he was a physician to Saladin, the sultan of
Egypt and Syria. Maimonides’s chief philosophical work, Guide to
the Perplexed, was addressed to those who had lost their faith and
attempted to reconcile the work of Aristotle with Jewish theology.
In the 15th century, there were about 250,000 Jews in Spain out of
a total population of about four million. At the end of the century, in
1492, the Spanish drove the Arabs out of Spain and expelled the Jews,
unless they converted to Christianity; about 165,000 chose to leave.
The Jews were also expelled from Portugal in 1496. Most of those
who left went to the Balkans; others went to a variety of places in the
Levant (the lands of the eastern Mediterranean, including present-
day Turkey, Syria, Lebanon, Israel, and Egypt), notably in Izmir (in
present-day Turkey), Jerusalem, Damascus, Alexandria, Cairo, and
Tangier. Others went to the Netherlands and Italy. Their descendants
in the mid-20th century numbered about two million and were widely
dispersed throughout the world. Most of those in the Balkans were
killed by the Germans during World War II. The majority of those who
escaped moved to Israel.
3. The Ashkenazim
The Ashkenazim are the descendants of the Jews who migrated
from Palestine into Central and Northern Europe. The word Ashkenazi
means “German” in Yiddish, the language they spoke. The theory
The Four Jewish Peoples 25
advocated by Arthur Koestler (1977) that the Ashkenazim are mainly
the descendants of Caucasian Khazars in present day Ukraine who
converted to Judaism in the eighth and ninth centuries has now been
rejected by most scholars (Brook, 2006; Entine, 2007), although David
B. Goldstein (2008) believes it is possible some Khazars may have
converted, migrated west, and assimilated into Jewish communities.
Between 300 and 600 AD, Jews are known to have lived in Cologne and
in several towns in what is now France, from which they were expelled
by King Dagobert of the Franks (c.603—639) in 629 AD. When these first
Ashkenazi communities came under the rule of Charlemagne about the
year 800, he gave freedoms to the Jews in his lands that stretched from
western Germany through France to northeast Spain. These favorable
conditions stimulated more Jewish migration from southern Europe.
This period also saw Jewish merchants taking up the occupation of
money-lending when Church legislation banned Christians from the
practice of “usury,” defined as lending money in exchange for interest,
making the Jewish presence a necessary part of the economy.
By the early 900s, Jewish populations were well-established in
Northern Europe. Some of them settled in England following the
Norman Conquest of 1066. In the period between 1290 and 1500, Jews
were extensively persecuted and expelled from Western and Central
Europe. They were expelled from England (1290), France (1394),
and parts of Germany (1400s). Most of them migrated eastward
into present day Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, and Russia. They mainly
remained there until 1881-1914, when there were pogroms against
them in the Russian empire. There was an exodus from Central and
Eastern Europe between 1918 and 1939 when the Jews experienced
further persecution. They migrated principally to the United States
and also to Britain, Canada, Continental Europe, Australia, South
Africa, South America, and Israel. In the second half of the 20th
century, around 95 percent of Jews in the world outside Israel were
Ashkenazi (Rubinstein, 1985).
4. The Ethiopian Jews
The fourth group of Jews are the Falashas, who are also known
as the Black or Ethiopian Jews. They believe they are descended from
Ham, one of Noah’s sons. As they are black, this is improbable and in
26 THE CHOSEN PEOPLE
fact they are Ethiopians who converted to Judaism at some uncertain
time many centuries ago. Genetic studies have shown that they are
closer genetically to sub-Saharan Africans, including South African
Bantu, San Bushmen, and Senegalese, than to Ashkenazi and Asian
Jews (Kobyliansky, Micle, Goldschmidt, Arensburg & Nathan, 1982;
Zoossmann-Diskin, Ticher, Hakim, Goldwitch, Rubinstein, & Bonnie-
Tamir, 1991). The most definitive study found no Jewish genetic
markers in the Ethiopian Jews and concluded that they are descended
from Ethiopians who converted to Judaism (Lucotte & Smets, 1999).
In the 1970s, there was discussion among the rabbis in Israel as to
whether they should be recognized as Jews. In 1973, the Chief Rabbi
decided that the Falashas were, indeed, Jews. The Israeli government
accepted this decision, and as a result, allowed Ethiopian Jews to
migrate to Israel. From 1977 onward, many thousands of them took
advantage of this concession, and by 1998, virtually all of them had
left Ethiopia and taken up residence in Israel. They numbered about
80,000, according to the Central Bureau of Statistics, and were
approximately 1.4 percent of the population of Israel.
In addition to these four Jewish groups, there is a small population
of Jews in India. There were about 26,000 of these Indian Jews in the
late 1940s, mainly living in and around Mumbai (Bombay). Some of
these were “genetic Jews” who had migrated to India at various times
and for various reasons, while others were converts. About 10,000 of
these migrated to Israel after the state was established in 1948. There
was also a small community of about 1,000 Tibeto-Burmese Jews in
northern India, who appeared not to be genetically Jewish (Halkin,
2008) and who migrated to Israel.
5. Genetic Differentiation after the Diaspora
The Ashkenazim, the Sephardim, and the Mizrahim have some
genetic affinity, as a result of their common origin in Palestine. The
Ethiopian Jews are not related genetically to these three populations
of “genetic Jews.” These three populations of Jews have affinity
derived from their common origin. The first evidence for the genetic
relatedness of the Ashkenazim, the Sephardim, and the Mizrahim
was published by L. Sachs and M. Bat-Miriam (1957). They examined
fingerprints and devised a method for quantifying the number of
The Four Jewish Peoples 27
whorls, the distinctive ring patterns on the fingertips. They then
measured the number of whorls in eight samples of Jews in Israel
who had come from different countries (Bulgaria, Turkey, Germany,
Morocco, Egypt, Yemen, Poland, and Iraq) and compared these with
four samples of non-Jewish Arabs and with six samples of European
Gentiles. The study showed that the whorl count of the Jews from the
eight geographically disparate locations was similar and different from
those of the Arabs and European Gentiles. Jews in the United States
also have the same numbers of whorls. The authors concluded that
“even Jews living in Europe and North America show clear evidence of
their original Eastern Mediterranean gene pool” (p. 125).
These results have been confirmed and extended by Michael
Hammer et al. (2000) in a study in which they examined the genetic
profiles of 1,371 men from seven Jewish populations (Ashkenazi,
Roman, North African, Kurdish, Near Eastern, Yemenite, and
Ethiopian) and 16 non-Jewish populations (Russians, Poles, Greeks,
Turks, Italians, Germans, Austrians, Egyptians, Tunisians, Palestinian
Arabs, Syrians, Lebanese, Moroccans, Kurds, and the Lemba (a tribe
of Blacks in South Africa)). They found that all the Jewish samples
(except for the Ethiopian Jews) shared a degree of genetic similarity
that differentiated them from non-Jews; allthe Jewish samples (again,
except for the Ethiopian Jews) also displayed a genetic similarity
to Palestinian Arabs, Syrians, and Lebanese. This proved that the
Jews are a Semitic people who have evolved a genetic identity that
differentiates them from other Semitic peoples.
While the three populations of Jews have some genetic affınity
derived from their common origin, they have also become genetically
differentiated. It was inevitable that this would happen because it is
a law of evolutionary biology that when populations become isolated
from one another, they grow apart genetically. There are two principal
reasons for this. First, populations adapt to their local environments.
For instance, the incidence of G6PD deficiency is 58.2 percent among
Jews in Iraq but only 0.4 percent among Ashkenazi Jews in Northern
Europe and the United States (Szeinberg, 1963). The deficiency
provides some protection against malaria, which is why it has become
so common among Jews in Iraq, where malaria is prevalent, but
has not spread among Ashkenazi Jews because malaria is absent
in Northern and Central Europe. Second, genetic mutations occur
28 THE CHOSEN PEOPLE
in some populations but not in others; for instance, the recessive
gene for Tay-Sachs disease is present in approximately 1.8 percent
of Ashkenazi Jews but in only about 0.2 percent of Mizrahim Jews
(Bodmer & Cavalli-Sforza, 1976, p. 629). This gene appeared as a
mutation in Ashkenazi Jews and has spread among them, but it has
not appeared to anything like the same extent in other Jews. Two
further factors have led to genetic differentiation among the three
Jewish peoples. The first of these consists of some interbreeding over
the centuries between Jews and their Gentile host communities. Some
of the offspring of these Jewish-Gentile unions have been absorbed
into Jewish communities. The second is that some Gentiles have
converted to Judaism, sometimes as individuals and occasionally as
groups. The result of these two processes has been that each of the
three Jewish peoples has developed some genetic similarities with
the Gentile populations among whom they have lived. Thus, while
virtually all the Sephardim and the Mizrahim have dark eyes and
dark, straight hair, significant numbers of Ashkenazim have blue eyes
as well as fair and wavy hair. M. Fisberg (1904) summarized a dozen
studies of a total of 75,377 Ashkenazi Jews in Germany carried out at
the end of the 19th century and found that approximately 47 percent
had the dark hair and dark eyes of the original Southwest Asian stock;
42 percent had mixed hair and eye color (fair hair with dark eyes or
dark hair with blue eyes), while 11 percent had fair hair and blue eyes.
Thus, 53 percent of German Jews had some North European ancestry.
The genetic differentiation of the three Jewish peoples has been
further demonstrated by Hammer et al. (2000) in their study of
the genetic profiles of 1,371 men from seven Jewish populations
(Ashkenazi, Roman, North African, Kurdish, Near Eastern, Yemenite,
and Ethiopian) and 16 non-Jewish populations. They found that (1)
Ashkenazi Jews had some genetic affinity with European peoples
including Germans, Austrians, Russians, Greeks, and Spaniards; this
shows that there was some interbreeding and genetic admixture of
Ashkenazi Jews with various non-Jewish European populations; (2)
Mizrahim had some genetic affinity with non-Jewish Tunisians and
Egyptians, again showing that there was interbreeding and some
genetic admixture of the Mizrahim with non-Jewish North African
populations among whom they lived; (3) the South African Lemba also
had some genetic affinity with the Jews, presumably because many
The Four Jewish Peoples 29
centuries ago some Jewish merchants traded with them and interbred
with some Lemba women.
DNA research has shown that the Y-chromosome of both
Ashkenazi and Sephardic Jews are of Middle Eastern origin, similar
to Lebanese and Syrian DNA types. The Y-chromosome is only passed
from father to son and can be used to trace Jewish male origins.
Another study of Ashkenazi mitochondrial DNA, which can only be
passed from mother to child, allows the tracking of maternal origins
and showed that the mtDNA generally matched that oflocal European
populations and not Middle Eastern populations (Hammer et al.,
2000). The Y-chromosome study showed that gene flow into the
Jewish community from female European Gentiles was low at about
0.5 percent per generation. However, over some 40 generations, this
small amount of gene flow would have an appreciable effect. This
and further studies indicate that a number of male Jewish traders
moved from the Middle East into Europe and married local women.
The children of these marriages assimilated into Jewish communities
(Behar, Garrigan, Kaplan, Mobasher, et al., 2004; Entine, 2007;
Goldstein, 2008; Halkin, 2008).
The four Jewish peoples, each with their distinctive genetic
profiles, differ considerably in their intelligence and achievements. In
subsequent chapters this is documented for all the countries in which
there are significant Jewish populations. We shall see that it is only the
Ashkenazim that have the exceptional intelligence, which is estimated
at 110 (all these IQs are calculated in relation to 100 for Britain and
other countries of Northwest Europe, which has become known as
the “Greenwich standard,” analagous to longitude which is measured
in degrees distant from Greenwich). The IQ of the Sephardim is
considered in Chapter 17 on the Balkans and is estimated at 99,
about the same as the average of Europeans. The IQ of the Mizrahim
is considered in Chapter 11 on Israel and is estimated at 91, about 7
IQ points higher than that of other peoples of the Near and Middle
East. The IQ of the Ethiopian Jews is also considered in Chapter 11
and is estimated at 66, about the same as that of other peoples of
sub-Saharan Africa (Lynn, 2006). Chapter 20 considers theories to
explain the differences in intelligence among the four Jewish peoples
and between these and Gentiles. Chapter 21 considers the general
implications of the study of Jewish intelligence and achievements and
30 THE CHOSEN PEOPLE
the future of the Jewish peoples. The IQs of these peoples have been
obtained from a literature search using PsychINFO, PsychNet, ISI
Web of Science, and Web of Knowledge.
CHAPTER 3
Australia
1. Numbers of Jews
2. Educational Achievement
3. Socioeconomic Status
4. Earnings
5. Intermarriage
6. Conclusions
mall numbers of Jews were transported to Australia as convicts
from Britain between 1788 and 1852. Others migrated voluntarily
in the early 19th century. Even at this early date, “Australian Jews
played a more dominant role in commercial life than their numbers
would suggest” (Rutland, 1988, p. 121). In New South Wales, the most
prominent Jewish business was run by the Cohen family. The business
was started by Samuel Cohen (1815?-1890?), who set up a shop in 1836
in West Maitland. His son George (1842-1937) moved the business to
Sydney, where he became one of the leading businessmen. George’s son,
Samuel (1869-1948), was a director of numerous companies and was
knighted in 1937 in recognition of his public work. Sir Samuel Cohen’s
son, Paul (1909-2007), changed his surname to Cullen, entered the
army, and rose to the rank of Major General. Other prominent Jews
34 THE CHOSEN PEOPLE
in Sydney were Sir Adolph Basser, who established a leading jewelery
business and founded Basser College at the University of New South
Wales, and Abram Coppleson, who founded the Coppleson Institute
for medical research at the University of Sydney.
Jews immigrated in the 1850s to participate in the development of
the goldfields at Ballarat and Bendigo, and also in the mining of coal,
as well as copper, silver, and lead. Few Jews worked as miners. They
worked more as provisioners for the miners, setting up hotels and
shops and supplying the mines with food, clothing, sieves, and pick-
axes. A population survey of the state of Victoria in 1881 found that
fewer than 10 percent of Jews were unskilled laborers, while nearly all
the rest were skilled workers, salesmen, storekeepers, hotel owners,
bakers, and caterers. Jews had a higher socioeconomic profile than
Gentiles (Rutland, 1988, pp. 53-4).
In Melbourne, the Michaelis family ran one of the most prominent
Jewish businesses. Moritz Michaelis (1820-1902) arrived in Australia
in 1853 and set up an import business. When he died in 1902, he was
one of the hundred richest men in Victoria. Another was the Myers
family. Sidney Baevski Myer (1878-1934) arrived in Australia in
1897, established the Myer Emporium “which has been ranked with
the famous international stores such as Macy’s in New York and
Selfridges in London” (Rutland, 1988, p. 124). Other prominent Jews
included Sir Isaac Isaacs (1855-1948), whose father arrived from
Poland in 1854 and who was Chief Justice of Australia and Governor-
General (1931-1936); and Sir Zelman Cowen (b. 1 919), whose
grandparents had fled Russia in the 1880s to escape the pogroms.
Zelman’s paternal grandfather went to Britain, from which his father
immigrated to Australia, while his maternal grandfather went to
the Australian gold-mining town of Ballarat. Cowen studied law at
the University of Melbourne, where he became professor; he later
became vice-chancellor of the University of Queensland (1970-1977)
and then Governor-General of Australia. Yet another eminent Jew
was Lieutenant General Sir John Monash (1865-1931), whose father
arrived from Poland in 1853. John was Commander-in-Chief of the
Australian Army Corps on the Western Front during World War I. In
1923, he was appointed vice-chancellor of the University of Melbourne.
In 1958, Monash University in Melbourne was named after him. The
most internationally famous of the Melbourne Jewish community
Australia 35
was Helena Rubinstein (1879-1965), who migrated to Australia from
Kracöw in 1891. She observed that women’s complexions suffered in
the Australian climate and opened a shop to sell face cream to afford
some protection against the strong Australian sun. From this modest
beginning she built her worldwide cosmetics business that survives to
this day.
1. Numbers of Jews
The approximate numbers of Jews in Australia and their
percentages of the population for various dates from 1851 to 2001 are
given in Table 3.1. The increase of about 36,000 in the numbers from
1933 to 1961 was partly due to the immigration of about 8,000 Jews
from Austria, Germany, Hungary, Lithuania, and Poland seeking to
escape anti-Semitism and persecution. The numbers were quite small
because Australia had a quota of 1,800 Jews a year, which was raised
to 5,000 a year in 1938. About another 23,000 or so Jews entered after
World War II up to 1960 as survivors ofthe Holocaust, including a few
thousand from Egypt and other countries in the Near East from which
they were expelled following the Arab-Israel conflict. A further 36,000
came between 1961 and 2001, anumber ofthem from South Africa and
Israel. Most of the Austrian, German, and Hungarian Jews settled in
Sydney, while most of the Polish Jews settled in Melbourne (Rutland,
1988). In the 1980s, about 10,000 Jews migrated to Australia from
South Africa. Despite the increase in the numbers of Jews, the Gentile
population increased at about the same rate, with the result that the
percentage of Jews in the population has remained fairly stable from
1851 to 2001 at between 0.36 and 0.56 percent.
Table 3.1. Numbers and Percentages of Jews in Australia
Year Jewish Population % of Total
1851 1,778 0.53
1933 23,553 0.36
1961 59,343 0.56
2001 98,000 0.50
36 THE CHOSEN PEOPLE
2. Educational Achievement
Jews in Australia have had higher levels of education than Gentiles.
Some statistics for the educational achievement of Jews in Australia
are given in Table 3.2. Row 1 shows that already by 1921, Jews were
more than five times overrepresented as students in Australian
universities, as compared with Gentiles. Row 2 shows that by 1933, this
had increased to an overrepresentation of 5.8 times. Rows 3 through 5
show the percentages of Jews and Gentiles that passed the high school
matriculation examinations and who were university graduates in
New South Wales, recorded in the 1966 and 1976 censuses in New
South Wales and in Victoria. Jews were greatly overrepresented and
obtained Achievement Quotients of 5.3 in New South Wales in 1966
and of 3.9 in Victoria in 1976.
Table 3.2. Educational Achievement of Jews and Gentiles
(percentages)
Year |Education State Jews Gentiles AQ
1921 |College students | Australia 3.74 0.71 5.2
1933 | College students | Australia 4.26 0.73 5.8
1966 | Matriculation N. S.Wales 33.0 9.4 3.5
1966 | Graduates N. S.Wales 5.8 1.1 5.3
1976 | Graduates Victoria 10.2 2.6 3.9
Sources: rows 1-2: Elazar & Redding, 1983, p. 280;
rows 3-5: Rubinstein, 1986, p. 122)
3. Socioeconomic Status
Jews had achieved higher socioeconomic status than Gentiles
by 1947, when a survey found that 53 percent of Jews were in white-
collar occupations compared with 25 percent of Gentiles (Elazar &
Redding, 1983, p. 280). In 1986, the Australian magazine Business
Review Weekly published a “Rich List” of the 200 Australians who
possessed more than $100 million and found that 50 of these were
Jewish business people, mostly immigrants from Central and Eastern
Europe (Rutland, 1988, p. 200). Jews were about 0.5 percent of the
population, giving them an Achievement Quotient of 50.
Australia 37
The percentages of Jews and Gentiles in professional and
administrative occupation and in sales in New South Wales recorded
in the 1966 census are shown in Table 3.3. It will be seen that for
both men and women, Jews were greatly overrepresented and
obtained Achievement Quotients of 3.2 and 6.4, respectively. Jews
were also overrepresented as salesmen and saleswomen. Jews were
correspondingly underrepresented in blue-collar occupations. William
Rubinstein (1987) gives figures from the 1971 census for the whole
of Australia, showing that for all workingmen, 46.1 percent were in
professional and managerial occupations, quite similar to the 49.8
percent in New South Wales in 1966; in the 1971 census, 21.2 percent of
working Jewish men were in small business and clerical occupations, and
6.7 percent were in semiskilled and unskilled occupations. (Rubinstein
does not give the corresponding figures for Gentiles.)
Table 3.3. Occupational Distribution of Jews and Gentiles
in New South Wales in 1966 (percentages)
Occupation Sex Jews | Gentiles | AQ
Prof/Admin Men 49.8 15.4 3.2
Prof/Admin Women 15.9 2.5 6.4
Sales M&W 14.8 5.8 3.9
An analysis of the numbers and percentage of Jews among the
elite defined as the 370 leading Australians was carried out by Higley,
Deacon, and Smart (1979). Their results are summarized in Table 3.4.
Table 3.4. Percentages of Jews in the Elite
Field % Jews AQ
Politics & media 3.5 6.2
Business 6.0 10.7
Civil servants 12.0 21.4
Academics 15.0 26.8
We see that Jews were considerably overrepresented in
politics and the media, and among business leaders, and massively
38 THE CHOSEN PEOPLE
overrepresented among senior civil servants and leading academics
with Achievement Quotients of 21.4 and 26.8, respectively.
4. Earnings
Jews in Australia have higher average earnings than Gentiles.
Statistics for the earnings of Jews and Gentiles in Victoria in 1976 and
1981 taken from the Federal census have been given by Rubinstein
(1987, p. 122) and are given in Table 3.5. For 1976, he gives the
percentages of men with annual earnings of $18,000 and above as
30.5 for Jews and 9.5 for Gentiles. Among low earners, there were
fewer Jews than Gentiles. Only 17.8 percent of Jewish men had annual
earnings of under $ 7,000, as compared with 28.5 percent of Gentiles.
In 1981, the percentages of men with annual earnings of $26,000 and
above were 25 percent for Jews and 11 percent for Gentiles.
Table 3.5. Annual Earnings of Jews and Gentiles in
Victoria (percentages)
Year Annual Earnings | Jews | Gentiles
1976 $18,000+ 30.5 9.5
1976 Under $7,000 17.8 28.5
1981 $26,000+ 25.0 11.0
5. Intermarriage
Many Jews in Australia have assimilated with Gentiles. The rates
of intermarriage between Jews and Gentiles recorded in the censuses
of 1921, 1961, and 1971 are shown in Table 3.6. In 1921, the rates of
exogamy were quite high at 28 percent for Jewish men and 15 percent
for Jewish women. The exogamy rates declined in 1961 and 1971. This
was due to the greater numbers of Jews in Australia in the second half of
the 20th century and hence the greater availability of Jewish marriage
partners. The greater percentages of Jewish men marrying Gentiles than
of Jewish women have been found in a number of other countries and
implies that a higher proportion of Jewish women remain unmarried.
Australia 39
Table 3.6. Percentages of Jews Marrying Gentiles
Year | Men | Women
1921 28 15
1961 10 4
1971 10 6
6. Conclusions
The Jews have been remarkably successful in Australia. They
have been overrepresented in the universities, the professions, and
business. They have also made their mark in chess: the Hungarian-
born Lajos Steiner (1903-1975) won the New South Wales chess
championship for five consecutive years (1941-1945) and later became
the all-Australia chess champion.
How can the Jewish successes be explained? Suzanne Rutland
(1988, p. 259-261), who has written the standard text on Jews in
Australia, believes there are five reasons for Jewish success. First,
many of them had “entrepreneurial flair and business acumen.”
Second, they “were highly motivated to create a new and more secure
life for themselves.” Third, they had “the willingness to work hard,
‘often seven days a week and sixteen hours a day’, usually with the
assistance of their wives.” Fourth, they had “imagination”:
Imagination is another essential ingredient in business success, ‘as
new products must be conceived, new ways of doing things conjured
up, and ways round problems solved’. As a result of persecution
and discrimination, Jews have always tended to be innovators.
Fifth, “self-help was also an important factor in Jewish business
success,” as Jews excelled at exploiting the ethnic-religious networks
they brought over from Europe. (p. 264). Rutland does not mention
intelligence as a possible factor in the success of the Jews. There is
no direct evidence on the intelligence of the Jews in Australia, but
studies in Britain, Canada, and the United States have shown that it is
higher than that of Gentiles at an IQ of approximately 110. The Jews
of Australia are the same Ashkenazi stock, most likely have about
the same IQ, and this has almost certainly been a significant factor
in their success.
CHAPTER 4
Austria and Hungary
1. Austria
2. Austrian Nobel Prize winners and Chess Grandmasters
3. Czechoslovakia
4. Hungary
5. Hungarian Nobel Laureates, Wolf Prize winners, and Chess Grandmasters
6. Infant Mortality
T: this chapter, we consider the position of Jews in Central Europe,
a region that comprised the Austro-Hungarian Empire from 1815
to 1918 and now includes not only present-day Austria and Hungary
but the Czech Republic and Slovakia. In 1867, Hungary (which
included Slovakia) became an autonomous region of the Austro-
Hungarian Empire. In 1918, as a result of the First World War, the
Austro-Hungarian Empire was split up: Austria and Hungary became
independent states, and the northern provinces of both were hived off
to form the independent state of Czechoslovakia.
Jews settled in this region of Central Europe from at least 800
AD. From time to time, they were persecuted and expelled. In 1298, it
is estimated that approximately 100,000 Jews were killed in Austria.
The Jews were expelled from Hungary in 1360 and from Austria in
42 THE CHOSEN PEOPLE
1420 (Barnaav, 1998). Despite these tribulations, Jews flourished in
this region. The 1918 American Jewish Yearbook calculated that at
the turn of the century, there were 2,258,000 Jews in the Austro-
Hungarian Empire, 4.4 percent of a total population of 51,100,000.
Charles Murray (2003, p. 280) has calculated the numbers of
Jewish and Gentile “significant figures” (important names in science
and the arts) in Central Europe whose careers peaked in the years
1870-1950. He finds 21 Jews and 50 Gentiles. Calculating the ratio of
Jewish to Gentile “significant figures,” he concludes that Jews were
overrepresented by a factor of 7.1.
1. Austria
The number of Jews in Austria during the 19th century and up to
1940 was approximately 233,000 and comprised approximately 3.5
percent of the population. About 90 percent of these (approximately
209,000) were estimated to have been killed in the Holocaust. Of
the 32,000 or so that survived, many immigrated to Israel, leaving
approximately 9,000 (0.1 percent of the population) in 2002.
Jews were emancipated and given full civil rights in Austria in 1867.
From this time up to the end of World War I, Jews in Austria became
prominent in the professions, in intellectual life, banks, commerce,
and industry. Several of the most famous Austrians of this period were
Jews, including the philosophers Karl Popper (1902-90) and Ludwig
Wittgenstein (1889-1951), whose family had a large engineering
business; the founder of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud (1856-1939),
his daughter Anna Freud (1895-1982), and Alfred Adler (1870-1937),
Freud’s sometime colleague and later apostate; the novelist Stefan
Zweig (1881-1942); and the Rothschilds whose Creditanstalt was one
of the largest banks in the country.
Within a couple of decades following emancipation, Jews
became greatly overrepresented among university students, in the
professions, and in business in Austria. Statistics showing this for the
years 1873-1918 are given in Table 4.1. The first row shows that in the
1880s, Jews (who were approximately 3.5 percent of the population)
were 17 percent of all university students in the country, giving them
an overrepresentation Achievement Quotient of 4.9. Row 2 of Table
4.1 shows that in the 1880s, Jews were 50 percent of the students at
Austria and Hungary 43
the University of Vienna, where they comprised approximately 10
percent of the population, giving them an Achievement Quotient of
5.0. The next eight rows show that in the period 1873-1910, Jews were
40 percent of graduates of the Gymnasium (elite high schools), 40
percent of directors of the public banks, 70 percent of the members
of the Vienna stock exchange council (the Borsenrath), and were
overrepresented in the professions of law, medicine, and journalism,
and among the Faculty at the University of Vienna. The last row shows
that in 1917 Jews comprised 50 percent of the directors of industrial
companies who held more than seven simultaneous directorships.
Table 4.1. Jews in Austria 1870-1918
Years Occupation % Jews AQ
1880s University Students 17 4.9
1880s Vienna Students 50 5.0
1873-1910 |Gymnasium Students 40 11.4
1873-1910 |Bank Directors 40 11.4
1873-1910 |Stock Exchange 70 20.0
1873-1910 |Lawyers 62 17.7
1873-1910 |Doctors 50 14.3
1873-1910 |University Faculty 25 71
1873-1910 |Journalists 57 16.3
1917 Company Directors 50 14.3
Source: Slezkine (2004)
Austrian Jews continued to do well in the interwar period.
Statistics showing the overrepresentation of Jews in the professions
and business in Austria for the years 1918-1939 are given in Table
4.2.Jews (who were still approximately 3.5 percent of the population)
hadhighachievementquotientsamonguniversityprofessors,jewellers,
chemists, booksellers, shoe manufacturers, and hat manufacturers.
44 THE CHOSEN PEOPLE
Table 4.2. Jews in Austria 1918-1929
Occupation % Jews AQ
Professors 23.7 6.8
Jewellers 55.6 15.9
Chemists 26.0 7.4
Booksellers 71.5 20.4
Shoe Manufacturers 35.0 10.0
Hat Manufacturers 45.0 12.9
Source: Fraenkel (1967)
2. Austrian Nobel Prize winners and Chess
Grandmasters
Austrian Nobel Prize winners, representing the peak ofintellectual
achievement in the country, are listed in Table 4.3. Of the total of 16
Nobel Laureates, seven have been Jews. (Friedrich von Hayek is not
identified as Jewish, but this is uncertain; he is not listed as Jewish on
many websites of Jewish Nobel Prize winners, but he was a cousin of
Ludwig Wittgenstein, who was Jewish, so he likely had some Jewish
ancestry).
Table 4.3. Nobel Prize winners (Jews are asterisked)
Year |Name Subject Year |Name Subject
1914 | Robert Bárány * Medicine 1945 | Wolfgang Pauli* Physics
1923 | Fritz Pregl Chemistry | | 1962 | Max Perutz* Chemistry
1927 | Julius Wagner-Jauregg | Medicine 1973 | Konrad Lorenz Medicine
1930 | Karl Landsteiner* Medicine 1973 | Karl von Frisch Medicine
1933 | Erwin Schrodinger Physics 1974 | Friedrich von Hayek | Economics
1936 | Otto Loewi* Medicine 1998 | Walter Kohn* Chemistry
1936 | Victor F. Hess Physics 2000 | Eric R. Kandel* Medicine
1938 | Richard Kuhn Chemistry | | 2004 | Elfriede Jelinek Literature
Thus, Jews, comprising about 1.8 percent of the population over
Austria and Hungary 45
the 20th century, have won 43 percent of the Nobel Prizes, giving
them an Achievement Quotient of 24.
Austrian chess grandmasters are listed in Table 4.4. These are
taken from the list of the 141 top-rated chess grandmasters for the
years 1851 to 2000-the title of grandmaster was first introduced in
1851-compiled by William Rubinstein (2004). In this period, there
were four Jews and four Gentiles among the top-rated grandmasters.
From 1940-2000, there was only one top-rated grandmaster
(Portisch) who was a Gentile.
Table 4.4. Jewish and Gentile Top-rated Chess Grandmasters
Year Jews Gentiles
1851-1939 | Englisch Hamppe
Spielmann Maroczy
Kostic Schlecter
Chajes Duras
1940-2000 |- Portisch
3. Czechoslovakia
The most famous Jews from Czechoslovakia are Sigmund Freud,
who was born in the present-day Czech Republic but studied medicine
at the University of Vienna and conducted his medical practice in the
city; Franz Kafka (1883-1924), who was born in Prague and is best
remembered for his novels The Trial and The Castle; and the British
publishing tycoon Robert Maxwell (born Ludvik Hoch) (1923-1991).
From the emancipation of the Jews in 1867 up to 1940, Jews were
approximately 2.4 percent of the population of Czechoslovakia. In the
census of 1930, there were 354,342 Jews recorded in Czechoslovakia,
representing 2.42 percent of the population. Most of these were in the
eastern provinces of Slovakia and Subcarpathian Rus, where they were
8.4 percent of the population. In the western provinces of Bohemia
and Moravia, they were only 1.1 percent of the population. According
to Ezra Mendelsohn (1983, p. 152), “the Jews did not, on the whole,
suffer discrimination in the state bureaucracy or the universities,
unlike the case almost anywhere else in East Central Europe.” Jews
46 THE CHOSEN PEOPLE
assimilated well in Bohemia, where 32 percent of Jewish men married
Gentile women in 1931, and only slightly fewer Jewish women married
Gentile men.
Jews did well in Czechoslovakia after the emancipation. In the
1880s, Jews were 15 percent of university students in Czechoslovakia
and were overrepresented by a factor of 5.6 in relation to their
proportion in the population (Slezkine, 2004). In 1935-1936, 11.9
percent of the university students were Jewish, giving them an
Achievement Quotient of 4.9. While in Slovakia, “Jewish professionals,
especially doctors and lawyers, constituted an inordinately high
proportion; in the late 1930s, 40 percent of doctors in Slovakia were
Jews” (Mendelsohn, 1983, p. 145). This gives them an Achievement
Quotient of 4.8.
There have been three Czech Nobel Prize winners: Carl Cori
(1896-1984) and Gerty Cori (1896-1957), who were jointly awarded
the Prize for Medicine in 1947, and Jaroslav Seifert (1901-1986), who
was awarded the Prize for Literature in 1984. Carl Cori was Jewish,
so Jews, who composed about 2.4 percent of the population in the
first half of the 20th century, won two thirds of the Nobel Prizes. The
Czechs have produced three of the top-rated chess grandmasters:
Wilhelm Steinitz (1836-1900), Solomon Flohr (1908-1983), and
Oldrich Duras (1882-1957). All three were Jewish.
In World War II, it is estimated that about 90 percent of Jews in
Czechoslovakia perished in the concentration camps. In 2002, there
were an estimated 2,800 Jews in the Czech Republic and 3,300 Jews
in Slovakia, comprising 0.02 and 0.06 percent of the populations,
respectively.
4. Hungary
Jews were approximately five percent of the population of Hungary
during the 19th century and up to 1910. In 1920, the percentages of
Jews in the population was a little higher at 5.9. In the 1920s, the
numbers of Jews and their percentages of the population declined
because Jews had lower fertility than Gentiles, and there were also
some conversions and emigration. The fall from 444,567 in 1930 to
170,000 in 1949 was a result of the Nazi exterminations in World War
II. The further falls to 75,000 in 1985 and 52,000 in 2000 were largely
Austria and Hungary 47
due to emigration, principally to Israel, and to low fertility (Johnson,
2004, p. 563). These figures are given in Table 4.5.
Table 4.5. Numbers and Percentages of Jews in Hungary
Year Jewish Population % of Total
1800-1910 - 5.0
1920 473,355 5.9
1930 444,567 5.1
1949 170,000 1.9
1985 75,000 0.75
2000 52,000 0.5
The Jews prospered in Hungary after their emancipation in 1867.
According to a leading historian of the Austro-Hungarian Empire:
“the capitalist development of modern Hungary...has been almost
entirely of the Jews’ making” (Macartney, 1969, p. 710). Another
historian of the Austro-Hungarian Empire has written, Hungary
was “a paradise for the Jews”:
By the late 19th century a small but potent Jewish oligarchy, mostly
ennobled and partly converted to Christianity, held overriding
economic power.... Budapest was sometimes called Judapest.... The
Jewish impact on Hungary was not limited to economic activity.
The children of Jewish bankers, industrialists, and businessmen,
here as elsewhere in Europe, flocked to the universities and
became doctors, lawyers, editors, journalists, scholars, musicians,
and, perhaps most notably, scientists.... In the immediate prewar
period, Jews constituted some fifty percent of the students in the
University of Budapest medical faculty.” (Mendelsohn, 1983, pp. 89, 92, 94)
“How are we to explain the unprecedented Jewish penetration
of Hungarian economic and cultural life in the prewar period?” asks
this same historian. To this question he gives the cogent answer that
“the fact is that the general environment was unusually favourable
to Jews” (p. 93).
Among the most internationally famous of the Jews in Hungary
in this period were the composer Franz Lehar (1870-1948), best
48 THE CHOSEN PEOPLE
known for his operetta The Merry Widow, first performed in 1905;
the escapologist Harry Houdini (1874-1926), who was born Ehrich
Weisz; the writer and novelist Arthur Koestler (1905-1983); and
David Gestetner (1854-1939) who invented the stencil duplicating
process and whose copiers—Gestetners—were an essential item of
equipment of offices throughout the world until they were replaced by
photocopiers in the 19708.
Some statistics showing how well Jews were doing in the second
half of the 19th century up to World War I are given in Table 4.6. Row
1 shows that in 1857, 12.5 percent of wealthy landowners (defined
as those in the class of the highest taxpayers) were Jewish (305
out of 2,450). Row 2 shows that in 1887, 62.3 percent of wealthy
businessmen defined as those in the class of the highest taxpayers
were Jewish (362 out of 588). Row 3 shows that between 1880 and
1900, Jews were 25 percent of all university students in the country
which, considering that they were approximately 5 percent of the
population, gives them an Achievement Quotient of 5.0.
Table 4.6. Jews in Hungary, 1857-1900 (percentages)
Year Occupation % Jews AQ
1 1857 Landowners 12.5 2.4
2 1887 Businesses 62.3 12.2
3 | 1880-1900 | University Students 25.0 5.0
4 | 1880-1900 | Budapest Students 43.0 8.6
5 1900 Doctors 49.0 9.8
6 1900 Lawyers 45.0 9.0
7 1900 Journalists 42.0 8.4
8 1900 Writers and artists 26.0 5.2
Sources: rows 1-4: Slezkine (2004); rows 5-8: Encylopedia Judaica.
Row 4 shows that in the same period Jews were 43 percent of
students at the elite Budapest Technological University, giving
them an Achievement Quotient of 8.6.
Rows 5 through 8 shows that in 1900 Jews were massively
overrepresented among doctors, lawyers, and journalists, and
Austria and Hungary 49
among writers and artists.
In 1918, Hungary became an independent country. After a
tumultuous period, a Communist government gained power in
1919, headed by Bela Kun (1886-1938?), who was Jewish. Twenty
of the 26 ministers in the government were also Jewish. This gave
Jews a bad name among much of the population who disliked life
under Communist rule. The fires of anti-Semitism were fuelled and
there were a number of pogroms against Jews in which Jews were
murdered in some 50 cities throughout the country. In August of
1919, Hungary was invaded by Romania, and Kun’s reign of terror
was put to an end. The Romanians installed a Social Democratic
government, but in the next year, this was replaced by the
conservative regime of Admiral Miklös Horthy (1868-1957).
Jews continued to do well in Hungary in the new order between
the wars:
Hungarian Jewry was basically distributed among the middle
class, ranging from the haute to the lower bourgeoisie. At its apex
were the giants of finance and industry. At the bottom were the
artisans and small merchants of the little towns. There was no
Jewish factory proletariat. (Mendelsohn, 1983, p. 100)
Only 4.2 percent of Jews worked in agriculture as compared with
59.7 percent of Gentiles, who were largely peasants (Slezkine, 2004).
During this period, five percent of Jews were university graduates,
compared with 1.7 percent of Protestants, 1.3 percent of Catholics, and
0.8 percent of Greek Orthodox (von Hentig, 1948, p. 339).
Statistics showing the prominence of Jews among the business
elite and in the professions are given for 1920 in Table 4.7. Row
1 shows that in 1920, 54.0 percent of the owners of prominent
commercial businesses were Jewish and row 2, that Jews owned
85.0 percent of banks and other financial institutions. Row 3 shows
that in 1920, 12.5 percent of the owners of industrial businesses
were Jewish. Row 4 shows that 60 percent of the doctors were Jews.
Rows 5, 6, 7, and 8 show that 51 percent of lawyers, 39 percent of
the privately employed engineers and chemists, 34 percent of the
journalists, and 29 percent of the musicians were Jews. These figures
are for those who identified themselves as Jews by religion. If Jewish
converts and nonbelievers had been added, the percentages of Jews
in these professions would have been higher.
50 THE CHOSEN PEOPLE
Table 4.7. Occupational Profile of Jews in Hungary in 1920
Occupation % Jews AQ
1 | Commerce 54.0 10.6
2 |Banks 85.0 16.7
3 |Industrialists 12.5 2.4
4 | Doctors 60.0 12.0
5 | Lawyers 51.0 10.1
6 | Engineers/Chemists 39.0 7.8
7 | Journalists 34.0 6.8
8 | Musicians 29.0 5.8
9 | University students 13.4 2.3
Source: Slezkine (2004)
Row 9 shows that 13.4 percent of the university students were
Jewish. This figure is for the years 1921-1922 and is lower than might
be expected due to a law passed in 1920 limiting the numbers of Jews
admitted to the universities.
The prominence of Jews among the business elite was still
present in 1930, as shown in Table 4.8.
Table 4.8. Economic position of Jews in Hungary in 1930
Ownership % Jews AQ
1 | Large commercial firms 61.7 12.1
2 | Large industrial firms 47.4 9.3
3 | Wealth 71.0 14.2
Source: Mendelsohn, 1983, p. 101
Row 1 shows that in this year, 61.7 percent of the commercial
firms (defined as those employing 20 or more people) were Jewish
and row 2, that Jews owned 47.4 percent of the large industrial
firms (similarly defined). Row 3 shows that Jews were 71 percent
of the most wealthy taxpayers, defined as those whose income
exceeded 200,000 pengo (the Hungarian currency) a year.
A significant number of Jews married Gentiles during this
period. Between 1931 and 1935, 19.3 percent of Jewish men
Austria and Hungary 51
married Gentile women, while 16.5 percent of Jewish women
married Gentile men (Mendelsohn, 1983, p. 102). Jews were well
acculturated. Nevertheless, anti-Semitism increased in the 1920s
when a quota for Jews was instituted for university admissions
and Jews were effectively kept out of the civil service and army
officer corps. Anti-Semitism became more virulent toward
the end of the 1930s. In 1938, a law was passed restricting the
proportion of Jews to 20 percent of the workforce, and Jews were
limited to five percent of those admitted to the legal, medical, and
engineering professions. In 1939, a further law prohibited Jews
from all managerial positions in newspapers, theatres, cinemas,
and film production; limited Jews to six percent of students at
universities; and required all Jewish public prosecutors and
professors and teachers in universities and high schools to retire
by 1943. In industrial corporations, banks, mines, and insurance
companies, Jews were to be limited to 12 percent of the workforce.
Hungary entered World War II as an ally of Germany. This was,
up toa point, good for Jews because the Hungarians retained control
of the country and Admiral Horthy (the regent) and other political
leaders were sympathetic to the Jews, or at least not as virulently
anti-Semitic as the Nazis. The Germans exerted pressure on the
Hungarian government for the extermination of the Jews, but the
Hungarian political leaders did their best to avoid complying with
this demand. To accommodate the Germans, they passed more
anti-Semitic legislation in 1941 prohibiting marriage between Jews
(defined as having at least one Jewish grandparent) and Gentiles,
and in 1942, Jewish estates were confiscated. Jews were conscripted
into labor battalions and sent unarmed to the Russian front,
where many of them died. In March 1944, the Germans occupied
and took control of Hungary and organized the transportation of
approximately 300,000 Jews to the concentration camps. These
came largely from rural areas. Horthy managed to protect most of
the Jews in Budapest from deportation, and more than half of them
survived the war. By the year 2000, there were still 52,000 Jews in
Hungary.
52 THE CHOSEN PEOPLE
5. Hungarian Nobel Laureates, WolfPrizewinners,
and Chess Grandmasters
In the 1920s and 1930s, Hungary produced a number of brilliant
Jewish physicists. They included Leo Szilard (1898-1964), born
in Budapest the son of a civil engineer, who won the Hungarian
national prize in mathematics at the age of 18. He studied physics
and engineering at the University of Berlin, where he developed a
friendship with Einstein. When Hitler came to power he fled to Britain
and in 1938 moved to the United States, where he was a prominent
member of the Manhattan Project for the development of the atom
bomb. Other renowned Hungarian Jewish physicists of this period
were Eugene Wigner (1902-1995), John von Neumann (1903-1957),
Edward Teller (1908-2003), Theodor von Kärmän (1881-1963),
Georg von Hevesy (1885-1966), and Michael Polanyi (1891-1976).
In the 1930s, all of these men moved to the United States, where the
first three (Wigner, von Newman, and Teller) joined Szilard as key
members ofthe Manhattan Project.
Hungary has produced 12 Nobel Prize winners and four recipients
of the Wolf Prize, awarded for outstanding work in mathematics.
They are listed in Table 4.9.
Table 4.9. Hungarian Nobel and Wolf Prize winners (Jews
are Asterisked)
Year |Nobel Prize Subject Year |Wolf Prize
1937 |Albert Szent-Györgyi Medicine 1983 |Paul Erdos*
1943 |George de Hevesy* Chemistry 1987 |Peter Lax*
1943 |\Jaroslav Heyrovsky* Chemistry 1999 |Läszlö Loväsz
1944 |Isidor Isaac Rabi * Physics 2000 |Raoul Bott*
1945 |Wolfgang Pauli* Physics
1961 |Georg von Bekesy Medicine
1963 |Eugene Wigner* Physics
1971 |Dennis Gabor* Physics
1994 |John C. Harsanyi* Economics
1994 |George A. Olah* Chemistry
2002 |Imre Kertész* Literature
2004 |Avram Hershko* Chemistry
Austria and Hungary 53
Of the total of 12 Nobel Prize winners, 10 have been Jews, while
three of the four Wolf Prize winners have been Jews. Thus, Jews,
comprising about 3.2 percent of the population during the 20th
century, have produced 81 percent of the Nobel and Wolf Prize
winners, giving them an Achievement Quotient of 25.
Hungarian Jews have excelled in chess. Table 4.10 gives the names
of the top-rated Jewish and Gentile chess grandmasters in Hungary for
the years 1851 to 2000. Between 1851 and 1939, there were four Jews
and three Gentiles among top-rated grandmasters (Rubinstein, 2004).
Table 4.10 Jewish and Gentile Top-rated Chess
Grandmasters
Year Jews Gentiles
1851-1939 Lowenthal Szen
Kolisch Maroczy
Gunsberg Charousek
Reti
1940-2000 Leko
From 1940 to 2000, there was only one, a Gentile. Over the
whole period, there were four Jews and four Gentiles. Jews were
approximately 3.7 percent of the population during the period, giving
them an Achievement Quotient of 13.5. Hungarian Jewry is also
notable for producing Judit Polgar (b. 1976), from a Jewish family in
Budapest (a number of her family were killed in the Holocaust, and her
grandmother survived Auschwitz). She was among the best 20 players
in the world in the 1990s and is widely considered the best female
chess player of all time. Her two older sisters, Zsuzsa and Zsófia, are
also good players, though not in the same class as Judit.
6. Infant Mortality
There is an association between high intelligence and low infant
mortality that has been found among individuals and between groups.
For instance, S.W. Savage (1946) found that in Britain the mothers
of infants who died in their first year of life (this is the definition of
54 THE CHOSEN PEOPLE
infant mortality) had below average intelligence; this correlation was
confirmed in the United States by Richard Herrnstein and Charles
Murray (1994), who reported in their analysis of the American
Longitudinal Study of Youth that mothers of infants who died in
their first year of life had an average IQ of 92, eight points below
the national average. One of the principal reasons for this is that
more intelligent mothers look after their babies more effectively, for
example, by feeding them properly, taking care of them when they are
ill, and insuring that they do not have accidents.
Infant mortality was lower among Jews in the late 19th and
early 20th centuries. Studies showing this have been summarized by
Gretchen Condran and Ellen Kramarow (1991) and are shown in Table
4.11; infant mortality of Gentiles was between four and 67 percent
higher than that of Jews.
Table 4.11. Infant Mortality per 1,000 Live Births
Years Location Jews Gentiles % Difference
1851 Hungary 153 251 64
1851 Bohemia 162 271 67
1851 Moravia 163 226 39
1880-1899 | Budapest 129 210 63
1900-1912 | Budapest 95 152 60
1894-1913 | Vienna 78 81 4
CHAPTER 5
Benelux
1. Numbers of Jews in the Netherlands and Belgium
2. Socioeconomic Status of Jews in the Netherlands, 1860-1909
3. Crime Rates among Jews in the Netherlands, 1910-1920
4. Position of Jews in the Netherlands, 1930
5. Educational and Occupational Status, 1999
6. Nobel and Mathematics Prize winners
7. Fertility, Mortality, and Exogamy
enelux is the convenient, if unlovely, name for the area of
Northwest Europe that includes Belgium, the Netherlands,
and Luxembourg. Jews were first recorded in these parts around
the year 1200. By 1261, Henry III of Brabant (c. 1230-1261), the
ruler of much of what is now this region, became concerned about
the Jews’ profession of money-lending, regarded as the sin of
usury, and ordered them to leave unless they desisted from this
occupation. However, he died before his order was carried out,
and his widow decided not to proceed with the order because the
Jews paid substantial taxes that she did not wish to forego.
A number of Jews came to Belgium and the Netherlands in 1290
following their expulsion from England. The first major persecution of
58 THE CHOSEN PEOPLE
Jews in Belgium and the Netherlands occurred in 1348-1350 when the
bubonic plague, known as the Black Death, swept though Europe and
was responsible for the deaths of about a third of the population. Many
people blamed the Jews for this terrible and inexplicable epidemic,
since Jews were widely believed to be the enemies of Christians and
wished to harm them. Throughout Europe, Jews were attacked and
killed in revenge; Belgium and the Netherlands were no exceptions. A
contemporary monk, Henry of Hereford, wrote:
In that year of 1349 the Jews were exterminated most cruelly. This
was done either on account of their wealth, which many people
were able to seize illegally, or because they, as the general rumour
hath it, maliciously poisoned the wells all over the world. (Blom,
Fuks-Mansfeld, & Schoffer, 1996, pp. 19-20)
In the 15th century, Jews were discriminated against in a number
of ways. They were prohibited from being money-lenders and from
living in several towns. The only city to provide a benign environment
for Jews was Nijmegen, and this was where the majority of Jews in
the region lived. Many Jews left as a result of this hostile environment
in the rest of the Low Countries and settled in Germany, mainly in
Cologne and Frankfurt am Main.
From 1540 onward, a number of Sephardic Jews from Portugal
settled in Antwerp. The Jews were officially given notice to leave
Portugal in 1496, but were given some years grace to wind down their
affairs. In 1511, some of them left for Antwerp, where they founded
a colony of 20 families and traded in imports of salt, figs, oranges,
and lemons from Portugal; sugar and tobacco from the Portuguese
colony in Brazil; and spices and silks from the East, largely shipped
via Lisbon. They also exported grain and textiles back to Portugal. In
the next few years, more Jewish families moved to Antwerp as the
Inquisition made life increasingly uncomfortable for them in Portugal.
In 1549, Charles V (1500-1558), the ruler of the Benelux region at the
time, became concerned at the growing numbers of Jews in Antwerp
and expelled those who had arrived since 1543. Those who remained
continued to increase in numbers, and by 1598, there were 93 Jewish
family households in the city.
In 1587-88, the States of Zeeland and the States General permitted
Portuguese Jews to come to the northern provinces. These included
Benelux 59
Amsterdam, where a number of Sephardic Jews settled. In the early
1600s, they were joined by a number of Ashkenazim refugees from
Germany and Poland. The Ashkenazim and the Sephardim coexisted
as separate communities with their own synagogues and burial sites.
Many of the Sephardim were rich, and the wealthiest were among the
social elite:
The Sephardi elite retained its aristocratic ways in every area:
some ofthe splendid houses they purchased in Amsterdam became
tourist attractions... Those who lived in The Hague bought homes
on the prestigious boulevard, the Lange Voorhout.... They kept
carriages and servants some of whom were Negroes and mulattos,
who were slaves brought in from the Caribbean” (Blom, Fuks-
Mansfeld, & Schoffer, 1996, p. 147).
The Ashkenazim were the Sephardim’s poor relations, and the
latter took measures to prevent intermarriage. In 1671, the Sephardim
decreed that any of their men who married an Ashkenazi should be
expelled from the Sephardic community. About this time, an Ashkenazi
middle class began to emerge, and by the middle of the 18th century,
mixed marriages became common and the two communities came
together.
From the early 1600s, Amsterdam became the major Jewish city in
the Netherlands. By the 1650s, Jews held 10 percent of the accounts in
the Amsterdam Exchange Bank and were 10 percent of the registered
brokers for commerce and shipping. Jews were prominent in share
dealing in the Dutch East India Company and the West India Company:
All reports agree that by the end of the seventeenth century these
activities were dominated by Jews, who before 1700 were almost
always Sephardim. They acted as specialist buyers and vendors on
behalf of Dutch regents, Christian merchants and shopkeepers, and
sometimes on behalf of foriegn noblemen (Blom, Fuks-Mansfeld,
& Schoffer, 1996, p. 110).
In the mid-17th century, Jewish communities were established in
several other Dutch cities, including the major ports of Rotterdam,
Middleburg, and Antwerp, and also in the inland towns of Amersfoort
and The Hague. At this time the Netherlands became the most
important European center of international trade with the Americas
and the East and the Jews were prominent among the Dutch merchants.
60 THE CHOSEN PEOPLE
By the year 1700, there were 6,200 Jews in Amsterdam, comprising
three percent of the population of the city, with approximately equal
numbers of Ashkenazim and Sephardim (Blom, Fuks-Mansfeld, &
Schoffer, 1996, pp. 91, 100). The city became the center for the import
of wool from Spain and rough diamonds from the Portuguese colony of
Goa in India. The Jews in Amsterdam established the two major centers
for cutting and polishing rough diamonds, and then selling them on. In
the late 17th century, the wealthiest Sephardim were Jacob Delmonte,
Jeronimo Nunes da Costa, Antonio and Francisco Lopes Suasso,
Manuuel de Belamonte, and the De Pintos and Pereiras. The wealthiest
Ashkenazim were the Gompertz family in Amsterdam and the Boas
family in The Hague. The Amsterdam Jew who acquired the greatest
permanent reputation was Baruch Spinoza (1632-1677), who was born
into a Sephardic family from Spain. He was critical of Judaism, denying
the divine origin of the Bible and the authority of the rabbis. The
Sephardi community convicted him of heresy and excommunicated
him in 1656.
In the 17th century, Jews had greater civil rights in the Netherlands
than in the rest of Europe. They were permitted to attend the Dutch
universities, where a number of them qualified in medicine. At the
end of the century, there were 30 Jewish physicians in the Collegium
Medicum, the professional medical association of Amsterdam.
In the 1650s, there was a community of Dutch Jews in the British
colony of Barbados, who exported sugar and tobacco to Amsterdam
and Hamburg. Toward the end of the 17th century, Jews played a
significant part in the development of the Dutch colony of Surinam in
South America. In 1730, Jews owned 115 of the 400 sugar plantations
in the colony. Jews were also prominent as traders in the Dutch island
of Curacao in the Caribbean.
1. Numbers of Jews in the Netherlands and Belgium
During the 18th century, “stockbroking and share dealing
remained key sectors of Jewish economic activity in Amsterdam.
Furthermore, a growing number of Ashkenazim gradually found
a place in what had hitherto, to all intents and purposes, been a
Sephardic preserve” (Blom, Fuks-Mansfeld, & Schoffer,1996, p. 110).
The first half of the 18th century saw a huge increase in the numbers
Benelux 61
of Ashkenazim, largely due to immigration from Eastern and Central
Europe after 1726, while the numbers of Sephardim declined slightly
as a result of emigration to London, Surinam, and the Caribbean,
where many of the sugar plantations were in Sephardi ownership. In
the middle of the century, the Benelux region had by far the largest
concentration of Jews in Western and Central Europe. Among the
social elite, Jews and Gentiles mixed together comfortably in social
life. Many Jews, however, were poor and were supported by charities
established and administered by wealthy Jews. At the time of the first
census carried out in 1795, there were approximately 25,000 Jews
recorded in the city, comprising about 12 percent of the population,
of whom 22,000 were Ashkenazi and only 3,000, Sephardic.
In 1796, Napoleon emancipated the Jews from restrictions on
where they were permitted to live and gave them full civil rights. In
the 19th century, Amsterdam continued to be the major Jewish city in
the Netherlands. In 1869, there were 29,952 Jews in the Amsterdam,
comprising 11.3 percent of the population of the city and 44 percent of
Jews in the Netherlands.
Over the course of the 19th century, efforts to integrate the Jews
into Dutch society increased. In 1808, Jewish schools were required
to teach Dutch, and in 1814, Yiddish was proscribed in official Jewish
affairs. Within a generation, the Ashkenazim abandoned Yiddish and
began to speak Dutch as their first language. Amsterdam remained the
major Jewish city. In the middle decades of the century, the German
Rothschild and the French Pereire banking houses established
branches in Amsterdam and recruited Jews to work in them; young,
well-educated Jews began to enter the civil service, the professions,
education, and the army and navy. In Amsterdam and Antwerp,
Jews dominated the diamond trade that consisted of importing
rough diamonds and cutting and polishing them. In Amsterdam, in
the middle decades of the 19th century, Jews were 43 out of the 50
diamond dealers and retailers in the city. In the last two decades of the
19th century, about 12,000 refugees from Russia and Poland came to
the Netherlands, increasing the Jewish population by around 15 percent.
The numbers and percentages of Jews in the Netherlands and
Belgium in the 19th and 20th centuries are given in Table 5.1. In
the Netherlands, about five percent of these were Sephardic Jews of
Portuguese origin. The increase in the number of Jews from 1899 to
62 THE CHOSEN PEOPLE
1929 was largely caused by an influx of refugees from Eastern Europe.
In 1930, there were an additional 20,900 who were half or a quarter
Jewish. Following the accession of Hitler to power in Germany in 1933
and the rise of virulent anti-Semitism, about 35,000 German Jews
fled to the Netherlands, and about 20,000 ofthese moved on to other
countries during the course of the 1930s.
Table 5.1. Numbers and Percentages of Jews in the
Netherlands and Belgium 1869-2001
The Netherlands Belgium
Year N. Jews % Population N. Jews % Population
1869 68,000 1.9 - -
1879 81,000 2.1 - -
1899 103,000 2.0 - -
1920 115,000 1.7 - -
1930 112,000 1.4 - -
1941 140,522 1.6 65,000 1.4
1947 28,000 0.16 25,000 0.3
2001 26,500 0.16 31,500 0.3
Nazi Germany invaded the Netherlands in May 1940. In the
following year, the Germans carried out a census of the whole
population in which everyone was required to register and receive
identity cards. The Jews were required to identify themselves as such
and had a J stamped on their cards. The census produced a figure
of 140,522 full Jews, 14,549 half-Jews, and 5,719 quarter-Jews.
Between 1941 and 1942, Jews were prohibited from sending their
children to Gentile schools and from entering the universities; were
dismissed from their jobs; and stripped of their civil rights, goods,
and property. In July 1942, the Germans began to send the Jews to
the concentration camps for extermination. Over the next two years,
about 107,000 were deported, of whom an estimated 5,500 survived.
Some 5,000 Jews were exempted from deportation, mainly because
they assisted the Germans in various ways such as by working in
industries that served the war effort. A further 10,500 were partners
of mixed marriages and were also exempted. About 25,000 Jews
Benelux 63
were able to avoid deportation by going into hiding: some 9,000 were
detected and killed, while 16,000 survived. About 1,000 wealthy Jews
were permitted to leave the country on payment of large sums. And
somewhere between 1,800 and 2,700 were able to escape by boat to
England or overland to Switzerland and Spain. After the liberation in
1945, it is estimated that there were about 28,000 Jews left in the
Netherlands.
There was some increase in numbers and percentages of Jews in
the Netherlands from 1930 to 1941 as a result of the immigration of
about 15,000 German Jews. The huge fall from 1941 to 1947 reflects
the deaths in the concentration camps. In the post World War II
period, an increasing number of Jews abandoned their Jewish identity
and about one half married Gentiles. It thus becomes difficult to
define and identify their numbers. In the 1947 census, 14,346 people
declared themselves to be Jews. This was about half the number with
Jewish ethnicity, the remainder of whom did not consider themselves
Jews or did not care to reveal this to the census. There was therefore
an estimated total of 28,000 Jews (Brasz, 1996, p. 345). In the 1960s,
around 10,000 Israelis came to the Netherlands, and in the early
1990s, they were joined by about 2,000 Jews from Eastern Europe.
In the 1980s, the number of Jews affiliated to Jewish congregations
had declined to around 9,000. And by 2001, this had fallen further
to 5,139. The total number of Jews in the Netherlands at the turn of
the century has been estimated in the American Jewish Yearbook at
about 30,000, not including the 10,000 or so Israelis.
In Belgium there were approximately 65,000 Jews in 1940.
Approximately 40,000 of these were killed in the German occupation.
By 2001, the numbers had increased to 31,500, largely as a result of
immigration from the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe.
2. SocioeconomicStatus of Jews in the Netherlands,
1860-1909
The socioeconomic status of Jews in the Netherlands in the second
half of the 19th century has been analysed by Jona Schellekens and
Franz van Poppel (2006). They took The Hague as a typical city
and examined the socioeconomic status of Jews, Protestants, and
Catholics from population registers and census returns for the period
64 THE CHOSEN PEOPLE
1860-1909. The percentages of the three religious denominations in
various socioeconomic categories are shown in Table 5.2. We see that
Jews were overrepresented in the first three higher socioeconomic
status categories, and underrepresented in the second three lower
socioeconomic status categories.
Table 5.2. Socioeconomic Status of Jews in the Netherlands,
1860-1909
Group Jews Protestants Catholics
Numbers 727 1,114 621
Upper class 7.4% 6.8% 3.2%
Petty bourgeoisie 57.8% 17.0% 24.5%
Lower white collar 8.1% 6.6% 6.1%
Farming & fishing 0.1% 7.5% 2.4%
Skilled laborers 13.1% 36.3% 35.3%
Unskilled laborers 3.7% 9.3% 9.7%
Unknown 9.8% 16.4% 18.8%
3. Crime Rates among Jews in the Netherlands
Some useful information about the crime rates of Jews in the
Netherlands during the years 1910-1920 has been given by Willem
Bonger (1943). He has provided statistics for those sentenced,
subdivided by Jews, Protestants, Catholics, and No Church. His results
are shown in Table 5.3. The first row gives the percentages of the four
groups (aged 20 and over) in the population. The next rows give the
percentages of those sentenced for various crimes. The general pattern
of results is that Jews were underrepresented among those sentenced
for what may be regarded as the less intelligent crimes of violence (rape,
murder, assault, etc.), but were overrepresented among those sentenced
for the more intelligent financial crimes of embezzlement, swindling,
and receiving stolen goods.
Benelux 65
Table 5.3. Crime Rates of Jews in the Netherlands, 1910-1920
Jews | Protestants | Catholics | No Church
Percent in population 1.8 54.4 35-5 TES
Rape 0.0 59.7 39.0 0.0
Murder/manslaughter 0.4 58.3 38.3 2.0
Sexual offences by teachers 0.5 59.8 38.1 1.6
Serious assault 0.6 48.2 49.3 1.5
Domestic violence 0.8 58.2 381 2.6
Assault 1.3 56.3 40.1 2.0
Theft 1.3 52.4 43.9 1.8
Minor sexual offences 1.4 72,7: 24.1 147
Embezzlement 2.5 56.3 37.8 2.6
Swindling 4.6 53.8 38.1 2.6
Receiving stolen goods 4.9 51.5 41.1 1.9
4. Position of Jews in the Netherlands, 1930
The 1930 Dutch census provides some of best information about
the position of the Jews in the Netherlands in the first half of the 20th
century. Amsterdam continued to be the major Jewish center. The
1930 census recorded that the number of Jews in the city had risen
to 65,523; Jews comprised 8.65 percent of the population of the city
and 58 percent of Jews in the Netherlands. They became increasingly
integrated with Dutch society. In Amsterdam, the percentage of mixed
marriages increased from six percent in 1901 to 17 percent in 1934
(Blom, Fuks-Mansfeld, & Schoffer, 1996, p. 234). Holland’s 1930
census, which showed that Jews comprised 1.4 percent ofthe population,
provided information about the numbers and percentages of Jews with
university educations and in the major professions. It was found that 2.6
percent of Jews were university graduates. The percentages of Jews who
were lawyers, doctors, and dentists are summarized in Table 5.4. Jews
were overrepresented in all three professions by factors of between 2.3
and 5.7. J. C. H. Blom, R. G. Fuks-Mansfeld, and Ivo Schoffer (1996,
p. 248), who present these data and are the authors of the standard
text on the Jews in the Netherlands, explain that the large proportion
66 THE CHosEn PEOPLE
of Jewish university graduates and professionals “was related to Jewish
traditions, in which learning is highly esteemed.”
Table 5.4. Occupations of Jews in the Netherlands in
1930 (percentages)
Occupation %Jews | AQ
Lawyers 3.2 2.3
Doctors 3.8 2.7
Dentists 7.4 5.3
As in the United States, Jews in the Netherlands were prominent
in the music business: “A remarkably large number of musicians
had Jewish origins, among them Lez van Delden, Sem Dresden, Jo
Juda, Bertus van Lier, Max Tak, and the musical educator Oskar
Back” (Blom, Fuks-Mansfeld, & Schoffer, 1996, pp. 248, 267). Two
Dutchman are listed among the 141 top-rated chess players from 1851
to 2000 (Rubinstein, 2004, p. 37). One of these was the Jew Max
Euwe (1901-1981), the only Dutch world champion. He defeated the
legendary Russian champion Alexander Alekhine in 1935 and held the
world title for two years until he was defeated by Alekhine in 1937. The
other was Jan Timman (b. 1951), a Gentile who appeared among the
top-rated chess players in the 1980s.
5. Educational and Occupational Status in the
Netherlands, 1999
A survey carried out in 1999 compared the educational and
occupational status of Jews (18-64 years of age) in the Netherlands
with the general population. The results are summarized in Table
5.5. The samples consisted of 776 Jews and 10,617 non-Jewish
Netherlanders. Among men, nine percent of the general population
had university degrees, whereas the percentage of Jews was almost
four times greater at 34 percent. Among women, Jews were four times
overrepresented among university graduates. Occupational status
was scored on a scale that ran from 13 for garbage collectors to 89 for
surgeons. For both men and women, Jews had higher average scores
than the general population.
Benelux 67
Table 5.5. Educational and Occupational Status of Jews in
the Netherlands, 1999
Status Jews Population
University degree: % Men 34 9
% Women 21 5
Occupational status: % Men 55 45
% Women 47 39
6. Nobel and Mathematics Prize winners
The Dutch have won 13 Nobel Prizes for science, literature, and
economics. One of these was Jewish—Tjalling Koopmans (1910-
1985), who received the prize for economics in 1975. (In addition
Tobias Asser (1838-1913), a member of the Dutch Jewish Asser
banking family, won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1911.) Five Belgians have
won Nobel Prizes; none of whom were Jewish. Belgium has produced
three prize-winning mathematicians: the Fields Medalist Jean
Bourgain (1994), who is a Gentile, the Wolf Prize winners Elias Stein
(1999), who is Jewish, and Pierre Deligne (2007), who is a Gentile.
The two countries together have produced 18 Nobel Prize winners, of
whom one has been Jewish. Jews, who have been about 0.23 percent
of the population of the two countries during the second half of the
20th century, have produced approximately five percent of the Prize
winners, giving them an Achievement Quotient of 22.
7. Fertility, Mortality, and Exogamy
In the 19th century, Jews in the Netherlands had higher
fertility than Gentiles. The average Jewish family has 11 children,
as compared with eight children for Gentiles. In the early 20th
century, this fertility differential was reversed, as Jews developed
the low fertility characteristic of middle-class and more intelligent
subpopulations that I have reviewed in Dysgenics. Among those
married between 1906 and 1910, Jews had an average of 3.4 children
compared with 5.2 children for Gentiles (Blom, Fuks-Mansfeld, &
Schoffer, 1996, p. 235).
Infant mortality, child mortality, and general mortality were
lower among Jews in the 19th and early 20th centuries: in the
68 THE CHOSEN PEOPLE
period between 1905 and 1910, for instance, the mortality rate of
Jews was about 20 percent lower than that of Protestants, whose
rate in turn was about 20 percent lower than that of Catholics. The
figures for infant and child mortality show similar differences.
Studies showing this for Amsterdam have been summarized by
Gretchen Condran and Ellen Kramarow (1991) and U. O. Schmelz
(1971) and are shown in Table 5.6.
Table 5.6. Infant and Child Mortality per 1,000 Live Births
Mortality Years Jews Gentiles
Infant 1901-1913 77 101
Infant 1914-1918 52 58
Infant 1919-1920 41 48
Child 1900-1910 112 182
Blom, Fuks-Mansfeld, and Schoffer (1996, p. 235) suggest the
explanations of the comparatively low infant mortality of Jews
include better parental care, closer family ties in general, a healthier
lifestyle (due to Jewish dietary and other ritual laws), a different
occupational structure (a marked preference for commerce and
the liberal professions), and a greater number living in large cities;
in addition, Jews were less subject to tuberculosis, syphilis, other
infections, and respiratory and intestinal diseases. They do not
mention that low mortality is associated with higher intelligence
and that this might be a factor in the lower rate of infant mortality
of Jews.
In the post-World War II period, Jews in the Netherlands
increasingly married Gentiles. In 1934, 17 percent of Jews married
Gentiles; while between 1946-1999, 61 percent of Jewish men and
48 percent of Jewish women married Gentiles (Kalmijn, Liefbroer,
van Poppel, & van Solinge, 2006).
CHAPTER 6
Britain and Ireland
1. Numbers of Jews
2. Intelligence
3. Educational Attainment
4. Earnings and Wealth
5. Socioeconomic status
6. The Professions
7. The Royal Society and the British Academy
8. Significant Figures
9. Eminence
10. Chess Champions
11. Bridge
12. Nobel Prize winners
13. Infant Mortality
14. Ireland
15. Conclusion
J first came into England shortly after the Norman Conquest in
1066. In the 12th century, the largest community was in Norwich,
where it numbered around 200. There were also Jewish communities
in London, York, Oxford, Winchester, and some other cities. In the year
1290, their total number in England has been estimated at around 2,500.
72 THE CHOSEN PEOPLE
Jews made a living as money-lenders, as elsewhere in Europe, and as
traders, particularly in eastern goods such as spices and silk, for which
they had a virtual monopoly.
There were large-scale attacks on Jews during the Third Crusade
of 1189-1190, during which a number of Jews were massacred in
London, York, and Norwich (Russell, 1945, p. 434). In 1290, Edward
I confiscated the Jews’ money and property and expelled them en
masse. There were virtually no Jews in England until the end of
the 15th century, when a few of those expelled from Spain in 1492
and Portugal in 1497 arrived in England. There were, however, no
significant numbers until they were officially permitted to settle
by Oliver Cromwell (1599-1658) in 1656. From this time on, many
Ashkenazi Jews from East and Central Europe settled in England;
a number of Sephardim came from the Netherlands, which was in
decline economically in the 18th century. Nearly all these immigrants
settled in London.
In the 19th century, Jews were not subjected to violence in Britain.
However, they suffered certain disabilities. For most of the century,
they were not permitted to become members of parliament, hold
public office, or enter the universities of Oxford and Cambridge,
which only began admitting Jews in 1871. Despite this, a number of
Jews excelled intellectually in the 19th century. David Ricardo (1772-
1823), the economist and author of Principles of Political Economy
and Taxation, came from a wealthy Jewish family, converted to
Christianity, and became a Member of Parliament. Nathan Mayer
Rothschild (1777-1836) was sent by his father from Frankfurt to
set up a bank in Britain, made a fortune in the Napoleonic War, and
established the bank as the greatest in the world. His grandson, also
Nathan Mayer (1840-1915) was made Baron Rothschild in 1885,
and the family joined the ranks of the British aristocracy. Benjamin
Disraeli (1804-1881) entered parliament in 1837, which he was
able to do after his conversion to Christianity, and became Prime
Minister from 1874 to 1880. Sir Moses Montefiore (1784-1885) was
the first Jew to become Sheriff of London and was created a baronet
in 1846. Sir William Herschel (1792-1871), who was half-Jewish, was
a distinguished astronomer who discovered the planet Uranus, and
was appointed president of the Royal Astronomical Society in 1848. In
1858, Lionel de Rothschild (1808-1879) became the first professing
Britain and Ireland 73
Jew to enter parliament and in taking the oath was allowed to omit the
words “on the true faith of a Christian.”
1. Numbers of Jews
By 1730, there were about 6,000 Jews in Britain. By 1800 this had
grown to about 20,000 and by 1860, to approximately 60,000, partly
through immigration and partly through natural increase. In the first half
of the 19th century, the Jewish community in London was dominated
by a dozen or so very rich families, among whom the leading were the
Rothschilds, Montefiores, Goldsmids, Cohens, Mocattas, and Samuels.
Between 1881 and 1900, the number of Jews increased nearly
fourfold. This was due to the immigration of about 100,000 Jews
from Russia and Poland, where they were persecuted following the
assassination of Tsar Alexander II in 1881, for which the Jews were
widely blamed. This was largely responsible for the increase in the
number of Jews to around 300,000 by 1920. Most of these settled
in London, which has been home to around 65 to 70 percent of Jews
in Britain in the 20th century. The next largest communities have
been in Manchester, followed by Leeds and Glasgow. The majority of
Jews in Britain at the end of the 20th century were the descendants of
those who had fled from Russia between 1881 and 1905 (Waterman &
Kosmin, 1986).
Estimates of the size of the Jewish population in Britain and
of their percentage of the population from the Middle Ages to the
end of the 20th century have been given by Stephen Brook (1990)
and by Stanley Waterman and Barry Alexander Kosmin (1986)
and are shown in Table 2.1. It appears from these figures that the
size of the Jewish population peaked around 1950 and declined
substantially over the next 50 years. The reason for the increase in
the number of Jews, from 330,000 in 1930 to 380,000 in 1940, was
the immigration of about 50,000 Jewish refugees from Germany
and Austria in the 1930s. From 1940 to 2001, the numbers of Jews
declined. The main reason for this is that many Jews assimilated
into the Gentile community and lost their Jewish identity. The
figure for 2001 is the number who identified themselves as Jewish
in the census of that year. It should be noted that these figures are
difficult to estimate with any precision because many Jews have
74 THE CHOSEN PEOPLE
taken British sounding surnames and the numbers of these cannot
be ascertained from electoral rolls or from records of births, deaths,
and marriages; also, substantial numbers who are ethnically Jewish
do not subscribe to Judaism, so they do not appear in statistics of
religious affiliation.
Table 6.1. Numbers of Jews in Britain
Year Jewish Population % of total
1290 2,500 0.005
1730 6,000 0.01
1800 20,000 0.01
1850 30,000 0.01
1880 60,000 0.20
1900 225,000 0.59
1910 280,000 0.67
1920 310,000 0.70
1930 330,000 0.71
1940 380,000 0.79
1970 360,000 0.65
1980 340,000 0.60
1990 304,000 0.54
2001 267,000 0.46
Jews in Britain range between the strictly Orthodox and those
with no Jewish affiliation designated secular and nonpractising. In the
1990 “National Jewish Population Survey” (Schmool & Cohen, 1998),
47 percent of the sample considered themselves as having been raised
in traditional Jewish homes. The percentages of these who identified
with different degrees of Judaism are given in Table 2.2. The last three
groups who identified themselves as “Just Jewish,” “Progressive,” and
“Secular/Nonpractising,” together totalling 44 percent, had moved
toward a more liberal identification than the traditional homes in
which they had been reared. This trend away from traditional and
Orthodox Judaism was confirmed by asking the total sample how
similar their Jewish identity was to that of their parents: 49 percent
Britain and Ireland 75
said they were the same as their parents; 38 percent considered
themselves less Orthodox; and only 13 percent considered themselves
more Orthodox.
Table 6.2. Identities of Jews in Britain in 1990
(percentages)
Identity Percent
Strictly Orthodox 5
Traditional 51
Just Jewish 16
Progressive 13
Secular 15
Despite some degree of social and legal discrimination, Jews did
well in Britain. In 1857, asurveyin London found Jews overrepresented
in the middle class: 76 percent of Jews had incomes of more than £100
a year, compared to 69 percent of Gentiles (Feldman, 1994). Jews had
lower infant mortality than Gentiles in the early 20th century. In 1903,
the infant mortality per 1,000 live births was 128 for Jews; the rate for
Gentiles was 161, a full 25 percent higher. (Condran & Kramarow, 1991).
2. Intelligence
By the end of the 19th century, it was noted that Jewish children in
London took a disproportionate number of prizes and awards in schools
(Russell & Lewis, 1900). In the 1920s, studies began to be published
reporting that Jews had high IQs. Subsequent testing only confirmed these
findings. There have been five studies of the intelligence of Jews in Britain.
These are summarized in Table 6.3.
Rows 1 through 3 give the results of a study carried out in the mid-1920s
in London. Children aged 8—14 were tested in three schools in which Jewish
and Gentile children were present in approximately equal numbers. The
children were tested for general intelligence with the Northumberland
Test. The Jewish children obtained a mean IQ of 110.5. The children were
also tested on arithmetic and reading and obtained an arithmetic quotient
of 110.6 and a reading quotient of 113.0. These EQs (educational quotients)
are both very close to their IQ and show, as in many other studies, that
76 THE CHOSEN PEOPLE
differences in educational attainment are closely similar to differences in
intelligence and are likely largely due to differences in intelligence.
Table 6.3. IQs and Educational Attainment of Jews in
Britain
Age | N. Jews N. Gentiles Test IQ/EQ
1 | 8-14 1081 813 IQ 110.5
2 | 8-14 1081 813 Arithmetic 110.6
3 | 8-14 1081 813 English 113.0
4 | 6-14 303 221 IQ 113.0
5 10 907 - IQ 111.5
6 8 22 3,350 IQ 108.5
7 | 7-16 39 11,101 IQ 108.2
Sources. Rows 1-3: Davies & Hughes, 1927. Row 4: Winch, 1930.
Row 5: Vincent, 1966. Rows 6-7: Lynn and Longley, 2006
Row4 gives an IQ of 113 obtained on a reasoning test for Jewish children
attending two schools together with Gentile children in the East End of
London. The East End was a lower socioeconomic community, so the
Gentile children were probably a little below average. Typically, the IQ gap
between lower- and middle-class children is about 10 IQ points, suggesting
that the IQ of the Jewish sample in relation to a socially representative
sample of Gentile children would have been approximately 108—110. Row
5 gives an IQ of 111.5 for a sample of 907 10-year-old Jewish children in
the city of Glasgow. These children were found to have a mean IQ of 117.8
on the Moray House Test, a verbal comprehension and verbal reasoning
test, compared with an IQ of 100 for Gentile children (number not given)
tested at the same time in the same city. The unusually high IQ of the
Jewish children in this study is explained by the intelligence of non-Jewish
children in Scotland being somewhat depressed as compared with that in
Great Britain as a whole (see Lynn, 1979). The extensive data presented
by Vernon (1951) on mean IQs in different regions of Great Britain put the
mean IQ in Glasgow at 93.7 in relation to 100 for the country as a whole.
To compare the mean IQ of Jewish children in Glasgow with that of Gentile
children, we must therefore subtract 6.3 IQ points from their score, giving
them a mean IQ of 111.5. This brings the mean IQ of the Jewish children in
Britain and Ireland 77
Glasgow obtained in this study closely into line with results of the London
studies given in rows 1 through 4. Although the samples whose IQs are
given in rows 6 and 7 are small, they are well drawn and representative of
the British population.
Row 6 gives a mean Jewish IQ of 108.5 derived from the British 1946
national cohort study (NCS-46) of all babies born in the first week of March
of that year. The sample was intelligence tested at eight years, but their
religious affiliation was not recorded until the age of 26, when 22 described
themselves as having been brought up Jewish out of a total of 3,374. There
were four intelligence tests given at age 8 (a 60-item nonverbal picture test,
a 35-item reading comprehension test, a 50-item word-reading test, and a
50-item vocabulary test). The scores on the four tests were summed to give
an IQ. The higher Jewish IQ is statistically significant (t=2.31, p<0.031).
Row 7 gives an IQ of 108.2 for a sample of 39 Jewish children in the
British National Cohort Study (NCS-58) of all babies born in the week 3-9
March, 1958. The children were tested on reading and arithmetic at the
age of 7, on reading comprehension, mathematics, verbal and nonverbal
IQ at the age of 11, and on reading comprehension and mathematics
at 16 years. The total sample size at age 7 was 11,140, among whom 39
were Jewish. The sample size fell to 29 among the 16-year-olds because
of attrition inevitable in longitudinal studies. The number of Jews is quite
small and comprises 0.3 percent of the sample. This is roughly what would
be expected, as the numbers of Jews in Britain in 1970 was estimated at
360,000 (Waterman & Kosmin, 1986), approximately 0.65 percent of the
population. The percentage of Jews among the children in the sample may
appear too small, but Jews in Britain were an aging population (Waterman
& Kosmin, 1986), so the percentage of Jewish children would be expected
to be lower than their percentage in the population. The average IQ of the
five studies is 110.3 and is regarded as the best reading for the IQ of Jews in
Britain in relation to White Gentiles.
The results of the NCS-58 study are given in detail in Table 6.4. The
right-hand column gives the IQs and EQs (Educational Quotients) of
the Jewish children in relation to 100 for the Gentiles. At all three ages
and on all the tests, the Jewish children score higher than the Gentiles.
78 THE CHOSEN PEOPLE
Table 6.4. IQs and Educational Attainment of Jews in the
NCS-58 Sample
Test Age Jews Gentiles Jewish IQ
- - N |Mean| Sd N Mean | Sd -
Arithmetic 7 |36| 6.50 2.61 | 11,104 5.19 2.47 108
Reading 7 |37| 26.57 | 5.39 | 11,104 | 23.67 | 9.95 104
Verbal IQ 11 | 39] 27.95 | 8.38 | 11,104 | 22.63 | 9.25 104
Nonverbal IQ 11 |39| 25.13 7.70 |10,790 | 21.27 | 7.52 108
Reading 11 | 39 | 20.49 6.33 |10,789 | 16.31 | 6.20 110
Math 11 | 39] 25.67 | 10.25 | 10,785] 17.19 | 10.30 112
Reading 16 | 29] 29.21 6.75 | 9,508 | 25.72 | 6.84 108
Math 16 | 29] 18.56 6.94 9,467 | 13.09 | 6.98 112
Despite the small numbers of Jews, all the differences are highly
statistically significant (p<.001). The IQs have been averaged to 108.25,
giving an overall IQ for the sample. This is the figure entered in row 7
of table 6.3.
3. Educational Attainment
The educational attainment of all 11-year-old children in England
attending state schools was collected in 2004 under the direction of the
Government Department for Education and Skills (DfES). The children
were tested in English, mathematics and science using a program known
as Key Stage 2. On the basis of their performance in the tests, the children
were graded into levels 2, 3, 4, and 5. The DfES released the results as
percentages of those attending Jewish schools and White Gentiles from all
schools passing at levels 4 and 5. These are shown in Table 6.5. We see
that a higher percentage of Jewish children passed in all three subjects.
As the sample consisted of all the children attending state schools, it did
not include children at independent schools, who are approximately six
percent of the cohort. Children attending these independent schools come
largely from affluent families and perform well in educational tests, so the
exclusion of these is likely to have reduced slightly the attainment scores of
both the Jews and the Gentiles. Affluent Jews as well as Gentiles typically
send their children to independent schools, so it is doubtful whether
the omission of small numbers of these has any significant effect on the
Britain and Ireland 79
differences shown in Table 6.5.
Table 6.5. Educational Attainment of Jews and Gentiles in
2004 (percentages passing)
Group N English | Math | Science
Jews 905 92 91 95
Gentiles 489,887 78 74 87
In recent decades, greater proportions of Jews than of Gentiles have
attended universities and attained advanced degrees. This trend was first
discovered in the 1960s by E. Krause (1969), who estimated that about three
percent of university students were Jews, even though Jews at this time
were approximately 0.5 percent of the population. This was confirmed in
the “National Jewish Population Survey” of 1990, which related that 48
percent of Jewish men aged 18-64 held university degrees, as compared
to 10 percent of Gentile men (Schmool & Cohen, 1998). Among women, 45
percent of Jews held university degrees, as compared with eight percent of
Gentiles. The 2001 census contained a question on religious identity from
which information about educational qualifications has been analysed by
David Graham and Stanley Waterman (2005). Their results for educational
qualifications of Jews and the total population in England and Wales are
shown in Table 6.6. We see that Jews attained university degrees at almost
double the rate of the general public. On the other hand, the percentage of
Jews with no educational qualifications was approaching half that of the
total population.
Table 6.6. Educational Qualifications of Jews and the
Total Population in 2001 (percentages)
Age Group
Group Education 25-34 | 35-49 | 50-59 | 60-64 | 65-74
Jews U. Degree 56 44 32 25 22
Population U. Degree 29 23 18 14 12
Jews None 7 9 23 33 45
Population None 13 21 39 55 64
80 THE CHOSEN PEOPLE
The greater percentage of Jews with high educational qualifications has
remained remarkably constant over the 40-year period covered by the
age range. Thus, among the 65-74 year olds born between 1927 and 1936,
almost twice as many Jews than Gentiles had university degrees. Jews had
just about the same advantage among the 25-34 year olds born between
1967 and 1976.
4. Earnings and Wealth
Using probate returns on death, William Rubinstein (2000) calculated
the numbers of Jews and Gentiles possessing great wealth in the 19th and
first half of the 20th centuries . He found 7,574 persons leaving estates
worth £100,000 or more during the period 1809-1899; 179 of these were
Jews, representing 2.4 percent. Rubinstein’s detailed figures are shown in
Table 6.7. These include the numbers of Jews leaving these large estates,
the percentage of Jews among all estates of this size, the percentage of
Jews in the population, and finally the Jewish Wealth Quotient calculated
by dividing the percentage of Jews among the wealthy by their percentage
in the population given in Table 2.1 (0.01 percent in 1809-1849 and 0.30
percent in 1850-1899). Thus, in the first period, the Jewish Wealth Quotient
of 10.5 indicates that Jews were 10.5 times overrepresented among the very
wealthy, relative to their numbers in the population. In the second half of
the century, the Jewish Wealth Quotient fell slightly because of the large
number of impoverished Jewish immigrants from 1881 on. Row 3 gives the
number of Jews who died leaving in excess of £1 million during the period
1809-1939. Rubinstein found 199 such individuals, of whom 28 were
Jews (14.1 percent). Taking the average number of Jews in the population
during this period as 0.4 percent, Jews obtain a Wealth Quotient of 28.4.
Row 4 gives the number of Jews who died leaving in excess of £2.5 million
during the period 1870-1919. Rubinstein found 24 such individuals, of
whom four were Jews (16.7 percent). Adopting the average number of
Jews in the population during this period as approximately 0.59 percent
(the percentage in 1900), Jews obtain a Wealth Quotient of 28.3. All these
figures show that Jews were greatly overrepresented among the very
wealthy.
Britain and Ireland 81
Table 6.7. Percentages of Jews among the very wealthy
Years Wealth N Jews % Jews | WQ
1 1809-1849 £100,000 13 1.05 10.5
2 |1850-1899 £100,000 166 2.58 8.6
3 |1809-1939 £1 million 28 14.10 28.4
4 |1870-1919 £2.5 million 4 16.70 28.3
5. Socioeconomic Status.
Jews have higher socioeconomic status than Gentiles. An early study
showing this was published by E. Krause in 1969. He examined the
occupational structure of the London district of Edgware and found that 57
percent of Jewish men worked in professional or managerial occupations,
compared with 39.4 percent of Gentiles. Figures giving national statistics
for the overrepresentation of Jews in the professional class and their
underrepresentation in the manual class and among the unemployed
are given in Table 6.8. The table gives these as percentages of Jews and
Gentiles in the socioeconomic classes and the right-hand column gives the
odds ratios, representing the proportion of Jews in relation to a Gentile
proportion set at 1.0. Row 1 gives results from a study of the percentages of
Jews and Gentiles in 1961 by S. J. Prais and M. Schmool (1975), showing
that 10 percent of Jews and 4 percent of Gentiles were in the higher
professions and hence a Jewish Achievement Quotient of 2.5, signifying
that Jews were 2.5 times overrepresented.
To obtain a comparison of the occupational distribution of Jews and
Gentiles in 1990, the proportions of Jews in the professions and in manual
work are taken from the “National Jewish Population Survey” of 1990
(Schmool & Cohen, 1998). The proportions of White Gentiles are taken
as the averages obtained in the 1982 and 1994 surveys carried out by the
Policy Studies Institute (Modood & Berthoud, 1997). The results are given
in rows 2 through 5 of Table 6.8 and show that Jews were substantially
overrepresented in the professions and underrepresented among
manual workers. Row 6 gives the percentage of Jews and Gentiles who
were unemployed for men and women combined aged 16-64 (men)
and aged 16-59 (women) from the same two sources and show that the
percentage of Jews who were unemployed was 40 percent of the rate
of Gentiles.
82 THE CHOSEN PEOPLE
Table 6.8. Jewish and Gentile socioeconomic status,
1961-1990 (percentages)
SES Year Sex Jews | Gentiles | AQ
1 |Professional 1961 M&W 10 4 2.5
2 |Professional 1990 Men 54 25 3:3
3 |Professional 1990 Women 50 14 3.6
4 |Manual 1990 Men 6 17 0.4
5 |Manual 1990 Women 2 25 0.1
6 |Unemployed 1990 M&W 6 14 0.4
6. The Professions
An analysis of the numbers and proportions of Jews in most of the
major professions around 1985 has been made by Asher Tropp (1991).
He began by noting that it is impossible to find the numbers of Jews
in professions by searching through the directories for Jewish names
because many Jews have anglicized their names and cannot be identified.
This is a common problem that is not confined to identifying Jews in
Britain. His method of overcoming it was to select 40 indisputably
Jewish names (Cohen, Goldberg, Stein, etc.). He found that these
comprise seven percent of Jews in the Jewish Board of Deputies list of
Jewish names. He inferred that in directories of members of professions,
the number of those with these Jewish names would represent seven
percent of the number of Jews. To obtain an estimate of the number
of Jews in each of a number of professions, he multiplied this number
by 14.26 (7 x 14.26 = 100). He then counted the total number in the
profession and calculated the percentage of these who are Jews. His
figures are shown in Table 6.9.
Tropp did not take the final step of comparing the percentages of
Jews in the professions in relation to their percentages in the population.
I have made good this omission by calculating the percentage of Jews in
the professions as a proportion of their percentages in the population in
1985. To make this calculation, the number of Jews in the population in
1985 is taken as 322,000 (given in Table 6.1), and the total population in
the United Kingdom is taken as 56,379,000, the figure in the 1981 census.
Thus, in 1985, Jews were approximately 0.6 percent of the population.
I have constructed an index of the comparative representation of Jews
Britain and Ireland 83
by calculating the ratio of their percentage in the professions to their
percentage in the population to give Jewish Achievement Quotients.
Table 6.9. Percentages and Achievement Quotients of Jews
in the Major Professions
Profession % Jews AQ
Ophthalmic Opticians 7.8 13.0
Barristers 7.5 12.5
Dentists 4-9 8.2
Pharmacists 4.6 77.
University Faculty 4.3 72
Doctors 4.0 6.6
Solicitors 4.0 6.6
Dispensing Opticians 4.0 6.6
Accountants 3.6 6.0
Architects 2.3 3.8
Chartered Surveyors 1.3 2.2
It will be seen that in all of the 11 professions, Jews have Achievement
Quotients much greater that 1.0; hence Jews are substantially
overrepresented in relation to their proportion in the population. The
magnitude of their overrepresentation varies considerably among the
professions. Itis greatest among ophthalmic opticians and barristers, with
Achievement Quotients of 13.0 and 12.5, respectively, and lowest among
architects and chartered surveyors, with Achievement Quotients of 3.8 and
2.2, respectively. Tropp does not suggest any reasons for these differences. A
possible explanation for the relatively low ratios of architects and chartered
surveyors may lie in American studies that have found that Jews are less
strong on visualization abilities than on verbal and reasoning abilities; it is
likely that visualization abilities are required to succeed in the professions
of architecture and chartered surveying. (Tropp omits some professions
from his study, including veterinary surgeons, chiropodists, members of
parliament, clergymen, senior civil servants, and senior members of the
armed forces on the grounds that these are too few for analysis.)
I have examined two further high status professions for the
percentages of Jews. The first is Members of Parliament and the second
84 THE CHosEn PEOPLE
vice-chancellors of universities. The results are summarized in Table
6.10. There were 29 Jewish Members of Parliament (MPs) elected to the
House of Commons in 1950, 4.5 percent of the total. In 2000, 21 Jews were
elected, representing 3.2 percent of the total (these figures come from
the Jewish Yearbooks for each year). In 1950, Jews were approximately
0.70 percent of the population, giving Jews an Achievement Quotient of
6.4. In 2000, Jews were 0.46 percent of the population, giving Jews an
Achievement Quotient of 7.0. These are just about the average of their
overrepresentation in the 11 professions shown in Table 6.8. As regards
university vice-chancellors, in 2006, there were 161 of these, of whom
seven were Jews (4.3 percent of the total). University vice-chancellors
were all middle aged or elderly, so we should compare this 4.3 percent
with the percentage of Jews in the population around 1970 (0.65 percent)
to give an Achievement Quotient of 6.6.
Table 6.10. Numbers and Percentages of Jewish MPs and
University Heads
Year |Profession N. Jews % Jews AQ
1950 |MPs 29 4.5 5.4
2000 | MPs 21 3.2 7.1
2006 | University heads 7 4.3 6.6
7. The Royal Society and the British Academy
We look now at two indices of Jewish intellectual distinction of
a more elevated order than membership of a profession. These are
Fellowship of the Royal Society and the British Academy. The Royal
Society was founded in 1660 for leading British scientists. Its web site
asserts that election to its fellowship is an intellectual distinction second
only to the Nobel Prize. The Jewish fellows are given in the British
Jewish Yearbooks. The numbers and percentages of Jewish Fellows of
the Royal Society are shown for selected years from 1901 through 2005
in Table 6.11. The percentages (but not the numbers) for the years 1901
through 1940 are given by Tropp (1991). The Achievement Quotients of
Jews have been calculated in the same way as described above for the
professions.
Britain and Ireland 85
We can see that Jews have been overrepresented in all years
except 1910. The reason for this lies in the large immigration
of impoverished Jews from Russia between 1881 and 1914 that
increased their percentage in the population. The newcomers had
not acquired the education to achieve the degree of eminence
required for fellowship of the Royal Society. As they established
themselves in Britain, they took advantage of the educational
opportunities and their overrepresentation (shown by their
Achievement Quotients) increased steadily. Notice that from 1901
to 1920, the average Achievement Quotient was 1.8; from 1930 to
1950, it increased to 4.7; and from 1965 to 2005, it improved to
9.6. This reflects the rise and rise of Jewish attainment over the
course of the century.
Table 6.11. Jewish Fellows of the Royal Society
Year | N. Jews % Jews | Jewish AQ
1901 - 1.0 1.7
1910 - 0.6 0.9
1920 - 2.0 2.8
1930 - 3.0 4.3
1940 = 3-7 4.7
1950 19 3-7 5.1
1965 36 5.2 8.0
1985 53 7.6 13.3
1995 47 4.6 9.2
2005 48 3.7 8.0
We look next at the numbers of Jewish Fellows of the British
Academy. This was founded in 1902 as a society for eminent scholars
in History, Philosophy, and Philology, and was later extended to those
who have achieved distinction in the social sciences. Fellowship of
the British Academy was intended to confer the same distinction for
eminent scholars in these subjects as fellowship of the Royal Society
conferred on scientists. Whether it has quite succeeded in this aspiration,
I will not venture to say, but it is a satisfactory criterion for those who
have achieved distinction in the humanities and social sciences. The
86 THE CHOSEN PEOPLE
numbers of Jewish fellows are given in the Jewish Yearbooks and are
shown for selected years from 1950 through 2005 in Table 6.12 (the
Yearbooks do not give this information for the first half ofthe century).
The Achievement Quotients of Jews have been calculated in the same
way as described above for the professions and the Royal Society,
namely, by calculating the ratio of the percentage of Jewish Fellows
to their percentage in the population. We can see that Jews have been
overrepresented with Achievement Quotients of between 8.0 and 10.7
throughout the period, just about the same as their overrepresentation
among fellows of the Royal Society
Table 6.12. Jewish and Gentiles Fellows of the British Academy
Year | N. Jews N. Gentiles % Jews AQ
1950 10 140 6.7 9.6
1965 19 235 7:5 10.7
1985 25 444 5.3 9.3
1995 26 622 4.0 8.0
2005 28 725 3.7 8.0
8. Significant Figures
Charles Murray (2003, p. 280) has calculated the numbers of Jewish
and Gentile “significant figures” (great names in science and the arts) in
Britain who had most of their careers between 1870 and 1950. He finds
eight Jews and 185 Gentiles. Calculating the ratio of Jewish to Gentile
“significant figures,” he arrives at an Achievement Quotient (that is,
the measure of Jewish overrepresentation) of 8.1. This is close to the
Jewish Achievement Quotients for Fellowship of the Royal Society and
the British Academy.
9. Eminence
There are four further apogees of eminence in Britain. The first is a
life peerage that confers on the holder the title of baron or baroness; the
second the Order of Merit, whichis confined to amaximum of 24 members;
the third is the Companion of Honour; and the fourth is the title of Dame,
Britain and Ireland 87
reserved for eminent women. These honors are conferred on those who
have achieved distinction in a variety of fields. For instance, life peerages
have been conferred on Maurice Saatchi (b.1946), the advertising tycoon,
and George Weidenfeld (b.1919), the publisher, who are both Jewish,
and on John Birt (b.1944), a former director of the BBC, and William
Rees-Mogg (b.1928), a former editor of the Times, who are Gentiles. The
Order of Merit has been conferred on Lucian Freud (b.1922), the painter,
Lord Rothschild, the banker, and Tom Stoppard (b.1937), the playwright,
who are Jewish, and on Norman Foster (b.1935), the architect, and Joan
Sutherland (1926-2010), the soprano, who are Gentiles. The Companion
of Honour has been conferred on Harold Pinter (1930-2008), the
playwright), and Eric Hobsbawm (b.1917), the historian, who are both
Jewish, and on Paul Scofield (1922-2008), the actor, and Peter Brook
(b.1925), the theatre producer, who are Gentiles.
The numbers of Jews and Gentiles who held these honors in 2002 are
given in Table 6.13. Those holding the Order of Merit and the Companion
of Honour have been combined because they are so few, amounting to only
64.
Table 6.13. Jewish and Gentile Life Peers, Holders of the
Order of Merit, and the Companion of Honour, and Dames.
Honor Year | N. Jews N. Gentiles % Jews AQ
LifePeers 2002 43 439 8.7 14.5
OM/CH 2002 9 55 14.0 27.3
Dames 2002 7 251 2.3 3.8
Column 5 gives the percentages that are Jewish. Column 6 gives
the Jewish Achievement Quotients calculated on the basis of 0.6 for the
percentage of Jews in the population in 1980, adopted because these
honors are normally awarded to those in late middle age and the old, so it is
appropriate to use an earlier figure when Jews formed a larger percentage of
the population. We can see that Jews are hugely overrepresented with AQs
of 14.5 for Life Peers and 27.3 for the Order of Merit and the Companion
of Honour. Jewesses are less overrepresented among Dames, with an AQ
of only 3.8.
88 THE CHOSEN PEOPLE
10. Chess Champions
The British Chess Federation was formed in 1904 and has held
tournaments every year except during World Wars I and II. The
winners of these tournaments are given in Table 6.14. Some people
won in more than one year, but their names are only given once.
Jewish winners are asterisked. Of the 47 chess champions, seven have
been Jewish (15 percent). Adopting a figure of 0.65 percent for the
percentage of Jews in the population during the 20th century, Jews
have an Achievement Quotient of 23.
Table 6.14. British Chess Champions (Jews are asterisked)
Napier Barden Short
Atkins Philips Adams
Griffiths Fazekas* Plaskett
Yates Penrose Hodgson
Scott Haygarth Hennigan
Thomas Lee Watson
Khan Keene Sadler
Winter Eley Ward
Fairhurst Hartston* Adams
Alexander Botterill Short
Coombe Mestel* Gallagher
Golombek* Speelman* Ramesh
Broadbent Bellin Kunte
Klein* Nunn Rowson
Wade Littlewood
Yanofsky* Miles
11. Bridge
Britain does not produce many top-level bridge players. There are
only seven British players among the 157 top rated names among the
Open World Champions recognised by World Bridge Federation in
2004. Their names ranked by their position are given in Table 6.15.
Two of them are Jews, denoted by asterisks. Hence, Jews who were
Britain and Ireland 89
0.46 percent of the population produced 29 percent of the top bridge
players, giving them an Achievement Quotient of 63.
Table 6.15. British Bridge Champions in 2004; (Jews are
denoted by asterisks.)
Boris Schapiro*
Kenneth Konstram
Terence Reese
Leslie Dodds
Adam Meredith
Nico Gardener*
Jordanis Pavlides
12. Nobel Prize winners
British Nobel Prize winners are listed in Table 6.16. (These
were born in Britain; the list does not include those who were born
elsewhere but assumed British nationality.) Britain has produced 79
Nobel Prize winners, three of whom have been Jews: Brian Josephson
(b.1940), physics (1973), Herbert Brown (1912-2004), chemistry
(1979), and Harold Pinter (1930-2008), literature (2005). Thus,
Jews have been 3.8 percent of British Nobel Prize winners. In 1970
the Jewish population in Britain was around 360,000 or 0.65 percent
of the population. Adopting this figure, Jews are overrepresented by
a factor (Achievement Quotient) of 5.8. All the Jewish Prize winners
were in the second half of the 20th century, confirming the same trend
that was found for Fellows of the Royal Society.
Table 6.16. British Nobel Prize winners (Jews are asterisked)
Year |Name Subject Year |Name Subject
1902 | Ronald Ross Medicine 1960 | Maurice Wilkins Medicine
1904 | William Ramsay | Chemistry 1963 | Alan Hodgkin Medicine
1904 | Lord Rayleigh Physics 1963 | Andrew Huxley Medicine
1906 | J.J. Thomson Physics 1964 | Dorothy Hodgkin | Chemistry
1907 | Rudyard Kipling | Literature 1967 | Ronald Norrish Chemistry
1915 | William Bragg Physics 1969 | George Porter Chemistry
1915 |Lawrence Bragg | Physics 1969 | Derek Barton Chemistry
1917 | Charles Barkla Physics 1972 | John Hicks Economics
90 THE CHOSEN PEOPLE
Year |Name Subject Year |Name Subject
1908 |Frederick Soddy | Chemistry 1972 | Rodney Porter Medicine
1922 | Francis Ashton Chemistry 1973 | Geoffrey Wilkinson | Chemistry
1922 | Archibald Hill Medicine 1973 | Patrick White Literature
1927 |C.T.R. Wilson Physics 1973 | Brian Josephson* | Physics
1928 |Owen Richardson | Physics 1974 | Paul Flory Chemistry
1929 | Arthur Harden Chemistry 1974 | Antony Hewish Physics
1929 | Frederick Hopkins | Medicine 1974 | Martin Ryle Physics
1932 | John Galsworthy | Literature 1977 | James Meade Economics
1932 | Edgar Adrian Medicine 1977 | Neville Mott Physics
1932 | Charles Sherrington | Chemistry 1978 | Peter Mitchell Chemistry
1933 | Paul Dirac Physics 1979 | Herbert Brown* Chemistry
1935 | James Chadwick | Physics 1974 | Godfrey Housefield | Medicine
1936 | Henry Dale Medicine 1980 | Frederick Sanger Chemistry
1937 | Norman Haworth | Chemistry 1982 | John Vane Medicine
1937 |George Thompson | Physics 1983 | William Golding Literature
1945 | Alexander Fleming | Medicine 1984 | Richard Stone Economics
1947 | Robert Robinson | Chemistry 1988 | James Black Medicine
1947 | Edward Appleton | Physics 1993 | Michael Smith Chemistry
1948 | Patrick Blackett | Physics 1993 | Richard Roberts Medicine
1950 | Bertrand Russell | Literature 1996 | Harold Kroto Chemistry
1950 | Cecil Powell Physics 1996 | James Merrlees Economics
1951 |John Cockcroft Physics 1997 | John Walker Chemistry
1952 | Archer Martin Chemistry 1998 |John Pople Chemistry
1950 |Richard Synge Chemistry 2001 |Tim Hunt Medicine
1953 | Winston Churchill | Literature 2001 |Paul Nurse Medicine
1956 |Cyril Hinchelwood | Chemistry 2003 | Peter Mansfield Medicine
1956 |William Shockley | Physics 2003 | Anthony Leggett Physics
1958 | Lord Todd Chemistry 2005 | Harold Pinter* Literature
1958 |Frederick Sanger | Chemistry 2007 | Martin Evans Medicine
1960 | Peter Medawar Medicine 2007 | Oliver Smithies Medicine
1962 | John Kendrew Chemistry 2009 | Jack Szostak Medicine
1960 | Francis Crick Medicine
Britain and Ireland 91
Britain has also produced seven mathematicians who have
received the Fields Medal or the Wolf Prize awarded for outstanding
work in mathematics. These are Michael Atiyah (1966), Alan Baker
(1970), David Mumford (1974), Simon Donaldson (1986), Andrew
Wiles (1995), Richard Borcherds (1998), and Timothy Gowers (1998).
None of these is Jewish.
13. Infant Mortality
Despite the poverty of Jews in Britain in the early 1900s, they had
comparatively low rates of infant mortality. In London as a whole, the
infant mortality at this time was 102.8 per 1,000 live births, while in
the heavily Jewish districts of Spitalfields and Goodman’s Fields, it
was 85.4 and 95.0 per 1,000, respectively (O’Grada, 2006).
14. Ireland
There was a small number of Sephardic and Ashkenazi Jews in
Ireland in the 17th and 18th centuries; these were “mainly commercial
and middle class” (O’Grada, 2006, p. 33). The majority of Jewish
immigration took place from the 1870s until 1914. Most of these
came from Lithuania, then from parts of Russia, and were known as
“Litvaks.” Most of them settled in Dublin, while a few settled in Belfast
and Cork. The numbers of Jews recorded in censuses from 1981 to
2001 are shown in Table 6.17. The fall in numbers from the peak in
1936 has been due to low fertility, assimilation with Gentiles, and
emigration, principally to Israel, Britain, and the United States.
Table 6.17. Numbers and Percentages of Jews in Ireland
Year N. Jews % Population
1871 285 0.00
1911 5,148 0.01
1936 5,221 0.01
1971 3,592 0.01
2001 2,000 0.00
92 THE CHOSEN PEOPLE
The first generation of Jewish immigrants to Ireland nearly all spoke
Yiddish and made a living principally as itinerant peddlers of cloth, cotton,
needles, scissors, cereals, seeds, and household furnishings, frequently
supplied on credittothe Irish poor. Others worked as tailors, cabinetmakers,
and as money-lenders. As elsewhere, the second generation prospered
and “within a decade or two, many of them entered careers in dentistry,
medicine, or the law, or became merchants or factory owners”
(O’Grada, 2006, p. 3).
Among the Jews who achieved prominence in Ireland was Chaim
Herzog (1918-1997), who grew up in Dublin in the 1920s and immigrated
to Israel where he became president. In 1956 and again in 1961, Robert
Briscow, whose father came from Lithuania, was elected mayor of Dublin;
he also sat in the Irish Parliament for a number of years.
The socioeconomic profile of Jews in Ireland is given in the censuses of
1926 and 1946 and is shown for men in Table 6.18. We see that in 1926, 11.5
percent of Jews worked in the professions compared with only 2.7 percent
of the total population. Thus, Jews were 4.2 times overrepresented—4.7
times by 1946. Jews were also considerably overrepresented in commerce,
(including banking, insurance, and finance), in production and repairs,
and among clerks. In contrast, Jews were underrepresented in public
administration (includes the police and the military), transport, and in
agriculture. The reason for the underrepresentation of Jews in public
administration is attributable to “a lingering anti-Semitism in the public
sector and in government” (O’Grada, 2006, p. 210).
Table 6.18. Socioeconomic Profile of Jewish Men in Ireland
Occupation 1926 1946
Total | Jews | Total | Jews
Professions 2.7 11.5 3.5 16.6
Commerce 5.9 52.7 5.8 40.3
Production, repairs 16.0 27.1 15.8 35.3
Clerks, typists 1.8 2.8 2.1 1.8
Public administration 3.5 0.5 3.8 0.6
Transport 6.6 1.1 6.0 0.5
Agriculture 57.1 0.3 53.2 0.2
Britain and Ireland 93
The socioeconomic profile of Jewish women in Ireland is shown in
Table 6.19. It is broadly similar to that of Jewish men. We see that in 1926,
slightly fewer Jewish women worked in the professions compared with
the total population. In 1946, however, the position was reversed, with
Jews slightly overrepresented. Jewish women were also considerably
overrepresented in commerce, including banking, insurance, and
finance, in production and repairs, and among clerks, including typists. In
contrast, Jews were underrepresented in public administration (includes
the police and the military), transport, and agriculture. The socioeconomic
profiles as a whole show that already by 1926, Jewish men and women
had become upwardly mobile in Ireland and were numerous in middle-
class occupations; by 1946 their position had further improved.Infant
mortality in Dublin recorded in the 1911 census was 3.2 percent for Jews,
15.3 percent for Catholics, and 13.4 percent for others, who were mainly
Protestants (O’Grada, 2006a). Child mortality from birth to 14 years was
9.6 percent for Jews in Dublin, and 20.8 percent for non-Jews in the city.
But “even today, we do not fully understand why Jewish parents were so
good at looking after their children” (O’Grada, 2006, p. 201).
Table 6.19. Socioeconomic Profile of Jewish Women in Ireland
Occupation 1926 1946
Total | Jews | Total | Jews
Professions 8.6 6.8 11.0 13.3
Commerce 8.3 42.3 8.9 31.0
Production, repairs 9.5 20.0 10.5 18.0
Clerks, typists 3.7 18.7 7.1 28.7
Public administration 1,2 0.3 0.9 0.6
Transport 3:7 0.0 0.4 0.3
Agriculture 35.5 1.6 24.3 0.3
15. Conclusion
Most of the Jews in Britain and Ireland came as impoverished
immigrants between 1881 and 1914 seeking refuge from the pogroms
in Russia and as economic migrants. In both countries, Jews have
94 THE CHOSEN PEOPLE
prospered. In Britain, already by the 1920s, Jewish children had a
substantially higher average IQ at approximately 110 than that of
Gentiles, and by the second half of the 20th century, Jews were
massively overrepresented in the professions, among fellows of the
Royal Society and the British Academy, among the top chess and
bridge players, and among Nobel Prize winners.
In Ireland as well, Jews have been economically more successful
than their non-Jewish neighbors. How to explain this? Cormac
O’Grada offers five explanations. First, “men were prepared to
work hard at jobs that most people in the host community found
distasteful, particularly peddling and petty money-lending, or
dealing in scrap and rags and second-hand furniture.” Second, “the
immigrants saved and invested in property, education, and business.
They worked harder, they probably saved more.” Third, “the Jews
helped one-another; their community was rich in networks and
institutions offering mutual support.” Fourth, “Jewish demography
was characterized by adaptability and flexibility; while the first
generation stood out for low infant and child mortality, the second
led the transition toward ever smaller families, trading child quantity
for child quality.” Fifth, “the career expectations of the second
generation stretched beyond those of the first, and many of the
younger generation received second-and even third-level education”
(O’Grada, 2006, p. 210-11). No mention is made of the possibility
that Jews might be more intelligent than Gentiles.
CHAPTER 7
Canada
1. Numbers and Percentages of Jews in Canada
2. Intelligence
3. Educational Attainment
4. Earnings
5. Socioeconomic Status
6. Nobel and Wolf Prize winners
7. Fertility and Mortality
8. Conclusions
small number of Sephardic Jews, originally from Spain and
Portugal, settled in Montreal in the middle decades of the 19th
century. But the great majority of Canada’s Jews are the Ashkenazim
descendants of immigrants who sought refuge from Russia, Poland,
and Lithuania from 1881 on, particularly between 1900 and 1918.
In the 1930s, there was some further immigration from Germany,
Austria, and Czechoslovakia.
98 THE CHOSEN PEOPLE
1. Numbers and percentages of Jews in Canada
Numbers and percentages of Jews in Canada from 1901 through
2002 are shown in Table 7.1. There were very few Jews in Canada
in 1901, but the country experienced a considerable increase by 1911,
resulting from refugees from Russia. The numbers had increased
again by 1931, as a consequence of natural increase and further
immigration, and had risen again by 1981 and 2002. The percentage
of Jews in the population, however, remained more or less constant,
between 1.0 and 1.5 percent.
Table 7.1. Numbers and Percentages of Jews in Canada
Year | N. Jews % population
1901 16,000 0.2
1911 75,681 1.0
1931 156,726 1.5
1981 264,020 1.0
2002 362,000 1.1
2. Intelligence of Jews in Canada
There have been two studies of the intelligence of Jews in Canada.
The results are given in Table 7.2. Row 1 gives the results of the first
study carried out by R. A. Wendt and Elinor Burwell (1964) in the
early 1960s in three schools: two were Jewish; one was mixed. They
were tested with the WISC and obtained a Full Scale IQ of 111.1, a
verbal IQ of 113.1, and a “performance” IQ (a nonverbal test that
to some degree, meaures spatial-visualization ability) of 107.8.
These results need adjustment for the secular rise of IQs known
as the “Flynn Effect,” a secular trend in which Full Scale IQs have
been increasing at 3 points a decade, verbal IQs, at two points a
decade, and performance IQs, at four points a decade (Flynn, 1984).
The WISC standardization sample was obtained in 1949, and the
adjusted results are a Full Scale IQ of 107.1, a verbal IQ of 108.1, and
a performance IQ (entered as “spatial”) of 104.8.
The second study was carried out by Kevin Majoribanks (1972).
He compared 100 Jewish boys aged 11 years with 200 White Gentile
Canada 99
boys (100 Protestant Anglos and 100 French Canadians). His results
are shown in row 2 of Table 7.2. In relation to the combined scores
of the two Gentile groups set at 100, the Jewish boys obtained a
nonverbal reasoning IQ of 105, a verbal IQ of 119, a spatial IQ of 103,
and a numerical IQ of 115. To calculate a general IQ, these have been
averaged to give a figure of 110.5. The two studies can be averaged to
give an IQ of 108.8 for Jews in Canada, or 109 to the nearest whole
number. This is close to the mean IQs of Jews in the United States and
in Britain of about 110. Both the Canadian studies show the strong
verbal/weaker spatial-ability profile that has also been found among
Jews in the United States.
Table 7.2. IQs of Jews in Canada
Test IQ Reas | Verb | Spatial | Num
WISC | 107.1 - 108.1 104.8 -
PMA | 110.5 105 119.0 103.0 115
3. Educational Attainment
Canadian Jews’ educational attainment compared with that of
ethnic British, French, and other Europeans are shown in Table
7.3. Row 1 gives the percentages that were illiterate found in the
1921 census. The British had the fewest (one percent) illiterates,
reflecting their higher educational and socioeconomic status in
Canada at this time. Next come the Jews (seven percent), showing
that even at this early date, the Jews were relatively well educated.
They were followed closely by the French (eight percent), who
performed consistently at a lower level than the British until the
end of the 20th century. Then come the Other Europeans (14
percent), reflecting the immigration of large numbers of illiterate
Italians (19 percent), Poles (20 percent), and Ukrainians (30
percent) in the last decades of the 19th century and early decades
of the 20th.
Row 2 gives the percentages that were found to be illiterate in
the 1931 census. As in 1921, the British had the fewest (1 percent)
illiterates, reflecting their continued high status in Canada. Once
100 THE CHOSEN PEOPLE
again, Jews (four percent) came next, followed closely by the French
(six percent). The Other Europeans had eight percent illiteracy, a
significantly lower percentage than their 14 percent in 1921.
Table 7.3. Literacy and Educational Attainment of Jews
and Gentiles
Measure Year | Jews | British | French European
1 Illiterate % 1921 7 1 8 14
2 Illiterate % 1931 4 1 6 8
3 10th grade % 1951 53 55 30 35
4 10th grade % 1961 64 63 38 31
5 10th grade % 1971 80 77. 59 58
6 10th grade % 1981 85 84 77 72
7 Years-NB 1981 13.5 11:7 11.1 11.9
8 | Years-FB 1981 12.7 12.7 12.4 10.7
9 Years-M 1991 15.0 12.3 11:7 12.4
10 |Years-W 1991 14.6 12.6 12.2 12.5
Sources: rows 1-6: Herberg, 1990b; rows 7-8: Li,
1988; rows 9-10: Sweetman & Dicks, 2000
Rows 3 through 6 give percentages of the ethnic groups who had
reached the 10th grade of secondary school found in the censuses of
1951, 1961, 1971, and 1981. Row 3 gives the data for 1951, showing
that the British had the greatest percentage (55 percent), followed
closely by the Jews (53 percent). There is a considerable drop to the
Other Europeans (35 percent) and the French (30 percent).
Row 4 gives the data for 1961 and shows that the Jews had
marginally overtaken the British to become the group with the highest
percentage (64 percent) with 10th-grade education. The British came
second with 63 percent, followed by the French at 38 percent. The
Other Europeans came next at 31 percent, a little lower than the 35
percent of 1951, reflecting the post-World War Two immigration of
substantial numbers of illiterate Poles (40 percent) and Ukrainians
(38 percent). Once again, the Native American Indians had by far the
fewest with 10th-grade education at only nine percent.
Row 5 gives the data for 1971 and shows that the Jews were
again the group that boasted the highest percentage (80 percent) of
Canada 101
people with at least 10th-grade education. The British came second
with 77 percent. There is then quite a drop, with the French at 59
percent and the Other Europeans at 58 percent. Row 6 gives the
data for 1981. Once again, the Jews were the group with the highest
percentage (85 percent) with 10th-grade education, followed by
the British with 84 percent. The French came next at 77 percent,
followed by the Other Europeans at 72 percent.
Rows 7 and 8 give the average years of education given in the
1981 census, broken down by the native born (NB) and the foreign
born (FB). Among the native born, the Jews had the most years of
education (13.5 years), followed by the Other Europeans (11.9), the
British (41.7), and the French (11.1). The figures for the foreign born
are a little different. The foreign-born Jews and Other Europeans
had fewer years of education than the native born, while the foreign-
born British and French had more years of education than the native
born. These differences reflect different patterns of immigration. The
Jews and Other Europeans who entered Canada were less educated
than their native-born co-ethnics; the reverse was true for British
and French.
Rows 9 and 10 give the average years of education measured in
the 1991 census, separately for men (row 9) and women (row 10).
Among the men, the Jews once again had the most years of education
(15.0 years), followed by the Other Europeans (12.4 years), the British
(12.3), and the French (11.7).
Table 7.4 gives Jewish and European figures for the percentages
with any kind of tertiary (college or university) education found in the
censuses of 1951 through 1991. Row 1 gives the data for 1951 and shows
that Jews had the greatest percentage (13 percent) with some tertiary
education, followed by the British (11 percent). The French (4 percent)
and Other Europeans (5 percent) had much lower percentages. Row 2
gives the data for 1961 and shows that again the Jews had the highest
percentage (15 percent), followed by the British (8 percent), the
French (5 percent), and Other Europeans (5 percent). Row 3 gives the
data for 1971 and shows that once more, the Jews had the greatest
percentage (40 percent) with some tertiary education, followed by
the British (29 percent), the Other Europeans (26 percent), and the
French (23 percent).
102 THE CHosEn PEOPLE
Table 7.4. Jews and Gentiles with Tertiary Education
(percentages)
Year Jews British French | European
1 1951 13 11 4 5
2 1961 15 8 5 5
3 1971 40 29 23 26
4 | 1981 53 38 29 34
5 1981 32 10 8 9
6 1991 55 12 13 15
Sources: 1951-1981: Herberg, 1990a & b;
1981: Li, 1988; 1991: McMullin, 2004.
In 1981, shown in row 4, the Jews still had the greatest percentage
with tertiary education at 53 percent, again followed by the British (38
percent), the Other Europeans (34 percent), and the French (29 percent).
Row 5 gives the percentages with university degrees in 1981. The
figures are lower than those in row 4 because they exclude those with
other forms oftertiary education. The rank order of the ethnic groups,
however, remains the same, with a much greater percentage of Jews
than the three categories of Gentiles. Row 6 gives the percentages of
those aged 25-34 with university degrees in 1991. Once again, the
Jews had by far the highest percentage with university degrees (55
percent) followed by the British, Other Europeans, and the French
with between 12-15 percent.
Further evidence for the better educational attainment of Jews
comes from grade-eight high school students (approximately 14 year
olds) in Ontario in 1994. At this stage, the students are streamed
by ability into three groups: (1) basic-where students are two years
behind the average for grade eight; (2) general—for students of average
abilities; and (3) advanced-for high ability students who achieve more
than 70 percent in both English and in mathematics. The percentage
of Jews and Whites are shown in Table 7.5. It will be seen that a much
higher percentage of Jewish children were placed in the high ability
advanced streams, and a much lower percentage, in the basic streams.
Canada 103
Table 7.5. Jews and Gentiles in Advanced Streams and
Basic School Streams (percentages)
Group Advanced | Basic
Jews 42 13
Whites 26 25
Source: The Toronto Star,
February 11, 1995
4. Earnings
The earnings of Jews compared with those of ethnic British,
French, and Other Europeans are shown in Table 7.6. The figures
are for the employed labor force obtained from census returns for
1941 through 2001.
Table 7.6. Jewish and Gentile Earnings, 1941-2001
Year Jews British | French | European
1 1941 1,327 1,515 1,007 1,115
2 1951 2,619 2,481 2,150 2,232
3 | 1961 7,426 4,852 3,872 3,319
4 1971 12,368 8,500 7,307 7,846
5 1981 21,349 15,100 13,831 13,367
6 1991 50,100 34,660 31,615 33,100
7 2001 73,928 51,985 - -
Sources: Meng & Sentence, 1984; Herberg, 1990b, 1981;
Li, 1988, 1991; Sweetman & Dicks, 2000, 2001.
Row 1 gives the average earnings for 1941 and shows that the
British had the highest average earnings ($1,515), reflecting their
dominant position in Canada at this time. The Jews came next
($1,327), followed by a substantial drop to the Other Europeans
(Germans, Italian, Dutch, Scandinavians, and Poles) ($1,115), and
the French ($1,007). Row 2 gives the average earnings in 1951 and
shows that the Jews had overtaken the British as the group with the
104 THE CHOSEN PEOPLE
highest average earnings ($2,619 as compared with $2,481). Other
Europeans (Germans, Italian, Dutch, Scandinavians, Ukrainians, and
Poles) came next at ($2,232), followed by the French ($2,150).
Row 3 gives the average earnings in 1961 and shows that the Jews
had increased their lead as the highest earning group ($7,426) with a
substantial advantage over the British ($4,852). These groups were
followed by the French ($3,872) and the Other Europeans ($3,319).
Row 4 gives the average earnings in 1971 and shows that the Jews
retained their position as the highest earning group ($12,368), again
with a substantial lead over the British ($8,500); Other Europeans
come next ($7,846), followed by the French ($7,307).
Row 5 gives the average earnings in 1981 and shows that the Jews
continued to retain their lead as the highest earning group ($21,349)
with a substantial lead over the British ($15,100). The French ($13,831)
still had significantly lower average earnings than the British; Other
Europeans were fractionally lower ($13,167). Rows 6 and 7 give the
average earnings in 1991 and 2001 and show that Jews continued to
maintain their position as much higher earners than Gentiles.
Abdolmohammad Kazemipur and Shiva Halli (2001) give the
percentages of native-born Canadians living in poverty found in the
1996 census as British: 19.3 percent; French: 19.6 percent; and Jews:
12.2 percent. Consistent with the Jews’ high average earnings, there
are fewer Jews in poverty.
5. Socioeconomic Status
The percentages of Jews and Gentiles in the professions in the
censuses of 1921 through 1981 are shown in Table 7.7. Row 1 gives
the percentages in the professions in 1921 and shows that the British,
not surprisingly, had by far the highest percentage (12 percent). The
French had five percent in the professions, well below the British,
and reflecting the under-performance of the French in all indices of
education and socioeconomic status in the early and middle decades
of the 20th century. The Jews also had five percent in the professions;
they were not doing particularly well in 1921. The reason for this is
that nearly all of them were recent immigrants from Eastern Europe
and had not been able to obtain the educational qualifications for
entry into the professions.
Canada 105
Table 7.7. Jews and Gentiles: Percentages in the Professions,
1921-1981
Year | Jews | British | French | European
1921 5 12 5 4
1931 7 11 9 4
1941 7 10 8 4
1951 45 19 14 5
1961 48 23 17 14
1971 32 21 16 15
1981 45 26 24 18
Source: Herberg (1990a, 1990b)
In the years 1931 and 1941, we see that the British retained
their leading position (11 percent and 10 percent), but the French
had narrowed the gap (9 percent and 8 percent). The Jews had also
improved their position to 7 percent, but were below the British and
the French.
The 1951 census reveals a dramatic shift in the position ofthe Jews
in Canada. They were by far the most overrepresented group with 45
percent in the professions. The British had lost their hitherto dominant
position and dropped to 19 percent. The French were still behind at
14 percent. The censuses of 1961, 1971 and 1981 saw a continuation
of these trends. The Jews remained by far the most overrepresented
group in the professions. The British continued to be second; the
French, third; and Other Europeans, fourth. The underrepresentation
of Other Europeans reflects the immigration of numbers of Greeks,
Portuguese, and Italians without professional qualifications.
The occupations of Jewish men and all Canadian men found in
the 1991 census are given in Table 7.8. Row 1 shows Jews massively
overrepresented among doctors and dentists, while row 2 shows Jews
substantially overrepresented among lawyers and accountants. Row
3 shows Jews only slightly overrepresented among architects and
engineers, as to be expected. Rows 4 through 6 show Jews moderately
overrepresented among teachers, managers, and salesmen. Row 7 shows
Jews highly underrepresented among manual workers.
106 THE CHOSEN PEOPLE
Table 7.8. Occupations of Jews and All Canadians; Men,
1991 (percentages)
Occupation Jews | All | AQ
Doctor, dentist 4.6 0.5 | 9.2
Lawyer, accountant 8.1 1.8 | 4.5
Architect, engineer 5.8 5.1| ii
Teacher 12.5 6.4 | 19
Manager 19.2 10.6 | 1.8
Sales 16.3 8.0 | 2.0
Manual 16.3 47.3 | 0.3
Source: Torezyner & Brotman, 1995
The occupations of Jewish females and all Canadian females found
in the 1991 census are given in Table 7.9 The figures mirror those for men.
Table 7.9. Occupations of Jews and All Canadians;
Women, 1991 (percentages)
Occupation Jews | All | AQ
1 | Doctor, dentist 1.1 0.2 5.5
2 | Lawyer, accountant 2.7 1.5 1.8
3 | Architect, engineer 1.7 1.3 1.3
4 | Teacher 22.0 | 14.4 1.5
5 | Manager 11.0 6.2 1.8
6 | Sales 11.0 7.3 1.5
7 |Manual 7.2 | 18.8 0.4
Source: Torezyner & Brotman, 1995
6. Nobel and Wolf Prize winners
There have been eight Canadian Nobel Prize winners and one Wolf
Prize winner for mathematics. These are listed in Table 7.10. Four of
the nine have been Jewish. Thus, Jews, who comprised about 1.25
percent of the population of Canada during the 20th century, have
Canada
107
produced 44 percent ofthe Nobel and Wolf Prize winners, givingthem
an Achievement Quotient of 35.
Table 7.10. Canadian Nobel and Wolf Prize winners (Jews
are asterisked)
Year |Name Subject Year |Name Subject
1976 | Saul Bellow* Literature 1995 | Robert Langlands | Mathematics
1983 | Henry Taube Chemistry | | 1996 | William Vickrey | Economics
1989 | Sidney Altman* Chemistry | | 1997 | Myron S. Scholes* | Economics
1990 | Richard E. Taylor Physics 1999 | Robert A. Mundell | Economics
1992 | Rudolph A. Marcus* | Chemistry
7. Fertility and Mortality
Jews in Canada have resisted assimilation with Gentiles more than
in the United States. In 1991, only 12.9 percent of Canadian Jews had
married Gentiles (Torczyner & Brotman, 1995). This has contributed
to the continued survival of Jews as an ethnic group. Acting against
this trend, however, is the low fertility of Jewish women in Canada.
Canadian Jewish women have had the lowest fertility of the four
major religious groups. Table 7.11 gives statistics from the 1981 census
showing this expressed as children ever born per 1,000 ever-married
women aged 15-44 and aged 44 and up (Brym, Shaffir, & Weinfeld,
1993, p. 32). As these figures are for ever-married women, and
therefore exclude unmarried women, the true fertility of Canadian
women is actually lower, possibly below replacement level in the case
of Jewish Canadian women.
Table 7.11. Children Ever Born per 1,000 Ever-married
Women, 1981
Group Age 15-44 Age 44+
Catholic 1.78 3.85
Protestant 1.80 2.80
Eastern Orthodox 1.80 2.80
Jewish 1.60 2.24
All 1.78 3.30
108 THE CHOSEN PEOPLE
Child mortality has been lower among Jews than among Gentiles
in Canada. In 1931 the rates were 13.6 percent for Jews and 36.7
percent for the general population (Schmelz, 1971).
8. Conclusions
The Jews have been the most successful ethnic group in Canada.
In the second half ofthe 20th century, they had the most education,
the highest percentage with university degrees, the greatest
proportion in the professions, and the highest average earnings of
all racial and ethnic groups.
The success ofthe Jews is difficult for social scientists to explain.
The Canadian sociologist Peter Li has written that “the income
advantage enjoyed by Jews and those of West European origin, except
the French, is probably due to their historical position in which they
already enjoyed an advantage over other groups” (Li, 1988, p. 138).
This is not convincing. Most of the Jews arrived in Canada between
1881 and 1914 as impoverished refugees fleeing persecution in
Russia and Poland. When they arrived in Canada, they could not
speak English or French and were, for the most part, penniless and
at the bottom of the earnings and socioeconomic status hierarchy.
The British possessed the wealth and held the powerful positions in
most of Canada; the French were the established dominant ethnic
group in Quebec. The Europeans discriminated against Jews to
some degree by excluding them from clubs and associations, as
they did in the United States and Europe. Yet by 1951, the Canadian
Jews had a far greater proportion in professional occupations than
the British, at 45 percent as compared with 19 percent, and they
maintained this advantage in the successive censuses of 1961, 1971
and 1981 (Table 7.7). They have also had higher average earnings
from 1951 through 1991 (Table 7.6). The high IQ of Canadian Jews,
measured at 109, must be a major factor in their overrepresentation
in the professions and their high average earnings. It may or may
not be surprising that this is not mentioned by sociologists such as
Li (1988) and Edward Herberg (1990a, 1990b) in their analyses of
the success of the Jews in Canada.
CHAPTER 8
Denmark
1. 1814-1939
2. Nobel Prize winners
3. The Royal Danish Academy
J. first began to settle in Denmark in the 17th century. Virtually
all of them went to Copenhagen, where many have remained. More
Jews came to Denmark from Germany in the 18th century. Jews were
discriminated against in Denmark until the early 19th century. They
were not allowed to vote, hold public office, or marry non-Jews.
1. 1814—1939
The 19th century witnessed a transformation of the socioeconomic
position of Jews in Denmark from poverty to predominantly
bourgeois status. Thus, “at the beginning of the nineteenth century,
the majority of Jews in Denmark were in poor circumstances, but by
1900 they mostly belonged to the middle and upper middle classes”
(Encylopedia Judaica, 1968, 15, p. 1537). The socioeconomic ascent
of the Jews in Denmark began with their partial emancipation in 1814
when Jews were given citizenship and were permitted to hold public
112 THE CHosEn PEOPLE
office and marry Gentiles. In 1834, Jews were allowed to vote. In 1843,
Jews could be appointed to medical professorships at the University
of Copenhagen, but it was not until 1872 that all formal restrictions
on the appointment of Jews to the University were lifted. During the
course of the 19th century, Jews became well assimilated in Denmark.
From 1880 to 1889, 35.9 percent of Jewish marriages were to Gentiles.
From 1890 to 1899, this figure had increased to 40.7 percent, and
between 1900 and 1905, it had increased further to 48.2 percent. Only
about half of the children of these mixed marriages were raised as
Jews, so there was some reduction in the number of those who were
identified as Jews. Thus, in 1834, there were 4,064 Jews in Denmark,
while in 1902, there were only 3,476. Immigrants seeking refuge from
Eastern Europe in the early 20th century pushed the number of Jews
in Denmark up to 5,875 in 1921 (Buckser, 2003, pp. 37-38, 41).
From 1881 onward, Jews came to Denmark as refugees from the
pogroms in Russia, and there was some further immigration from the
Middle East in the 1990s. Throughout the 19th and 20th centuries,
Jews have been about 0.10 percent of the total population in Denmark.
In 2002, there were 6,400 Jews in Denmark, representing 0.11 percent
of the population of 5,360,000.
During the 19th century, Jews prospered socially and economically
in Denmark. According to the leading historian of Danish Jewry, “over
the course of the nineteenth century, Jews found their way into almost all
of the nation’s most prestigious positions.”
This process drastically transformed the economic position of the
community.... [B]y the opening of the twentieth century, most Jews
belonged to the upper end of the middle class, with incomes and
living standards far above the Danish average (Buckser, 2003, p. 39).
One of the most successful Danish Jews in the 19th century was
I. C. Jacobsen (1811-1887), the brewer of Carlsberg lager. In 1876, he
founded the Carlsberg Foundation, which remains one of the leading
Danish foundations for the support of research. The trust stipulates
that 51 percent of the shares of the Brewery must be owned by the
Foundation at all times. One of the best known of the Danish Jews is
Victor Borge (1909-2000), the pianist and comedian.
In April 1940, the Germans occupied Denmark, but did not treat
it as a conquered country but as a “protectorate.” Danes kept their
own civil government and administration. The Germans exerted
Denmark 113
pressure on the Danes to round up and transport the Jews, but the
Danes did not cooperate and resisted these demands. In August 1943,
the protectorate was abolished, and the Germans took control of the
country. They tried to round up the Jews with a view to eliminating
them, but word of the plan got out and the great majority of the Jews
were able to go into hiding. Later, the Danes ferried many of them
across the sea to Sweden. In the event, almost all of the approximately
7,000 Jews in 1943 were saved from the Holocaust.
2. Nobel Prize winners
The best-known Danish Nobel Prize winner is the physicist
Niels Bohr (1885-1962). His mother, Ella Adler, was a member of
a prominent Jewish banking family. (Jews count those who have
Jewish mothers as Jews.) Niels Bohr’s father was a Gentile and
Professor of Physiology at the University of Copenhagen. Bohr was
a brilliant student at the University. After graduating in Physics,
he worked with J. J. Thomson in Cambridge and was appointed
Professor of Physics at the University of Copenhagen at the early
age of 21. His principal achievement was the formulation of a
theory of the spectrum of hydrogen based on an atomic model
and quantum theory structure, for which he was awarded the
Nobel Prize for Physics in 1922. In the early years of World War
II, he was visited by Werner Heisenberg, the German theoretical
physicist, who tried to recruit him to work on the development of
a nuclear bomb. Bohr declined and was among those who escaped
to Sweden in 1943. He then went to the United States and joined
the Manhattan Project that developed the atom bomb. His son,
Aage Neils Bohr (1922-2009), was also a physicist and succeeded
his father as Professor of Physics at the University of Copenhagen.
In 1975, he too won the Nobel Prize for Physics. There has been
one other Danish Nobel Prize winner who was Jewish. This is the
Danish American Benjamin Mottelson (b.1936), who won the Prize
for Physics in 1975.
In total, there have been 11 Danish Nobel Prize winners; they
are listed in Table 7.1. Three of them have been Jews. Thus, Jews,
who comprise 0.1 percent of the Danish population, have won 27
percent of the Nobel Prizes, giving them an Achievement Quotient of 270.
114 THE CHOSEN PEOPLE
Table 7.1. Nobel Prize winners (Jews are asterisked)
Year |Name Subject Year |Name Subject
1917 | Karl Gjellerup Literature 1944 |Johannes V. Jensen | Literature
1917 | Henrik Pontoppidan | Literature 1975 | Ben Mottelson* Physics
1920 | August Krogh Medicine 1975 | Aage N. Bohr* Physics
1922 | Niels Bohr* Physics 1984 | Niels K. Jerne Med.
1922 |Johannes Fibiger | Medicine 1997 | Jens C. Skou Chem.
1922 | Henrik Dam Medicine
3. The Royal Danish Academy
The Royal Danish Academy for Arts and Sciences was established
in 1742 as an institution for the most eminent scholars in Denmark,
akin to the National Academy of Sciences in the United States and
the Royal Society in Britain. In 1999, it had 236 members, of whom
143 were in the sciences and 93 in the humanities and social sciences.
Eleven of these were Jewish or partly Jewish, including three members
of the Bohr family (Aage, Henrik, and Tomas). Thus, the Jews, who
comprise 0.1 percent of the Danish population, are 4.7 percent of the
Academicians, giving them an Achievement Quotient of 47. Because
many of these were partly Jewish, this Achievement Quotient should
be halved to 23.5.
CHAPTER 9
France
1. Numbers of Jews in France
2. 1789-1945
3.1945-2010
4. Socioeconomic Status
5. Nobel Prize winners
6. Fields Medallists and Wolf Prize winners
7. Significant Figures
8. Bridge Champions
Jo are known to have lived in what is now France between 300
and 600 AD. They were expelled by King Dagobert (c.603—639) of
the Franks in 629. Early in the ninth century, Charlemagne (768-814)
ruled a large empire that covered France, western Germany,
northeastern Spain, and northern and central Italy (including Rome).
Charlemagne was keen to promote culture and learning in his empire,
and he observed that the Jews in Italy were strong in this regard.
Accordingly, he invited the Italian Jews to relocate to France and the
Rhineland. He promised good conditions for them, including physical
protection; liberty to travel; the freedom to practice their religion and
build synagogues; property rights; and the rights to hold public office
and adjudicate their own disputes. A number of Jews took up this
118 THE CHOSEN PEOPLE
invitation. They did, however, suffer some discrimination in so far as
they were banned from the guilds, and they were heavily taxed.
In France, as throughout Europe, many Jews became money-
lenders and traders. Money-lending was a good niche for them
because of the Christian prohibition against charging interest on
loans, promulgated by the Pope in 1179. This prohibition was based
on Deuteronomy, which decrees “thou shalt not lend upon usury
to thy brother.” This was Church law and therefore applied only to
Christians, not to Jews. Few Christians were willing to incur the risk
of lending money without the incentive of receiving interest, so there
was a demand for money-lenders that Jews took advantage of. They
extended loans to a wide range of borrowers, including peasants,
tradesmen, knights, courtiers, and occasionally even to monasteries.
A record from Perpignan in southwest France states that in 1270, 80
percent of the 228 adult Jewish men made their living lending money
to their Gentile neighbors (Arkin, 1975).
Jews were also traders and were
practically alone in maintaining links between the primitive and
agrarian Carolingian society and the most important trading centers
in the Middle East, India, and even China. In exchange for slaves,
furs, and arms, they brought back spices, perfumes, precious cloth,
jewels, and many other goods. (Blom, Fuks-Mansfeld, & Schoffer,
1996, p. 13)
In the ıoth century, the Carolingian Empire founded by
Charlemagne collapsed, and it broke up into a number of independent
states. In most of these, Jews had a number of their privileges
withdrawn. They were no longer permitted to own land or hold public
office, and they were banned from the trade and craft guilds that had
monopolies. Money-lending remained one of the few activities open
to them, together with street peddling, the repair of utensils and
clothing, and the practice of medicine.
In 1096, at the time of the First Crusade, “Jews were murdered on
a large scale for the first time, by the Crusaders themselves and by the
rabble that followed in their wake” (Blom, Fuks-Mansfeld, & Schoffer,
1996, p. 15). The reason for this was that Jews were perceived to be
ethnically related to the Saracens, who then occupied the Holy Land,
and therefore sympathetic to the enemy.
France 119
The second major persecution of Jews occurred in 1348-1350,
when the Black Death (the bubonic plague) swept though Europe and
was responsible forthe demise ofabout athird ofthe population. Many
people blamed the Jews for this terrible and inexplicable epidemic,
since Jews were widely believed to be the enemies of Christians.
Throughout Europe, Gentiles attacked and killed the Jews in revenge,
and France was no exception: in 1394, the Jews were expelled from
the country.
In the late 16th century, King Henry II invited the Jews, who were
being harassed by the Inquisition in Portugal, to settle in southwest
France between Bordeaux and Spain, and a number of them did so.
Most of them worked as traders importing goods from Lisbon and
exporting grain back to Portugal. Some of the Jews in the Southwest
did well, including the philosopher Michel deMontaigne (1533-1592),
who was half-Jewish and mayor of Bordeaux.
In the 18th century, Jews were subject to restrictions in France
similar to those in most of the rest of continental Europe. A poll tax
levied on Jews was abolished in 1784, but in the same year, the rights
of Jews to lend money and trade in grain and cattle were curtailed.
Jews were required to obtain crown permission to marry and secure
residence qualifications, without which they could be expelled. The
Revolution of 1789 saw the emancipation of the Jews from these
restrictions. The revolutionaries appreciated that their slogan
“Liberty, Equality, Fraternity” was inconsistent with the limited rights
of Jews, and in 1781, these restrictions were abolished. Jews became
full citizens and were able to enter the universities and, at least in
theory, any occupation.
1. Numbers of Jews in France
The numbers of Jews and their percentages of the population
are shown in Table 9.1. The big jump in numbers from 1890 to 1914
was due to the immigration of approximately 120,000 refugees from
Russia. The increase from 1914 to 1940 was largely due to refugees
from Germany. The fall from 340,000 in 1940 to 250,000 in 1945 was
a result of the killing of approximately 90,000 Jews in World War II.
120 THE CHosEn PEOPLE
Table 9.1. Numbers of Jews in France
Year N. Jews | % population
1890 86,000 0.2
1914 296,000 0.5
1940 340,000 0.8
1945 250,000 0.6
1985 670,000 11
2002 520,000 0.86
2. 1789-1945
Following their emancipation in 1789, Jews in France had
considerable freedom and generally prospered. Most Jews in the 19th
century “were modest garment makers, small provincial salesmen,
sellers of livestock, furniture, iron or canvas” (Birnbaum, 1992, p. 98).
The first field in which Jews began to achieve success was banking.
In the middle decades of the 19th century, about a third of the major
banks in France were run and owned by Jews, including Deutsch,
Bamberger, Heine, Lippman, Periere, Ephtussi, Stern, Bischoffsheim,
Hirsch, Reinach, and Rothschild. Pre-eminent among these were the
Rothschilds who were “almost certainly the richest family in France
during the 19th and 20th centuries” (Rubinstein, 2000, p. 32). In
1858, Emmanuel Lambert (1814-1860) became the first Jew to be
appointed a prefet (a senior public official). In the second half of the
19th century, Jews who achieved prominence included Camille Pissarro
(1830-1903), the early impressionist painter, Georges Bizet (1838-
75), the composer (who was half-Jewish) and is best remembered for
his opera Carmen, and Sarah Bernhardt (1844-1923), who became
the most acclaimed actress of her day.
In the closing decades of the 19th century, Jews began to gain
acceptance in French professional life. From this time up to 1940,
a number of the most famous intellectuals and public figures were
Jews, including Léon Blum (1872-1950), who was Prime Minister
in 1936; the sociologist Emile Durkheim (1858-1917); the novelist
Marcel Proust (1871-1922); the writer Emile Herzog (1885-1967),
better known by his penname “Andre Maurois”; the anthropologist
Claude Lévi-Strauss (1908-1988); and the psychoanalyst and literary
France 121
critic Jacques Lacan (1901-1981). In the 20 years from 1895 to 1914,
148 Jews graduated from France’s most prestigious college, the Ecole
Polytechnique. Jews became quite prominent in public life during
the Third Republic, which began in 1870. In the period 1870-1914,
21 Jews were elected deputies to the French Parliament, and between
1914 and 1940, a further 31 were elected. In the years 1870-1940, 25
generals in the French army were Jews (Birnbaum, 1992, pp. 186,
383-384—He does not give the total numbers of Ecole Polytechnique
graduates, deputies or generals). In the 1930s, an estimated 15 percent
of doctors in France were Jews (Brustein, 2003), drawn from a Jewish
population of about 0.8 percent of the French population.
Despite the absence of legal restrictions, there was a strong
undercurrent of anti-Semitism in the 19th century that persisted up to
the deportation of many Jews to the concentration camps during World
War II. Although Jews were admitted to the civil service, by an unwritten
rule, none were appointed to the three most important ministries: the
Quai d’Orsay (the ministry for foreign affairs), the Cour des Comptes
(Court of Audit), and the Inspection des Finances (finance ministries).
In 1853, Arthur de Gobineau (1816-1882) published his Essai sur
linegalite des races humaines (An Essay on the Inequality of the
Human Races), which maintained that Aryans (Northern Europeans)
are a superior race, though Jews are highly gifted. The Jews are, in de
Gobineau’s mind,
a people capable of all it undertook, an intelligent people.... [W]e
marvel at the variety of Jewish aptitudes, at their singular ability to
assimilate, at the speed with which they appropriate our knowledge
and our methods. (Baker, 1974, p. 36)
Three years later Ernest Renan (1823-1892) published his Vie de
Jesus (Life of Jesus), the best selling book in France in the whole of
the 19th century, which maintained “the Semitic race, compared to
the Indo-European, represents an inferior level of human nature”;
he asserted that Jesus was an exception who “was immune to all the
defects of his race” (Johnson, 1987, p. 282). Those who held such anti-
Semitic sentiments encountered a problem: If Jews were inferior,
why were they so successful? The answer was provided by Edouard
Drumont (1844-1917) in his widely popular La France Juive (Jewish
France, 1886), in which he argued that Jews succeeded by cheating
122 THE CHOSEN PEOPLE
and conspiring together to advance their own kind.
In 1893, a further discussion of the reasons for the remarkable
success of the Jews was offered by Anatole Leroy-Beaulieu (1842-
1912) in his book Israel chez les Nations (Israel Among the Nations).
He wrote, “We marvel at the variety of Jewish aptitudes, at their singular
ability to assimilate, at the speed with which they appropriate our
knowledge and our methods.” How to explain these Jewish aptitudes?
They have been prepared by heredity, by two thousand years of
mental gymnastics. By taking up our sciences, they do not enter
an unknown territory, they return to a country already explored
by their ancestors. The centuries have not only equipped them for
stock-market wars and assaults on fortune, they have armed them
for scientific battles and conquests. (p. 221)
Leroy-Beaulieu was perceptive in identifying high intelligence as
the key to Jewish success and in noting that this could be channelled
into a variety of fields, including commerce and science. He erred only
in his Lamarckian theory of the inheritance of historically acquired
characteristics in so far as he evidently believed that high intelligence
of the Jews had been acquired by “two thousand years of mental
gymnastics.”
Anti-Semitism erupted in 1895 in the now-legendary “Dreyfus
Affair.” This case involved Captain Alfred Dreyfus (1859-1935), who
was the only Jew serving in the French army general staff. He was
accused of handing military secrets to the Germans. He was tried,
found guilty, and sentenced to imprisonment on Devil’s Island.
The case aroused tremendous passions between the supporters of
Dreyfus and his opponents. There were anti-Semitic riots in Paris
and a number of provincial cities. After 11 years in prison, Dreyfus
was released and pardoned.
At the time of the Dreyfus case, in the last decade of the 19th
century, there was growing unease over the apparently large
numbers of Jews in the public services. In 1895, two deputies raised
this matter in the French parliament. One asked, “what measures
the government intends to take to stop the predominance of Jews
in various branches of the French administration,” while the other
called for an inquiry “into the dangers of the continual infiltration
of the Jewish race into our midst” (Birnbaum, 1992, p. 301).
France 123
The German invasion of France took place in May 1940, and
it took the German army only a few weeks to secure victory. The
Germans partitioned the country, occupying Paris and the north,
while allowing the remainder to be governed from Vichy by Marshal
Philippe Petain (1856-1951), a German sympathizer. In October
1940, the Germans and the Vichy government issued statutes that
banned Jews from all public offices, including school and university
teaching and the armed services. Jewish generals and other officers
were retired. Many prominent Jews were stripped of their French
citizenship, including Maurice de Rothschild (1881-1957), the head
of the banking family, and Pierre Mendes-France (1907-1982),
who was later to become Prime Minister. A census of Jews was
drawn up, and all Jews were required to wear a yellow badge. In
June 1942, Adolf Eichmann issued instructions that Jews in France
should be rounded up and taken to camps, where they would await
deportation to Germany, often for the purpose of extermination.
In August, this plan began to be implemented with the deportation
of approximately 10,000 Jews. The writer and novelist Arthur
Koestler was among those imprisoned in transit camps, though he
managed to escape. It is estimated that the Germans and the Vichy
government deported approximately 90,000 French Jews (about
26 percent of the total) who died in the concentration camps during
World War II.
3. 1945-2010
The increase in the number of Jews in France from 250,000 in
1945 to 670,000 in 1985 was largely due to the immigration of North
African Jews from Algeria (120,000), Tunisia (80,000), Morocco
(65,000), and Egypt (25,000), and of Southwest Asian Jews from
Syria, Lebanon, and Turkey (Johnson, 2004, p. 563). In addition,
about 40,000 Jews were admitted from Poland.
In the post-World War Two period, Jews were prominent in public
life, in the professions, in intellectual life, banks, commerce and industry.
Distinguished Jews included the politicians Leon Blum, Prime Minister
(1946-1947); Rene Mayer, Prime Minister (1953); Pierre Mendes-
France, Prime Minister (1954-1955); Michel Debre, Prime Minister
(1959-1962); Rabrice Reinach, Prime Minister (1960); Laurent Fabius,
124 THE CHOSEN PEOPLE
Prime Minister (1984-1986); Simone Veil, Health Minister (1974-1976),
President of the European Parliament (1979-1982); and Dominique
Strauss—Kahn, Finance Minister, (1997-1999), Managing Director of the
International Monetary Fund (2007-2011).
Prominent Jewish activists include: René Cassin (1887-1976), who
drafted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and won the Nobel
Peace Prize 1968; Daniel Cohn-Bendit (b. 1945), student leader and Green
MEP; Bernard Kouchner (b.1939), founder of Médecins Sans Frontiéres
(Doctors Without Borders); and Alain Krivine (b.1941), student leader
and Trotskyist MEP; the cleric Jean-Marie Lustiger (1926-2007),
former Archbishop of Paris and Cardinal (born Jewish; converted
to Roman Catholicism).
Eminent Jewish academics in the social sciences and humanities
include: Raymond Aron (1905-1983), sociologist and journalist; Jacques
Attali (b.1943), economist; Claude Lévi-Strauss, anthropologist; George
Steiner (b.1929), historian and literary critic; Simone Weil (1909-1943),
philosopher; and the impenetrable philosopher and deconstructionist
Jacques Derrida (1930-2005).
In music, distinguished Jews include the composers Alain Boublil
(b. 1941) and Claude-Michel Schonberg (b. 1944), who composed the
musicals Les Miserables and Miss Saigon; the composer Adolphe
Adam (1803-1856); Jacques Canetti (1909-1997), music producer and
brother of writer Elias Canetti (1905-1994), the Nobel Prize winner;
and Sacha Distel (1933-2004), the celebrated singer and guitarist.
In business distinguished Jews have included Marcel Bleustein
(1906-1996) and Maurice Lévy (b.1942), founder and head of Publicis
Groupe; Isaac (1874-1939) and his son Daniel Carasso (1905— 2009),
leaders of multinational Gouppe Danone (Dannon); André Citroén
(1878-1935), founder of Citroën automobiles; Marcel Dassault (1892-
1986) (born Marcel Bloch), aerospace industrialist; Maurice Girodias
(1919-1990), founder of Olympia Press; Philippe Kahn (b. 1962),
founder of Borland; Alexandre, Simon, and Elie Lazard, founders
of the Lazard bank; Armand, Georges, Maurice and Paul Marciano
(b. 1952), founders of Guess; Gilbert Trigano (1920-2001), founder
of “Club Med”; and Pierre Wertheimer (1888-1965), co-founder of
Chanel, the perfume business
France 125
4. Socioeconomic Status
The socioeconomic status distribution of Jews and Gentiles
in 1988 has been given by Della Pergola (1993) and is shown in
Table 9.2. We see that Jews are highly overrepresented in the
major professions and senior management, and also among
traders, which includes the proprietors of medium-sized and small
businesses. Jews are also highly overrepresented among skilled
craftsmen. Jews and Gentiles are about equally represented in the
minor professions. Jews are underrepresented among the clerical
workers and in the “Other blue-collar” category.
Table 9.2. Socioeconomic status of Jews and Gentiles
Socioeconomic status Jews | Gentiles
Professional & managerial 41.7 12.2
Traders 19.4 5.8
Minor professional 18.1 17.5
Clerical 11.1 25.0
Skilled craftsmen 8.3 2i
Other blue-collar 1.4 37.4
5. Nobel Prize Winners
France has produced 41 Nobel Prize winners, who are listed in
Table 9.3. Six of these have been Jews: Henri Moissan, Chemistry
(1906); Gabriel Lippmann, Physics (1908); Henri Bergson,
Literature (1927); Francois Jacob, Chemistry (1965); André Lwoff,
Medicine (1965); Claude Cohen-Tannoudji, Physics (1997). Thus,
Jews, who have made up about 0.8 percent ofthe population during
the 20th century, have produced 15 percent of French Nobel Prize
winners, giving them an Achievement Quotient of 19. In the first
half of the 20th century, three of the 21 Nobel Prize winners were
Jewish, representing a rate of 8.8 per million. In the second half,
three of the 16 Nobel Prize winners were Jewish, but the number
of Jews in France had almost doubled from 340,000 to 670,000,
so Jewish Nobel Prize winners as a rate per million approximately
126 THE CHOSEN PEOPLE
halved. The explanation for this is that many of the new Jews
in France came from North Africa and have lower IQs than the
Ashkenazim of Europe (see Chapter 11).
Table 9.3. French Nobel Prize winners (Jews are asterisked)
Year |Name Subject Year |Name Subject
1901 |Sully Prudhomme |Literature || 1956 |Andr& F. Cournand | Medicine
1903 | Henri Becqueral Physics 1957 | Albert Camus Literature
1903 | Pierre Curie Physics 1960 | Saint-John Perse Literature
1904 | Frédéric Mistral Literature || 1964 | Jean-Paul Sartre Literature
1906 | Henri Moissan* Chem. Francois Jacob* Chemistry
1908 | Alphonse Laveran | Medicine André L woff* Medicine
1908 | Lippmann* Physics Jacques Monod Physics
1912 | Victor Grignard Chem. Alfred Kastler Physics
1912 | Paul Sabatier Chem. Louis Néel Physics
1912 | Alexis Carrel Medicine Roger Guillemin Medicine
1913 | Charles Richet Medicine Jean Dausset Medicine
1915 | Romain Rolland Literature Jean-Marie Lehn Chemistry
1921 | Anatole France Literature Maurice Allais Economics
1926 | Jean Perrin Physics Pierre de Gennes Physics
1927 | Henri Bergson* Literature || 1997 |C. Cohen-Tannoudji* | Physics
1928 | Charles Nicolle Medicine 2005 | Yves Chauvin Chemistry
1929 | Louis de Broglie Physics 2007 | Albert Fert Physics
1935 | Frédéric Joliot Chemistry || 2008 |F. Barre-Sinoussi Medicine
1935 |Iréne Joliot-Curie | Chemistry || 2008 | Luc Montagnier Medicine
1937 | Roger du Gard Literature || 2008 | J. M. Le Clézo Literature
1952 | François Mauriac | Literature
6. Fields Medallists and Wolf Prize winners
France has produced 17 of the mathematicians who have received
the Fields Medal or the Wolf Prize awarded for outstanding work in
mathematics. These are listed in Table 9.4. Five ofthese have been Jews.
France 127
Thus, Jews have produced 29 percent of top French mathematicians,
giving them an Achievement Quotient of 36.
Table 9.4. French prizewinning mathematicians (Jews
are asterisked)
Year |Field Medal Year |Wolf Prize
1950 | Laurent Schwartz* 1979 | Jean Leray
1954 | Jean-Pierre Serre 1979 | Andre Weil*
1958 | René Thom 1980 | Henri Cartan
1974 | Enrico Bombieri 1986 | Albert Libchaber*
1978 | Pierre Deligne 1993 | Jacques Tits
1982 | Alain Connes 2000 | Jean-Pierre Serre
1984 | Pierre-Louis Lions
1994 | Lean-Christophe Yoccoz
1998 | Maxim Kontsevich*
2002 | Laurent Lafforgue
2006 | Werner Wendelin
7. Significant Figures
Charles Murray lists 188 Frenchmen (170 Gentiles and 18 Jews)
in his roster of “significant figures” in world cultural and intellectual
achievement (2003, p. 280). Thirteen of these are listed in Table 9.5.
Murray’s list is more comprehensive than Nobel Prize winners and
includes painters, mathematicians, composers, philosophers and
engineers. Only two French Nobel Prize winners appear in his list
(Henri Bergson & André Lwoff). Murray explicates the numbers of
Jewish and Gentile “significant figures” who were active between 1870
and 1950 and the ratio of Jewish to Gentile “significant figures” in
relation to their numbers in the population. These calculations yield a
Jewish Achievement Quotient of 19.1, remarkably close to the Jewish
Achievement Quotient of 20.9 based on Nobel Prize winners.
128 THE CHOSEN PEOPLE
Table 9.5. French Jewish “Significant Figures”
Michel de Montaigne Philosophy 1533-1592
Fromental Halevy Music 1799-1862
Adolphe Adam Music 1803-1856
Camille Pissarro Art 1830-1903
Ludovic Halevy Literature 1834-1908
Ferdinand Moissan Technology 1852-1907
Henri Bergson Philosophy 1859-1941
Jacques Hadamard Mathematics 1865-1963
Paul Dukas Music 1865-1935
Marcel Proust Literature 1871-1944
Darius Milhaud Music 1892-1974
Andre Lwoff Biology 1902-1994
8. Bridge Champions
Not surprisingly, Jews are prominent in top-level bridge in
France. The names of the 22 French Open World Bridge Champions
recognised by World Bridge Federation in 2004 are given in Table 9.6.
Five ofthem are Jews, denoted by asterisks.
Table 9.6. French open world bridge champions in 2004;
(Jews are denoted by asterisks.)
Rene Bacherich Pierre Ghestem Gerard Bourchtoff
Paul Chemla* Michel Lebel* Claude Delmouly
Pierre Jais Franck Multon Albert Faigenbaum*
Alain Levy* Philippe Soulet Roger Lattes
Christian Mari Henri Szwarc* Dominique Pilon
Herve Mouiel Pierre Adad Bertrand Romanet
Michel Perron Maurice Aujaleu
Thus, Jews, who are about 0.86 percent of the French population
at the beginning of the 21st century, contribute 23 percent of the top
bridge players, giving them an Achievement Quotient of 27.
CHAPTER 10
Germany
1. Numbers of Jews
2. The 19th Century
3.1900-1918
4. The Weimar Republic, 1918-1933
5. Nazi Germany, 1933-1945
6. Jewish Achievement in Chess
7. Nobel Prize winners
8. Mathematicians
9. Significant Figures
ews are known to have lived in Cologne in western Germany
between 300 and 600 AD. As described in the previous chapter,
in an attempt to promote culture and learning throughout his vast
territories, the emperor Charlemagne invited a group of Jews in Italy
to relocate to France and the Rhineland. Those who settled in the
German lands adopted the name “Ashkenazim.” They were granted
some basic liberties, but also forced to suffer under a number of
restrictions: Ashkenazim were not permitted to own land; they were
banned from the guilds; and they were heavily taxed. As elsewhere
in Europe, a number of them adapted to their new environment by
132 THE CHOSEN PEOPLE
becoming money-lenders. They also had a virtual monopoly of the
trade in Eastern goods such as spices and silk.
The Jewish experience in Germany certainly had its share of
conflict and suffering. As discussed previously, the Crusades and
the Black Death inspired outbreaks of anti-Jewish violence. The
15th century saw a growing wave of anti-Semitism throughout the
German lands. In 1414, the Jews were expelled from Trier; in 1424,
they were expelled from Cologne; in 1430, from Saxony; and in 1446,
from Brandenburg. Most of them headed east to Prussia, Poland,
and Russia. In the 16th century, expulsions of Jews continued from
a number of the small German states, including Wurttemburg (1521),
Saxony (1536), Upper and Lower Bavaria (1551), Brunswick, Hanover,
and Luneburg (1553), the Palatinate (1556-1559), and Brandenburg
(1573) (Blom, Fuks-Mansfeld & Schoffer, 1996, p. 45).
The year 1618 saw the beginning of the Thirty Years War and
attendant deprivation and bloodshed. Many Jews migrated to Poland
and the Ukraine; others moved to Amsterdam in the Netherlands, and
some went to Hamburg, which was a free port in which there was a
community of Sephardim, among whom the wealthiest was the da
Costa family.
In the 18th century, Germany was still divided into a number
of independent principalities and remained this way until Otto von
Bismarck (1815-1898) united the states in 1867-1870. In virtually all
of these principalities, Jews suffered varying degrees of discrimination
and restrictions, but the severity of these varied in the different states.
In Prussia, the largest of the German states, Jews were prohibited from
the craft trades for which guild membership was necessary. Frankfurt
required Jews to live in the ghetto, whose entrance was locked at night
by soldiers and reopened in the morning. Jews were limited to 500
families and 12 marriages a year and were prohibited from farming,
manufacture of handicrafts, and dealing in weapons, silk, and fruit.
In the 17th and 18th centuries, most Jews worked as petty
traders, dealing largely in second-hand goods, especially clothes and
household furniture, and operated pawn shops and took part in other
forms of money-lending and exchange. A few Jews achieved high
social positions as “Court Jews” who served as the financial agents
of princes in the control of salt and tobacco monopolies, arranging
army contracts, establishing industrial enterprises, founding banks,
Germany 133
and granting loans to finance military and civil expenditures.
In the late 18th century, the two most prominent Jewish families
were the Oppenheims and the Rothschilds. Mayer Rothschild, who
began trading in old coins, founded the banking dynasty and became
the financial agent of the Elector of Hesse-Kessel, the richest of the
German princes. The Oppenheim familyrana bank in Cologne that has
survived up to the present day as the largest private bank in Germany.
The Napoleonic wars in the first decade and a half of the 19th
century saw an improvement in the position of the Jews in Germany.
In 1812, Napoleon emancipated the Jews in southwestern Germany
from numerous restrictions, though many of these freedoms were
withdrawn in the 1830s. During the Napoleonic Wars, a number of
Jews used their money to finance the armies and made substantial
sums from interest. After the end of the conflict, they had capital
to launch and fund commercial enterprises. Many of them did so
successfully and rose to positions of economic power and social
eminence. According to Werner E. Mosse (1987), who has written
one of the most authoritative works on the economic and social rise of
the Jews from the 19th century up to the accession to power of Hitler,
there were some “peripheral prejudices” against Jews but overt anti-
Jewish discrimination was largely absent in 19th-century Germany.
On the contrary, Gentiles generally accepted socially the Jews who had
acquired wealth. Most of the wealthy descendants of the successful
Court Jews of the 18th century converted to Christianity, and many
of them married into the Gentile upper-middle class and nobility. By
the mid-19th century, many of them had become integrated into the
upper echelons of Gentile society and had disappeared from Jewish
economic life.
1. Numbers of Jews in Germany
The approximate numbers of Jews in Germany and their
percentages of the population for various dates are given in Table
10.1. Between 1871 and 1910, Jews were approximately one percent
of the German population. Although the numbers of Jews increased
during this period, their percentage of the population fell slightly due
to lower fertility and intermarriage with Gentiles, which resulted in
a number of Jews becoming assimilated. From 1910 to 1935, these
134 THE CHOSEN PEOPLE
trends persisted, and the numbers of Jews and their percentage of the
population continued to decline. The decline from 1935 to 1945 was
due to emigration and the Holocaust in the years 1942-1945. (The
figures for 1945 and 1985 are for East and West Germany combined;
these became two independent states in 1945.) The increase from 1945
to 1985 was due to immigration, largely from Russia.
Table 10.1. Numbers and percentages of Jews in Germany
Year | N.Jews | % Population
1871 410,000 1.00
1910 615,000 0.95
1935 525,000 0.78
1945 26,603 0.04
1985 42,000 0.08
2002 95,000 0.11
Sources: Gordon, 1984, p. 8;
American Jewish Yearbooks
2. The 19th Century
During the 19th century, the restrictions placed on Jews were gradually
relaxed. Jews flourished, as indexed by their greater longevity than
Gentiles. A study in Frankfurt in 1855 found that Jews had an average life
span of 49 years; the Gentile average was only 37 years (Johnson, 2004,
p. 356). This was offset, however, by low fertility. It has been estimated
that the birthrate of Jews in Munich in 1875 was 20 percent below that of
Catholics (Chiswick, 1988).
In 1848, Jews became entitled to vote. When Bismarck had
completed the unification of the hitherto independent states in 1870,
he gave the Jews full civil rights, though it was not until 1875 that Jews
were permitted to marry Gentiles.
Throughout the century, Jews succeeded in a number of fields and
by its closing decades they were prominent in banking, commerce,
industry, the professions, the arts, and intellectual life. Jews were
approximately one percent of the population, but they had much
higher percentages on a number of indices of educational, social, and
economic achievement, and social standing. Many of the most famous
Germany 135
in Germany in the 19th century were Jews, including the poet and
essayist Heinrich Heine (1797-1856), the political economist Karl
Marx (1818-1883), the composers Felix Mendelssohn (1809-1847),
Jacques Offenbach (1819-1880), and Giacomo Mayerbeer (1791-
1864), and the physicist Albert Einstein (1879-1955), who was born
in Bavaria although he was educated in Switzerland and took Swiss
nationality in 1901.
The field in which Jews achieved their greatest prominence was
banking. Besides the aforementioned Rothschilds of Frankfurt (later
the Goldschmidt-Rothschilds) and the Oppenheims of Cologne, the
most successful of banking families were the Kaskells, who founded
the Dresdner Bank in 1872 (which still exists as Dresdner-Kleinwort-
Benson); the Seligmans and the Hirsches, who founded the Bayerische
Hypotheken und Wechselbank (still one of the largest banks in
Germany); the Kaullas family, who founded the Wurttembergerische
Hofbank in Stuttgart; the Pfeiffers, who with other small Jewish
bankers, established the Wurttembergerische Vereinsbank; and the
Warburgs, whose London banking dynasty is still going strong as of
this writing.
Jews also established successful businesses in textile manufacture
and distribution, chemicals, brewing and distilling, sugar refining,
metallurgy, alum and lignite mining, and transport. The most
prominent in textiles were the Meyers, Liebermanns, Reichenheims,
Weigerts, Kauffmanns, Frankels, Pinkuses, and Goldschmidts. In
chemicals: Heinrich Caro (1834-1910), Franz Oppenheim (1852-
1929), Fitz Haber (1868-1934), the Berends, Beers, Goldschmidts,
and Kunheims. In brewing, distilling and sugar-refining: the Bachers,
Berends, and Beers. In metallurgy: the Harzes, Hirsches, and the
Coppels. In alum and lignite mining: the Kunheims and the Henochs.
In transport, consisting initially of horse-drawn carriages and later of
railways: the Henochs, Guterbocks, and the Beers.
As mentioned above, in the 19th century, the Gentile business
community generally accepted Jews socially who had established
successful businesses. In Prussia, public recognition of successful and
creditable businessmen was accorded by the conferment of the coveted
titles of Kommerzenrat (KG) and the more prestigious Geheimer
Kommerzenrat (GKG). These were analogous to the orders of nobility;
the Geheimer Kommerzenrat was entitled to be addressed as Geheimrat.
136 THE CHOSEN PEOPLE
There were rigorous selection procedures for the conferment of these
titles that took account of income and wealth, economic services to the
state, public service, charitable activities, standing among peers, and
respectable lifestyle.
The numbers of Jews and Gentiles who were awarded the titles
of KG and GKG during the period 1819 to 1900 have been given
by Mosse (1987). From these, I have calculated the percentages of
these who were Jews from the totals and broken these down into
those who were bankers, merchants, and manufacturers for four
periods spanning the 19th century. These figures are given in Table
10.2. Three points are particularly striking. First, the percentage
of Jews in the population in Germany during the 19th century was
approximately 1.0 percent, so Jews were hugely overrepresented
among the economic elite on whom these titles were conferred, as
they were overrepresented in all sectors of the economy and at all
times. Second, the percentage of Jews among this business elite
nearly doubled from the first half of the century (1819-1852), when
it stood at 10 percent, to the second half (1861-1900), when it
averaged 18 percent. Third, the percentage of Jews was much higher
in banking, where they constituted about half of the bankers, rather
less in merchandising, where they were around a quarter in the
second half of the century, and lowest in manufacturing where they
ranged between five and seven percent. Jews also made up seven
percent of journalists in 1881 (Gordon, 1984, p. 14).
Table 10.2. Percentages of Jews among the economic elite
in Germany in 1819-1900
Years Total Bankers | Merchants | Manufacturers
1819-1852 10 54 5 5
1861-1872 19 50 25 7
1879-1889 20 52 26 7
1890-1900 15 45 21 6
Inevitably, it took time for Jews to take advantage of these new
opportunities, but they gradually did so. As the century progressed,
an increasing number of Jews achieved eminence. Gerhard Falk and
Vern Bullough (1987) have collected information about 375 Jews who
Germany 137
achieved eminence in academe and the professions (but not business)
and who were born in Germany between 1785 and 1884. They used the
criteria of listing in Die Neue Deutsche Biographie, The Dictionary
of Scientific Biography, The Jewish Encyclopedia, The Universal
Jewish Encyclopedia, and The Encyclopedia Judaica. They found
that the numbers of Jews who achieved eminence gradually increased
over the course of the century. Their figures are shown in Table 10.3.
We can see that during the century there was a more than fivefold
increase in the numbers of Jews achieving eminence. This shows that
it takes a couple of generations for an oppressed people to find their
place in the socioeconomic hierarchy.
Table 10.3. Numbers of Jews who achieved eminence in
Germany
1785-1804 | 1805-1824 1825-1844 1845-1864 | 1865-1884
25 59 67 87 137
Falk and Bullough (1987) have also analyzed the occupational
distribution of Jews and Gentiles in Germany at the end of the 19th
century. Their results for 1895 are shown in Table 10.4.
Table 10.4. Occupational distribution of Jews and Gentiles
in Germany in 1895 (percentages)
Occupation Jews | Gentiles
Prof/Civil Service 7.1 6.4
Business 59.8 5.3
Railroads 5.4 5.3
Manual 22.5 37.5
Domestic Service 3.6 8.0
Farming 1.6 37.5
It will be seen that Jews were slightly overrepresented in
the professional and civil service category and were massively
overrepresented as business proprietors. On the other hand, Jews
were substantially underrepresented in manual occupations, domestic
service, and farming. Their average position in the socioeconomic
hierarchy was clearly substantially higher than that of Gentiles.
138 THE CHOSEN PEOPLE
Many studies have shown that crime is predominantly committed
by the less intelligent. Probably the main reasons for this are that the
more intelligent have a better understanding of the costs of crime, and
since they generally have better jobs and higher social status, the cost
of crime is usually greater for them. It is therefore interesting to note
that Jews have tended to have lower crime rates than Gentiles. Cesare
Lombroso notes (1911, p. 37):
The statistics of many countries show a lower degree of criminality
for Jews than for their Gentile fellow-citizens.... In Bavaria one
Jew is sentenced for every 315 of them in the population, and one
Catholic for every 265. In Baden, Jewish criminality was 63.8
percent of Christian criminality.
F. Lenz (1930, p. 680) confirmed this for the last decade of the 19th
century. His figures for conviction rates for all crime are 103 per 10,000
populations for Jews and 124 per 10,000 populations for Gentiles.
Infant mortality was lower among Jews in the 19th and early
20th centuries.
Table 10.5. Infant mortality per 1,000 live births
Years Location Jews | Gentiles | % Difference
1812-40 | Prussia 129 174 35
1819-70 | Westphalia 96 140 46
1827-56 | Magdeburg 135 225 67
1857-73 | Baden 185 276 47
1878 Bavaria 152 296 95
1891-1913 | Frankfurt 67 146 118
1894-1905 | Munich 87 264 203
1901-1912 | Hesse 70 128 82
1906 Breslau 62 217 250
Studies showing this have been summarized by Gretchen Condran
and Ellen Kramarow (1991) and are shown in Table 10.5, where it will
be seen that the infant mortality of Gentiles was between 35 and 250
percent higher than that of Jews.
By the later decades of the 19th century, it was becoming recognized in
Germany 139
GermanythattheJewsareanexceptionallyintelligentpeople. Forinstance,
Heinrich von Treitschke (1834-1896) noted the overrepresentation of
Jews in the higher classes in Berlin colleges; Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-
1900) wrote of “the extraordinary intellectual resources ofthe Jews ofthe
present day” (Baker, 1974, pp. 44-46).
3. 1900-1918
Jews prospered in Germany during the early years of the 20th
century and a large percentage became quite wealthy. Mosse (1987,
1989) has published the statistics, derived from tax returns, for the
economic success of Jews between 1908 and 1911; they are shown in
Table 10.6. Jews were about 0.08 percent of the population at this
time. Yet row 1 shows that 36 percent of prominent businessmen
were Jewish (chairmen, managing directors, and directors of
the 100 largest corporations). Row 2 shows that 21.7 percent of
millionaires (worth five million marks or more) in Prussia (by far the
largest state) in 1908 were Jewish. Row 3 shows that 31 percent of
multimillionaires were Jewish (families worth 50 million marks or
more: there were 29 such families of which nine were Jewish).
Table 10.6. Percentages of Jews among the wealthy in
Germany in 1908-1911
The Wealthy % Jews
Prominent businessmen 36.0
Millionaires 21.7
Multimillionaires 31.0
The names of the wealthiest families ranked in order of the value
of their holdings are given in Table 10.7, in which Jewish families are
asterisked. Ofthe 29 wealthiest families, 10 (31 percent) were Jewish.
140 THE CHOSEN PEOPLE
Table 10.7. Wealthiest families in Germany in 1908-1911:
Jews are asterisked
Haniel Thyssen Schottlander*
Rothschild* Stumm Ballestrem
Henckell Tiele-Winckler Dippe
Krupp Arenberg Henschel
Hohenlohe Gans/Weinberg* Simon*
Speyer* Bleichroder* Schichau/Ziese
Waldthusen Guilleaume Mosse*
Mendelssohn* Oppenheim* Borsig
Schaffgotsch von Roth Metzler
Pless von Schwarzenstein
Source: Mosse (1987)
Statistics showing the overrepresentation of Jews in the higher
socioeconomic strata of Germany for the years 1904-1910 are given in
Table 10.8. During this period, Jews were approximately one percent
of the population. Row 1 shows that in 1900, 50 percent of the doctors
in Berlin were Jews. Row 2 shows that in 1904, 27 percent of the
lawyers were Jewish. Rows 3, 4, 5, and 6 show that in 1910, Jews were
seven percent of university professors, 25 percent of law and medical
students, 5.4 percent of all university students in the country, and 17
percent of students at the University of Berlin.
Table 10.8. Jews in Germany 1904-1910
Years |Occupation % Jews AQ
1900__| Berlin doctors 50 50
1904 |Lawyers 27 27
1910 | University professors 7 7
1910 | Law & medical students 25 25
1910 | University students 5.4 5.4
1910 | Berlin University students 17 17
Sources: rows 1-2: Gordon, 1984; row 3-6: Slezkine (2004)
Germany 141
During the early 20th century, the Jewish physician Martin
Englander (1902, pp. 11-12) contended that Jews are on average
more intelligent that Gentiles and have larger heads, though inferior
physique. During World War I, the suggestion that Jews are more
intelligent than Gentiles appeared to be confirmed with the publication
of astudy by Ottokar Nemeck (1916) in which he analyzed the scholastic
records of 1,549 15-18-year-old school students. He reported that
Jewish students were on average superior in all academic subjects,
including mathematics, physics, chemistry, languages, history,
and geography.
4. The Weimar Republic, 1918-1933
Between 1918 and 1933, it was quite widely recognized that Jews
were on average more intelligent than Gentiles. For instance, Fritz
Lenz, who held the Professorship of Racial Hygiene at the University
of Munich, wrote,
But when we compare the average German Jew with the average
German Gentile we cannot doubt that the Jews excel in intelligence
and alertness. In the higher schools, where the pupils represent
a selection for talent, the proportion of Jewish children is many
times as large as the proportion of Jews in the general population.
In the elementary schools, the Jewish children on the average
perform better than the Gentiles; Jews form an immoderately
large proportion of undergraduates at the universities; at the
Prussian universities in 1911-1912, Jews were 5.6 percent of the
students [and only one percent of the population]. (1931, p. 670)
Jews remained prominent in the economic elite during the
Weimar Republic. Mosse (1987, pp. 355, 362), the historian of the
socioeconomic position of Jews in Germany, writes, “men of Jewish
extraction were to be found in some 39 of the largest industrial
companies...and down to 1931, there is little evidence of any significant
overall decline of the role of Jews in German economic life.” Mosse
does not, however, provide any further statistics to substantiate these
assertions. In these years, Jews were also becoming increasingly
assimilated with Gentile society.From 1901 to 1905, 15 percent of
Jews married Gentiles. Between 1926 and 1932, this figure rose to 36
percent, and by 1933, to 44 percent (Gordon, 1984, p. 17).
142 THE CHOSEN PEOPLE
Statistics showing the percentages of Jews among the
socioeconomic elite in the Weimar Republic are given in Table 10.9
(at this time, Jews were about 0.78 percent of the population). Rows
1-3 show that in 1925, 16 percent of the physicians, 15 percent of the
dentists and 25 percent of the lawyers were Jews. Row 4 shows that in
1928, Jews occupied 80 percent of the leading positions in the Berlin
stock exchange. Row 5 shows that in 1930, Jews held 43 percent of
the leading positions in Jewish private banks. Row 6 shows that in
the same year, Jews held six percent of the leading positions in non-
Jewish banks. Row 7 shows that in the same year, 75 percent of the
plays produced in Germany were written by Jews. Row 8 shows that
in 1931, 50 percent of theatre directors were Jews. In addition, “a large
number of prominent actors and actresses were Jewish” (Gordon,
1984, p. 14).
Child mortality was lower for Jews in the 1920s, at a mean of 10.3
percent for Jews in Berlin, as compared with 25.5 percent for the
general population (Schmelz, 1971).
Table 10.9. Jews in Germany 1918-1933
Years |Occupation % Jews | AQ
1925 | Physicians 16 20
1925 | Dentists 15 19
1925 | Lawyers 25 32
1928 | Berlin stockbrokers 80 102
1930 | Private bankers 43 55
1930 | Public bankers 6 8
1930 | Playwrights 75 96
1931 | Theatre directors 50 64
Sources: rows 1-3: Slezkine (2004);
rows 4-8: Gordon (1984)
5. Nazi Germany, 1933-1945
As Adolf Hitler came to power in 1933, one of his prime objectives
was to rid Germany of the Jews. Hitler’s motives for doing this appear
to have been that he believed that the Jews are exceptionally talented
and could take control of the world. He may also have believed that
Germany 143
the Jews were parasitical and had certain poor character qualities. Be
this as it may, he began to take measures against the Jews shortly after
he acquired power. In 1935, the Nuremberg Laws deprived Jews of
their citizenship and prohibited them from marrying Gentiles, from
attending public schools, engaging in business or the professions,
and owning land. In 1938, a pogrom destroyed synagogues; the state
confiscated most Jews’ financial assets; and all Jews were required to
live in ghettos. In the 1930s, it seems that the Nazis thought the way
to rid Germany of the Jews would be to encourage them to emigrate
and between 1933 and 1945, approximately 300,000 Jews who had
been robbed of their goods and property were allowed to leave the
country. The Nazis also considered plans to resettle the Jews in other
countries. Madagascar was considered as a possible place to send
them (Gordon, 1984). It appears that it was not until late 1941 or early
1942 that the Nazis formulated and began to implement the plan of the
extermination of the Jews. During the next three years, approximately
160,000 were killed in the gas chambers, while some 26,600 survived,
a figure that includes those in mixed marriages.
6. Jewish Achievement in Chess
Jews have excelled at chess in a number of countries, and up to
1939, Germany was no exception. Table 10.10 gives the names of the
top-rated German-Jewish and Gentile chess grandmasters for the
years 1851 to 2000 (Rubinstein, 2004, p. 37). There were six Jews and
seven Gentiles among grandmasters in the years between 1851 and
1939.
Table 10.10. Jewish and Gentile chess grandmasters
Year Jews Gentiles
1851-1899 Horowitz von der Lasa
Harrwitz Anderssen
Newmann Paulsen
Schwarz von Minckwitz
Tarrasch von Bardelben
1900-1939 Lasker Lipke
Teichmann
1940-2000 Hubner
144 THE CHOSEN PEOPLE
The Germans have only produced one top-rated grandmaster
since 1940. Thus, Jews, who were about one percent of the population
between 1871 and 1914, were 46 percent of the top-rated German
chess grandmasters, giving them an Achievement Quotient of 46.
7. Nobel Prize winners
A list of German Nobel Prize winners is given in Table 10.11 (the
Prize winners listed are those born in Germany, a number of whom
emigrated in the 1930s). Of the 89 Nobel Laureates, 21 have been
Jewish. Thus, Jews, who were about 0.78 percent of the population
in the 1930s, received 24 percent of the Nobel Prizes, giving them an
Achievement Quotient of 31.
Table 10.11. German Nobel Prize winners (Jews are
asterisked)
Year | Name Subject Year | Name Subject
1901 | Emil von Behring Medicine 1953 | Fritz Lipmann* Medicine
1901 | Wilhelm Rontgoen _ | Physics 1954 | Max Born* Physics
1902 | Emil Fischer Chemistry ||1954 | Walther Bothe Physics
1902 |TheodorMommsen | Literature ||1955 | Polykarp Kusch Physics
1905 |Adolf von Baeyer* Chemistry ||1956 | Werner Forssmann | Medicine
1905 | Philipp Lenard Physics 1961 | Rudolf Mossbauer | Physics
1907 | Eduard Buchner Chemistry || 1963 | Karl Ziegler Chemistry
1908 | Rudolf Eucken Literature || 1963 |M. Goeppert-Mayer | Physics
1908 | Paul Ehrlich* Medicine 1963 |J. Hans Jensen Physics
1909 | Wilhelm Ostwald Chemistry |[1964 | Konrad Bloch* Medicine
1909 | Ferdinand Braun Physics 1964 | Feodor Lynen Medicine
1910 | Otto Wallach* Chemistry || 1966 | Nelly Sachs Literature
1910 | Paul Heyse* Literature ||1967 | Manfred Eigen Chemistry
1910 | Albrecht Kossel Medicine 1967 | Hans Bethe* Physics
1911 | Wilhelm Wien Physics 1969 | Max Delbrück Medicine
1912 |Gerhart Hauptmann | Literature ||1970 | Bernard Katz* Medicine
1914 |Max von Laue Physics 1971 | Gerhard Herzberg* | Chemistry
1915 | Richard Willstätter* | Chemistry ||1972 | Heinrich Böll Literature
Germany 145
Year | Name Subject Year | Name Subject
1918 | Fritz Haber* Chemistry ||1973 | Ernest Fischer Chemistry
1918 | Max Planck Physics 1978 | Arno Penzias* Physics
1919 | Johannes Stark Physics 1979 | Georg Wittig Chemistry
1920 _| Walther Nernst Chemistry ||1984 | Georges Kohler Medicine
1921 | Albert Einstein* Physics 1985 | Klaus von Klitzing | Physics
1922 | Otto Meyerhof* Medicine 1986 | Gerd Binnig Physics
1925 |Richard Zsigmondy |Chemistry ||1987 | Georg Bednorz Physics
1925 | James Franck* Physics 1988 | Johann Deisenhofer | Chemistry
1925 | Gustav Hertz Physics 1988 | Robert Huber Chemistry
1927 | Heinrich Wieland Chemistry |}1988 | Hartmut Michel Chemistry
1928 | Adolf Windaus Chemistry ||1988 | Jack Steinberger* | Physics
1929 |Thomas Mann Literature || 1989 | Hans Dehmelt Physics
1930 | Hans Fischer Chemistry |}1991 | Erwin Neher Medicine
1931 | Otto Warburg Medicine 1991 | Bert Sakmann Medicine
1931 | Friedrich Bergius Chemistry |}1992 | Rudolf Marcus Chemistry
1931 | Carl Bosch Chemistry |[1994 | Reinhard Selten Economics
1932 |Werner Heisenberg |Physics 1995 |C Nusslein-Volhard | Medicine
1935 | Hans Spemann Medicine 1998 |Horst L. Stormer | Physics
1939 | Adolf Butenandt Chemistry ||1999 | Ginter Grass Literature
1939 | Gerhard Domagk Medicine 1999 | Günter Blobel Medicine
1943 | Otto Stern* Physics 2000 | Jack S. Kilby Physics
1945 | Ernst B. Chain* Medicine 2005 | Robert Auman* Economics
1946 | Hermann Hesse Literature ||2005 | Theodor Harsch Physics
1950 | Kurt Alder Chemistry || 2007 | Peter Gruneberg Physics
1950 | Otto Diels Chemistry || 2007 | Gerhard Ertl Chemistry
1953 |H. Staudinger Chemistry || 2008 | Harald zur Hausen | Medicine
1953 | Hans Krebs* Medicine
8. Mathematicians
Germany has produced seven mathematicians who have
received the Fields Medal or the Wolf Prize awarded for
outstanding work in mathematics. These are listed in Table 10.12.
Three of these have been Jews. Thus, Jews who have been about
146 THE CHOSEN PEOPLE
0.4 percent of the population during the second half of the 20th
century have produced 43 percent of top mathematicians, giving
them an Achievement Quotient of 107.
Table 10.12. German Mathematicians (Jews are asterisked)
Year |Fields Medal Year |Wolf Prize
1958 | Klaus Roth* 1978 | Carl Siegel
1966 | Alexander Grothendieck* 1984 | Hans Lewy*
1986 | Gerd Faltings 1988 | Friedrich Hirzebruch
1994 _ | Jurgen Moser
9. Significant Figures
Charles Murray (2003, p. 280) has calculated the numbers of
Jewish and Gentile “significant figures” (i.e. great names in science
and the arts) in Germany whose careers came within the years 1870 to
1950. He finds 40 Jews and 155 Gentiles. Calculating the ratio of Jewish
to Gentile “significant figures,” he arrives at an Achievement Quotient
(Jewish overrepresentation) of 22. This is not greatly different from
the Jewish Achievement Quotient of 31 for Nobel Prize winners.
CHAPTER 11
Israel
The Population
Intelligence of Jews and Arabs
Intelligence of European and Oriental Jews
Education Attainment of European and Oriental Jews
Genetic Basis of European-Oriental IQ difference
Abilities of Jews and Arabs in Mathematics and Science
Education of European Jews, Oriental Jews, and Arabs
Socioeconomic status of European Jews, Oriental Jews, and Arabs
Nobel and Wolf Prize winners
. Ethiopian Jews
12. Fertility of European Jews, Oriental Jews, and Arabs
13. Infant Mortality and Life Expectancy
14. Intelligence of Jews in Israel, Britain, Canada, and the United States
15. Conclusions
Oe NH
Ihe contemporary state of Israel is approximately coterminous
with the historic land of Palestine, the original homeland of the
Jews, from which they were expelled on three occasions between
the sixth century BC and the second century AD. A few remained or
returned, but Arabs mainly occupied the land until the end of World
War I. The Ottomans ruled it from 1516 until 1918, when the British
150 THE CHOSEN PEOPLE
took control of Palestine as a mandate, which was in effect a colony. In
1917, the British Foreign Secretary, Arthur Balfour, issued a statement
that “His Majesty’s Government views with favor the establishment
in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people and will use
their best endeavors to facilitate the achievement of this object.” This
became known as the Balfour Declaration and encouraged the growth
of the Zionist movement, whose objective was to establish a Jewish
state in the territory. The British plan was to divide Palestine into
two independent states, one Jewish and the other Arab. The British
held discussions in an attempt to achieve this, but the Jews and Arabs
could not agree on the details of the partition.
Nevertheless, during the 1920s and 1930s, a number of Jews,
mainly from Russia and Eastern Europe, migrated to Palestine in the
expectation that a Jewish state would eventually be established. From
1933 onward, a number of German Jews also migrated to Palestine
to escape the Nazis. The 1922 census reports that 12.9 percent of
the population were Jews. By 1929, this had increased, as a result
of immigration, to 18.9 percent. By 1940, the census found that this
had increased further to a third of the population, the remaining two
thirds consisting largely of Arabs (both Christian and Muslim).
The Jewish aspiration for their own country remained unresolved
until 1947, when the United Nations recommended that the British
should withdraw; the country was finally partitioned into independent
Jewish and Arab states. In 1948, the British did withdraw, but the Arabs
refused to accept partition. In May of that year, the Jews proclaimed
the establishment of the state of Israel. The Arabs objected, and the
five neighboring Arab countries of Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, and
Iraq attacked in an attempt to restore the single state. The Israelis
defeated them, and the state survived. However, Israel continued
to be harassed by Arab and Egyptian terrorists. In 1956, to prevent
incursions from Egyptian fedayeen (terrorists), who operated from
Sinai, the Israelis invaded and occupied Egypt east of the Suez Canal.
Later in the year, the Israelis withdrew and a UN international force
policed the Sinai.
Israel 151
1. The Population
Following the establishment of Israel in 1948, a Law of Return
was passed, giving all Jews worldwide the right to immigrate to the
country. In the years 1948-1956, about 850,000 did so, mainly from
Central and Eastern Europe, Yemen, Iraq, and North Africa. In 1956,
the population consisted of 1,872,390, including about 200,000
Arabs. By 1990, the population had grown to 5,696,000 and by 2000,
to approximately six million.
There are five ethnic subpopulations in Israel. These are:
(1) The Ashkenazim, mainly from Europe and the United States,
and a smaller number from other countries such as South Africa. This
group is about 40 percent of the population of Israel and numbers
approximately 2.4 million. The Ashkenazim are sometimes called the
“European Jews,” but this is not accurate. The term “Ashkenazim”
designates the Jews of Central and Eastern Europe and their
descendants in Western Europe, North America, and elsewhere,
whereas European Jews include Sephardim from the Balkans.
Furthermore, the terms Ashkenazim and European Jews also include
a number of Russians who pretended to be Jews in order to obtain
permission to leave the Soviet Union (Abbink, 2002; Lazin, 2002).
Israeli demographers estimate that only about half of the 1.8 million
Russians who immigrated to Israel between 1985 and 2000 were
actually Jewish (Tolts, 2003). Thus, of the 2.4 million classified as
European Jews in Israel, about 1.4 million, or just about half, are
Ashkenazim, about 900,000 are non-Jewish Russians, and about
110,000 are Sephardim, who escaped from the Balkans during
the German occupation in the Second World War or survived the
Holocaust and migrated to Israel after the end of the war.
(2) The Sephardic Jews, originally from Spain and Portugal, from
which they were expelled in 1492 and 1497. Most of them settled in
the Balkans, and a number also settled in the ports of the Levant
(the littoral of the eastern Mediterranean). The term “Sephardim” is
sometimes used to designate Jews from the Near and Middle East,
but this is inaccurate. The term should be reserved for those originally
from Spain and Portugal and more recently the Balkans.
(3) The Oriental Jews of Near and Middle Eastern and North African
origins, most of whom migrated to Israel from Iraq and Iran, together
with some from Syria, Yemen, and other countries in southwest Asia
152 THE CHosEn PEOPLE
and North Africa, largely between 1950 and 1958. In the last decade of
the 20th century, these numbered approximately 2.4 million and were
about 40 percent of the population. The Oriental Jews are sometimes
designated the “Mizrahim,” but are more commonly described as
“Oriental.” I shall use this term, even though it is inaccurate, as many
ofthem came from North Africa.
(4) The Ethiopian Jews, sometimes known as the Black Jews or
Falashas. Although they have no genetic affınity with other Jews, they
were accepted as Jews by Israel in 1973 and hence acquired the right
of abode in Israel. Most of them took advantage of this privilege, and
by 2000, there were approximately 80,000 of them in Israel, about
1.3 percent of the population.
(5) The Arabs, who in the 1996 census, comprised 20 percent of
the Israeli population and numbered approximately 1.2 million.
2. Intelligence of Jews and Arabs
There have been six studies comparing the intelligence and related
cognitive ability of Jews and Arabs in Israel. These have shown that
Jews have a higher IQ than Arabs by about 14 points. The studies are
summarized in Table 11.1, in which the means obtained by the Arabs
are expressed in relation to Jewish means set at 100 with a standard
deviation of 15. Row 1 gives an IQ of 86 for Arabs in Israel, obtained
in the late 1970s in the standardization sample of the Wechsler
Intelligence Scale for Children-Revised (WISC-R). Rows 2 and 3 give
IQs of 87 and 89 for two reasoning tests, the first nonverbal and the
second verbal, for Jewish and Arab university applicants. Rows 4 and
5 give means of the same applicants of 92 for mathematics and 91
for English. These are selected samples and tend to understate the
true difference; they are nevertheless closely similar to the difference
shown in row 1. Row 6 shows the mean score of 87 on a test of general
knowledge of osteoporosis of Arab and Jewish women who had
attended an outpatient clinic for women’s health and were surveyed
in 1999. The result can be regarded as a test of general knowledge,
which is an important component of intelligence. Only the study given
in row 1 is based on a representative sample of the population; the IQ
of 86 is therefore adopted as the best reading of the IQ of Israeli Arabs
in relation to 100 for Jews.
Israel 153
Table 11.1. IQs of Jews and Arabs
Age |Test N. Jews|N. Arabs | Arab IQ |Reference
6-16 |WISC-R 2111 639 86 Leiblich & Kugelmass, 1981
20-24 |Reasoning: NV | 1778 1017 87 Zeidner, 1987a
20-24 | Reasoning: V 1778 1017 89 Zeidner, 1987a
20-24 | Mathematics 1778 1017 92 Zeidner, 1987a
20-24 |English 1778 1017 91 Zeidner, 1987a
53 Knowledge 176 80 87 Werner, 2003
The lower IQ of Arabs compared with that of Jews is expressed
in their higher rate of mental retardation (0.8 percent compared
with 0.4 percent among Jews), and also in their overrepresentation
in classes for slow learners. In the 1990s, Arabs were 20 percent of
children in Israeli schools, but 25-30 percent of children in classes
for slow learners (Dinero, 2002).
3. Intelligence of European and Oriental Jews
A number of studies have shown that European Jews have higher
IQs than Oriental Jews. These are summarized in Table 11.2, which
expresses the means obtained by the Oriental Jews in relation to a
European Jewish mean of 100 with a standard deviation of 15. Row 1
gives an IQ of 84 for 5-year-old Oriental Jewish children on the Full
Scale IQ of the Israeli standardization of the Wechsler Intelligence Scale
for Children (WISC). Rows 2 and 3 give the verbal and performance
IQs of 84 and 86, respectively, in the same study and show that the
Oriental Jews were not significantly handicapped verbally. Rows 4
and 5 give smaller European-Oriental differences of 91 (verbal) and
94 (nonverbal) on the Milta test (an Israeli test). Row 6 gives results
from the Israeli standardization of the Wechsler Preschool and
Primary Test (WPPSI) for children aged 4-6 years and shows that
Oriental Jewish children had an IQ of 87. These were children whose
fathers had come from the Middle East or from North Africa. There
was little difference in the IQs of the two groups, who obtained IQs
of 88 and 86, respectively. Row 7 gives a verbal IQ of 84 for a small
sample of 9-year-old Oriental Jewish children. Row 8 gives an IQ of
84 for a sample of 4-year-old Oriental Jewish children. Row 9 gives
154 THE CHOSEN PEOPLE
an IQ of 85, derived from the standardization sample of the WISC.
Row 10 gives an IQ of 90 for 5-year-old Oriental children, but these
were from high socioeconomic status families matched to Europeans,
so the IQ difference is reduced. The studies are in close agreement. If
the study in row 10 is discarded on the grounds the samples were not
representative (as well as being very small), the median gap between
European and Oriental Jewish children is 15 IQ points. Five of the
studies (rows 4, 5, 6, 8, and 10) are on preschool children and show
the same difference as in older children, suggesting that the lower IQ
of Oriental children cannot be attributed to poorer schools.
Table 11.2. IQs of Oriental and European Jewish children
Age |Test N. European |N. Oriental | Oriental IQ | Reference
Smilansky.
1 WISC: FS 138 8 á
5 75 3 4 1957
Smilansky.
2 WISC: Verb 138 8 i
5 er 75 3 4 1957
Smilansky.
WISC: Perf 138 86 ,
315 T 75 3 1957
: Ortar et
4 | 3-6 | Milta-Verbal 115 195 91 al., 1966
r Ortar et
5 | 3-6 |Milta-N.Verbal 115 195 94 al., 1966
Leiblich et
6 | 4-6 |WPPSIIQ 186 443 87 al., 1972
7| 9 |WISC: Verb 41 41 84 Gill, 1974
; Smilansky
8 | 4 | Stanford-Binet 187 450 84 et al., 1976
9 | 6-16 | WISC 363 715 85 Gafni, 1978
10| 5 |WPPSIIQ 36 27 90 Gross, 1978
Table 11.3 gives mean scores, calculated from Burg and Belmont
(1990), on verbal, reasoning, numerical, and spatial abilities for 6-to-7-
year-old children whose fathers had come from Europe, Iraq, North
Africa, and Yemen. The scores are expressed in terms of means of 50 and
standard deviations of 10 for the groups for each test. The children had all
been born in Israel in 1964 and had attended kindergarten and primary
Israel 155
schools. There were 80 children in each of the four groups, of whom 40
came from middle class and 40 from lower-class families. The effect of
this is that they were not representative of the four ethnic groups for
socioeconomic status because European Jews have higher socioeconomic
status than the three groups of Orientals. Matching the groups for
socioeconomic status disguises the magnitude of the group differences
present in representative samples. Nevertheless, the Europeans obtained
generally higher scores and a higher overall mean than the other three
groups, consistent with the results given in Table 11.2. The interest of the
study lies in the size of the differences on verbal, reasoning, numerical,
and spatial abilities. The Europeans scored much higher than the three
groups of Orientals on verbal ability, somewhat higher on reasoning and
numerical abilities, but not so much higher on spatial ability. In fact, on
spatial ability, the Iraqis scored fractionally higher than the Europeans.
This pattern of the abilities of European Jews is similar to that found in an
American study, in which Jewish children in New York were compared
with Chinese, Blacks, and Puerto Ricans (Lesser, Fifer, & Clark, 1965).
Table 11.3. Abilities of European and Oriental Jews
Group Verbal | Reasoning | Number | Spatial | Mean
European 55.5 53.4 52.7 52.0 53.4
Iraqi 50.4 51.7 50.5 52.3 51.2
North African 47.5 46.5 48.9 48.8 47.9
Yemeni 46.6 48.4 47.6 46.8 47.3
Jewish children scored much higher than the other three groups on
verbal ability, about the same as the Chinese on reasoning and numerical
abilities, but below the Chinese on spatial ability. It appears, therefore,
that the European Jews have particularly strong verbal ability and
somewhat less strong reasoning and numerical abilities, but their spatial
ability is not nearly so good, not only compared with Oriental Jews but
also with other racial groups, namely, Chinese, Blacks, and Puerto Ricans.
This pattern of European Jewish abilities confirms the theory that these
abilities evolved because they found a niche in Europe as money-lenders
and tax farmers, for which verbal, reasoning, and numerical abilities were
required, and were excluded from the craft occupations for which spatial
156 THE CHOSEN PEOPLE
ability is required. (This theory is discussed further in Chapter 20.)
Table 11.4 gives IQs for reasoning and verbal ability and an EQ for
mathematics and the Grade Point Average (GPA) obtained by European
and Oriental Jewish applicants to university in 1983. These figures have
been calculated from data published by Zeidner (1987b). The applicants
had an average age of 24 years and were not representative of the
populations because fewer Oriental Jews apply to university, making this
group more exclusive and therefore reducing the differences between
Oriental and European Jews. Thus, Orientals in the study are only four
IQ points lower on reasoning and three EQ points lower on mathematics,
although they were 13 IQ points lower on verbal ability. This confirms the
results given in Table 11.3, showing that the European Jews are particularly
strong on verbal ability. Row 4 gives the grade point average (GPA) of the
Oriental Jews at the university and shows that this was lower than that
of the European Jews by three points. The author notes that “the mean
academic performance for the Oriental Jewish group was at least as low as
predicted by test scores”; hence, “the cultural bias hypothesis—contending
that standardized aptitude tests are systematically biased against minority
groups—was once again disconfirmed” (Zeidner, 1987), p. 47).
Table 11.4. Mean IQs and EQs of European and Oriental
Jewish college applicants and students
Test N. European | N. Oriental | Oriental IQ/EQ
Reasoning 773 503 96
Mathematics 773 503 97
Verbal 773 503 87
GPA 773 503 97
Further evidence on intelligence differences between European
and Oriental university students at Technion, the Israeli University of
Technology, has been published by Y. Rim (1983) and is summarized
in Table 11.5. He provides scores for tests of verbal IQ, nonverbal
reasoning (measured by the Dominos Test), mechanical ability and
number series, a test of reasoning with numbers.
Israel 157
Table 11.5. Mean IQs of European and Oriental students at
Technion
Tests European Oriental Sig.
Number 180 144 -
Verbal IQ 52.52 48.41 0.01
Nonverbal IQ 33.41 32.26 0.05
Mechanical 1Q 12.54 10.57 0.01
Number Series 7.54 6.52 0.01
The standard deviation of the verbal IQ is 10, so the difference
between European and Oriental Jews is 0.411 standard deviations
or the equivalent of 6.2 IQ points. The report does not give standard
deviations for the remaining three tests, but the significance levels
are lower than for the verbal IQ, so the European-Oriental Jewish
differences are evidently a little smaller. Once again, the Europeans
are particularly strong on verbal ability. These samples of university
students are selected for high intelligence, so the IQ difference is less
than in general population samples.
4. Educational Attainment of European and
Oriental Jews
European Jews have higher educational attainment than Orientals,
consistent with their higher IQs. Y. Dar and N. Resh summarized
studies of the differences in educational attainment (1991). They
are shown in Table 11.6, which gives Oriental educational quotients
(EQ) in relation to European quotients of 100. The median EQ of the
Orientals in the 12 studies is 88, fractionally higher than the median
IQ of 85. This suggests that the lower IQ of the Oriental Jews is largely
responsible for their lower educational attainment.
The evidence is conflicting on whether the gap in educational
attainment between European and Oriental Jews decreases with
assimilation in Israel. In her study of 13-year-olds on tests of geography,
arithmetic, Bible studies, language, and history, Gina Ortar (1967)
divided her sample into two groups: those whose fathers had been born
in Israel and those who had been born outside Israel. Both groups of
Oriental Jewish children had the same mean educational quotient,
158 THE CHOSEN PEOPLE
showing that being reared and educated in Israel had no advantageous
effect on their educational attainment. However, among the European
Jewish children, those born in Israel had an educational quotient five
IQ points higher than those born outside Israel. The explanation for this
may be that being reared and educated in Israel had an advantageous
effect on their educational attainment. Alternatively, it may be that
more recent immigrants had lower IQs than earlier immigrants and
transmitted these to their children.
Table 11.6. Educational attainment (EQ) of Oriental
Jewish children
Year Age |Test EQ |Reference
1954-1967 14 |Seker 86 | Ortar, 1967
1963 14 | Language 85 |Smilansly & Yam, 1969
1963 14 |Mathematics 87 |Smilansly & Yam, 1969
1969-1971 11 |General 87 | Levy & Chen, 1976
1971 7 Reading 85 | Smilansly & Shefatiya, 1977
1972 15 | English 88 | Levi etal., 1978
1973 14 |General 87 | Chen et al., 1978
1975 6-12 | Reading 90 | Eshel, 1980
1980 14 |General 91 | Chen, 1983
1982 11 Science 93 |Zuzovsky, 1987
1983 15 | Science 91 | Levin, 1988
1985 12 |General 92 | Chen, 1987
In contrast to Ortar’s results, Avram Minkowitch, Dan Davis, and
Joseph Bashi (1982) found that the gap in educational attainment
between European and Oriental Jews decreased from the first to the
second generation. Their sample consisted of 12-year-olds tested in
reading, mathematics, and geography and the results are shown in
Table 11.7. It will be seen that the attainment of the Oriental Jews
improved in the second generation in reading and mathematics,
though not in geography.
Israel 159
Table 11.7. Educational attainment of first and second-
generation Oriental Jews
Generation N. Reading | Mathematics | Geography
First 2753 87 88 85
Second 423 90 93 85
5. GeneticBasisofEuropean-OrientalIQDifference
Summarizing research on the IQs of the European and Oriental
Jews brought up from early infancy in the same kibbutzim, Miles
Storfer presented evidence that there is a substantial genetic basis
of the European-Oriental IQ difference (1990, p. 221). Children of
European parents had much higher IQs than the children of Oriental
parents, while the children of mixed European-Oriental parents
had IQs intermediate between the two. Unfortunately, Storfer did
not report mean IQs of the three groups but only the percentages of
children with IQs above 128, 120, and 110. Furthermore, he reported
the percentages for the three groups broken down by the fathers’
educational level into high-school graduates (n=401) and those with
elementary school only or less (n=268). Nevertheless, the results are
informative and are shown in Table 11.8. We can see that at both
educational levels the children with two European parents had
substantially greater proportions at all three levels of intelligence;
the children with one European parent came next, while the children
with two Oriental parents had the smallest proportions. The average
of the two percentages of children of European parents with IQs
above 128 is 18.6, indicating that the mean IQ of these must have
been about 115. The average of the two percentages of children of
two Oriental parents with IQs above 128 is 2.7, indicating that the
mean IQ of these must have been about 100. Thus the mean IQs of
these two groups differ by about 15 points, virtually exactly the same
as the differences shown in Table 11.2. Since these children were all
brought up in the same kibbutzim environment, the only conclusion
that can be drawn is that the IQ differences must be wholly genetically
determined. The mean IQs of the total sample are evidently somewhat
higher than 100 and appear to be approximately 107.5 (the average
160 THE CHOSEN PEOPLE
of the children of the High School graduates and Elementary School
fathers). The reason for this is that the test used in the study was the
1947 American WISC, and the norms were outdated by the Flynn
effect.
Table 11.8. IQs of kibbutzim children with European and
Oriental parents (percentages)
High School Graduates | 128+ 120+ | 110+
Both Parents European 26.1 47.0 71.2
One Parent European 19.7 42.3 74.6
Both Parents Oriental 0.4 40.8 65.2
Elementary School
Both Parents European 11.2 28.0 46.4
One Parent European 8.4 31.3 48.2
Both Parents Oriental 5.0 12.5 27.6
The greater proportion of children among those with high IQs
whose fathers were High School graduates must also be a genetic
effect. This result confirms several studies carried out in Britain and
the United States, in which the intelligence of children brought up
in orphanages were found to be related to the socioeconomic status
of their fathers. In the first of these studies, D.C. Jones and A.M.
Carr-Saunders (1927) in Britain reported that these children with
professional fathers had an average IQ of 107; the IQs of the children
fell with declining socioeconomic status of their fathers to 93 for
the children of laborers. I have summarized several other studies
showing the same phenomenon in my book Dysgenics (1996).
6. Abilities of Jews and Arabs in Mathematics
and Science
The Third International Mathematics and Science Study
consisted of the collection of scores on tests of 14-year-olds in 49
countries. The results are given for mathematics and for science
by Martin, Mullis, Gonzales, and Chrostowski (2004). Among
the countries were Israel and the Palestine National Authority
Israel 161
(which was treated as a country for the study’s purpose). The
mean scores of the Israelis were substantially higher than those
of the Palestinians. The means are given in Table 11.9, together
with the standard deviations for the set of 49 countries. The
bottom row gives the “ds,” i.e. the differences between the Israelis
and the Palestinians expressed in standard deviation units. The
IQ difference between Jews and Arabs shown in Table 11.2 is 16
IQ points and is the equivalent of 10.7d. Thus, the advantage of
the Israelis over the Palestinians is greater for mathematics but
less for science, as compared with the IQ difference. However,
the average of the mathematics and science (10.2d) is almost the
same as the IQ difference.
Table 11.9. Abilities of Jews and Arabs in Math and Science
Country Number | Math | Science
Israel 385 395.20 438.8
Palestine 504 492.40 489.0
SD - 73.00 70.0
d - 1.33 0.71
7. Education of European Jews, Oriental Jews,
and Arabs
Education was made free and compulsory for all Israeli children
between the ages of five and 13 by law in 1956. However, more
European Jews have chosen to continue into secondary and tertiary
education than Oriental Jews and Arabs. Studies showing this are
summarized in Table 11.10. Rows 1 and 2 give results from the 1961
census for the percentages of Oriental and European Jews who had
completed nine years of school; for both sexes, the percentage of
Europeans with such educational attainment was about twice as
high as that for Orientals. Row 3 gives the percentages of Oriental
and European Jewish school students passing the matriculation
examination in 1970 and shows a considerably greater rate of
success for the Europeans than for Orientals (80.6 percent as
compared with 58.4 percent).
162 THE CHOSEN PEOPLE
Table 11.10. Education of European and Oriental Jews
and Arabs
Education Year | European | Oriental | Arabs
1 |9 Years school: men 1961 48.0 28.0 -
2 |9 Years school: women 1961 38.0 13.0 -
3 | Matriculation 1970 80.6 58.4 -
4 | Years schooling: men 1974 11.1 8.1 5.9
5 | Years schooling: men 1983 12.8 9.9 8.4
6 | Years schooling: women 1983 13.3 10.1 10.6
7 | University degree 1983 17.4 3.4 -
8 | Years schooling: men 1993 14.2 11.7 9.6
9 | University graduates: men 1995 31.0 10.0 -
10 | University graduates: women 1995 47.0 20.0 -
11 | University students 1998 40.3 27.1 -
12 | Ph.D. students 1998 58.1 15.7 -
Sources: rows 1-2: Friedlander et al., 2002; row 3: Eisikovits,
1997; row 4: Kraus & Hodge, 1990; row 5-6: Neuman, 1998; 7:
Schmelz, Della Pergola & Avner (1990); row 8: Haberfeld & Cohen,
1998; 9-10: Cohen & Haberfeld, 2004; 11-12: Yisraeli, 1998.
Row 4 gives the average years of education of men of the three
groups found in 1974 and shows that the Europeans had the most
years of education, followed by the Orientals; the Arabs had the
least. Rows 5 and 6 give the average years of education of men and
women of the three groups found in the 1983 census and show that
for both men and women, Europeans had the greatest amount of
education, followed among men by the Orientals; the Arabs had the
least education. Among women, however, the Arabs had about five
months more education than the Orientals. Row 7 shows that in
1983, a much higher percentage of Europeans (17.4) had university
degrees than of Orientals (3.4: 3.8 percent from Asia and 3.0
percent from North Africa). Row 8 shows that in 1992, the same
differences in years of education remained between the Europeans,
the Orientals, and the Arabs.
Rows 9 and 10 give percentages from the 1995 census for third-
generation Israelis who were university graduates. Three times as
Israel 163
many European men as Orientals were graduates; among women,
nearly two and a half times as many were graduates. These results
revealed that even among those who are acculturated to Israeli
society, a substantial gap in educational attainment remains between
the Europeans and the Orientals. Rows 10 and 11 show that in 1998,
the percentages of university students who were European were much
higher than the percentages who were Oriental; among PhD students,
the disparity was even greater. These figures are for those born in
Europe and the Near East (including North Africa), respectively.
The percentages of Orientals among university students in
different faculties in 1999 have been given by Hanna David (2003)
and are shown in Table 11.11.
Table 11.11. Percentages of Oriental university students,
1999
Subject % Oriental [Subject % Oriental
Medicine 18 Engineering 22
Science/Math 19 Social Science 30
Law 21 Humanities 33
Arabs were 9.6 percent of all students and the remainders were
European. It is apparent that the Europeans were most heavily
overrepresented in the more prestigious faculties of medicine and
science, together with math, law, and engineering, with about 80
percent of the students. They were considerably overrepresented,
although less so, in the less prestigious faculties of social science
and humanities. The percentages of Orientals are intermediate
between the European Jews and the Arabs.
There is a widespread consensus among Israeli social scientists
that the Oriental Jews have been disadvantaged and discriminated
against by the Europeans and that with time they would gradually
improve their position. Whether this has occurred has been
investigated by Savit, Cohen, Steir, and Bolotin (1999), who
examined the percentages of 30-to-34-year-olds in the 1946-1962
birth cohorts who became university graduates. They confined
their analysis to those born in Israel and subdivided the Orientals
into Asians (including Egyptians) and North Africans. Their
164 THE CHOSEN PEOPLE
results for men are shown in Table 11.12 and for women in Table
11.13. The percentage of European men who became university
graduates remained stable at approximately 30 percent over the
16-year period. The percentage of Asians increased from 12 to 15
percent, and the percentage of North Africans also increased from
one to seven percent. Table 11.13 shows similar trends for women.
Oriental Jews improved their position relative to Europeans,
and Asians have done considerably better than North Africans.
Nevertheless, even among the youngest cohort, the Europeans
were still much more successful academically than the Orientals.
Table 11.12. Percentages of male university graduates
Group 1946 1954 1962
European 30 28 31
Asian 12 10 15
N. African 1 5 7
Table 11.13. Percentages of female university graduates
Group 1946 1954 1962
European 26 27 30
Asian 4 5 13
N. African 3 4 6
Further data for the education of European and Oriental Jews
and Arabs together with their average earnings were obtained in
income surveys of representative samples in 1975 and 2001 and
have been given by Yinon Cohen and Yitchak Haberfeld (2003).
The data are for employed men aged 25-54 and are shown in
Table 11.14. In both years, the Europeans had the most education
and the highest average monthly earnings; the Orientals came
next; and the Arabs were at the bottom in both categories. The
gap in years of education was reduced over the quarter century,
but the gap in earnings increased. For instance, Europeans earned
slightly less than twice as much as Arabs in 1975, but in 2001, they
Israel 165
earned more than twice as much. The authors attribute this to the
increased demand for skilled men, which pushed up salaries. As
European Jews have more skills than Oriental Jews and Arabs,
their earnings have risen more. They do not mention that there
has been an increased demand for those with higher IQs.
Table 11.14. Education and earnings of European and
Oriental Jews and Arabs
Year |Measure Europeans | Orientals Arabs
1975 | Years education 13.7 10.3 7.6
1975 | Earnings 5,210 4,041 3,559
2001 | Years education 14.8 12.9 11.8
2001 | Earnings 13,103 9,077 5,854
8. Socioeconomic Status of European and Oriental
Jews and Arabs
European Jews have acheived, on average, a higher
socioeconomic status than Oriental Jews. In 1966, 38 percent of
European Jews worked in white-collar occupations, compared with
16 percent of Oriental Jews. By 2004, 58 percent of European Jews
worked in white-collar occupations, compared with 49 percent
of Oriental Jews (Della Pergola, 2007). Thus the gap between
European and Oriental Jews narrowed over these 42 years, but was
not completely closed.
Arabs do less well than Jews in socioeconomic status. Differences
in socioeconomic status of European Jews, Oriental Jews, and
Arabs are shown in Table 11.15. Row 1 gives the percentages of the
three populations working in professional occupations found in
a labor force survey carried out in 1955; European Jews had the
highest percentage (8.5), followed by the Arabs (4.6), while the
Orientals had the lowest percentage (3.4). Row 2 gives similar data
from a labor force survey in 1974, showing again that the Europeans
had a much higher percentage in professional occupations (27.0)
than the Orientals (7.8). Arabs had a slightly higher proportion
166 THE CHOSEN PEOPLE
in professional occupations (8.5) in this survey, as in 1955. Row 3
gives the percentages of the three populations working in unskilled
and service occupations found in the labor force survey of 1974 and
shows that Europeans had the lowest percentage (8.4), followed
by the Orientals (21.1), while the Arabs had the highest percentage
(23.3). Row 4 gives the percentages of the three populations working
in professional occupations in the labor force survey in 1986 and
shows once again that Europeans had the highest percentage
(36.2), but this time the Orientals had the next highest percentage
(14.6), while the Arabs had the lowest percentage (10.3). Evidently
the Orientals had gained some ground as compared with the Arabs
over the 31-year period 1955-1986.
Table 11.15. Socioeconomic status of Arabs and Jews
Socioeconomic Status Year | Arab | Oriental | European
Professional % 1955 4.6 3.4 8.5
Professional % 1974 8.5 7.8 27.0
Unskilled & service % 1974 23.3 21.1 8.4
Professional % 1986 10.3 14.6 36.2
Low status: men % 1983 21.8 28.0 15.3
Low status: women % 1983 36.5 41.1 18.0
Hourly wage: men 1983 118.0 152 219.0
Hourly wage: women 1983 133.0 132 180.0
Sources: rows 1-4: Kraus & Hodge, 1990; rows 5-8: Neuman, 1998
Rows 5 and 6 give socioeconomic data from the 1983 census for
the percentages of men and women from the three groups engaged
in low-status occupations. Among men (row 5), Europeans had
the lowest percentage (15.3), followed by the Arabs (21.8), while
the Oriental Jews had the highest percentage (28.0). The same
gradient is present for women shown in row 6. Rows 7 and 8 give
the average hourly wage in shekels of men and women of the
three populations found in the 1983 census. For men and women,
Europeans had the highest wages. Among men, the Europeans
were followed by Orientals and then the Arabs. Among women,
however, the Arabs had fractionally higher average wages than
Israel 167
the Orientals. These results are consistent with the differences
in education and demonstrate the association between education
and earnings that has frequently been found.
9. Nobel and Wolf Prize winners
Six Israelis have won Nobel Prizes, and two have received the
Wolf Prize for outstanding work in mathematics. This is quite
an impressive record, working out to approximately 1.4 Nobel
laureates per million Israelis, a rate considerably better than that
of any other country. (Britain comes next in the second half of the
20th century with 58 Prize winners from a population of about 57
million.) The Israeli Prize winners are listed in Table 11.16. All of
them are Ashkenazi.
Table 11.16. Israeli Nobel and Wolf Prize winners
Year |Name Subject Year |Name Subject
1966 | Samuel Agnon Literature 2004 | Avram Hershko | Chemistry
1990 |I. Piatetski-Shapiro | Mathmatics || 2005 | Robert Aumann _ | Economics
1999 | Daniel Kahneman |Economics || 2007 | Halkin Furstenberg | Mathematics
2004 | Aaron Ciechanover | Chemistry 2009 | Ada Yonath Chemistry
10. Ethiopian Jews
The Ethiopian or Black Jews are Jewish by religion rather than by
descent. They are not genetically related to the other Jews, but converted
to Judaism many centuries ago. In Ethiopia, “[t]hey lived in small villages
and made their living in agriculture and craftsmanship; most of the older
generation were illiterate” (Ben-David & Ben-Ari, 1997, p. 511). The Israeli
government recognized them as Jews in the 1970s and permitted them to
migrate to Israel. By 1998, virtually all of them had done so. In the year
2000, the number of Ethiopian Jews in Israel was approximately 80,000,
representing some 1.4 percent of the population.
There have been three studies of the intelligence of the Ethiopian
Jews in Israel and these are summarized in Table 11.17. The first sample of
168 THE CHOSEN PEOPLE
15-year-olds assessed by the Standard Progressive Matrices one year after
they arrived in Israel obtained a British IQ of 68; a second sample of 14-16-
year-olds, who had been in Israel for four or more years and were attending
Israeli boarding schools, obtained a British IQ of 66. These IQs are about the
same as those of sub-Saharan Africans throughout the continent (see Lynn,
2006). These results suggest that education in Western schools does not
benefit the African IQ. Row 3 gives the results of the third study of the IQ of
Ethiopian Jews consisting of a small sample of 29 6-7-year-olds tested with
the Colored Progressive Matrices. These obtained a higher IQ of 86. Part of
the explanation for this higher IQ is that the Colored Progressive Matrices
gives higher IQs for young children because it measures visualization rather
than problem-solving ability (Lynn, Allik and Irwing, 2004). Africans also
typically perform better on visualization tasks. Further, it is a small sample
of only 29 and therefore not very reliable. The weighted average of the three
studies is an IQ of 69 and can be adopted as the best reading of the IQ of
Ethiopian Jews in Israel.
Table 11.17. IQs of Ethiopian Jews in Israel
Age | N. | Test | IQ |Reference
15 250 | SPM | 68 |Kaniel & Fisherman, 1991
14-16 | 46 | SPM | 66 |Kozulin, 1998
6-7 29 | CPM | 86 |Tuzuriel & Kaufman, 1999
The Ethiopian Jews in Israel have all the characteristics of a low
IQ population. They are a social problem and “make up one of Israel’s
poorest communities” (Clayton, 2000, p. 12).
Many are not equipped with sufficient language, professional
and social skills for Israeli society. There is a large proportion of
Ethiopians living in relative poverty, and many do not or cannot
improve themselves; the number of high school drop-outs as well
as crime figures among the young are rising significantly.... In the
1990s, Ethiopian youth gangs made their appearance, terrorizing
shopkeepers and neighborhoods.
Ethiopian Jews identify with an “aggressive and semi-criminal
African-American youth culture” and have become “a kind of ethnic
underclass” (Abbink, 2002, p. 13).
Israel 169
A report on the social problems of the Ethiopian immigrants has
been issued by the Brookdale Institute (2004) based on a survey of
about 15,000 Ethiopians in eight Israeli cities. The principal findings
were: (1) In 2004, Ethiopians accounted for 4.1 percent (933 of
22,839) of juvenile crimes—double the proportion of Ethiopians in
Israel’s youth population. (2) Each Ethiopian immigrant costs the
taxpayers about $100,000 over the course of his or her lifetime. (3)
Thirty percent of the Ethiopian family units are single-parent families
compared with nine percent for Israel (Lazin, 2002). (4) Ethiopian
Israelis have a school dropout rate of six percent, compared to four
percent among the general Jewish population. (5) At age 17, some 25
percent of Ethiopians in 2002 were not in schools under the auspices
of the Ministry of Education compared to about 15 percent of all
17 year-old Israeli youth. (This statistic is based on data from the
Ministry of Education on the number of Ethiopian students in school
and on estimates from the Central Bureau of Statistics on the size of
the age cohorts.)
(6) Poor school achievement: according to the national
achievement tests of the Ministry of Education in 2002, some 75-80
percent ofthe Ethiopian children in fifth and eighth grades were below
the national average in English, Science, Mathematics, and Hebrew.
A national study was conducted in 2000 for the Ministry of Education
on achievements of Ethiopian children in fifth, eighth, and ııth
grades. It found that the average achievement scores in Mathematics
and Hebrew of Ethiopian children are 60-70 percent of the average
of all Jewish children in the fifth grade and declined to 40-60 percent
of the average in the 11th grade. Data from the national evaluation
survey of 2003 found that the average scores of Ethiopian children
aged three in language and basic concepts were some 70 percent ofthe
scores of all Israeli children. At ages five, six, and eight, the average
scores of Ethiopian children in language skills were 62 percent, 56
percent, and 43 percent of the average scores of Israeli children,
respectively. In mathematics, the scores of Ethiopian children at ages
five, six, and eight were 65 percent, 60 percent, and 39 percent of the
average scores.
(7) High School Matriculation Exams: Ethiopians do poorly in
the matriculation exams taken at the end of high school, which are
the basis for acceptance to higher education. Table 11.18 shows pass
170 THE CHOSEN PEOPLE
rates for 2003 for Ethiopian and for all Israeli 17-year-olds for the
matriculation pass rate (Level 1) and the higher-level pass rate (Level
2) required for university entry. Thirty-one percent of Ethiopians
achieveda Level ı pass compared with 52 percent ofall Israeli students,
while 13 percent of Ethiopians achieved a Level 2 pass compared with
45 percent of all Israeli students.
Table 11.18. Matriculation pass rates in 2003
Pass rates | Ethiopians | All Israelis
Level 1 31 52
Level 2 13 45
Source: Myers-JDC-Brookdale Institute:
analysis of Ministry of Education data
The authors of the report comment:
These findings reinforce the need for a greater effort to enhance
the educational achievement of Ethiopian Israelis and reduce
the educational gaps. At the same time the findings also point to
an opportunity. They reveal that there is a large group who has
successfully passed the matriculation exams, yet not at the level
that meets university requirements. There is a high probability
that with extra assistance they can take this significant additional
step ahead.
(8) Employment rates: in 2003, about 45 percent of Ethiopian
men age 18-64 were employed. This is a decline from 54 percent in
1995-1996. This decline reflects the growing difficulties that unskilled
workers have experienced in Israel in the last decade. Among women of
the same ages, there was an increase in employment from 24 percent in
1995-1996 to 32 percent in 2003. This reflects a significant increase in
the number of women looking for work, which is particularly influenced
by their length of stay in Israel. Indeed, along with the increase in
those employed, there was a significant increase in the percentage of
Ethiopian women who were looking for work but still unemployed.
The authors of the report comment: “There is a serious concern that
the immigrants may develop a reliance on public assistance rather than
becoming integrated into the labor force.”
Israel 171
(9) Family structure and size: some 60 percent of Ethiopian
families have five or more children (ages 0-18); 20 percent of families
with children are single parent; a large percentage of single-parent
families have three or more children.
(10) Hebrew proficiency: about 45 percent of Ethiopian parents
are unable to hold a simple conversation in Hebrew, and most
(about 75 percent) are unable to read or write simple Hebrew. This
is true even of a large proportion of those who have been in the
country for a relatively long time.
(11) Demographic status: some measures obtained in a 1995 survey
of the socioeconomic status of Ethiopians compared with all Israelis
are summarized in Table 11.19. Rows 1 through 4 show the low levels
of education of the Ethiopians. Row 5 shows the higher percentage of
single-parent families (18 percent compared with 10 percent). Row
6 shows that 41 percent of Ethiopian children were being raised in
families without an earner and were therefore dependent on welfare
support, compared with only nine percent of all Israeli children.
Table 11.19. Demographic status of Ethiopian and all
Israeli children in 1995 (percentages)
Demographic status Ethiopian Children | All Israeli Children
Father’s education - -
No education 61.0 3:3
Education 1-8 years 20.0 14.7
Education 13+ years 5.6 35.0
Single-parent families 18.0 10.0
No earner 41.0 9.0
Source: Brookdale Institute, special analysis of 1995
National Census of the Central Bureau of Statistics
(12) Delinquency: the most reliable data on the delinquency rate
of Ethiopian children are for 1996, when a police file was opened for
2.6 percent of Ethiopian children, as opposed to 1.4 percent of non-
Ethiopians. It was found that Ethiopian children become delinquent
at an earlier age and have more offences on average than do non-
Ethiopian offenders.
172 THE CHOSEN PEOPLE
(13) Military service: the report notes, “the serious problems of
Ethiopian families impact on Army service...and about 25 percent do
not complete their Army service.” (It does not give the corresponding
figure for all Israelis.)
The authors of the report conclude:
There are a number of worrying trends among Ethiopian youth. The
special characteristics and challenges facing Ethiopian families place
many of them in risk situations. About half the families are known
to the social service departments and receive assistance for a variety
of needs, ranging from household equipment to help with difficulties
in the functioning of the family. Because of the difficulties facing the
families, the percentage of Ethiopian children known to the social
services is three times the percentage found in the general population,
reaching a third of all Ethiopian children. In light of the special
difficulties faced by the immigrants from Ethiopia, Israel adopted
a strategy of affirmative action and from the beginning provided
special assistance beyond that available to other immigrants. This
is consistent with the overall framework of differential assistance to
immigrant groups within absorption policy in Israel.
The authors of the report fail to note the low IQ of the
Ethiopian immigrants and that this goes a long way toward
explaining the social problems of poor educational attainment,
high unemployment, single motherhood, and high rates of crime.
There is considerable reluctance to acknowledge, or even mention,
the low IQs of Ethiopian Jews in Israel. Girma Berhanu is an
Ethiopian working at Goteborg University in Sweden who has
attempted to analyze why the Ethiopian Jews do poorly at school.
He contends that the problem is that “Ethiopian students are in
a state of identity crisis as they grapple with two cultural systems
and structures of meaning which confuse their sense of direction.”
In the process, meaningfully propelled learning dispositions and an
affectively driven urge to achieve scholastic excellence deteriorate.
Thus, the lagging academic performance of these children is partly
caused by the school system, which has little knowledge of the way
these children and their parents feel and think in terms of identity,
belongingness and negotiation of meaning. It is not that Ethiopian
students are unmotivated; they work hard to achieve excellence. It
is more that the process of learning a new code of behavior, values
Israel 173
and school culture is taking place rapidly without the original
culture’s active participation as a basic link and a vehicle for further
learning. (Berhanu, 2005, p. 51)
The Ethiopian Jews have several of the characteristics of the Black
underclass in the United States and Britain, including low average IQs,
poor educational attainment, and high rates of unemployment, single
motherhood, crime, and HIV infection (Pollack, 1993). The Ethiopian
Jews have become ghettoized because many white Jews prefer not to
live in communities with a large number of black Jews (Lavin, 2000).
11. Fertility of European and Oriental Jews and
Arabs
From the foundation of the state of Israel, the Oriental Jews
have had higher fertility than the European Jews, and fertility has
been still higher among the Arabs. These fertility differences are
shown for the years 1950-2007 in Table 11.20.
Table 11.20. Fertility ofthe European and Oriental Jews
and Arabs
Jews born | Jews born
Jews Jews 5 |: F
arin borm in J ews in Israel; | in Israel;
Year F bornin | father, father, Arabs
Europe/ | Asia/ 1 R
America | Africa Du Danos Aay
America Africa
1950 3.28 5.69 3-94 F g
1960 2.38 5.10 2.76 - - 9.31
1970 2.84 4.07 3.12 2.95 3.14 8.95
1980 2.75 3.04 2.76 2.68 2.79 5.98
1990 2.31 3.09 2.76 3.73 2.81 4.70
2000 2.25 3.20 2.78 2.58 2.62 4.74
2007 - - 2.80 - - 3.90
Source: Israel Central Bureau of Statistics; della Pergola (2009)
The fertility difference between the Europeans and Orientals
has been partly due to the more efficient use of contraception
by the Europeans. A survey carried out in 1988 found that 38
174 THE CHOSEN PEOPLE
percent of unmarried European young women born in Israel used
contraception during their first sexual experience, compared with
only 20 percent of Orientals (Wilder, 2000). This is itself partly
attributable to the difference in intelligence. The fertility of all
three groups has declined over the 25 years and the differences have
converged. The difference between the European and the Oriental
Jews had virtually disappeared by the year 2000 for those born in
Israel, although the fertility of those born in Asia and Africa was
about 43 percent greater than of those born in Europe. By the year
2000, the fertility of the Arabs had also declined, but remained
above that ofthe Jews.
12. Infant Mortality and Life Expectancy
Jews enjoy better health than Arabs, as indexed by rates of infant
mortality and life expectancy. Differences between Arabs and Jews in
infant mortality have been published for 1977 through 1999 by Dov
Chernichovsky and Jon Anson (2005) and are shown in Table 11.21.
Throughout the period, the rate of infant mortality of Arabs was more
than double that of Jews. The Israeli National Health Insurance Act of
1995 gave free medical care to all Israeli residents, including Arabs, but
this evidently did not reduce the different rates for Arabs and Jews.
Table 11.21. Infant mortality per 1,000 births
Year | Arabs | Jews
1977 32 14
1987 17
1999 9
Chernichovsky and Anson have also published life expectancy
for Arabs and Jews from 1975 through 2001. The figures for these
are shown in Table 11.22.Throughout this period, life expectancy was
greater for Jews by three or four years. Life expectancy was greater
for women than for men, as is invariably the case.
Israel 175
Table 11.22. Life expectancy of Arabs and Jews
Year |Sex Arabs |Jews
1975 |Men 68 71
1975 | Women 71 74
1987 |Men 73 75
1987 |Women 75 78
2001 |Men 68 78
2001 |Women 78 82
13. Intelligence of Jews in Israel, Britain, Canada,
and the United States
We now consider the question of how the intelligence of European
and Oriental Jews in Israel compares with that of European Jews in
Britain and the United States. There are no studies that give direct
evidence on this question, but it can be answered indirectly. To do
this, we need to look first at studies of intelligence in Israel in relation
to the “Greenwich standard” IQ of 100 for intelligence in Britain.
Eight such studies are summarized in Table 11.23.
Table 11.23. Intelligence in Israel
Age N. |Test IQ |Reference
13-14 | 200 |WISC 95 |Ortar, 1952
11-15 267 |SPM 95 | Moyles & Wolins, 1973
10-12 180 | Lorge-Thorndike 97 | Miron, 1977
10-12 | 268 |SPM 95 | Globerson, 1983
11 2,781 |SPM 89 | Lancer & Rim, 1984
5 52 |CPM 96 | Tzuriel & Caspi, 1992
9-15 | 1,740 |SPM 90 | Lynn, 1994
13 - SPM 96 | Kazulin, 1998
The IQs lie in the range of 89—97, with a median of 95. We can
adopt this as the IQ of Israel. Approximately half of the Jews in Israel
176 THE CHOSEN PEOPLE
are European Jews; the other half are Orientals. Ten studies carried
out in Israel summarized in Table 11.2 have found that the Orientals
have a mean IQ approximately 15 IQ points lower than the European
Jews. From these figures, it can be estimated thatthe European Jews
in Israel have a mean IQ of 106; Oriental Jews have a mean IQ of 91
(15 IQ points lower). The combination of both groups gives an IQ of
98 for Jews in Israel.
Arabs make up approximately 20 percent of the population of
Israel; their IQ of 84 is 14 points below that of Israeli Jews (as shown
in Table 11.1, row 1). This is not surprising, since it is the same as the
IQ of other southwest Asian, Arab peoples (see Lynn, 2006). The
weighted mean of the IQs of the three groups gives the IQ of 95 for Israel.
The IQ of 106 calculated for European Jews in Israel is lower
than the IQ of 110 of European Jews in Britain, Canada, and
the United States, given in the chapters on these countries. The
explanation for this is that the Jews in Britain, Canada and the
United States are Ashkenazim, whereas not all of those classified
as European in Israel are Ashkenazim. As noted in Section 1, of the
2.4 million Jews classified as European in Israel, approximately
1.4 million (58 percent) are Ashkenazim, about 900,000 are non-
Jewish Russians, and about 110,000 are Sephardim from the
Balkans. We can assign the Ashkenazim an IQ of 110 and the non-
Jewish Russians and the Sephardim an IQ of 99 (see Lynn, 2006,
and Chapter 17). Weighting these figures with their proportions
among European Jews, we arrive at the IQ of 106 for European
Jews in Israel.
14. Conclusions
In the early days after the foundation of the state of Israel, it
was soon observed that European Jews did better than Orientals
and Arabs in education, earnings, and occupational status.
Virtually all Israelis believed that these differences would soon
diminish and eventually disappear as the Orientals and Arabs
became assimilated. The evidence has shown, however, that this
has not happened. In fact, the earnings gap has become greater in
the period 1975-1992 (Cohen and Haberfeld, 1998, p. 507).
Israel 177
We have seen that there is a gradient of intelligence in the four
ethnic populations in Israel. Intelligence is highestin the European
Jews (IQ=106), lower in the Orientals (IQ=90), lower still in
the Arabs (IQ=84), and lowest in the Ethiopian Jews (IQ= 69).
These IQ differences predict and largely explain the differences
in educational attainment, earnings, and socioeconomic status.
However, Israeli social scientists have been very shy about
acknowledging this. A number of Israeli social scientists attribute
the poor performance of the Orientals, the Arabs, and the Ethiopian
Jews to “discrimination” by European Jews. For instance, Savit,
Cohen, Steir and Bolotin (1999, p. 6) write that “the Israeli Arabs
suffer from severe discrimination”:
Scholars agree that the social disadvantages of the Mizrahim
have their roots in the way they were received by the Ashkenazim
establishment during the early years of the state...inequality
persists because the dominant ethnic group, the Ashkenazim,
manages to perpetuate its privileges by excluding others from the
higher and more selective educational tracks.” (p. 18)
In a similar, if opaque, vein, Friedlander, Okun, Eisenbach, and
Elmakias, (2002, p. 135) assert, “ethnic gaps are functions of political
and economic historical factors and contextual factors.”
Two other social scientists who believe that the poor performance
of the Orientals, the Arabs, and the Ethiopian Jews is attributable
to “discrimination” by European Jews against the other groups are
Vared Kraus, a sociologist at the University of Haifa, and Robert
Hodge, a sociologist at the University of Southern California (Kraus
and Hodge, 1990). They have concluded that Israel is meritocratic
insofar as the racial and ethnic differences in socioeconomic status
are virtually wholly determined by the differences in education, so
“the process of occupational attainment is basically egalitarian” (p.
179). Why, therefore, do the European Jews do so much better than
the Orientals and the Arabs? Their explanation is that the Europeans
discriminate against the Orientals and the Arabs and keep them in
a socially subordinate position. They do this to maintain their own
position and are particularly motivated to do so because they are aware
of their low fertility and the threat this poses to their dominance. Thus,
“the dominant European-American Jewish elements in the Israeli
178 THE CHOSEN PEOPLE
population sought, by means of established institutions of education,
to control the flow of other ethno-religious groups into positions of
power and prestige.
Their scheme was ostensibly fair because it was meritocratically
based; nevertheless, it effectively excluded Arabs and Asian-African
Jews from the highest echelons of the nation’s social institutions
and economy because of their lack of access to educational
opportunities. Thus, what appears to be a meritocratic system
may also be construed as a system of social control based on their
educational credentials by the dominant elite (European-American
Jews) in order to exclude the educationally disadvantaged (Asian-
African Jews as well as Arabs). (p. 175)
This is the standard sociological theory of racial and ethnic
differences in educational attainment, earnings, and socioeconomic
status. With few exceptions, it is axiomatic for sociologists that all
groups are equal in intelligence, despite massive evidence to the
contrary. Hence, ethnic differences in socioeconomic status must be
caused by “discrimination” by the socially dominant group. But this
explanation does not stand up to examination. How can the Europeans
use their power to secure higher marks for their children than for the
Oriental Jews and the Arabs in examinations at school and university?
It is not suggested that the Europeans fake the marks, but how else
can the better performance of the European children be explained?
And if the Europeans used their power to exclude the Oriental Jews
and the Arabs from higher education and higher socioeconomic status
positions, they would surely have exercised this more strongly against
the Arabs, who are widely perceived by Jews in Israel as enemies, than
against their ethnic coreligionists, the Oriental Jews. Yet the Arabs do
pretty much as well as the Oriental Jews in socioeconomic status, and
even had higher percentages in the professional class in 1955 and 1974.
Contrary to Kraus and Hodge’s conspiracy theory, there is nothing to
stop Oriental Jews and Arabs from entering the universities and the
professions, except that fewer of them are able to pass the entrance
examinations, and the reason they cannot do this is that they have
lower IQs.
Other Israeli social scientists, including Cohen and Haberfeld,
have concluded that the poor performance of the Orientals,
Israel 179
the Arabs, and the Ethiopian Jews cannot be explained by
“discrimination.” Reviewing the studies, they write, “most previous
research detected no differential labor market discrimination of
Jews of Eastern origin” (1998, p. 510); their own studies have
confirmed this conclusion. They believe much of the gap can be
explained by “the increase of returns to college education” (p.
507), but they have no explanation to offer for why so many more
European Jews have college education than Orientals and Arabs.
It is difficult to believe that these social scientists are unaware
of the higher intelligence of the European Jews and that this can
explain their better achievements. It can only be presumed that
they have chosen not to mention it.
CHAPTER 12
Italy
1. 1859-1944
2. 1944-2006
3. Nobel Prize winners
4. Infant Mortality
here has been a Jewish community in Rome since the first century
AD, when 30 Jewish families came from Palestine and settled
in a ghetto in the Travevere district. In the late Roman Empire, the
number is estimated at about 50,000 (Roth, 1946). At this time
Jews do not appear to be in any way exceptional: “if there were any
callings characteristic of the Italian Jews at this period, they were of
the lowliest nature; there were Jewish butchers, tailors, tentmakers
and other craftsmen” (Roth, 1946, p. 23). This substantiates the view
that the early Jews did not have a high average IQ; this came later asa
result of experiences in the Middle Ages.
In the early Middle Ages, “attitudes to Jews were fairly tolerant”
(Johnson, 2004, p. 216). However, in the 1480s, when there were
about 50,000 Jews in Italy, they were expelled from most of the
northern cities, including Perugia, Parma, Milan, Lucca, Florence,
and Venice. In 1493, they were expelled from the Kingdom of Sicily; in
182 THE CHOSEN PEOPLE
1510, from the Kingdom of Naples; and in 1569, from the Papal States,
with the exception of Rome and Ancona (Barnaav, 1998; Castello &
Kagan, 1994).
Duringtheperiod between 1480 and 1600, Jews wereintermittently
expelled and readmitted-and then expelled again-throughout the
numerous independent states that existed in Italy until the country was
unified in the mid-19th century. In the 1490s, a number of Sephardic
Jews who had been expelled from Spain and Portugal moved to Italy.
The descendants of these formed the great majority of Jews in Italy,
although some Ashkenazim came to Italy from Germany in the 15th
and 16th centuries. In 1541, Jews were expelled from Naples and
in 1550 from Venice and Ancona, but in the later 1500s, they were
readmitted to Venice and a number of other Italian cities (Barnaav,
1998; Castello and Kagan, 1994). In 1555, Pope Paul IV issued a Papal
Bull Cum Nimis Absurdum that required the segregation of Jews into
ghettos throughout his domains.
In the second half of the 16th century, “the position of the
Jews was pitiable;
The bulls of Paul IV and Pius V had reduced them to the utmost
humiliation and had materially diminished their numbers.... In
southern Italy there were almost none left; in each of Rome, Venice
and Mantua, there were about 2,000, while in all Lombardy there
were about 1,000. (Castiglioni, 1904, pp. 7,10)
From the 16th to the 18th centuries, throughout Italy, “generally
speaking, Jews were not allowed to have shops outside the ghetto,
or to engage in retail trade except among their coreligionists, or to
practice any organized handicraft, or to follow any liberal profession,
or to enter any branch of manufacture, or to employ Christians.
[T]here was a small aristocracy of wholesale importers and textile
magnates, but the vast majority were itinerant hawkers, rag-pickers
and second-hand dealers. By and large, the economic history of
Italian Jewry is a record of fruitless endeavors to extend the range
of their activities, alternating with bursts of savage repression.
(Roth, 1946, p. 373)
Napoleon liberated the Jews of Italy in 1796, but at the end of
the Napoleonic Wars, “restrictions were re-imposed and until the
Revolution of 1848,
Italy 183
there was hardly a country in Europe where the restrictions
placed on Jews were more galling.... [T]he liberty acquired under
Napoleon was of short duration; it disappeared after his downfall.
Pope Pius VII reinstalled the Inquisition.... he deprived the Jews of
every liberty and confined them to the ghetto. (Castiglioni, 1904, p. 7)
In the early 19th century, Jews were severely discriminated
against in most of Italy: “Students were expelled from all educational
institutions, fromthe elementary and trade schoolsto the universities...
They were not allowed to become lawyers, notaries, apothecaries, or
physicians, except for practice among their coreligionists” (Roth, 1946,
p. 449). Jews were subjected to frequent intermittent persecution in
Italy until the middle of the 19th century. Jews in Italy at this time
seem to have had the low fertility typical of their people. It has been
estimated the birthrate of Jews in Florence in the first half of the 19th
century was 47 percent below that of Gentiles (Chiswick, 1988).
1. 1859-1944
In 1859, the numerous formerly independent Italian states were
united to become the Kingdom of Italy, and the Jews obtained full
emancipation. At the time, “most Italians could neither read nor write,
whereas literacy in the Jewish community was nearly 90 percent”
(Stille, 2005, p. 25). From 1859 until 1938, Jews enjoyed civic liberties
in Italy and there was very little anti-Semitism: “there was no part of
the world where religious freedom was more real or religious prejudice
so small” (Michaelis, 1978, p. 3). Not surprisingly, Jews flourished
during this period.
In the first House of Deputies (the Italian Parliament) of 1861,
there were three Jewish deputies; this rose to 11 in 1871 and 15 in 1894.
In 1906, Italy acquired a half-Jewish Prime Minister, Sidney Sonnino
(1847-1922), and in 1910, a fully Jewish Prime Minister in the person
of Luigi Luzzati (1841-1927). The most famous Italian Jews of this
period were the forensic physician Cesare Lombroso (1836-1909),
who claimed that criminals have smaller than normal brains, and the
painter Amedeo Modigliani (1884-1929), who immigrated to Paris,
where his frank nudes shocked even the French to such an extent that
his first exhibition in 1918 was closed on the first day for indecency.
Hardly less famous were Camillo Olivetti (1868-1943), who founded
184 THE CHOSEN PEOPLE
Olivetti typewriters in 1911, and the novelist Alberto Pincherle (1907-
1990), better known by his pen name Alberto Moravia, who was half-Jewish.
The approximate numbers of Jews in Italy and their percentages
of the population between 1901-2001 are given in Table 12.1. The
growth in numbers from 1901 is attributable to natural increase,
although this was to some degree offset by Jews leaving the
community. An estimated 44 percent of Jews married Gentiles
during the interwar years, and many ofthese defected from Judaism
(Zimmerman, 2005). The fall in numbers from 44,000 in 1940 to
29,000 in 1945 was a result of the killing of approximately 7,700 by
the Germans in World War II and the emigration of around 6,000
to Switzerland and elsewhere (Michaelis, 1978; Sarfatti, 2006). The
small increase from 1945 to 1965 was due to immigration (Johnson,
2004, p. 563), and the subsequent decline from 1965 to 2001 is
attributable to below-replacement fertility.
Table 12.1. Numbers and percentages of Jews in Italy
Year | N. Jews % Population
1800 34,000 0.20
1901 34,653 0.10
1940 44,000 0.10
1945 29,000 0.06
1965 32,000 0.07
2001 29,500 0.05
From 1900 to the 1930s, Jews were accepted and did well in
Italy. In the 1901 census, it was found that 94.3 percent of Jews were
literate, compared with 50.1 percent of the population (Sarfatti,
2006, p. 31). In 1904, King Victor Emmanuel III (1869-1947)
asserted, “Jews may occupy any position, and they do.... Jews for us
are full-blown Italians” (Johnson, 2004, p. 501). In World War I,
the Italian foreign minister, Sidney Sonnino, was a Jew, and there
were 11 Jewish generals in the army. Jews were also prominent in
the socioeconomic elite:
Jewish families played key roles in rural land development, the silk
industry, and urban construction, and held substantial influence
Italy 185
in the insurance business; Jewish banking firms, such as Weil-
Weiss and Malvano in Turin, Weil-Schott in Milan, and Treves in
Venice, held key positions in the Italian banking industry; Jews
were overrepresented among owners, editors, and journalists in
the Italian newspaper industry, and the Jewish firms of Treves,
Bemperad, Lattes, Formiggini, and Voghera stood out among
Italy’s major publishing houses; Jews were overrepresented within
the Italian civil service, law, business, and academia. (Brunstein,
2003, pp. 253-4)
And in the period 1900-1939, Jews were highly overrepresented
in the universities. “the number of outstanding Jewish scholars
was disproportionately high.... [T]he number of Jewish university
teachers continued to be disproportionately high, and so did the
number of Jewish generals and admirals” (Michaelis, 1978, p.
51). The percentages are shown in Table 12.2. Jews, who were
approximately 0.1 percent of the population, constituted between
6.4 and 8.0 percent of professors in the universities.
Table 12.2. Percentages of professors in Italian
universities who were Jewish
Year | % Jews | Year | % Jews
1901 6.4 1928 6.7
1919 6.8 1938 8.0
Benito Mussolini (1883-1945) assumed power in 1922 and began
to express some anti-Semitism. In 1926, he founded the Academia
d'Italia asa national academy for the most distinguished academics
and instructed that no Jews were to be elected members. However,
in the early years of his dictatorship, he was not stridently anti-
Semitic, possibly because both his Minister of Finance, Guido
Jung (1876-1949), and his mistress, Margherita Sarfatti (1880—
1961), were Jewish. Mussolini became more anti-Semitic in the
mid-1930s and “saw to it that members of the Jewish community
did not reach positions of control either in the government or in
the party hierarchy” (Michaelis, 1978, p. 51).
The prosperous position of Jews was shown in the 1931 census,
whose relevant results were summarized by Michele Sarfatti
186 THE CHosEn PEOPLE
(2006, p. 34) and are given in Table 12.3. Jews were more than
five times overrepresented among professionals and were also
significantly overrepresented among proprietors, managers, and
shopkeepers. On the other hand, Jews were underrepresented among
laborers and among agricultural workers (a category that includes
agricultural laborers and proprietors).
Table 12.3. Percentages of Jews and Gentiles in different
occupational categories, 1931
Occupation Jews | Gentiles
Professions 10.8 1.9
Proprietors & Managers 11.1 4.9
Shopkeepers 34.3 6.1
Laborers 5.6 21.1
Agriculture 0.8 48.5
By 1938, “the Italian Jewish population had been highly
integrated into general society and, on the whole, was solidly middle
class” (Zimmerman, 2005, p. 4). This was shown in a further census
of that year, which gave a statistical breakdown of the percentages of
Jews and Gentiles in different occupational categories. This is shown
in Table 12.4. The results are broadly similar to those in the 1931
census, although some of the categories differ. We can see that 8.8
percent of Jews, as compared with 0.6 percent of Italians, worked
in the liberal professions of medicine, dentistry, law, architecture,
engineering, and journalism (Zimmerman, 2005, p. 4). Jews were
also about tenfold overrepresented in financial services, included
banking and insurance, and in trade. In public administration,
Jews were about 40 percent overrepresented, indicating very little
anti-Semitic discrimination. In the other occupational categories
of industrial workers, transportation and agriculture, Jews were
underrepresented.
Italy 187
Table 12.4. Percentages of Jews and Gentiles in different
occupational categories
Occupation Jews | Gentiles
Professions 8.8 0.6
Finance 5.9 0.6
Public administration 11.6 7.5
Industry 22.1 29.3
Transportation 3.6 3.8
Trade 43.3 8.2
Agriculture 1.5 50.0
In the fall of 1938, Mussolini instituted more serious anti-
Semitic measures. These laws prohibited the publication of Jewish
periodicals, prohibited Jewish children from attending public
and private schools, and expelled Jews from teaching positions
in schools, universities, and learned societies. In the universities,
96 professors were dismissed, including Emilio Segré (1905-
1989), a physicist who moved to the United States and received
the Nobel Prize in 1956, and Tullio Levi-Civita (1873—1941), the
most distinguished Italian mathematician. These expulsions had
a damaging effect on Italian academic work: “some branches
of study, such as physiology, in which a majority of university
chairs happened to be filled by Jews, seemed to be completely
denuded” (Roth, 1946, p. 528). One of the most serious losses was
Enrico Fermi (1901-1954). While a professor of physics at Rome
University, Fermi had sucessfully split the atom, work for which
he was later awarded the Nobel Prize. He left Italy for Columbia
University in New York, where he shortly joined the Manhattan
Project for developing the nuclear bomb. (Fermi was not Jewish
himself, but had a Jewish wife.)
In addition to these expulsions, Mussolini introduced anti-
Semitic laws that prohibited marriages between “Aryans” (i.e.
White Gentiles) and Jews (and also between “Aryans” and Blacks).
Jews were prohibited from entering the military and the civil
service, from owning land of more than 50 hectares, and owning
or managing enterprises employing more than 100 persons.
Jews were expelled from the Fascist Party, a serious deprivation
188 THE CHosEn PEOPLE
because membership was required for virtually all employment.
They were expelled from all positions on the Stock Exchange, joint
stock banks and insurance companies, and were forbidden to open
new businesses; “Almost the only category of Italian Jews as yet
unaffected was the proletariat of street peddlers, still common in
Rome; but in the end they too were menaced” (Roth, 1946, p. 531).
Italian citizenship granted to Jews after 1919 was revoked, and all
foreign Jews, except those aged over 65, were ordered to leave the
country. In 1939, anew law was passed imposing further restrictions
of Jews, which included banning them from the professions of
medicine, dentistry, law, architecture, engineering and journalism.
Despite these hostile measures against Jews, Mussolini did not
order the killing of any of them: “the Fascist government was not
in sympathy with the Nazi extermination policy.... But resolved to
arrange for their evacuation” (Sarfatti, 2006, p. 146). But in July
of 1943, Mussolini was removed from office, and the Germans
acquired greater powers in Italy. Heinrich Himmler ordered the
capture of Jews for execution. Most ofthe Italians were sympathetic
to the Jews, and many of those who were given these orders were
uncooperative: “many Italian police were not particularly eager to
carry out the arrests of Jews and warned them beforehand so that
they might flee” (Stille, 2005, p. 31). Many Italians helped Jews to
escape deportation and gave Jews refuge in convents, monasteries,
and private houses. Nevertheless, as noted above, an estimated
7,700 Jews were deported to concentration camps and killed during
World War II.
2. 1944-2006
In the postwar period (1944 on), Jews recovered their position
in Italy. In 1944, Jews who had been expelled from their university
positions were reinstated. In the 1950s, 14 percent of Jews were
university graduates, as compared with 1.4 percent of Gentiles
(Encyclopedia Judaica, 1968). They had the low fertility and high
longevity typical of Jews elsewhere. A study carried out in 1965 found
that the birthrate of Jews in Italy was 11.4 per 1,000, compared with
18.3 for the population as a whole (Johnson, 2004, p. 563).
Italy 189
3. Nobel Prize winners
A list of Italian Nobel Prize winners is given in Table 12.5.
Of the 17 Nobel Laureates, four have been Jewish. Thus, Jews,
who comprised about 0.075 percent of the population during the
century, produced 24 percent of the Nobel Prize winners, giving
them an Achievement Quotient of 320.
Table 12.5. Italian Nobel Prize winners (Jews are
asterisked)
Year |Name Subject Year [Name Subject
1906 | Giosuè Carducci Literature 1969 | Salvador Luria* Medicine
1906 | Camillo Golgi Medicine 1975 | Eugenio Montale Literature
1909 | Gugliemo Marconi | Physics 1975 | Renato Dulbecco Medicine
1926 | Grazia Deledda Literature 1984 | Carlo Rubbia Physics
1934 | Luigi Pirandello Literature 1985 | Franco Modigliani* | Economics
1938 | Enrico Fermi Physics 1986 | Rita Levi-Moltancini* | Medicine
1959 | Quasimodo Literature 1997 | Dario Fo Literature
1959 | Emilio Segré* Physics 2002 | Riccardo Giacconi Physics
1963 | Giulio Natta Chemistry
4. Infant Mortality
From the early 19th century, it has been found that Jews in Italy
had lower infant mortality than Gentiles. Four studies showing this,
Paul Johnson (2004), are shown in Table 12.6. It will be seen that the
rate of infant mortality of Gentiles ranged between 45 and 146 percent
higher than that of Jews.
Table 12.6. Infant mortality per 1,000 live births
Years |Location | Jews | Gentiles | % Difference
1818-1837 | Florence 129 218 69
1838-1847 | Florence 149 216 45
1851 Trieste 105 258 146
1901-1907 | Rome 72 138 93
CHAPTER 13
Latin America
1. Argentina
2. Brazil
3. Chile
4. Mexico
5. Peru
6. Venezuela
7. Nobel and Wolf Prize winners
he history of Jews in the Americas dates back to Christopher
Columbus (1451-1506) and his first Atlantic voyage in 1492, when
he left Spain and “discovered” the New World. His date of departure
was also the day on which the Catholic monarchs Isabella I of Castile
(1451-1504) and Ferdinand II of Aragon (1452-1516) decreed that the
Jews of Spain had to convert to Catholicism or be expelled from the
country. Those who sincerely converted were known as “Conversos”
or “New Christians”; those who converted nominally but continued
to practice Judaism in secret (“crypto-Jews”) were known by the
pejorative “Marranos.” There were at least seven Jews who sailed with
Columbus in his first voyage including Rodrigo De Trianav (1469-?),
who was the first to sight land, Maestre Bernal (?-?), who served as the
192 THE CHOSEN PEOPLE
expedition’s physician, and Luis De Torres (?-1493), the interpreter,
who spoke Hebrew and Arabic, which it was believed would be useful
in the Orient (their intended destination).
In the 16th and 17th centuries, a number of Spanish and Portuguese
Jews settled in Latin America, largely in Argentina, Brazil, Suriname,
Peru, and Mexico. They were intermittently persecuted and put to
death by the Inquisition. In his eyewitness account of the conquest
of Mexico, Bernal Diaz del Castillo (1492-1585) describes a number
of executions of soldiers in the forces of Hernan Cortés (1485-1547);
they were killed because they were Jews. The Jewish communities
that remained assimilated with local Gentile populations and had
almost entirely disappeared by the end of the 19th century. From
the 1880s on, there was an influx of Jews from Eastern Europe,
principally to Argentina, where today about half of Latin American
Jews live, and to Brazil, which accounts for 20 percent. The six Latin
American countries containing the most Jews and their numbers and
percentages of the population in 1982 have been summarized by U.
O. Schmelz and Sergio Della Pergola (1985, p. 55) and are shown in
Table 13.1.
Table 13.1. Jews in Latin America, 1982
Country Number Jews | % Population
Argentina 233,000 0.80
Brazil 100,000 0.80
Chile 20,000 0.20
Mexico 35,000 0.05
Uruguay 30,000 1.20
Venezuela 20,000 0.14
1. Argentina
After their expulsion from Spain in 1492, a number of Jews settled
in Argentina. Most of these immigrants assimilated into the general
population and by the mid-1800s, Jews had virtually disappeared.
Immigration of Jews on a significant scale began in the middle decades
of the 19th century. The majority of these were Yiddish speakers from
Poland, although there were also some from France, as well as some
Latin America 193
Sephardim from the Ottoman Empire. Initially, they were denied
a number of civil rights, including that of having Jewish marriages
registered. This right was won in 1860, but it was not until 1888 that
Jews were given full civil rights.
By the beginning of the 20th century, the Jewish immigrants
were prospering: “their children and grandchildren often became
professionals—lawyers, teachers, artists, and doctors” (Elazar &
Redding, 1983, p. 95). They even secured control of more than half of
the prostitution trade, hitherto in the hands of the French.
From 1881 onward, there was a third wave of immigrants fleeing
poverty and pogroms in Russia and Poland. Baron Maurice de Hirsch
(1831-1896) founded the Jewish Colonization Association that bought
some 600,000 hectares of land in Argentina for Jews to settle as
farmers. Between 1906 and 1912, Jewish immigration increased at
a rate of 13,000 per year. Most of the immigrants were Ashkenazim
from Europe, but there were also a number of Jews from Morocco and
the Ottoman Empire. By 1920, more than 150,000 Jews were living in
Argentina. By the year 2000, Argentina’s Jewish community numbered
about 250,000, with about 200,000 living in Buenos Aires and most
of the remainder in provincial towns. About 85 percent are Ashkenazi.
Recently, many young Jews have been migrating to other countries
because of the poor state of the Agentine economy.
Anti-Semitism has not been particularly strong in Argentina,
although Jews have been by convention excluded from work in the
government, the judiciary and the officer corps of the military. Between
1918 and 1930, there was an increase of anti-Semitism, largely because
Jews were perceived as Communists who had played a large part in
the Russian Revolution. In 1919, there was a pogrom against the Jews
in Buenos Aires, in which many were beaten and had their properties
burned. There was a further outbreak of anti-Semitism in 1960-1961,
as a result of the abduction of Adolf Eichmann from a Buenos Aires
suburb by Israeli agents and his trial in Jerusalem.
Statistics for the educational attainment and socioeconomic
status of Jews in Argentina in 1960 are given by Schmelz and Della
Pergola (1984) and are shown in Tables 13.2 and 13.3. Table 13.2
shows that Jews were better educated than Gentiles. Fewer Jews
had no education or only primary education, while more Jews had
secondary and university education. The proportion of Jews with
194 THE CHOSEN PEOPLE
university education was more than four times that of Gentiles.
Table 13.3 gives the occupational distribution of Jews and Gentiles
in Argentina in 1960 and shows that Jews had higher socioeconomic
status than Gentiles in Argentina with approximately twice the
proportion in professional occupations and more than three times the
proportion in managerial occupations. In the lower socioeconomic
status categories, there were lower proportions of Jews in blue-collar
occupations, services, and agriculture.
Table 13.2. Education of Jews and Gentiles in Argentina in
1960 (percentages)
Education Jews | Gentiles
None 5.3 10.5
Primary 51.3 71.6
Secondary 32.1 15.2
University 11.3 27
Table 13.3. Occupational distribution of Jews and Gentiles
in Argentina in 1960 (percentages)
Occupation Jews | Gentiles
Professional 11.1 6.5
Managerial 9.5 2.6
Clerical 13.2 11.9
Sales 37:2 10.3
Blue collar 22.3 34.1
Services 4.5 14.7
Agriculture 2.2 19.8
Jews in Argentina have had lower fertility than the general
population. The 1960 census found that for ever-married women aged
45-64, the average number of children was 2.4 for Jews and 3.2 for the
general population, while for ever-married women aged 65 and over, the
corresponding figures were 3.6 and 4.1 (Schmelz & Della Pergola, 1984).
Latin America 195
2. Brazil
Jewish history in Brazil dates back to 1500, when Gaspar da
Gama (1444-c.1510-20), a Jew by birth, but later forcibly baptized,
accompanied the Portuguese admiral Pedro Álvares Cabral (c.1468-c.
1520) when he landed in what is now Brazil. Following their expulsion
from Portugal in 1497, Jews fled to places throughout the New World,
including Brazil. They arrived in Brazil primarily as Catholic converts
(Conversos), but many secretly practiced Judaism (Marranos).
Despite continued persecution by the Brazilian Inquisition, the “New
Christians” successfully established sugar plantations and mills. By the
1600s, approximately 50,000 Europeans lived in Brazil, with Conversos
making up a significant percentage. Many of them settled in Sao Paulo.
They were businessmen, importers, exporters, teachers, writers, and
poets. In 1624, the Dutch established a colony in northeastern Brazil.
The Dutch generally tolerated the Jews, who flourished in the sugar
industry, tax farming, and the slave trade, buying slaves cheap and
reselling them at a profit. In 1645, the Dutch Jewish population was
1,500, approximately half of the Gentile European population of about
3,000.
The Portuguese drove the Dutch out of Brazil in 1654, and the Jews
who remainded were subjected to the Portuguese Inquisition. In 1647,
the Portuguese authorities arrested Isaac de Castro (1623—1647) for
teaching Jewish rites and customs and sent him back to Portugal,
where the Inquisition sentenced him to death and burned him at the
stake. Portuguese anti-Jewish persecution led to a mass immigration
to places like Curacao and New York, where they laid foundations
for new Jewish communities, while others returned to Europe. Most
who could not escape were killed, but some became “crypto-Jews,”
practicing Judaism in secret. They lived away from the authorities
in the interior of Brazil, many becoming ranch hands or cowboys.
The persecutions, arrests, confiscation of property and emigration
of the Jews greatly damaged the Brazilian economy by bringing the
manufacture and export of sugar to a near standstill and seriously
disrupting trade between Portugal and Brazil.
In 1773, a Portuguese royal decree finally abolished legal
discrimination against Jews and a number settled in Brazil. In 1822,
Brazil gained independence from Portugal, and a number of Moroccan
Jews arrived and settled in Belem in northern Brazil and Manaus, at
196 THE CHOSEN PEOPLE
that time a prosperous city on the Amazon. By World War I, there
were approximately 7,000 Jews in Brazil.
Approximately 47,000 Western European Jews came to Brazil
in the 1920s and 1930s. In the late 1950s, another wave of Jewish
immigration brought more than 3,500 North African Jews to Brazil.
By the 1960s, Brazilian Jewry was thriving. In the 1966 parliamentary
elections, six Jews, representing various parties, won seats in the
federal legislature. In addition, Jews served in state legislatures and
municipal councils. By 1969, approximately 140,000 Jews lived in
Brazil, mostly in the large cities: Rio de Janeiro (50,000), Sao Paulo
(55,000), Porto Alegre (12,000), Belo Horizonte (3,000), Recife
(1,600), and Belem (1,200).
From the end of World War II, Jews prospered in Brazil. The
University of Sao Paulo has a Center for Jewish Studies. In 1969, 36
percent of Jewish men and 13 percent of Jewish women aged 15-29
had university degrees, compared with 6.4 percent of White Brazilians
recorded in the 1980 census (Schmelz & Della Pergola, 1985). Jewish
and Israeli film festivals are common in Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro.
In 1994, Jaime Lerner (b. 1937) was elected head Jewish governor. In
1998, Professor Dr. Eva Alterman Blay (b. 1937) becamethefirst Jewish
woman to servein Brazil’s Senate. Jews have also served in the Cabinet.
Jews have made a large contribution to the Brazilian economy. Jewish
families own Brazil’s two largest publishing and jewelry companies,
the sixth largest bank, and are among the executives of several other
large corporations.
In a total population exceeding 160 million people, the Jewish
population has stabilized around 95,000. About half of these are in
Sao Paulo. More than 8,000 Brazilian Jews have moved to Israel since
1948. Bythe end ofthe 20th century, about half of Brazilian Jewry was
intermarrying with Gentiles.
3. Chile
Chile became a refuge for Russian Jews in the early part of the
20th century. More Jews came from Germany in the 1930s, and
a number of Hungarian Jews entered the country following the
Hungarian Revolution of 1956.
Latin America 197
Jews have generally been treated well in Chile and have participated
in business, politics, and the professions. Julio Bernstein started the
first sugar refinery in Vino del Mar. Saloman Sack was a successful
steel businessman and financed the University of Chile’s School of
Architecture. Under the Allende government (1970-1973), a number
of Jewish individuals achieved high status. Among them were Jacques
Chonchol, minister of agriculture; Jacobe Shaulson, a Radical Party
member of parliament; Volodia Teitelbaum, senator and leader of the
Communist Party; Oscar Weiss, editor of the government newspaper;
Enrique Testa, professor of commercial law at the University of Chile
and later the president of the State Defense Council. Others were
prominent in the political opposition to the Allende government.
These included Angel Faivovich, a former senator; Marcos Chamudes,
who owned the opposition paper P. E. C; and Brigadier General Jose
Berdichevsky Scher, who was one of the Air Force officers responsible
for the bombing of the presidential palace where Allende died.
In the 1990s, Jews continued to be influential and active
in the universities, politics, theatre, music, education, and the
arts. These include Alejandro Lipschuetz, an anthropologist and
endocrinologist who has acquired a reputation for his research
on the American Indians; Dr. Abraham Horowitz, director of the
Pan American Health Service; Efrain Freidmann, the director of
the Chilean Atomic Research Committee; and Jaime Wisnaik,
the director of the department of engineering at the Catholic
University of Santiago. In theatre, prominent Jewish actors include
Don Francisco (born Mario Kreutzberger in 1940), Alejandro
Cohen, and Nissim Sharim, along with actresses Birginia Fischer,
Jael Unger, and Anita Klesky. Vitor Tevah, a noted violinist and
conductor, won the National Art Prize in 1980. Andy Pollack is a
leading Jewish jazz musician.
4. Mexico
There have been Jews in Mexico since the early 1500s, when
Hernando Cortez was accompanied by several Conversos in his
conquest of the Aztecs. In the 1860s, a large number of German
Jews settled in Mexico as a result of invitations from Maximilian
I (1832-1867). Beginning in the 1880s, many Ashkenazi Jews
198 THE CHOSEN PEOPLE
fleeing pogroms in Russia, Poland, and Romania came to Mexico.
Another large wave of immigration occurred in the 1920s, mainly
from Turkey, Morocco, and France. Finally, awave of immigrants
fled the Nazi persecutions in Europe in the 1930s.
At the start of the 21st century, there were around 40,000
Jews in Mexico. About 37,000 live in Mexico City; there are also
Jewish communities in Guadalajara, Monterrey, and Tijuana. The
majority is Ashkenazi. There is a Mizrahi community of mainly
Syrian immigrants and a Sephardic community primarily made up
of descendants of Turkish and Spanish immigrants.
A survey in 1991 found that Jews in Mexico were almost entirely
middle class. Only four percent worked in blue-collar occupations. The
distribution of the remaining 97 percent who worked in white-collar
occupations was 27 percent professional, 53 percent managerial, 11
percent clerical, and five percent sales (Della Pergola, 2007). Among
the most successful of the Jews in Mexico was Isaac Saba Raffoul
(1925-2008), who was the wealthiest man in the country.
5. Peru
In the 16th and 17th centuries, Lima was the capital of the Spanish
colony in Latin America. The city contained a number of Sephardic Jews
from Spain and Portugal who had converted to Christianity, or, more
often, pretended to do so. These Jews were prominent in the commercial
life of the colony: “by the 1630s, the ‘New Christians’ controlled much
of the commerce in Latin America; large numbers of Jews were starting
to acquire tremendous wealth and power” (Elazar and Medding, 1983,
pp. 65-6):
[F]rom brocade to sack-cloth, from diamonds to cumin-seed,
everything passed through their hands; the Castilian who had not a
Jewish partner could look for no success in trade.... They would buy
cargoes of whole fleets with the fictitious credits they exchanged,
thus rendering capital unnecessary, and would distribute the
merchandise through the land by their agents who were likewise
Jewish. (Cohen, 1971, p. 24)
By the 1630s, the commercial prominence of the Jews was beginning
to excite envy. In 1639 the Inquisition ordered the burning of all Jews
Latin America 199
as heretics. A few escaped, but a large number were burned in Lima
in the public ceremony of auto da fe, as a result of which the Jewish
community in Lima and much of Spanish Latin America was virtually
wiped out. The elimination of the Jews had the effect that “the entire
viceroyalty of Peru went into an economic decline: the Inquisition had
sequestered the property of the Jews so there was a scarcity of capital and
no-one to carry on commerce on the scale heretofore handled by the Jews.
(Elazar and Redding, 1983, p. 67)
6. Venezuela
A small Jewish community became established in Venezuela
in the middle of the 19th century. By 1917, the number of Jews was
only 475. In the 1920s and 1930s, the Jewish community increased
with the arrival of North African and Eastern European Jews. Jewish
immigration from Eastern and Central Europe, including Germany,
increased after 1934. By 1950, in spite of immigration restrictions, the
Jewish population grew to around 6,000. More immigrants arrived in
1967 after the Six-Day War, when a large influx of Jews from Morocco
arrived. By 1982, the Jewish population in Venezuela reached about
20,000, largely centered in Caracas, but with smaller concentrations
in Maracaibo. Most of Venezuela’s Jews are either first or second
generation. Intermarriage rates are low compared to the United States
or Britain.
Living under the Hugo Chävez regime, Venezuelan Jews
have experienced some anti-Semitism and, in many cases, have
emigrated. The Latin American Jewish Congress estimated that
some 22,000 Jews lived in Venezuela when Chävez took office
in 1999; by 2007, the Jewish community had shrunk to between
12,000 and 13,000.
A survey in 1998 found that Jews in Venezuela were almost
entirely middle class. Only three percent worked in blue-collar
occupations. The distribution of the remaining 97 percent who
worked in white-collar occupations was 17 percent professional,
28 percent managerial, 31 percent clerical, and 21 percent sales
(Della Pergola, 2007). Among the most eminent of the Jews in
Venezuela are Baruj Benacerraf (b. 1920), who won the Nobel
Prize for medicine in 1980, and Manual Blum (b.1938), who won
200 THE CHOSEN PEOPLE
the Turing Award for computing in 1995.
7. Nobel and Wolf Prize winners
Latin America has produced eight Nobel Prize winners and one
Wolf Prize winner for mathematics. These are listed in Table 13.4. Two
ofthe Nobel Prize winners have been Jews. These are Baruj Benacerraf
of Venezuela, and César Milstein (1927-2002) of Argentina, who won
the prize for medicine in 1984. Thus, Jews, who are about 0.1 percent
of the population of Latin America, have produced 22 percent of Latin
American Nobel and Wolf Prize winners, giving them an astounding
Achievement Quotient of 220.
Table 13.4. Latin American Nobel and Wolf Prize winners
(Jews are asterisked)
Year [Name Country |Subject
1945 | Gabriela Mistral Chile Literature
1947 |Bernardo Houssay |Argentina |Medicine
1967 | Miguel Asturias Guatemala | Literature
1970 | Luis Leloir Argentina | Chemistry
1971 | Pablo Neruda Chile Literature
1980 | Baruj Benacerraf* |Venezuela | Medicine
1982 | Gabriel Marquez Colombia | Literature
1984 | César Milstein* Argentina | Medicine
1989 | Alberto Calderon Argentina | Mathematics
CHAPTER 14
Poland, Lithuania, and Latvia
1. Numbers of Jews in Poland
2. 1800-1919
3. 1919-2010
4. Jews in Chess
5. Nobel and Wolf Prize winners
6. Lithuania and Latvia
7. Mixed marriages
N migrated into Poland from France and Germany following the
pogroms against them during the First Crusade of 1095. As mentioned
above, the French and Germans widely perceived the Jews as allies of the
Moslems who occupied the Holy Land, and at the start ofthe First Crusade,
there were massacres of Jews in France and Germany: “the ancient, rich
and populous Jewish communities ofthe Rhineland were destroyed, most
Jews being killed or dragged to fonts; others scattered” (Johnson, 2004,
p. 208). Among those who escaped, most migrated east and settled in
Poland. There were more attacks on Jews during the Third Crusade of
1189-90— “the preaching of a crusade always brought anti-Semitism to
the boil” (Johnson, 2004, p. 210)—and again a number escaped to Poland.
Further migrations into Poland took place following the expulsions of the
204 THE CHOSEN PEOPLE
Jews from England in 1290, from France in 1396, and from a number of
German states in the early decades of the 15th century including Trier in
1414 and Cologne in 1424.
In 1385, Poland was united with Lithuania, an arrangement that
lasted until the late 18th century. In the 1400s, many Jews migrated into
Poland-Lithuania, and by 1570, the number of Ashkenazim in the region
is estimated at 385,000, 10 percent of the population. This was likely the
largest community of Jews in the world (Sm, 1960, p. 216). In general, the
Jews lived fairly safely in Poland-Lithuania, but in the 17th century, they
were persecuted during the war against Sweden (1648-1650); some of
them fled to the Netherlands, which had a flourishing Jewish community
and had become a safe haven.
Between 1772 and 1795, Poland-Lithuania disappeared as an
independent state. It was carved up between Russia, which took the whole
of Lithuania and eastern Poland, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, which
took southwestern Poland (Galicia), and Prussia, which took northwestern
Poland. Poland regained independence through the Paris Peace Conference
of 1919, which followed the First World War. Between 1939 and 1945,
Poland was invaded by Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, both of which
inflicted great damage on the population during their occupations. Germany
established many of its concentration camps in annexed Polish territories,
including Auschwitz-Birkenau, where some 1 million Jews perished. After
being integrated into the Soviet sphere during the Cold War, Poland and
Lithuania gained independence as the Union collapsed in 1989.
1. Numbers and Percentages of Jews in Poland
Numbers and percentages of Jews in Poland at various dates are shown
in Table 14.1.
Table 14.1. Numbers and percentages of Jews in Poland
Year | N. Jews | % Population
1570 385,000 10.0
1921 2,855,381 10.5
1931 | 3,110,933 9.8
1956 65,000 0.2
1985 5,000 0.0
2002 3,500 0.0
Poland, Lithuania, and Latvia 205
The figure for 1570 is for Poland-Lithuania. There were censuses in
Poland in 1921 and 1931. Over this 10-year period, the numbers of Jews
increased, but their percentage in the population declined from 10.5 to 9.8
percent. The principal reason for this is that Jews had lower fertility than
Gentiles; in addition, there was some emigration.
2. 1800-1919
During the first two thirds of the 19th century, Jews suffered
from a number of restrictions. They were emancipated in the 1860s
and obtained equality of rights and were admitted to government
schools and universities. They soon became a significant presence in
the professions and the governmental bureaucracy. About half the
Jews lived in the cities of Warsaw and Lodz, where “there emerged a
wealthy Jewish industrial and commercial class...which played a key
role in the development of the region” (Mendelsohn, 1983, p. 20). It is
likely that at this time, Jews in Poland had higher IQs than Gentiles;
Nathaniel Hirsch (1926) reported that in the United States, children
of Jewish immigrants from Poland had an IQ 11.4 points higher than
the children of non-Jewish Polish immigrants.
During this period, Jews became prominent in the professions,
intellectual life, banks, commerce and industry. The most
internationally famous of the Jewish Poles of this time was the
composer Gustav Mahler (1860-1911), who was born in Kalist.
In the southern province of Galicia, Jews were more backward.
They “were basically of the East European type, lower middle class, and
proletarian, extremely conspicuous in local commerce” (Mendelsohn,
1983, p. 18). This region was a stronghold of the Hassidic Jews, whose
men wore black coats, white stockings, and long side curls.
In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the infant mortality
of Gentiles was between two and 20 percent higher than that of
Jews. Studies showing this have been summarized by Condran and
Kramarow (1991) and are shown in Table 14.2.
Table 14.2. Infant mortality per 1,000 live births in Poland
Years /|Location | Jews | Gentiles | % Difference
1851 Galicia 213 217 2
1891-1910 | Lvov 160 167 4
1851-1909 | Cracow 152 183 20
206 THE CHosEn PEOPLE
3. 1919-2010
Poland became independent after World War I, and Jews were
given full civil rights and a share of public funds for their own schools.
In practice, however, there was a great deal of discrimination against
the Jews:
[T]he government engaged in a tacit conspiracy to make the life
of the Jew so unpleasant that he would be forced to migrate;
Jews were kept out of the civil service, the co-operatives and the
government monopolies; they were discriminated against in the
licensing of traders and craftsmen, refused bank loans, limited
in the practice of law and medicine, and in many instances were
driven out of the universities. (Ms, 1960, p. 62)
In the early postwar years, there were a number of riots throughout
Poland in which Jews were attacked and killed and their properties
were damaged. Jews in the civil service were pensioned off and no
more appointed. In the 1930s,
violent anti-Semitism made a dramatic reappearance...Jewish
doctors were not appointed in state hospitals, and Jewish lawyers
were not employed in state institutions; Jewish professors in Polish
universities were virtually unknown; there were hardly any Jewish
officers (aside from doctors) in the Polish army. (Mendelsohn,
1983, pp. 42, 68)
In 1921, 24.6 percent of university students were Jews, but as the
universities increasingly discriminated against Jewish applicants,
by 1938, Jews were only 8.2 percent of students. Much of the anti-
Semitism was fuelled by resentment of Jewish socioeconomic success.
In 1935, the centrist Peasant Party issued a statement that demanded
wealth redistribution along ethnic lines:
The Jews as a middle class occupy a far more important position in
Poland than in any other country, so that the Poles have no middle
class of their own. It is vital for the Polish state that these middle
class functions shall more and more pass into the hands of Poles.
(Mendelsohn, 1983, p. 72)
To promote this objective there were widespread boycotts of
Jewish shops and businesses, and there were numerous attacks on
Poland, Lithuania, and Latvia 207
Jews during the 1930s. The government made plans to expel the
Jews to Palestine. A number of Jews thought it would be wise to go
voluntarily: 139,756 migrated to Palestine during the years 1919-
1942, from which many moved on to other countries. Among these
were Maurice and Anne Charpak who moved to Paris in 1931. Their
son Georges (1924-2010) survived the Holocaust and won the Nobel
Prize for Physics in 1998.
The historian Ezra Mendelsohn describes the Jewish population
in interwar Poland as largely “lower middle class and proletarian,”
with a numerically small but important intelligentsia and wealthy
bourgeoisie... [T]he typical Jewish worker was a shoemaker,
bakers, a tailor who worked in a small shop, possibly with a few
other journeymen, but often alone” (Mendelsohn, 1983, p. 27).
Jews were prominent in the intellectual and cultural life; these
included two of the leading poets, Julian Tuwim (1894-1953) and
Antoni Slonimski (1895-1976), the historian Szymon Ashkenazi
(1866-1935) and the pianist Wanda Landowska (1879-1959); the
latter was born in Warsaw, moved to Berlin, where she was appointed
professor of music at the Berlin Hochschule, moved on to Paris, and in
1940 sought refuge in Switzerland. Mendelsohn comments:
The presence of a small but important Polish Jewish cultural elite
belies any meaningful comparison with other oppressed groups
such as the American Blacks, whose contribution to the high
culture of the majority is far less striking. (1983, p. 68)
Despite strong anti-Semitism, Jews were highly overrepresented
in the professions. Statistics from the 1931 census, given in Table 14.3,
bear this out. Jews, who were 10.2 percent of the population, were 56
percent of doctors in private practice, 43 percent of private teachers,
33 percent of lawyers, 24 percent of the pharmacists, and 22 percent
of the journalists, publishers, and librarians. On the other hand, Jews
were only 2.5 percent of state primary and secondary schoolteachers
because they were normally debarred from appointment because of
anti-Semitism.
208 THE CHOSEN PEOPLE
Table 14.3. Jews in the Professions in Poland in 1931
Professions Percent Jews AQ
Doctors-private practice 56 5.6
Teachers-private schools 43 4-3
Lawyers 33 3-3
Pharmacists 24 2.4
Journalists & Publishers 22 2.2
State schoolteachers 2.5 0.25
Source: Slezkine (2004)
Germany invaded Poland in September of 1939 and from 1940 on,
began violently attacking Jews. Many of them were worked to death
in forced labor camps. Others were sent straight to the concentration
camps at Auschwitz, Sobidor, Belzec, and Treblinka. Of the 3,350,000
Jews in Poland in 1939, nearly 90 percent were killed during the war.
About a quarter of a million escaped, leaving approximately 90,000
in 1945. After the war, anti-Semitism persisted, and in 1946, there
was a pogrom in Kielce against Jews who had survived the war. Many
of the 90,000 or so who survived emigrated, with the result that the
numbers declined to 65,000 in 1965 and fell to 3,500 in 2002.
4. Jews in Chess
While the overrepresentation of Jews in the higher socioeconomic
strata of Poland is remarkable, it is overshadowed by their prowess
in chess. There have been six Polish players among top-rated chess
grandmasters for the years 1851 to 2003 (Rubinstein, 2004). They are
listed in Table 14.4. All six were Jewish.
Table 14.4. Polish top-rated chess grandmasters
Years /|Chess Champions Years |Chess Champions
1851-1899 | Rosenthal 1900-1939 | Rubinstein
Zuckertort Reshevsky
Janowsky 1940-1969 | Najdorf
Poland, Lithuania, and Latvia 209
5. Nobel and Wolf Prize winners
Poland has produced 9 Nobel Prize winners, of whom four have
been Jewish, and two Wolf Prize winners for mathematics, both of
whom were Jewish. They are listed in Table 14.5 (Marie Curie (née
Sklodowska, 1867-1934) is one of the few who have been awarded
the Nobel Prize twice, but is only counted once here). All six of
the Jews escaped the Holocaust by emigrating from Poland. George
Wald (1906-1997), Isaac Bashevis Singer (1902-1991), Roald
Hoffman (b.1937), Samuel Eilenberg (1913-1998), and Benoit
Mandelbrot (1924-2010) migrated to the United States, while
Georges Charpak went to Switzerland. Thus, Jews, who comprised
about five percent of the population of Poland during the 20th
century, have produced 67 percent of the Nobel and Wolf Prize
winners, giving them an Achievement Quotient of 10.
Table 14.5. Nobel and Wolf Prize winners (Jews identified
by asterisks)
Year |Name Subject Year |Name Subject
1903 | Marie Curie Physics 1980 | Czeslaw Milosz Literature
1905 | Sienkiewicz Literature 1981 | Roald Hoffmann* | Chemistry
1911 | Marie Curie Chemistry 1982 | George Stigler Economics
1967 | George Wald* Medicine 1986 | Samuel Eilenberg* | Mathematics
1977 | Andrew Schally | Medicine 1992 | Georges Charpak* | Physics
1978 | Isaac Singer* Literature 1993 | Mandelbrot* Mathematics
6. Lithuania and Latvia
Lithuania and Latvia have had Jewish populations from the 16th
century, when these countries were united with Poland. In 1923, there
were approximately 157,527 Jews, identified by religion, in Lithuania,
comprising 7.3 percent of the population; of these, 54,600 lived in the
capital city of Vilnius (Mendelsohn, 1983, p. 224; Sm, 1960, p. 218). The
Jews occupied a similar socioeconomic position as they did in Poland
and elsewhere in Eastern Europe. Jews comprised a lower middle
class and proletarian community of small shop-keepers and artisans,
210 THE CHOSEN PEOPLE
with the usual thin but important stratum of wealthy businessmen,
industrialists and professionals. The most internationally famous
Lithuanian Jew of the early 20th century was Chaim Soutine (1893-
1943), the expressionist painter who migrated to Paris.
In commerce, 77 percent of the population were Jews and in
industry, 21 percent; very important was the relatively large
number of Jewish intellectuals in the community, particularly the
teachers, but also the editors, journalists, writers and the like.... In
1922 Jewish students comprised 31.5 percent of the student body
at the University of Kaunas (the second city of Lithuania), but by
1934 their percentage had fallen to 15.9 percent. (Mendelsohn,
1983, pp. 226, 237)
The decline in the percentage of Jewish students was a result of
discrimination against Jewish applicants.
In Latvia, there were 95, 675 Jews recorded in the census of 1925,
comprising 5.2 percent of the population. Forty-one percent lived in
the capital city of Riga, where “over one fourth of all commercial and
industrial enterprises were in Jewish hands, as were a number of banks,
and Jews were conspicuous in the professions” (Mendelsohn, 1983, p.
244). Latvia has produced two of the top-rated chess grandmasters
for the years 1851 to 2003 (Rubinstein, 2004). These were Aron
Nimzovitch (1886-1935) in the 1930s and Mikhail Tal (1936-1992) in
the 1960s. Both of them were Jewish.
Ofthe 253,203 Jewsin Lithuaniaand Latvia in the 1920s, approximately
26,000 migrated to Palestine during the years 1925-1939. An estimated
200,000 perished in the Holocaust. By 2002, there were approximately
4,000 Jews in Lithuania (0.12 percent of the population), and about 9,000
in Latvia. The 2001 Lithuanian Census recorded the occupations of Jews
and Gentiles; the results are given in Table 14.6. Notice that Jews were
greatly overrepresented between the first two categories of legislators,
senior officers and managers, and professionals; they were greatly
underrepresented among the last six categories of skilled and unskilled
blue-collar workers.
Poland, Lithuania, and Latvia 211
Table 14.6. Occupations of Jews and Gentiles in Lithuania
in 2001 (percentages)
Occupation Jews | Gentiles
Senior officers and managers 19.6 8.1
Professionals 28.6 15.0
Technicians and associate professionals 9.6 9.6
Clerks 3,7 4.4
Service workers, shop, and sales workers 7.4 11.2
Skilled agricultural and fishery workers 1.2 10.1
Craft and related trades workers 5.8 14.1
Machine operators and assemblers 3.2 11.5
Unskilled occupations 3.4 7.1
Other or not indicated 18.4 8.9
7. Mixed Marriages
In the second half of the 20th century, increasing numbers of Jews
in the Baltic States married Gentiles. Statistics showing this for the
years 1958-1993 are provided by Mark Tolts (2003) and are given in
Table 14.7. The same trend has taken place in Russia, and in virtually
all other countries. Typically, the children of mixed marriages are
raised as Gentiles and lose their Jewish identity. It is likely that this
will continue in the Baltic States.
Table 14.7. Percentage of children of mixed origin among
children born to Jewish Mothers, 1958-1993
Republic 1958 | 1968 | 1988 | 1993
Latvia 14 27 40 48
Lithuania 12 19 32
Estonia 34 63 67
CHAPTER 15
Russia
1. Numbers of Jews in Russia and the Soviet Union
2. 1800-1917
3. The Bolshevik Revolution and the Soviet Union, 1917-1939
4. Discrimination against Jews, 1939-1989
5. Jewish Achievement in Chess
6. Nobel Prize winners
7. Mathematicians
8. Lenin Prize winners
9. Jews in the Post 1989 Russian Federation
10. Mixed Marriages
he first significant settlement of Jews in Russia took place in 1396
as a result of their expulsion from France in that year. More came
in the early decades of the ı5th century, following their expulsion
from a number of German states. There were massacres of Jews in the
Ukraine in 1648-1650, when many of those who escaped fled to
the Netherlands.
Throughout the 19th century, about 90 percent of Jews lived in
the Pale of Settlement, an area in the southwest of the Russian Empire
that included the eastern portions of present day Poland, Lithuania,
214 THE CHOSEN PEOPLE
Byelorussia, and Ukraine. Jews were legally restricted to this region.
They spoke Yiddish and lived largely in shtels (Jewish villages),
although some lived in the major cities of Warsaw, Kiev, Lodz, and
Vilna. They were prohibited from working in the civil service and on
the railroads when these were being constructed in the middle decades
of the century. Apart from these restrictions, Jews were fairly well
treated and tolerated (until the series of pogroms from 1881 onward).
Jews were successful and prominent in commerce:
Jews dominated the commercial life of the Pale for most of the
19th century; Jewish banks in Warsaw, Vilna and Odessa had been
among the first commercial lending institutions in the Russian
empire.... Their representation in the wealthiest commercial
elite was particularly strong.... [I]t was the initiative of Jewish
contractors that accounted for the construction of fully three-
fourths ofthe Russian railroad system. (Slezkine, 2004, pp. 118, 120)
By the end of the century, the Jewish Gintsburg family controlled a
large portion of the Siberian gold mining industry; the Jewish Gessen
brothers ran the main shipping business between the Baltic and
Caspian seas; and Jews developed the Caucasus oil industry, financed
by the Rothschilds.
In 1900, approximately 94 percent of Jews worked as traders;
serving as middlemen between the farmers and the towns, they would
buy agricultural produce, ship it to the towns, and resell it. Others
provided credit; leased and managed estates and various processing
plants, such as factories, tanneries, distilleries, and sugar mills;
kept shops and inns; provided professional services, principally as
doctors and pharmacists; and performed artisan work, such as tailors,
blacksmiths, shoemakers, jewelers, and watchmakers (Slezkine,
2004, p. 105). Russian Jews lived in their own segregated quarters and
spoke Yiddish. About four percent worked in factories or on farms.
While Jews were approximately four percent of the population, they
had much higher percentages on a number of indices of educational,
economic achievement, and social standing.
It was well recognized at the time that Jews were generally
intelligent. In 1874, Daniel Khvol’son, a professor at the University of
St. Petersburg, published a pamphlet arguing that the Jews and the
Hottentots represented the two extremes of high and low intelligence.
Russia 215
According to Maxim Gorky, Vladimir Lenin claimed, “a smart Russian
is almost always a Jew or somebody with an admixture of Jewish
blood.” Lenin himself was a quarter Jewish through his maternal
grandfather (Slezkine, 2004, p. 163).
1. Numbers of Jews in Russia and the Soviet Union
The approximate numbers of Jews in the Russian empire and the
Soviet Union at various dates, and their percentages of the population,
are given in Table 15.1. In 1800, there were approximately one million
Jews in the Russian Empire, which atthat time included Poland. Their
numbers grew by natural increase to about 5.2 million by 1900, when
they constituted about four percent of the population. By 1913, the
number of Jews in Russia had increased to 6,946,000, 4.1 percent of
a total population of 170,903,000 (Rubinstein, 2000). The increase
in the number of Jews was partly due to their lower mortality. In the
period 1880-1914, the age standardized death rate of Jews was 14.2
per 1,000 per year in European Russia, less than half of the 31.8 per
1,000 per year of Orthodox Russians (Johnson, 1987, p. 356).
Table 15. 1. Numbers and percentages of Jews in Russia
and the Soviet Union
Year | N.Jews % Population
1900 | 5,200,000 4.0
1913 | 6,945,000 4.1
1926 | 2,672,000 1.8
1939 | 3,000,000 1.8
1985 | 2,100,000 1.2
1989 550,000 0.4
2002 230,000 0.16
Sources: American Jewish Yearbooks
In 1926, the number of Jews in the Soviet Union had fallen to about
2.6 million. This was due to the loss of Poland and the Baltic States,
which had become independent in 1918, and to deaths in World War I.
By 1985, the number of Jews in Russia had fallen to about 2.1 million.
216 THE CHOSEN PEOPLE
The explanation for this is that the Germans in World War II killed
approximately 1.4 million Jews. The remaining loss of 0.6 million
was due to deaths in the war and to emigration, much of it to Israel.
The Soviet Union broke up in 1989; the figures for 1989 and 2002
are for the Russian Federation. The number of Jews in the Russian
Federation was only 550,000 in 1989, falling to 230,000 in 2002 as a
result of emigration.
2. 1800-1917
During the first two thirds of the 19th century, Jews generally
did not excel in education, but by the end of the century, they had
surpassed Gentiles. Some statistics showing this are given in Table
15.2.
Table 15.2. Jews in Russian universities and gymnasia
1840-1886
Years |Position Percent Jews | AQ
1840 | University students 0.5 0.12
1853 Gymnasium students 1.3 0.32
1878 Gymnasium students 19.0 4.75
1886 | University students 14.5 3.60
1886 |Kharkov: medicine/ law 40.0 10.00
Source: Slezkine (2004)
Row 1 shows that in 1840, Jews were only 0.5 percent of university
students in Russia and were therefore underrepresented in relation
to their four percent of the population. Row 2 shows that in 1853,
Jews were 1.3 percent of Gymnasium (elite high school) students and
were again underrepresented in relation to their four percent of the
population. However, row 3 shows that by 1878, Jews were 19 percent
of Gymnasium students and thus overrepresented in relation to their
four percent of the population by a factor of 4.75. Row 4 shows the
same story for university students in 1886. Row 5 shows that in 1886,
Jews were 40 percent of students in the faculties of medicine and law
at the University of Kharkov. These figures demonstrate the rapid
Russia 217
upward social mobility of Jews in Russia in the third quarter of the
19th century.
By the end of the 19th century and in the early years of the 20th,
Russian Jews were prominent and successful in many aspects of
society. The 1897 census showed that Jews were twice as literate as
non-Jews (Levin, 2000). It is likely that at this time, Jews in Russia
had higher IQs than Gentiles. N.D.Hirsch (1926) reported that in
the United States, the children of Jewish immigrants from Russia
had IQs 9.5 points higher than the children of non-Jewish Russian
immigrants. Some statistics showing that at this time, Jews were
overrepresented in the professions and business are given in Table
15.3. Rows 1 and 2 show that in 1889, Jews were 14 percent of certified
lawyers in the Russian empire and 43 percent of apprentice lawyers
(the next generation of professionals). Row 3 shows that in 1910, Jews
comprised 35 percent ofthe mercantile class (Rubinstein, 2000). Row
4 shows that in 1914, Jews comprised 37 percent of the managers in
Kiev (Slezkine, 2004).
Table 15.3. Jews in the professions and business
1889-1914
Years |Occupation Percent Jews | AQ
1889 |Certified lawyers 14 3.5
1889 | Apprentice lawyers 43 10.7
1910 Mercantile class 35 8.7
1914 Kiev: managers 37 9.2
Source: Slezkine (2004)
Jews were also prominent in the arts in the second half of the
19th century. The Gnesin sisters founded the first Russian music
school for children; the Rubinstein brothers founded the Russian
Music Society, the St. Petersburg conservatory, and the Moscow
conservatory. In the visual arts, many of the leading painters were
Jewish. They are not generally well known in the West except for
Marc Chagall (1889-1980), the surrealist painter who migrated to
Paris and then to the United States, and Leon Bakst (1866-1924,
born Lev Rozenberg), the painter and premier stage designer who
218 THE CHOSEN PEOPLE
designed the decor and costumes for Sergei Diaghilev’s ballet. In
addition to these were Leonid Pasternak (1862-1945), the foremost
portraitist; Mark Antokolsky (1843-1902), generally reckoned the
greatest Russian sculptor of the 19th century; and Isaak Levitan
(1860-1900), “who became, and still is, the most beloved of all
Russian landscape painters” (Slezkine, 2004, p. 126).
Other famous Russian Jews include the novelist Boris Pasternak
(1890-1960), author of Doctor Zhivago (and the son of Leonid
Pasternak); the revolutionary communist Leon Trotsky (1879-1940,
born Lev Bernstein), who together with Lenin was mainly responsible
for organizing the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 and served as
Commissar for Foreign Affairs until Lenin’s death in 1924; and the
anthropologist Franz Boas (1858-1942), who emigrated to the United
States, where he obtained the chair of anthropology at Columbia
University, from which he did anthropology a huge disservice by
divorcing it from biology.
There was a large Jewish community in the port city of Odessa
on the Black Sea. Some statistics for the educational and commercial
standing of Jews in the city are given in Table 15.4.
Table 15.4. Jews in Odessa 1878-1899
Years [Occupation % Jews
1878 Gymnasium students 33
1886 University students 33
1886 Medicine/ law students 40
1886 Lawyers 49
1875-1899 | Guild merchants 50
1875-1899 | Factory output 57
1875-1899 | Grain exports 70
Source: Slezkine (2004)
Row 1 shows that in 1878, Jews were one third of all Gymnasium
students in the city, and, according to a contemporary observer, they
typically outperformed the Russians: “all the schools are filled with
Jewish students from end to end and, to be honest, the Jews are always
at the head of the class” (Slezkine, 2004, p. 124). Row 2 shows that in
Russia 219
1886, Jews were one third of students at the University of Odessa;
row 3 shows that 40 percent of students in the faculties of medicine
and law were Jews. Row 4 shows that Jews were 49 percent of lawyers
in the city. Rows 5, 6, and 7 show that in the last quarter of the 19th
century, 50 percent of the city’s guild merchants were Jews, that 57
percent of factory output was produced by Jews, and that Jews were
responsible for 70 percent of the grain exports.
Statistics for St. Petersburg tell the same story. St. Petersburg lay
outside the Pale, and therefore Jews were not legally permitted to live
in the city. Nevertheless, some Jews did live there illegally in the years
from 1880 up to World War I. They comprised about two percent of
the population and were massively overrepresented in the commercial
and professional life of the city. Statistics showing this are given in
Table 15.5.
Table 15.5. Jews in St. Petersburg 1881-1915
Year [Occupation % Jews | AQ
1881 | Stock brokers 43 21.5
1881 | Pawnbrokers 41 20.5
1881 | Business owners 27 13.5
1881 | Brothel keepers 16 8.0
1881 | Lawyers 32 16.0
1881 | Doctors 11 5.5
1881 |Dentists 9 4.5
1913 | Doctors 17 8.5
1913 | Dentists 52 21.0
1915 | Stock Exchange Council 41 20.5
1915 | Bank managers 40 20.0
Source: Slezkine (2004)
Rows 1 through 4 show that in 1881 Jews constituted 43 percent of
stock brokers, 41 percent pawnbrokers, 27 percent all business owners,
and 16 percent of the brothel keepers. Rows 5-7 show that in the same
year Jews made up 32 percent of lawyers, 11 percent of the doctors,
and nine percent of the dentists in the city. By 1913, these percentages
had increased to 17 percent and 52 percent, respectively. Rows 10
220 THE CHOSEN PEOPLE
and 11 show that in 1915, Jews were 41 percent of the members of the
St. Petersburg Stock Exchange Council and 40 percent of joint-stock
bank managers.
In the first half of the 19th century, Jews in Russia were tolerated
without much overt discrimination. But by the 1870s, their success had
begun to excite concern. The numbers of Jewsamong the socioeconomic
elite worried Russian officials. In the 1880s, the universities introduced
quotas restricting the numbers of Jews applying for places. Many
Jews overcame this problem by attending universities abroad. V. D.
Spasovich, then-chairman of the St. Petersburg bar, observed in 1889,
“we are dealing with a colossal problem.” V. Kokovtsev, then- Finance
Minister of the Russian government, put it in 1906: “the Jews are so
clever that no law can be counted on to restrict them” (Slezkine,
2004, p. 158).
In the last three decades of the 19th century, the commercial success
of the Jews generated so much resentment that the Gentiles began a
series of attacks on them known as pogroms. The first of these broke
out in 1871 in Odessa, started by local Greeks who found themselves
unable to compete with the Jews. In 1881, there were further pogroms
against the Jews in a number of cities following the assassination of
Tsar Alexander II, for which the Jews were widely blamed. These were
followed by a series of further outbreaks. As a result of these many
Jews emigrated. (Others left Russia, no doubt, to avoid conscription
in the Russian Army and to seek a better life (Levin, 2000).) Between
1897 and 1914, approximately 1,288,000 left the Empire. About one
million of these went to the United States and another 100,000, to
Britain. There were more attacks on the Jews during the 1914-1918
War, when Jews were perceived as potentially or actually disloyal.
Infant mortality was lower among Jews in the late 19th and
early 20th centuries. Studies showing this have been summarized by
Condran and Kramarow and are shown in Table 15.6: infant mortality
of Gentiles was between 106 and 213 percent higher than that
of Jews.
Russia 221
Table 15.6. Infant mortality per 1,000 live births
Years |Location Jews | Gentiles | % Difference
1896-1897 | Russia 130 268 106
1900-1904 | Russia 119 254 113
1905-1909 | Leningrad 117 262 124
1910-1914 | Leningrad 78 244 213
1922-1924 | Leningrad 78 178 128
3. The Bolshevik Revolution and the Soviet Union,
1917-1939
Partly as a result of the series of attacks on Jews from the 1870s
on, and the failure of the Tsarist state to protect them, many Jews
joined the Bolshevik Party. Its objective was to overthrow the Russian
state and replace it with a new communist order based on the ideals
of ethnic equality and universal brotherhood. Jews were prominent
among the Bolsheviks during the Civil War between the Red and the
White Russians of 1917—1921. The Red Army was led by Trotsky, who
was Jewish, and Jews were 40 percent of the top elected officials in
the Army. At the First All-Russian Congress of Soviets in 1917, 31
percent of the Bolshevik delegates were Jews. In the Second Congress
of Soviets, Jews were 37 percent of the Bolshevik delegates. The first
two heads of the Soviet State-Lev Kamenev (born Rozenfeld, 1883-
1936) and Yakov Sverdlov (1885—1919)-were both Jews, and so also
were the first Bolshevik bosses of Moscow and Petrograd—Kamenev
and Zinoviev. From 1919 to 1921, Jews were approximately 25 percent
of the Party’s Central Committee. When Cheka (the secret police)
was set up in 1918, Jews were 19 percent of the investigators; they
made up 50 percent of the investigators employed in the department
for combating “counter-terrorism.” In 1923, Cheka was replaced by
OGPU; Jews composed 15 percent of the senior officials and half (four
out of eight) of the governing Secretariat.
Put simply, Jews prospered in the Soviet Union in the period
between the two World Wars: “there is no doubt that the Jews had
a much higher proportion of elite members than any other ethnic
group in the USSR” (Slezkine, 2004, p. 236). A higher percentage
222 THE CHOSEN PEOPLE
of Jews than Gentiles were literate: 85 percent in 1926, compared
with 58 percent of Russians; 94 percent in 1939, compared with
83 percent of Russians. In 1939, 26.5 percent of Jews had a high-
school education, compared with 7.8 percent of the population
of the Soviet Union as a whole and 8.1 percent of Russians in the
Russian Federation. Further statistics for the educational and
socioeconomic standing of the Jews are given in Table 15.7.
During the period 1917-1939, Jews were approximately 1.8
percent of the population. Row 1 shows that in 1926, nine percent
of the officers in military academies were Jews. Row 2 shows that
at the First Congress of Soviet Writers in 1934, Jews made up 19
percent of the delegates. Row 3 shows that in 1934, when the OGPU
was transformed into the NKVD, Jews made up 63 percent of the
senior officials (37 out of 59).
Table 15.7. Jews in the Soviet Union 1926-1939
Years |Occupation % Jews | AQ
1926 | Military officers 9 5.0
1934 | Writers 19 10.5
1934 |NKVD 63 35-0
1939 | University students 11 6.1
1939 | University graduates 15 8.3
1939 | Doctors 20 11.1
1939 | University professors: Russia 14 77.
1939 | University professors: Belarus 33 18.3
1939 | University professors: Ukraine 29 16.1
Source: Slezkine (2004)
Row 4 shows that in 1939, Jews made up 11 percent of the
university students and row 5, that Jews were 15 percent of the
university graduates. Row 6 shows that in the same year Jews
were 20 percent of the doctors. Rows 7 through 9 show that Jews
constituted 14 percent of the university professors in Russia, 33
percent of the university professors in Belarus, and 29 percent of
the university professors in the Ukraine.
Russia 223
In Moscow during the years 1926-1939, the number of Jews in
the city was approximately 250,000 (6.0 percent of the total). In
1939, 40 percent of Jews were high school graduates as compared
with 27 percent of the population of the city. Table 15.8 shows that
in 1926. In 1939, Jews were 45 percent of the professors of music
in Moscow, 17 percent of university students, and 24 percent of
university graduates in the city.
Table 15.8. Jews in Moscow 1926-1939
Years |Occupation % Jews | AQ
1926 | Music professors 45 7.5
1939 | University students 17 2.8
1939 | University graduates 24 4.0
Source: Slezkine (2004)
In Leningrad as well, Jews were prominent among elites. The
number of Jews in the city increased from 35,000 (1.8 percent)
in 1910 to 84,600 (5.28 percent) in 1926, and again to 201,500
(6.3 percent) in 1939. Jews were massively overrepresented in the
professional life of the city. Statistics showing this are given in
Table 15.9.
Table 15.9. Jews in Leningrad 1939
Occupation % Jews | AQ
University students 19 3.0
Lawyers 45 7A
Doctors 39 6.2
Dentists 69 11.0
Pharmacists 59 9.4
Journalists & writers 31 4.9
University professors 18 2.9
Artists 12 1.9
Actors & directors 12 1.9
Store managers 31 4.9
Source: Slezkine (2004)
224 THE CHOSEN PEOPLE
Row 1 shows that Jews were 19 percent of university students,
45 percent of lawyers, 39 percent of the doctors, 69 percent of the
dentists, 59 percent of pharmacists, 31 percent of journalists and
writers, 18 percent of university professors, 12 percent of artists,
actors, and directors, and 31 percent of the store managers.
Jews assimilated well with Gentiles in the years between the
two World Wars. There was an acceleration of mixed marriages
between Jews and Gentiles, which between 1924 and 1936,
increased from 17.4 to 42.3 percent in the Russian Republic. There
was little overt anti-Semitism, but nevertheless, the authorities
were at pains to defuse a certain degree of resentment about
Jewish prominence among the elite. When it was discovered that
Lenin’s maternal grandfather was Jewish, Stalin decreed that
this fact should be suppressed, lest it foster the notion that the
Revolution had been engineered by Jews.
Between 1937 and 1938, what has come to be known as “The
Great Terror” began: thousands of Army officers and professionals
were executed or deported to the gulags. Jews, however, survived
the purges fairly well. Only about one percent of all Soviet Jews
were arrested for supposed political crimes, as compared with 16
percent of Polish Jews and 30 percent of Latvian Jews. In 1939,
the proportion of Jews in the gulags was about 16 percent lower
than their proportion in the population. The explanation for this is
that Jews were nearly all loyal to the Soviet Union and the Marxist
ideology. This is shown by the high proportion of Jews among
the professors of Marxism-Leninism in the universities and the
research institutes. Jews were 20 percent of these, and 25 percent
in the elite universities of Moscow, Leningrad, Kiev, and Kharkov.
After the Second World War, Jews continued to be hugely
overrepresented among the professional elite. Statistics showing
this for 1949 are given in Table 15.10. At this time, Jews were about
1.8 percent of the population, yet they constituted 39 percent of
the faculty at the Moscow Institute of Jurisprudence (row 1). Row
2 shows that Jews were 80 percent of the members of the Institute
of Literature of the Academy of Sciences. Rows 3 through 6 show
that they were between 39 percent and 51 percent of the directors of
Moscow theatres, art galleries, popular music shows, and circuses.
Row 7 shows that Jews were 33 percent of the chief engineers at
Russia 225
Soviet armaments plants. Row 8 shows that Jews were 23 percent of
the top managers at the Telegraphic Agency of the Soviet Union (TASS).
Table 15.10. Jews among the professional elite in 1949
Position % Jews | AQ
Moscow Institute of Jurisprudence 39 21.7
Institute of Literature 80 44.0
Directors, Moscow theatres 42 23.3
Directors, art galleries 40 22.2
Directors of popular music shows 39 21.7
Directors of circuses 51 28.3
Chief engineers 33 18.3
Telegraphic Agency 23 12.8
Source: Slezkine (2004)
4. Discrimination against Jews, 1939-1989
In 1939, Joseph Stalin began to develop suspicions about the
loyalty of the Jews. He put Molotov in charge of Soviet diplomacy and
ordered him to remove the Jews from the Commissariat of External
Affairs. The purge of the Jews increased during the war with Germany
“and turned into an avalanche in 1949, when ideological contagion
became the regime’s chief concern and Jews emerged as its principal
agents” (Slezkine, 2004, p. 301). In January 1948, one of the best
known and high profile Soviet Jews, Solomon Mikhoels (1890-1948),
was murdered on Stalin’s orders. The establishment of the state of
Israel in 1948 increased Stalin’s growing paranoia about the Jews.
Many Russian Jews welcomed the state of Israel; Stalin thought they
would become more loyal to Israel than to the Soviet Union and that
Jews and Jewish institutions were already subversive. During the years
1948-1952, all Jewish theatres and writers’ organizations were closed
and many Jewish writers were arrested. In 1952, 15 members of the
former Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee were put on trial as “bourgeois
nationalists,” and all but one were shot. “By 1950 few Jews could
make it to the top bureaucratic positions, though Jews continued to be
226 THE CHOSEN PEOPLE
widely represented in the Soviet academic, cultural and artistic elite”
(Sacks, 1998, p. 249).
Stalin died in 1953, and the purges of the Jews ceased. From 1953
onward, “Jews returned to the top ofthe Soviet professional hierarchy;
they remained by far the most successful of all Soviet nationalities”
(Slezkine, 2004, p. 331). In 1955, the Soviet physicists, in a largely
Jewish team led by Andrei Sakharov (1921-1989), successfully
exploded the hydrogen bomb. Other brilliant Jewish scientists of this
period included the physicists Igor Y. Tamm (1895-1971) and Lev
Landau (1908-1968), the mathematicians Izrail Gelfand (1913-2009)
and Leonid Kantorovich (1912-1986), and the novelist Boris Pasternak
(1890-1960). However, despite the ending of overt discrimination
against Jews, covert discrimination continued: “in the 1970s, career
advancement and job appointments were limited by something akin
to percentage quotas.” Many Jews who found conventional careers
blocked found new fields to work in:
When access to top research institutions was restricted, Jews poured
into the burgeoning fields of computer science and information
services. Jews had specialized knowledge and experience that
remained in short supply and this assured their entry into high
status positions. (Sacks, 1998, p. 249)
Throughout the 1960s up to the 1990s, there remained a strong
current of anti-Semitism throughout Russia, generated by resentment
over the obvious and inescapable Jewish overrepresentation among
the professional elite. By this time, Jews had so consolidated their
positions to such an extent that they could be said to be “hereditary
members of the cultural elite” (Slezkine, 2004, p. 335); these select
lived in the affluent suburbs of Moscow and Leningrad and sent
their children to the top schools and universities; their offspring who
would, in turn, enter the elite. To combat this, the Soviet state put
quotas on the numbers of Jews admitted to elite universities and
prestigious professional positions. Many Jews, however, were able
to overcome these “affirmative-action” programs directed against
them. In some cases, the projects, such as the development of
nuclear weapons, missiles, and space research, were too important,
and Jewish scientists were appointed simply because they were the
best. Some Jews changed their names to make them sound Russian.
Russia 227
Others took positions in less prestigious universities and research
institutes and transformed them into first-rate institutions. Overall,
the “anti-Jewish discrimination was not very successful (the enormous
achievement gap between Jews and everyone else was narrowing very
slowly)” (Slezkine, 2004, p. 337).
Nevertheless, despite the ability of many Jews to overcome the
discrimination against them, many of them felt uncomfortable in
the Soviet Union from the 1950s onward. The Jewish writer Mikhail
Agursky (1933-1991) described the widespread Jewish sentiments
of this period:
Could one really expect that a nation [the Jews] that had given
the Soviet state political leaders, diplomats, generals, and top
economic managers would agree to become an estate whose
boldest dreams would be to a position as head of a laboratory
at the Experimental Machine-Tool Research Institute or senior
researcher at the Automatics and Telemechanics Institute? The
Jews were oppressed and humiliated to a much greater degree
than the rest of the population. (Slezkine, 2004, p. 338)
Jews increasingly identified with Israel, especially after the
victory in the Six-Day War of 1967, which established Israel in the
eyes of Soviet Jews as a serious country of which they could be proud.
The next year-1968-saw the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia.
Many Soviet Jews disapproved of the brutal crushing of the incipient
democracy and became further alienated from the Soviet Union.
The response of many Jews to this increasingly unfriendly and
sometimes hostile atmosphere was to emigrate. Increasing numbers
applied for exit visas. The government responded by further
discrimination against Jews in education and employment and by
raising the fee for an emigration visa, which further alienated the
Jews. Between 1968 and 1994, about 1.2 million left the USSR and
its successor states. Officially they applied to go to Israel, but many
treated this as a staging post en route to the United States. By 1988,
89 percent of emigrants were going to the United States. To stem
this outflow, the U.S. reduced its quota for Soviet Jews. By 1994,
63 percent of Jewish émigrés from the USSR had ended up in Israel
and 27 percent in the United States (Slezkine, 2004, p. 358). The
result of the extensive emigration of Jews in the 1960s, ‘70s, and
228 THE CHOSEN PEOPLE
‘80s was that their numbers in the Soviet Union fell precipitously.
In 1973, there were approximately 3.5 million Jews in the Soviet
Union out of a total population of approximately 200 million;
they comprised approximately 1.7 percent of the population, as
compared with about four percent during the 19th century.
Jews continued to be overrepresented among the professional
elite during the post World War II years. Statistics showing this
for 1959 and 1989 are given in Table 15.11. Rows 1 and 2 reveal that
in 1959, 11.4 percent of Jews were college graduates, compared
with 1.8 percent of Russians; 1.35 percent of Jews were employed
as scientists, compared with 0.01 percent of Russians. Rows 3 and
4 show that in 1989, 64 percent of Jews were college graduates,
compared with 15 percent of Russians; 5.3 percent of Jews were
employed as scientists compared with 0.5 percent of Russians.
Table 15.11. Jews among the professional elite in 1959 and
1989 (percentages)
Year [Occupation Jews | Russians
1959 | College graduates 11.4 1.8
1959 | Scientists 1.3 0.01
1989 | College graduates 64.0 15.0
1989 | Scientists 5.3 0.5
Sources: Altshuler, 1987; Sacks, 1998)
5. Jews in Chess
It is well known that Russians have been preeminent at chess; less
well known is the fact that Jews have been highly overrepresented
among top Russian chess players. There is an annual Soviet chess
championship tournament in which there are typically about 20
participants. In the Soviet championship tournaments for the years
1947-1949 and 1970-1976, there were 83 Jewish and 110 Gentile
participants. In these years, Jews in the Soviet Union numbered
about 2 million in a population of approximately 230 million. Jews
were therefore 88 times overrepresented than Gentiles among these
top Russian chess players.
Russia 229
Jews have been similarly overrepresented among Russian chess
grandmasters. The top-rated Russian chess grandmasters for the
years 1851 to 2003 are given by William Rubinstein (2004) and
are listed in Table 15.12. There was only one Russian grandmaster
(Carl von Jaenisch (1813-1872)) between 1851 and 1870. It was not
until the 1870s that the first Russian Jew (Szymon Winawer (1838-
1920)) appeared among the top-rated Russian chess grandmasters.
In the whole period, there are 14.5 Jews and 18 Gentiles among the
grandmasters. (Gari Kasparov (born Weinstein in 1963) is only half-
Jewish, so he is counted as 0.5.) Hence, Jews have been 44 percent
ofthe total.
Table 15.12. Top-rated Russian chess grandmasters (Jews
are asterisked)
Years Chess Champions Years Chess Champions
1851-1869 |von Jaenisch 1940-1969 |Spassky*
1870-1899 | Chigorin Korchnoi*
Winawer* Taimanov*
1900-1939 | Bogolyubov 1970-2003 | Polugayevsky*
Bernstein* Kasparov*
Tartakower* Gurevich*
Nimzovitch* Gelfand*
Alekhine Beliavsky
Keres Romanishin
Lillienthal* Ivanchuk
1940-1969 | Smyslov Salov
Petrosian Bareev
Kholmov Beliavsky
Karpov Kramnik
Botvinnik* Shirov
Bronstein* Morozevich
Tal*
It will be noted that in the period 1970-2003, the number of
Gentile top-rated Russian chess grandmasters exceeded the number
230 THE CHOSEN PEOPLE
of Jews for the first time since 1900. This is explained by the massive
emigration of Jews from the Soviet Union in these years. During this
period, Jews were only approximately one percent of the population
of the Soviet Union, as compared with about 2.5 percent during the
first three quarters of the 20th century.
6. Nobel Prize winners
A list of the Russian Nobel Laureates is given in Table 15.13, with
Jews identified by asterisks. Russia has produced 23 Nobel Prize
winners, of whom 16 (70 percent) have been Jewish. Thus, Jews, who
comprised about 2.1 percent of the population of the Soviet Union
during the 20th century, have produced 70 percent of the Nobel Prize
winners, giving them an Achievement Quotient of 47°
Table 15.13. Russian Nobel Prize winners (Jews are
asterisked)
Year |Name Subject | Year |Name [Subject
1904 | Ivan Pavlov Medicine | 1971 | Simon Kuznets* | Economics
1908 | Ilya Mechnikov* Medicine | 1973 | Wassily Leontief* | Economics
1933 | Ivan Bunin Literature | 1975 | Leonid Kantorovich* | Economics
1952 |Selman Waksman* | Medicine | 1977 | Ilya Prigogine* Chemistry
1958 | Boris Pasternak* Literature | 1978 | Pyotr Kapitsa Physics
1958 | Pavel A. Cherenkov | Physics 1982 | Aaron Klug* | Chemistry
1958 | Il’jaM. Frank* Physics 1987 | Joseph Brodsky* | Literature
1958 | Igor Y. Tamm* Physics 2000 | Zhores Alferov* | Physics
1962 | Lev Landau* Physics 2003 | Alexei Abrikosov* | Physics
1964 | Nicolay G. Basov Physics 2003 | Vitaly L. Ginzburg* | Physics
1964 | Alexander Prokhorov | Physics 2007 | Leonid Hurwicz* | Economics
1970 | Alexandr Solzhenitsyn | Literature |
7. Mathematicians
Russia has produced 14 mathematicians who have received the
Fields Medal or the Wolf Prize. These are listed in Table 15.14. Ten of
Russia 231
these have been Jews (Gregori Margulis (b. 1946) has been awarded
the Wolf Prize as well as the Fields Medal, but is only counted once;
Grigori Perelman (b. 1966) declined the Wolf Prize but is counted).
Thus, Jews, who have been about 1.5 percent of the population
during the second half ofthe 20th century, have produced 71 percent
oftop mathematicians, giving them an Achievement Quotient of 47.
Charles Murray (2003, p. 280) has calculated the numbers of
Jewish and Gentile “significant figures” (i.e. great names in science and
the arts) in Russia whose careers fell within the years 1870 to 1950. He
finds nine Jews and 63 Gentiles. Calculating the ratio of Jewish to Gentile
“significant figures,” he arrives at an Achievement Quotient (Jewish
overrepresentation) of 4.1.
Table 15.14. Russian Mathematicians (Jews are
asterisked)
Year |Fields Medal Year |Wolf Prize
1970 |Serge Novikov 1978 | Izrail Gelfand*
1978 | Gregori Margulis* 1980 | Andrei Kolmogorov
1990 | Vladimir Drinfeld* 1981 |Oscar Zariski*
1994 |Efim Zelmanov* 1982 | Mark Krein*
2002 | Vladimir Voevodsky 1993 |Mikhael Gromov*
2006 | Andrei Okounkov 1996 | Yakov Sinai*
2001 |Vladimir Arnold*
2006 |Grigori Perelman*
8. Lenin Prize winners
About 200 Lenin Prizes have been awarded annually for
meritorious work. The numbers of these, and the numbers who have
been Jews for the years 1967-1968 and 1971-1972, are shown in Table
15.15. Once again, Jews have been substantially overrepresented
among the recipients of these prizes.
232 THE CHOSEN PEOPLE
Table 15.15. Lenin Prize winners
Year | N. Prize winners | N. Jews | % Jews | AQ
1967 203 29 14 11.7
1968 192 30 16 13.3
1971 228 26 11 9.2
1972 185 21 11 9.2
9. Jews in the Post 1989 Russian Federation
In 1989, the Soviet Union disintegrated and its constituent
republics became the independent states ofthe Russian Federation,
Ukraine, Belarus, and so forth. Discrimination against Jews was
relaxed, and it was made easier for Jews to emigrate. Large numbers
of Jews took advantage of this opportunity. Between 1989 and 2002,
more than 15 million Jews and their relatives emigrated from the
former Soviet Union, mainly into Israel (about 940,000, or 62
percent), and the reminder largely to the United States and Germany.
In the Russian Federation, Mikhail Gorbachev (b.1931) introduced
a more liberal order and discrimination against Jews largely came
to an end. Nevertheless, many Jews still felt uncomfortable and
continued to emigrate. In 1989, there were 551,000 Jews in the
Russian Federation. By the 2002 census, the number of Jews had
approximately halved to 230, 000, and became only 0.16 percent of
the population.
In the new Russian Federation, “Jews are still heavily
concentrated at the top of the professional hierarchy” (Slezkine,
2004, p. 362). The 1989 census showed that 64 percent of employed
Jews had a higher education, compared with only 15 percent of
Russians. The percentages of Jews and Russians in the professions
and as metalworkers are shown in Table 15.16.
By this time, Jews were 0.4 percent of the population, but 16.1
percent of employed Jews were graduate engineers as compared with
5.1 percent of Russians; 6.3 percent were employed as physicians,
as compared with 0.9 percent of Russians (Sacks, 1998). Jews were
similarly overrepresented in other professions. On the other hand,
fewer Jews than Russians were employed as metalworkers.
Russia 233
Table 15.16. Jews and Russians in the professions and
manual occupations in 1989 (percentages)
Occupation Jews | Russians | AQ
Engineers 16.1 5.1 3.2
Physicians 6.3 0.9 7.0
Scientists 5.3 0.5 10.6
School teachers 5.2 2.2 2.4
Managers 3.3 0.6 5.5
University faculty 2.6 0.4 6.5
Metalworkers 2.6 7.2 0.4
In the Russian Federation, it continues to be widely recognized
that the Jews are successful. In a poll conducted in 1997, 75 percent
of the respondents said they believed that Jews are well brought
up and well educated; 80 percent said they believed that Jews
include a large number of talented people. It is remarkable, though
perhaps unsurprising, that of the seven top multimillionaires who
made huge fortunes when Russia privatized its oil and natural gas
industries in the Yeltsin era, six were Jews: Pyotr Aven (b.1955),
Boris Berezovsky (b.1946), Mikhail Fridman (b.1964), Vladimir
Gusinsky (b.1952), Mikhail Khodorkovsky (b.1963), and Alexander
Smolensky (b.1954). Jews, who at this time were about 0.2 percent
of the population, produced 86 percent of the new plutocracy.
10. Mixed Marriages
In the second half of the 20th century, there has been an
increasing trend for Jews to marry Gentiles. In 1988-1989, in the
former Soviet Union as a whole, 58 percent of Jewish men and
47 percent of Jewish women had entered into mixed marriages
(Altshuler, 1998; Tolts, 2003). The result of this has been that an
increasing number of children born to Jewish mothers have Gentile
fathers. Statistics showing this for the years 1958 through 1993 are
provided by Mark Tolts (2003) and are given in Table 15.17.
234 THE CHOSEN PEOPLE
Table 15.17. Percentage of children of mixed origin born to
Jewish mothers in the FSU
Republic 1958 | 1968 | 1988 | 1993
FSU 19 vs 41 in
Russia 27 40 58 68
Ukraine 17 30 42 69
Belarus 14 32 37 71
Moldavia 7 12 17 58
We see that in Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, and Moldova, the same
trend has been present. An increase of mixed marriages has also
taken place in the former Soviet Baltic states of Latvia, Lithuania,
and Estonia (see chapter 14).
Typically, Jews who enter mixed marriages lose their Jewish
identity and raise their children as Gentiles. This has occurred in Russia
in about 84 percent of mixed-marriage couples (Altshuler, 1998; Tolts,
2003). Thus, most of the Jews that have chosen to remain in Russia
have largely abandoned their Jewish identity and come to think of
themselves as Russians. In a poll carried out in 1995, only 16 percent of
Russia’s ethnic Jews considered themselves as religious. It seems likely
that the great majority of Jews who remain in Russia and the other
states of the former Soviet Union will increasingly assimilate with the
ethnic Russians through intermarriage and lose their Jewish identity.
In the foreseeable future, Jews in the former Soviet Union are likely
to disappear as a self-conscious ethnic group, much as did the Jews
of Spain and Portugal who converted to Christianity in the late 15th
century.
CHAPTER 16
South Africa
1. Numbers of Jews
2. Educational Attainment
3. Earnings and Socioeconomic Status
4. Nobel Prize winners
5. Fertility
È the 16th and 17th centuries, the Dutch East India Company
established a settlement in Cape Town as a staging post en route to
the Far East. A number of Jewish merchants in the Netherlands were
involved in the Dutch East Indies trade, and a few of them settled in
Cape Town. They were prohibited from further settlement in 1652,
when the Company banned all settlers except Protestants. This
prohibition lasted until 1806, when the British gained control of the
province of South Africa and allowed Jews to settle. A number of mainly
Dutch, British, and German Jews took advantage of this opportunity.
From henceforth, “Jews had much to do with the development of
South Africa” (Johnson, 1966, p. 272). Noteworthy among these were
the De Pass brothers, who developed copper mining at Port Nolloth
and sugar plantations in Natal, and the Mosenthals, who introduced
to South Africa the Mohair goat and flourished in ostrich farming and
sheep and cattle breeding.
238 THE CHOSEN PEOPLE
Other South African Jews who have taken a prominent partin
science, the legal profession, in political, philanthropic, industrial,
and mining affairs have been Simeon Jacobs (a judge of the
Supreme Court), the Mendelssohns, Papaports, Rabinowitzes,
Solomons, Lilienfelds, Kisches, Neumanns, Moselys, Alfred Beit, Sir
David Harris, Sir Lionel Phillips, and Sir George Albu.
Between 1860 and 1900, a number of Eastern European Jews
migrated to South Africa to participate in the mining of diamonds,
which had been unearthed in Kimberley in the 1860s, and gold,
following discoveries in the Rand in the 1880s. During the last
decades of the 19th century, “Jews played a notable part in the
South African deep-level mines and in the financial system which
raised the capital to sink them” (Johnson, 2004, p. 573). The
foremost among these in the diamond industry was Sir Ernest
Oppenheimer (1880-1957), the son of a German Jewish cigar
manufacturer, who formed the Anglo-American Corporation of
South Africa. By 1957, his firm controlled more than 95 percent
of the world’s supply of diamonds. He endowed several university
chairs in South Africa.
In 1899, a British journalist, J. A. Hobson, visited South Africa
and commented on the prosperity ofthe Johannesburg Jews,
who numbered around 7,000 at the time: they were so powerful
that the Johannesburg stock exchange was closed on the Day of
Atonement. Hobson observed, “The shop fronts and business
houses, the market place, the saloons, the “stoops” of the smart
suburban houses are sufficient to convince one of the large
presence of the chosen people.” (Johnson, 2004, p. 573)
In 1930 a Quota Act was passed that effectively stemmed
further immigration of Jews.
1. Numbers of Jews
Figures for the numbers of Jews in South Africa and their
percentage of the White population are given in Table 16.1. Both
figures are taken from Daniel Elazar and Peter Redding (1983)
and the American Jewish Yearbook. The decline in numbers of
Jews from 1970 to 2001 is largely a result of emigration. There
has also been an increase in the number of Gentile Whites, due
to immigration from Zimbabwe, which has contributed to the
reduction in the percentage of Jews among the White population.
South Africa 239
Table 16.1. Numbers and percentages of Jews in South
Africa
Year | N. Jews | % Population
1904 38,101 3.41
1926 62,103 4.09
1936 | 90,645 4.52
1946 | 104,156 4-39
1960 114,762 3.70
1970 | 118,200 3.15
1991 | 100,000 2.00
2001 79,000 1.30
2. Education
Jews in South Africa have a high level of educational
attainment as compared with White Gentiles. Statistics showing
this are given by Dubb (1984, 1991) and are shown in Table 16.2.
Table 16.2. Education of Jews and Whites in South Africa
(percentages)
Year |Measure Jews | Whites | AQ
1970 | Matriculation 56 23 2.4
1970 | University degree 10 4 2.5
1970 | Doctorate 0.2 0.1 2.0
1980 | University degree 15.7 7.1 2.2
1991 | Matriculation 93.0 23.4 4.0
1991 | University degree 22.6 10.1 2.2
Row 1 gives figures, from the 1970 census, for the percentages
of Jews (56 percent) and Whites (23 percent) who passed the
matriculation examination taken by school-leavers. Row 2 shows
that 10 percent of Jews and four percent for Whites had university
degrees in 1970. Row 3 reveals that the percentage of Jews with
doctorates in that year was nearly double that of Whites. Row
4 gives the percentages that had university degrees in the 1980
240 THE CHOSEN PEOPLE
census: the percentage for Jews had increased to 15.7 percent,
while that for White Gentiles had risen to only 7.1 percent. Row
5 gives the matriculation rate of 93 percent for Jews, found in
a survey of a representative sample of 1,000 Jews carried out
in 1998 and published by Barry Kosmin, Jacqueline Goldberg,
Milton Shain, and Shirley Bruk (1999); a corresponding figure
for Whites, taken from the 1991 census, was 23.4 percent. Row
6 shows that according to 1991 census, 22.6 percent of Jews had
university degrees, as compared with 10.1 percent of Gentile
Whites.
3. Income and Socioeconomic Status
Jews in South Africa have higher average incomes than
White Gentiles. Sergio Della Pergola and Allie Dubb (1988) have
calculated that in 1980, the median income of Jews was 8,323
Rand, approximately 25 percent greater than the 6,139 Rand of
White Gentiles.
Jews in South Africa also have higher socioeconomic status
than White Gentiles. The percentages of Jews and White Gentiles
in six socioeconomic status categories in 1936, 1960, 1970, 1980,
and 1991, obtained from census returns, have been given by
Marcus Arkin (1984), Della Pergola and Dubb (1988), and Dubb
(1994). The occupational distributions for 1936, 1960, and 1970
are shown in Table 16.3.
In 1936, Jews were slightly overrepresented in the professions
and in clerical and sales, but underrepresented in administrative
and managerial occupations and among blue-collar workers and
in agriculture. By 1960, the position of the Jews had improved.
They were now considerably overrepresented in the professions,
administrative and managerial occupations, and clerical and
sales, and again underrepresented in blue-collar occupations and
agriculture. The occupational distribution for 1970 is similar,
except that Jews had become somewhat underrepresented in
clerical and sales occupations.
South Africa 241
Table 16.3. Socioeconomic Status of Jews and whites in
South Africa, 1936-1970 (percentages)
Occupation 1936 1960 1970
Jews | Whites | Jews | Whites | Jews | Whites
Professional 9.7 8.2 20.0 12.3 22.7 15.4
Admin/managerial 2.0 12.7 19.7 5.2 17.5 5.3
Clerical & sales 53.5 23.1 49.7 33.3 20.7 26.7
Services 5.3 5.7 1.8 5.3 4.0 6.8
Blue collar 17.6 47.1 7.5 33.5 5.3 26.1
Agriculture 1.9 3.2 1.3 10.4 1.0 3.0
Table 16.4 gives the occupational distributions for 1980 and
1991 and shows that these were similar to those in 1970.
Table 16.4. Socioeconomic Status of Jews and whites in
South Africa, 1980-1991 (percentages)
Occupation 1980 1991
Jews | Whites | Jews | Whites
Professional 28.7 19.8 29.8 18.5
Admin/managerial 17.1 7.3 22.0 11.5
Clerical & sales 20.0 36.8 32.4 32.6
Services 4.3 7.9 3.2 7.9
Blue collar 74 28.2 12.6 29.5
Agriculture 1.5 1.6 - -
4. Nobel Prize winners
South Africa has produced five Nobel Prize winners for
science and literature, which is respectable for a White population
of around 3.7 to 5 million. They are listed in Table 16.5. It is
remarkable that two of the five have been Jews, who were 3.1
percent of the population in 1970 and 2.0 percent of the White
population in 1991. Thus, Jews, who comprised about 2.5 percent
of the White population of South Africa in the second half of
242 THE CHOSEN PEOPLE
the 20th century, have produced 40 percent of the Nobel Prize
winners, giving them an Achievement Quotient of 16.
Table 16.5. Nobel Prize winners (Jews are asterisked)
Year |Name Subject Year |Name Subject
1951 | Max Theiler Medicine || 2002 | Sydney Brenner* | Medicine
1979 | Allan Cormack Medicine 2003 | J. M. Coetzee Literature
1991 | Nadine Gordimer* | Literature
5. Fertility
Della Pergola and Dubb (1988) have published the fertility
rates of Jews and Gentile Whites in South Africa for 1940
through 1970. Their figures for these are shown in Table 16.6.
The fertility rates of Jews have been consistently lower than
those of White Gentiles, as has been the case, almost invariably,
in Western countries in the 20th century. Nevertheless, in
the period 1950-1970, the Jewish fertility rates have been
comfortably above the 2.1 required for replacement.
Table 16.6. Fertility rates of Jews and Gentiles
Year | Jews | Gentiles
1940 2.1 3.1
1950 3.0 3-4
1960 3.0 3.5
1970 | 2.7 3.2
CHAPTER 17
Switzerland
1. Numbers of Jews in Switzerland
2. The 19th Century
3. 1900-1945
4. Intellectual Achievement
5. Nobel Prize winners
6. 1945-2010: Business, Finance, and the Professions
witzerland has had a settled Jewish community since the 13th
century. The first recorded mention of Jews in Switzerland came
in 1213 in Basel, when the country hosted one of the largest Jewish
communities in Europe, made up mostly of Jews from Germany and
France. Jews settled in Bern by 1259, St. Gall in 1268, Zurich in 1273,
and Schaffhausen, Diessenhofen, and Luzerne in 1299. The Jewish
community in Basel flourished until 1348, when during the Black
Death, they were accused of poisoning wells. As a result, 600 Jews were
burned at the stake on an island in the Rhine in 1349, although their
children were spared and forcibly baptized. At about the same time,
the Jews in Bern were accused of murdering a Christian boy named
Rudolf (Ruff) and were expelled from the city. The public animosity
toward the Jews was so great that in 1349, they were expelled from
246 THE CHOSEN PEOPLE
Switzerland. However, they were permitted to return to Zurich in 1352
and to Basel in 1361.
In the 14th century, Jews from Alsace, Ulm, Nuremberg, France,
and various southern German cities began to settle in Neuchätel,
Biel, Vevay, Pruntrut, Solothurn, Winterthur, Zofingen, and various
places in Aargau and Thurgau. At this time, the Jews of Switzerland
were regarded as “Kammerknechte” (“chamber farmhands”) of the
Holy Roman Empire and were under its protection as long as they
paid an annual tribute. Some towns exercised the “Judenregal,” the
right to protect the Jews and impose taxes on them; foreign Jews
had to pay fees to the municipality in order to be allowed to remain
even for a few days.
As in most of Europe during the Middle Ages, Jews were
almost exclusively confined to peddling second-hand goods and to
money-lending; there were also a few Jewish physicians. They were
subjected to many restrictions. Jews were ostracized and required
to wear the “Judenhut” (“Jew’s hat”), although Jewish physicians
were sometimes exempted. Jews were required to live in designated
neighborhoods, and their infrastructure, such as slaughterhouses,
synagogues, mikvot (ritual purification baths), and cemeteries
were located in these ghettos. Jews had to pay high taxes for these
privileges, particularly for their cemeteries. As the Jews’ principal
occupation was money-lending, when the Christians were in debt,
they blamed Jews collectively for their hardships, and often tortured
or attacked them. Expulsions and persecutions ocured repeatedly.
Because of Christians’ prohibition against usury, the absence of
Jews due to expulsion would swiftly have an adverse effect on the
economic functioning of society. Simply put, the Jews were needed,
as they advanced funds to all strata. Thus, after various expulsions,
the Jews were often allowed to return and continue their money-
lending activities.
The 1400s saw further persecutions and expulsions of the Jewish
communities. In 1401, all of the Jews living at Schaffhausen were
accused of blood libel and condemned to death; 30 were burned alive.
In the same year, 18 men and women were burned at the stake in
Winterthur. The Jews of Zurich, though, were safeguarded. In Basel
in 1434, a church edict required Jews to attend Christian church
services and listen to proselytizing sermons; rather than comply,
Switzerland 247
most Jews left the city and did not return until the 1800s. Jews were
banished from the city and canton of Bern in 1427, from Freiburg in
1428, from Zurich in 1436, from Schaffhausen in 1472, from Rheinau
in 1490, from Thurgau in 1494, and from Basel in 1543. Despite these
expulsions, a number of Jews found their way back into Switzerland
during these years. A few were admitted in the 16th century when
Christian printers in Basel began printing Hebrew texts. They needed
Jews to proofread these texts and therefore acquired hundreds of
residency permits for them.
At the end of the 18th century, a Jewish community was established
in Geneva, after a number of Jews from Lorraine settled in the suburb
of Carouge. Up to the end of the 1700s, Jews in Switzerland did
not enjoy full civil rights, but were considered resident aliens. They
required special permission to marry, and their business activities
were heavily regulated. They did not obtain the same type of financial
assistance for their schools that the rest of Swiss society received.
In the Great Council of Helvetia of 1798-1799, which ocured under
French revolutionary occupation, prominent Swiss liberals advocated
that Jews be granted full civic equality, and some rights were conferred
on them in concordance with treaties with Britain, France, and the
United States. However, the Jews of Switzerland would have to wait
until the late 19th century before they were treated as citizens.
1. Numbers of Jews in Switzerland
The numbers of Jews in Switzerland recorded in censuses
from 1850 through 2000 are shown in Table 17.1. The numbers
approximately quadrupled from 1850 to 1900 as a result of natural
increase and immigration. There was a further increase from 1900
to 1950, largely resulting from immigration. From 1970 to 2000, the
Jewish population has been sustained by immigration, which has
offset declining numbers due to low fertility and the many mixed
marriages, whose offspring typically abandon Jewish identity.
Among the Cantons of Switzerland, only Zurich, Basel-City,
Geneva, and Vaud have a Jewish community exceeding 1,000 people.
One third of Swiss Jews reside in the Canton of Zurich (6,252 people).
The percentage of Jews in the population has fallen considerably from
1950 to 2000, largely as a result of an increase of the Swiss population
through immigration.
248 THE CHOSEN PEOPLE
Table 17.1 Numbers and percentage of Jews in the
population
Year | Jewish population | % of total
1850 3,145 0.1
1900 12,264 0.4
1950 19,048 0.4
1970 20,744 0.3
2000 17,914 0.2
2. The 19th Century
Emancipation came to the Jews of Switzerland in the 19th century,
as in most of Europe. During the Napoleonic period, Jews in Geneva
obtained full civil rights, but these were revoked on November 14,
1816, when a new law forbade them from owning land in the canton.
It was not until 1841 that they were again granted civic equality. In
1843, Jews in Geneva were naturalized and granted full religious
liberty; these right were granted to Jews in other parts of the country
only in 1874 with the establishment of the Swiss Federal Constitution.
Switzerland was thus one of the last Western European countries to
treat its Jews as citizens.
Following emancipation, Jews prospered in Switzerland. The
most famous Swiss Jew of the 19th century was Meyer Guggenheim
(1828-1905), who was born in Aargan. He migrated to the United
States and made a fortune in mining and smelting. He established a
family dynasty that founded museums and art galleries, first in New
York and later in Venice, Bilbao, Berlin, Guadalajaro, Abu Dhabi,
Budapest, and Vilnius.
3. 1900-1945
Jews continued to do well in Switzerland in the early decades
of the 20th century (Kamis-Mueller, 1992). From 1933 onward,
many German Jews sought refuge in Switzerland in response to the
increasing anti-Semitism of the National Socialist government. The
Swiss government was not particularly welcoming, perhaps through
Switzerland 249
fear of offending Hitler. In 1938, Swiss government made an agreement
with Germany to limit the numbers of Jews permitted to enter the
country. German authorities stamped “J” on the passports of Jews,
making it easier for the Swiss to refuse them entry. Nevertheless, in
the 1930s and during World War II, Switzerland gave refuge to about
23,000 Jewish refugees.
Many more Jews were turned away, however. In 1942, the Swiss
police issued a regulation that denied refugee status to “refugees only
on racial grounds, e.g. Jews.” By the end of the war, more than 30,000
Jews had been refused entry. Furthermore, the Swiss government
decreed that Jews would not be permitted permanent residence and
that Switzerland would serve only as a country of transit. The Jewish
refugees did not receive the financial support from the government
that non-Jewish refugees received, and most of them left Switzerland
at the end of the war.
In 1996, Swiss President Kastar Villiger formally apologized to
world Jewry for the 1938 accord with the Nazis and Switzerland’s
wartime actions against the Jews. At the same time, however, he
downplayed economic cooperation between Switzerland and Nazi
Germany. It transpired that numerous documents relating to Jewish
property in Swiss banks disappeared during the 1940s and ‘50s, and
there was significant pressure in the 1990s and early 21st century to
rectify and compensate Holocaust victims and their heirs who were
denied their assets in Swiss banks.
In 1956, after the Sinai campaign and the Hungarian uprising, the
Swiss Federation of Jewish Communities admitted Jewish refugees
from Egypt and Hungary. In 1968, it also looked after Jews who
fled to Switzerland from Czechoslovakia. Switzerland has generally
been supportive toward Israel, while maintaining its neutrality. This
support was strengthened by an Arab terrorist attack on an El Al plane
in Zurich in 1969 and an act of sabotage on a Swissair plane bound
for Israel in 1970. However, as in some other European countries,
reports of anti-Semitism and anti-Israeli sentiment in Switzerland
have increased since 2000.
250 THE CHOSEN PEOPLE
4. Intellectual Achievement
From emancipation onward, Switzerland became a major haven
for Russian Jewish intellectuals. One of these was Chaim Weizmann
(1874-1952), first president of the state of Israel, who wrote of his
university days in 1898,
If Russian Jewry was the cradle of my Zionism, the Western
universities were my finishing schools. The first of these schools
was Berlin, with its Russian-Jewish society; the second was Berne,
the third Geneva, both in Switzerland.
Around this time, prominent Jews who would become leaders of
the Bolshevik Revolution, such as Georgi Valentinovich Plekhanov
(1857-1918), Marxist philosopher and leader of the Russian Social
Democratic movement, and Leon Trotsky, were also resident in
Switzerland. Albert Einstein (1879-1955) attended school and college
in Switzerland and became a Swiss national in 1901. He received his
doctorate from the Federal Polytechnic Academy in Zurich and worked
in the Swiss patent office 1902-1905, where he wrote his ground-
breaking papers on special relativity in 1905. In 1909, a professorship
was created for him at Zurich, where he remained until 1914, when he
moved to Berlin as director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute of Physics.
5. Nobel Prize winners
A list of the Swiss Nobel Laureates is given in Table 17.2, with
Jews identified by asterisks.
Table 17.2. Swiss Nobel Prize winners (Jews are asterisked)
Year |Name Subject Year |Name Subject
1909 | Theodor Kocher Medicine |[1958 | Daniel Bovet Medicine
1913 |Alfred Werner Chemistry |}1978 | Werner Arber Medicine
1919 | Carl Spitteler Literature ||ı986 | Heinrich Rohrer Physics
1920 |Charles Guillaume | Physics 1987 |Karl Müller Physics
1937 |Paul Karrer Chemistry |}1991 | Richard Ernst Chemistry
1948 |Paul Muller Medicine |[1992 | Edmond Fischer* Medicine
1952 | Walter Hess Medicine ||1996 |Rolf Zinkernagel Medicine
1957 | Tadeus Reichstein* | Medicine ||2002 | Kurt Wüthrich Chemistry
1958 | Felix Bloch* Physics
Switzerland 251
Switzerland has produced 17 Nobel Prize winners, of whom three
have been Jewish (the list does not include Einstein who was born in
Germany). Jews, who comprised about 0.3 percent of the population
during the 20th century, have produced 18 percent of the Nobel Prize
winners, giving them an Achievement Quotient of 60.
6.1945-2010: Business, Finance, andthe Professions
Despite their small numbers, Jews play a fairly important role in
the textile and clock-making industries, as well as in manufacturing
and wholesaling. Switzerland’s Jews are not prominent in the big
banks. They do, however, own several private banks, including the
Dreyfus Bank in Basel, the Julius Bar in Zurich (both founded in
the 19th century), the Republic National Bank of New York, and the
Discount Bank & Trust Company. Jews are well represented in the
professions as doctors, dentists, pharmacists, lawyers, engineers,
academics, and artists, although there are few in the public service
and press (Kamis-Mueller, 1992). At the beginning of the 21st
century, Jews in Switzerland lived in prosperous communities and
were “concentrated in white collar jobs” (Encyclopedia Judaica,
2007, vol.19, 343). The most well known Jewish figure in Switzerland
in recent years is Ruth Dreifuss (b.1940), who entered the federal
government in 1993 and became Switzerland’s first female president
in 1999.
CHAPTER 18
The Balkans
1. Jews in the Ottoman Empire
2. Bulgaria
3. Greece
4. Romania
5. Turkey
6. Yugoslavia
7. Nobel Prize winners and Chess Champions
8. Intelligence of the Sephardic Jews
9. Conclusions
ews settled in the Balkans in the first century AD, following the
destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD by the Romans. This original
population is known as the Romaniot. In AD 330, the Roman emperor
Constantine established the city of Constantinople on the Bosphorus
Strait as the “New Rome” and capital of the empire. The city became
the center of what historians would later call the Byzantine Empire,
which extended across the Balkans and Asia Minor. The Roman
Empire in the east survived for the next 11 centuries, during which
“the Jews faced severe persecution under Byzantine rule” (Goffman,
2000, p. 16). As Paul Johnson bluntly puts it, “the treatment of Jews
was always bad” (Johnson, 2004, p. 205).
254 THE CHOSEN PEOPLE
In the 14th century, the Turks began to conquer parts of the
southern Balkans and incorporate them into the Ottoman Empire. The
Turks welcomed Jewish refugees from other domains and “offering a
place of refuge, attracted many Jews” (Benbassa and Rodrigue, 1995,
p. 4). In 1361, they conquered the city of Edirne (Adrianople) and
welcomed Jewish refugees from Hungary, from which they had been
expelled in 1376, from Spain, fleeing the massacres of 1370, and from
France, from which they had been expelled in 1394. In the census of
1477, 1,647 Jewish households were recorded in Edirne, comprising
about 8,000 individuals, roughly 11 percent of the population of the city.
In 1453, the Turks captured Constantinople, which they renamed
Istanbul, and which they made the capital of the Ottoman Empire.
They welcomed the Jews and a number of the Romaniot Jews moved
to the city where “they worked mainly in trade.” The Istanbul Jews
were also prominent in “farming taxes, the collection of custom dues,
and the mint; they controlled all major tax farming in the Istanbul
region in 1470-80” (Benbassa & Rodrigue, 1995, p. 6). More Jews
arrived after being expelled from Spain and Portugal in 1492 and in
1497, respectively. The Sultan of the Ottoman Empire invited them to
come to Istanbul because he needed competent people to populate the
city; somewhere between 50,000 and 100,000 took up this invitation
to settle in Istanbul and other towns in the Balkans. Others settled
in North Africa and the Levant (the eastern Mediterranean littoral)
and a smaller number went to the Netherlands. These refugees from
Spain and Portugal became known as the Sephardim. At the time of
the expulsions, the Jews in Spain and Portugal were given the option
of leaving or converting to Christianity. About 80,000 to 120,000
chose to convert. But as discussed in a previous chapter, many of these
continued to practice Judaism in secret, coming to be known as the
“Marranos.” The Spanish and Portuguese suspected this and from
time to time had them investigated by the Inquisition, which ordered
the convicted to be burned. As a result of this continued persecution,
waves of Marranos left Spain, most ending up in the Balkans.
From 1500, the Turks gradually colonized the whole of the Balkans,
until by 1683, their Empire included southeast Europe, comprising
Greece, what would become Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, Romania, and
Hungary. In 1687, they reached the outskirts of Vienna and laid
siege to the city, though they were never able to capture it. During
The Balkans 255
this time, large colonies of Turks were settled in the Balkans, which
began forming a Turkish-European ethnic mix with an average IQ
of about 92, slightly higher than the IQ of Turks in Turkey, 90 (see
Lynn, 2006). The cities with the greatest Jewish populations in the
Balkans during Turkish rule were Istanbul and Salonica, but Jewish
communities were found in towns throughout the Balkans.
There were three groups of Jews in the Balkans. The first of these
were the Romaniot (the original population). Second, there were the
Sephardic Jews, who immigrated following their expulsion from Spain
in 1492 and from Portugal in 1497. Most of these settled in Istanbul, but
some went to other cities in the Balkan Ottoman Empire, particularly
Salonica and Edirne. After a century or so, the Romaniots “completely
assimilated into the Sephardi group. ” According to Esther Benbassa
and Aron Rodrigue (1995, p. 14), there were fewer Sephardim but they
“succeeded in dominating the Romaniots” because of “the weight of
their scholars, their culture, and the dynamism of many of their rabbis.”
The third group of Jews in the Balkans were the Ashkenazim
from Central and Northern Europe, who from time to time moved to
the Balkans because they were expelled or were being persecuted. A
number of these came from Hungary after they had been expelled in
1360. Most of the Ashkenazim settled in Romania but some settled
in other parts of the Balkans, especially in Bosnia-Hertzegovina.
However, these were quite few compared with the Sephardim-
Romaniots, who were by far the largest group of Jews in the Ottoman
Empire in the Balkans, except in Romania where the Ashkenazim were
the majority. It is estimated that in 1900, there were approximately
400,000 Sephardic Jews in the Balkans (Montgomery, 1902).
1. Jews in the Ottoman Empire
The Ottoman Empire provided a benign environment for the Jews,
which is why so many of them who had been persecuted in Spain,
Portugal, and Northern Europe sought refuge there. The Ottomans
“success in government largely consisted in the wise policy of toleration
which they practiced toward Jews...” (Fisher, 1936, p. 138). And
without question, “the Ottoman takeover significantly ameliorated the
Jews’ condition” (Goffman, 2000, p. 16). In the early 1400s, there were
prosperous Jewish communities in the Balkan cities of Edirne and
256 THE CHOSEN PEOPLE
Salonica (Inalcik, 2000, p. 4). Moreover, “[ulnder Moslem rule, it was
easier for Moslems and Jews to live side-by-side without disturbance
than in Christian lands” (Roberts, 1996, p. 159). Jews were granted
much greater liberty in the Ottoman Empire than in Northern Europe
and were allowed to work as craftsmen and shopkeepers. Most Jews
“were engaged in food processing, soap making, tanning, and a host of
other artisanal occupations...” On top of this,
a smaller elite emerged that became significant in often interlocked
areas such as finance, international commerce and brokerage,
and the manufacture and marketing of textiles. (Benbassa and
Rodrigue, 1995, p. 36, 41)
The Sultan Mohammed the Conqueror (1451-1481) also welcomed
the Jews. His minister of Finance (Ya’kub) and his physician (Moses
Hamon) were both Jews.
Around 1510 the Jews of Salonika wrote to the Jews who were
being expelled from France: “Come and join us in Turkey and you will
live in peace and freedom as we do” (Benbassa & Rodrigue, 1995, p.
8). Many of them did so, and by 1529 Jews were about 55 percent of
the population of the city, which became one of the most important
Jewish centers in the world.
Many authorities have testified that the benign toleration of Jews
in the Ottoman Empire contrasted with the frequent persecutions of
Jews in Central, Northern and Eastern Europe. Thus, “Jews fleeing
from Spain and other European countries found in the Ottoman
Empire a secure and friendly haven.”
What makes their experience unique-especially when compared
with that of European Jewry-is that over a period lasting five
centuries, in good times and bad, Jews were never singled out
for persecution or oppression because of their religion. In fact for
much of the period they enjoyed the status of a favored minority.
(Levy, 2002, p. xix)
And the Ottoman bureaucracy “demonstrated particular
sympathy towards the Jews” (Inalcik, 2000, p. 6). Indeed, Jews in
the Ottoman Empire occupied more prominent positions than Jews
in Central and Northern Europe:
In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries they were instrumental
in developing and expanding the Ottoman administration and
The Balkans 257
economy, and they continued to maintain a prominent role in
those areas for a long time thereafter. Jews performed important
services as government advisers, ambassadors, tax farmers,
financial agents, scribes, international and interregional traders,
and in a wide range of urban industries and trades. They also made
significant contributions to Ottoman society in science, medicine,
technology, culture, and entertainment. (Levy, 2002, p. xix)
In the court of Sultan Sulaiman the Magnificent (1520-
1566), “Jews held positions of trust and honor, and took part in
diplomatic negotiations.... Commerce was largely in their hands...
In Constantinople they owned beautiful houses and gardens on the
shores of the Bosporus.” Into the 19th century as well, “the attitude
of the government [towards Jews] was uniformly kind”(Montgomery,
1904, pp. 280-4).
One of the major reasons for the greater acceptance of Jews in
the Ottoman Empire than in Europe was that for some five centuries,
from around 1400 up to 1918, the Muslim Ottoman Empire was in
conflict and frequently at war with Christian Europe for control of
the Balkans. To be sure, there was a “clash of civilizations” between
the two cultures, divided by religion and ethnicity. The Jews were
conscious of being persecuted in Europe, and the Ottomans and Jews
regarded each other as ethnic allies in what was widely regarded as
a holy war. It may also be that Jews and Turks are of the same race
(South West Asians) and are thus more compatible than Jews and
Europeans, in accordance with the principles of Genetic Similarity
Theory (see Rushton, 1989).
Whatever the case, the Jews prospered in the benign environment
provided in the Ottoman Empire, and “they flourished more within
the Ottoman economy and society than any other group.”
In the late fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, Jews instituted
tremendous innovations in commerce between the Ottoman
Empire and Europe. Their situations as bankers, industrialists,
and especially Ottoman officials helped propel that empire beyond
military dominance into economic distinction as well. (Levy, 2002, p. 33)
The leading Jewish family in the empire was the house of Mendes,
“which controlled a large share of the international spice trade and
had accumulated enormous capital in Europe” (Inalcik, 2000, p. 10).
258 THE CHOSEN PEOPLE
Some four centuries later a descendant of the same family, Pierre
Mendes-France, became Prime Minister of France.
It was not only in commerce that the Jews flourished: “the Ottoman
Jewish communities became the most important centers of Jewish
scholarship and learning in the world, a position they maintained for
a long time” (Levy, 2002, p. xix). Jews were also prominent among
doctors in the Ottoman Empire from 1450 up to 1900; their “primacy...
within the medical profession was unchallenged” (Murphey, 2000, p.
73). The apogee of the profession was the palace corps of physicians,
who looked after the sultan and his household. In 1548, there were 30
of these, among whom 14 were Jews; by 1609, the number had risen to
62, among whom 41 (66 percent) were Jews (Murphey, 2000, pp. 65, 73).
In the 18th century, however, Jewish prominence within the
empire began to wane. “The sixteenth century saw the heyday of their
role [in the economy], which went into a relative decline in the following
century until the modern period, without ever being effaced completely”
(Benbassa and Rodrigue, 1995, p. 36). This decline was evident on the
cultural front as well. While at the beginning of the 16th century there
is evidence for a highly literate Jewish culture in the Ottoman Empire,
this culture gradually disappeared after the 16th century, so that from the
mid-ı8th century until the intervention of the European powers in the
20th century, there was “an unmistakable picture of grinding poverty
and ignorance” (Lewis, 1984, 164) among Jews in the Muslim world.
Kevin MacDonald writes,
Jews became increasingly degraded in the Ottoman Empire, and
their decline was far more extreme than can be explained solely
by the economic fortunes of the Ottoman Empire, since it affected
them far more than their Muslim and Christian co-residents.
(MacDonald, 1994, p. 197).
Apparently, the position of the Jews declined because they
could not withstand the competition of other ethnic groups: “other
minorities simply out competed [them].” MacDonald attributes
this not to “deficits in the capabilities of Jews” but to Christians
networking skills (MacDonald, 1994, p. 197). “Muslim Turks,
Armenians, and especially Greeks were also active in customs and tax
collection and often outshone the Jews” (Benbassa & Rodrigue, 1995,
p. 37). However, according to MacDonald, there was “a resurgence of
Ottoman Jews in the 19th century,”
The Balkans 259
as a result of patronage and protection from European Jews, once
again a flowering of a highly literate culture, including secular
schools based on European models. (MacDonald, 1994, p. 198)
Also in the 19th century, Turkey began to lose control of its
territory in the Balkans. Greece achieved independence in 1830, and
the largely Jewish city of Salonica became part of Greece in 1913. In
1875, the provinces of Bosnia, Hertzegovina, Serbia, and Bulgaria
rebelled. Bosnia-Hertzegovina was annexed by Austria-Hungary
in 1878, while Serbia and Bulgaria achieved independence. Turkey
retained Macedonia, but lost this and all her remaining territory in
the Balkans in 1918, except for Istanbul and the hinterland which
she retains to this day.
Infant mortality was lower among Jews in the late ıgth and
early 20th centuries. Studies showing this have been summarized
by Gretchen Condran and Ellen Kramarow and are shown in Table
18.1. The infant mortality of Gentiles was between 20 and 50 percent
higher than that of Jews.
Table 18.1. Infant mortality per 1,000 live births
Years Location Jews | Gentiles | % Difference
1851 Buscovina 143 198 25
1851 Transylvania 89 178 50
1896-1905 | Serbia 140 170 20
2. Bulgaria
Jews enjoyed a dominant position in the Third Bulgaria State,
which achieved independence in 1878. Before World War I, Jews,
controlled 90 percent of the country’s exports of cereals, tobacco,
fruit and dairy produce—a proportion which fell to 60-70 percent
in 1932.... They controlled between 30 and 40 percent of the
imports of soap, oil and colonial produce. (Benbassa & Rodrigue,
1995, pP. 95)
These are impressive figures, especially considering that the
Jews were about 0.9 percent of the population. In the 1920s and
260 THE CHosEn PEOPLE
1930s, about half of the Jews lived in the capital Sophia. They
“were composed of small businessmen, merchants, and artisans
and did not face any significant threat to their existence until the
Second World War” (Benbassa and Rodrigue, 1995). Between the
World Wars, anti-Semitism was not particularly rife in Bulgarian
society. In 1941, Bulgaria joined Germany as an ally, and as a
result, German troops occupied the country. Berlin pressured
the Bulgarian government to transport the Jews to concentation
camps. The Bulgarians were reluctant to comply, but they did
hand over about 11,300 foreign Jews to the Germans, many of
whom were transfered to Treblinka. Apart from these, Bulgaria’s
Jews almost entirely escaped the Holocaust.
The numbers of Jews in Bulgaria and their percentages in the
population between 1881 and 1949 are given in Table 18.2.
Table 18.2. Numbers and percentages of Jews in Bulgaria
Year | Jewish population | % of total
1881 20,503 | 0.90
1900 33,663 | 0.90
1934 48,398 | 0.80
1945 41,000 0.58
1949 6,000 0.08
2001 2,500 | 0.03
Sources: Benbassa & Rodrigue, 1995, pp. 190,
256-7; American Jewish Yearbook, 2004
As mentioned above, Jews were approximately 0.9 percent of the
population between 1881 and 1900. By the 1934 census, the numbers
of Jews had increased, but their percentage in the population had
fallen to 0.8 percent. It fell further by around 7,398 by 1945, largely
as a result of Germany’s anti-Semitic policies. By 1949, it had fallen
again to about 6,000. The reason for this is that most of the Jews felt
uncomfortable in Bulgaria after the end of World War II and thought
they could have better and safer futures in Israel. Approximately
35,000 of them migrated there between 1945 and 1949, leaving only a
remnant in Bulgaria.
The Balkans 261
Bulgaria is the only country in the Balkans for which it has proved
possible to find statistics for the numbers of Jews in the two major
professions of medicine and law. These are shown in Table 18.3 where
we see that in 1940, Jews were 4.6 percent of the doctors and 3.0
percent of the lawyers. As Jews were 0.80 percent of the population,
they had Achievement Quotients of 5.75 and 3.75, respectively.
Table 18.3. Percentages of Jewish doctors and lawyers in
Bulgaria
Year [Occupation % Jews | AQ
1940 | Doctors 4.6 5.75
1940 | Lawyers 3.0 3.75
Source: (Benbassa & Rodrigue)
3. Greece
Numbers and percentages of Jews in Greece are shown in Table
18.4. Of the 79,950 Jews in 1940, an estimated 62,573 were deported
to Nazi concentration camps, leaving 10,371 in 1947. Over the next
12 years, about half of these emigrated, largely to Israel, leaving only
5,260 in 1959.
Table 18.4. Numbers and percentages of Jews in Greece
Year | Jewish population | % oftotal
1928 92,020 1.50
1940 79,950 1.10
1947 10,573 0.13
1959 5,260 0.07
Source: Benbassa & Rodrigue, 1995, p. 25
4. Romania
The Jews of Romania were partly Ashkenazim and partly
Sephardim, unlike in most other parts of the Balkans where the
Sephardim predominated. They were treated more harshly under
262 THE CHosEn PEOPLE
Ottoman rule than were Jews in the rest of the empire. According
to historians, “The story of the Romanian Jews in the Turkish
provinces of Moldavia and Wallachia in the nineteenth century is
a story of cruel, brutal mistreatment” (Ms, 1960, p. 59). “In 1870,
the Romanian government introduced a series of harsh anti-
Jewish restrictions and even tacitly encouraged mob attacks on
Jews” (Sachar, 1992, p. 83). Despite all this, on the eve of World
War I, Jews in Romania were 36 percent of the doctors, dentists,
and veterinary surgeons (Brunstein, 2003).
At the end of the war, Romania achieved independence from
Turkish rule, and Jews were given full civil liberties. However,
anti-Semitism remained strong: “Romania had a well-deserved
reputation for being, along with Russia, the most anti-Semitic
country in Europe” (Mendelsohn, 1983, p. 174). Nevertheless, Jews
found a way to flourish. According to Ezra Mendelsohn (1983,
pp. 179, 189), “The number of Jewish students far exceeded the
Jewish percentage in the population.... [T]hough on the whole very
poor, [Jews] played a dominant role in commerce, crafts and the
professions.” The occupational distribution of Jews and Gentiles
in the 1930 census is shown in Table 18.5. Jews were effectively
debarred from the civil service, so the 2.7 percent of Jews in row
1 were virtually all in the professions. The great majority (73.7
percent) of Gentiles were peasant farmers, while the great majority
of Jews (81.1 percent) worked in commerce, industry, and crafts.
Table 18.5. Occupations of Jews and Gentiles in Romania,
1930
Occupation Jews Gentiles
Civil Service/ professions 2.7 3.1
Commerce 48.3 4.2
Industry/ crafts 32.8 11.3
Transportation 2.4 2.3
Army 1.9 2.9
Agriculture 4.1 73.7
The percentages of Jews in various occupations in Romania in
1937 have been given by William Brustein and Ryan King (2004, p.
696) and are shown in Table 18.6. The Jewish population in the 1930
The Balkans 263
census numbered 756,930 and was 4.2 percent of the population.
It will be seen that Jews were greatly overrepresented among Army
doctors, engineers in the textile industry, journalists, lawyers,
stockbrokers, and university students.
Table 18.6. Percentages of Jews in occupations in
Romania, 1937
Occupation % Jews | AQ
Doctors — Army Medical Corps 50 11.9
Engineers — textile industry 80 19.0
Journalists 70 16.7
Lawyers 40 8.5
Stockbrokers 99 23.6
University students 15 3.6
Anti-Semitism increased from the late 1930s onward. In 1937, the
premier, Octavian Goga (1881-1938), disenfranchised the Jews and
deprived them of citizenship, as a result of which they were not allowed
to work. In 1940, following Romania’s loss of territory in arbitration
between then-allies Germany and the Soviet Union, the combined forces
of the fascistic Iron Guard and Ion Antonescu (1882-1946) took power in
a coup. The new government sought an alliance with the Axis Powers and
intensified anti-Semitic policies within the country: Jewish property was
confiscated and Jewish shops boycotted. Between 1941 and 1944, about
261,300 Jews were killed in the concentration camps. Approximately
346,440 survived the war (Mendelsohn, 1983, p. 210). Afterwards, many
Jews emigrated to Israel. In 1965 the dictator Nicolae Ceausescu (1918—
1989) struck a deal with the United States whereby American Jews paid
$8,000 for every Jew permitted to emigrate. Between 1967 and 1989,
165,000 departed for Israel, leaving around 20,000 in Romania (Sachar,
1992).
5. Turkey
In 1900, there were some 400,000 Jews in the Ottoman Empire;
about 320,000 of these were in Europe (Levy, 2002). As a result of
264 THE CHOSEN PEOPLE
the loss of most of its territory in the Balkans at the end of World
War I, there were, according to the 1927 census, 81,872 Jews in
Turkey. Most lived in Istanbul and Edirne (in Europe) and in Izmir
(in Asia Minor). When the Germans began to persecute the Jews
from 1933 onward, Turkey admitted 300 distinguished Jewish
doctors, scientists, and intellectuals. Many of these found positions
in universities. But Turkey refused to admit others who lacked
specialist qualifications. In 1942, heavy taxes were imposed on Jews
of 179 percent of their annual income. About 40 percent of them
emigrated to Israel as soon as this became possible in 1949. Jewish
demographics in Turkey are given in Table 18.7.
Table 18.7. Numbers and percentages of Jews in Turkey
Year | N. Jews % Population
1927 81,872 0.6
1945 76,963 0.4
1955 45:995 0.2
1990 19,000 0.02
Source: Benbassa and Rodrigue
In 1988, 94 percent of Jews in Istanbul worked in white-collar
occupations (11 percent professional, 15 percent managerial, seven
percent clerical, and 61 percent sales). The remaining six percent were
blue-collar laborors (Della Pergola, 2007).
6. Yugoslavia
Yugoslavia, the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes, was an
invention of the victorious Allies in the postwar Paris Peace Conference of
1919. The numbers of Jews in Yugoslavia are shown in Table 18.8. In the
1931 census, there were 68,405 Jews, of whom 57 percent were Ashkenazim
and 38 percent, Sephardic; five percent defined themselves as Orthodox.
Much as in Bulgaria, anti-Semitism was not common during the interwar
years (Benbassa & Rodrigue, 1995, p. 95).
The Balkans 265
Table 18.8. Numbers and percentages of Jews in
Yugoslavia
Year | Jewish population % oftotal
1931 68,405 0.49
1940 82,242 0.50
1945 15,000 0.10
2002 3,400 0.00
Source: (Benbassa & Rodrigue, 1995, p. 93, 256-7)
The number of Jews increased to 82,242 in 1940, though after the Axis
invasion, approximately 62,000 of these were killed during the Holocaust.
About 20,000 survived by going into hiding or escaping to Switzerland or
the Italian controlled west of the country. Many of these later went to Israel.
7. Nobel Prize winners and Chess Champions
The Balkans have produced seven Nobel Prize winners; they are
listed in Table 18.9. One of these, Elias Canetti (1905-1994), was
Jewish; though he was born in Bulgaria, Canetti migrated to Britain.
The remaining six were Gentiles, of whom George Palade (1912-2008)
emigrated to the United States, and Vladimir Prelog (1906-1998), to
Switzerland. Thus, Jews, who constituted about 0.6 percent of the
population in the Balkans, have produced 14 percent of the Nobel
Prize winners, giving them an Achievement Quotient of 23.
Table 18.9. Nobel Prize winners (Jews are asterisked)
Year |Name Country [Subject
1961 | Ivo Andric Yugoslavia | Literature
1963 | Giorgos Seferis | Greece Literature
1974 |George Pelade |Romania | Medicine
1975 | Vladimir Prelog | Bosnia Chemistry
1979 | Odysseus Elytis | Greece Literature
1981 | Elias Canetti* Bulgaria Literature
2009 | Herta Miiller Romania |Literature
266 THE CHOSEN PEOPLE
There have been three top-rated chess champions from the Balkans
from 1851 to 2000 (Rubinstein, 2004); one of whom, Milan Vidmar
(1885-1962) of Yugoslavia, was Jewish. Thus, Jews, comprising about
one percent of the population in the Balkans in the period between
1851 and 1940, produced a third of top-rated chess champions. The
sample is small, but the striking overrepresentation of Jews in top
class chess is consistent with their overrepresentation among Nobel
Prize winners.
8. Intelligence of the Sephardic Jews
There have been no studies of the intelligence of the Sephardic Jews
in the Balkans. Nevertheless, it is possible to make an approximate
estimate of their intelligence. Generally, there is little doubt that the
intelligence of the Sephardim is (1) higher than that of Gentiles in the
Balkans, (2) lower than that of the Ashkenazim of Central, Eastern and
Northern Europe, and (3) higher that that of Mizrahim Jews from the
Middle East and North Africa. The following considerations point to
this conclusion:
(a) When the Sephardim were expelled from Spain in 1492 and from
Portugal in 1497, some of them settled in North Africa. The Sephardim
quickly came to dominate the local Jews and “rapidly became dominant
in the economy as well as in rabbinic learning” (Benbassa & Rodrigue,
1995, p. 4). It can be inferred that they had higher intelligence. When the
Balkans were occupied by the Turks from the late 15th century, it was
observed that “The Turks were good soldiers but they were unsuccessful
as businessmen, and accordingly they left their commercial occupations
to other nationalities.... Hence the Jews soon became the business agents
of the country” (Montgomery, 1902, p. 280). This again suggests that the
Sephardic Jews had higher intelligence than the Turks.
(b) Numerous authorities have testified that the Sephardim as a group
had a higher socioeconomic status than the Gentile communities among
whom they lived and were overrepresented among physicians, merchants,
and professionals. It can beinferred from this that they were more intelligent.
(c) Inthe 19th century, the Ashkenazim “regarded Eastern Sephardi
Jewry as exotic and backward” (Benbassa & Rodrigue, 1995, p. 113),
which they undoubtedly were compared with the Jews of Central,
Eastern, and Northern Europe. This suggests that the Ashkenazim
were more intelligent than the Sephardim.
The Balkans 267
(d) In Yugoslavia in the 1920s and 1930s, there were both Ashkenazi
and Sephardic communities. The Ashkenazi were more prosperous: they
lived in “the most urbanized and westernized areas in the north,” whereas
the Sephardim “settled in the poorer zones in the south and east of the
country” (Benbassa and Rodrigue, 1995, p. 144). The Ashkenazim had
fewer children than the Sephardim (Benbassa and Rodrigue, 1995, p. 91),
which is generally a sign of higher intelligence (Lynn, 1996).
(e) In Israel, Jews form an ethnic status hierarchy such that “the
Sephardim show a position midway between the Ashkenazim and
Mizrahim (Benbassa and Rodrigue, 1995, p. 191). This hierarchy is based on
differences in intelligence. It is shown in Chapter 11 on Israel that European
Jews in Israel have an average IQ of 106 and Mizrahim, an average IQ of 91.
Hence, as the Sephardim fall midway between the other two groups, they
should have an IQ of about 98.
(f) In Britain, Jews are overrepresented among doctors by a factor of
6.6 and among lawyers by a factor of 9.0. Bulgaria is the only country in
the Balkans for which there are comparable statistics, and here Jews in
1940 were overrepresented among doctors by a factor of 5.75 and among
lawyers by a factor of 3.75. The overrepresentation in the two professions in
Britain averages 7.8, while in Bulgaria it averages 60 percent ofthis: 4.75. In
Britain, Jews have an average IQ of 110 as compared with 100 for Gentiles.
It can be reasonably assumed that in Bulgaria, Jews had about 60 percent
ofthis 10 IQ point advantage over Gentiles, i.e. an IQ of 106 compared with
100 for Gentiles in Bulgaria. Two studies of the IQ of Gentiles in Bulgaria
have given IQs of 91 and 94, which can be averaged to 92.5 (Lynn, 2006).
Hence the IQ of Bulgarian Jews should be approximately 98.5 (92.5 + 6.0
= 98.5). This is virtually identical to the estimate of 98 given in the last
paragraph.
(g) The Sephardim of the Balkans have only produced one Nobel
Prize winner (Elias Canetti from Bulgaria) from a population in 1940 of
about 288,000, estimated by adding the populations in Bulgaria, Greece,
Yugoslavia, and Turkey. This is a rate of 3.5 per 1 million. The Ashkenazim
have produced 120 Nobel Prize winners from a population in 1940 of about
18 million, a rate of 6.7 per 1 million. Thus, the Ashkenazim have produced
approximately double the rate of Nobel Prize winners as the Sephardim of
the Balkans. This provides further confirmation that the intelligence level
ofthe Ashkenazim is higher than that ofthe Sephardim.
268 THE CHOSEN PEOPLE
(h) In the United States, three studies have found that Ashkenazic
children obtain higher IQs than Sephardic children. In the first of these,
Riverda Harding Jordan (1921) reported that Romanian Jewish children
obtained a nonverbal IQ 4.7 points lower than Russian Jewish children.
This was confirmed in two further studies by Morris Gross (1967, 1986),
who found that Ashkenazic 6-year-olds obtained higher IQs than Sephardic
children. In the first study of 90 children, the Ashkenazic children outscored
the Sephardic on vocabulary by 17 IQ points. In the second study, the
Ashkenazic children outscored the Sephardic by 12 points (Gross, 1986).
The Ashkenazim in the United States do better socially than the Sephardim.
From 1890 to 1930, some 30,000 Sephardim from the Levant migrated to
the United States, where about 90 percent settled in New York. They did
not do nearly so well as the Ashkenazim:
Essentially without marketable skills, living in the wretchedest
of Lower East Side tenements, the newcomers eked out their
existence as bootblacks, as candy and ice-cream vendors in
nickelodeons, as cloakroom attendants or waiters. Others worked
for starvation wages in the cigarette factory of their ‘kinsmen, the
Schinasi brothers. The women, all but illiterate found intermittent
employment in the garment industry but more commonly as maids
or laundresses. Alcoholism, prostitution, and wife abandonment
were far more extensive among them than among Ashkenazi
immigrants. Few shared the Russian-Jewish passion even for
functional education. (Sachar, 1992, p. 338)
9. Conclusions
Four salient points stand out in this chapter. First, the Sephardim of
the Balkans did better socioeconomically and in the medical and legal
professions than the Gentile communities they lived amongst. This can
be attributed to their higher intelligence. Second, the intelligence of the
Sephardim in the Balkans can be estimated at an IQ of 98, as compared
with that of 92 of Gentiles in the Balkans, and 100 of Gentiles in Central
and Northern Europe. Third, the IQ of 98 of the Sephardim is well below
the IQ of 110 of the Ashkenazim of Britain, Canada, and the United States
(see the chapters on the Jews of these countries). Fourth, this difference
can be attributed to the Sephardim in the Balkans having been generally
The Balkans 269
free from persecution over the course of approximately five centuries
when they were in the Ottoman Empire, to which numerous authorities
cited in this chapter have testified. This contrasts with the repeated
pogroms against the Ashkenazim of Central, Eastern, and Northern
Europe. As discussed further in Chapter 21, the effect ofthese pogroms of
the Ashkenazim will have been to selectively eliminate the less intelligent,
leaving those with higher intelligence as survivors.
CHAPTER 19
United States
Bevounurnwpn
Numbers in the Population
Intelligence
The Jewish Intelligence Profile
Literacy, 1880-1910
Overrepresentation in Ivy League Universities
Anti-Semitism
Education
Earnings and Wealth
Socioeconomic Status
. Eminence
. The Academic Elite
. Nobel Prize winners
. Mathematicians
. Chess
. Bridge
. Pulitzer Prizes
. Music and Hollywood
. The Media
19.
Sport
20.Fertility and Infant Mortality
21.
Crime
272 THE CHOSEN PEOPLE
he first Jews to come to the United States in the 1660s settled in
Newport, Rhode Island, and in New York. They were Sephardim,
and by the 1770s, they numbered approximately 2,500 in the 13
colonies out of a population of approximately 3.75 million (Kosmin &
Lachman, 1993). Between 1830 and 1881,anumber of Ashkenazim from
Eastern Europe and Germany arrived, and by 1860, they numbered
about 275,000. From the 18th century, Jews had greater freedom in
the United States than anywhere else in the world, including the right
to engage in all trades, own property, and attend universities. Many
of them prospered; some became exceptionally wealthy, such as the
the Speyer and Seligman banking families. The third wave of Jewish
immigration began in 1881 from Russia and Poland, as Ashkenazi
Jews fled the pogroms. By 1924, approximately 2.5 million of these
had arrived. A further 150,000 or so came to the United States in the
1930s as refugees from Germany; approximately 100,000 Holocaust
survivors entered after the end of World War II.
1. Numbers in the Population
The numbers of Jews and their percentages in the population are
given in Table 19.1. Howard Sachar provides the figures for 1927 (1992,
p. 372). The 1957 figure is derived from a Census Bureau survey of
35,000 households that were asked their religion, of whom 3.2 percent
were Jewish. The figures for 1957 and 1980 are given by Paul Johnson
(2004) and for 1990 and 2002, by the American Jewish Yearbooks.
Table 19.1. Jews in the population of the United States
Year | Jewish Population | % of total
1780 2,500 0.0007
1927 4,228,000 3.55
1957 4,824,000 3.2
1970 5,420,000 2.7
1990 5,515,000 2.2
2002 5,700,000 2.0
United States 273
The 1924 Immigration Act severely restricted immigration;
between 1931 and 1941, only 580,207 immigrants entered the United
States. Remarkably, 161,262 of these were Jews. The number of Jews
in the U.S. increased during the 20th century, but their percentage of
the population declined during the period 1927—2000. The reasons for
this lie in the lower fertility of Jews than of the rest of the population
and the immigration of Hispanics, Asians, Caribbeans, and Africans.
(These figures are for what are called “core Jews,” i.e. those who
identify themselves as Jews.)
2. Intelligence
The first studies of Jewish intelligence in the United States were
published by Henry Herbert Goddard (1913, 1917) and were based on
Binet tests given to samples of immigrants at Ellis Island. In the 1917
paper, Goddard stated, “83% of the Jews, 80% of the Hungarians,
79% of the Italians, and 87% of the Russians were ‘feeble-minded”
(p. 424). This conclusion was based on small numbers of 35 Jews, 22
Hungarians, 50 Italians, and 45 Russians, who were said to be typical.
He did not, however, conclude that these low IQs were genetic, writing:
Assuming that they are morons, we have two practical questions:
first, is it a hereditary defect or, second, apparent defect due to
deprivation? If the latter, as seems likely, little fear may be felt for
the children. (p. 243)
In another early study, Carl Brigham (1923) reported on the IQs
of the military servicemen of different national origins in World War
I. Stephen Jay Gould (1996, pp. 195-8, 255-8) asserted that this
study reported that Jews have low IQs. This is incorrect, as noted
by J. Phillipe Rushton (1997). Brigham gave data for the mental
ages of a number of racial and national groups and reported these
as 13.3 years for native-born White draftees, 13.4 for foreign-born
English-speaking Nordics, 12.6 for non-English speaking Nordics,
11.7 for Alpines (Central Europeans), 11.5 for Mediterraneans and
Russians, and 10.7 for Blacks. Brigham asserted that 50 percent of
the Russians were Jews and suggested that the data did not support
the idea that Jews have a high IQ, but he did not give a breakdown
of the scores of Jewish and non-Jewish Russians because these were
274 THE CHOSEN PEOPLE
not available. Thus, the result does not tell us anything about the
intelligence of Jews.
Studies of the intelligence of Jews in the United States compared
with Gentile Whites from 1920 to 2008 are summarized in Table
19.2. (These studies have been obtained through a computerized
literature search using PsychINFO, PsychNet, ISI Web of Science,
and Web of Knowledge.) The Jews’ IQs are calculated in relation to
the Gentile White mean set at 100, with a standard deviation of 15.
Many of these studies compared Jews with Gentile Whites who were
tested at the same time, but others report Jewish means compared
with standardization test norms. In these studies, the Jewish means
are adjusted for the “Flynn effect” (the name given to the secular
increase of intelligence, which means that IQs need adjustment for
the year when the test was standardized). Wechsler IQs have been
increasing at about three points a decade, verbal IQs, at about two
points a decade, and nonverbal (performance) IQs, at about four
points a decade. Stanford-Binet IQs have been increasing at about
2.5 IQ points a decade (Flynn, 1984). Hence, Jewish IQs obtained
later than the standardization have been adjusted down to allow for this.
Row 1 gives the first of the post-World War I studies. The study
was carried out in New York City schools. Jews obtained an IQ one
point higher than native-born Whites, but 21 IQ points higher than
ethnic Italians, who were also included in the study. Row 2 gives
the IQs of native-born White and Russian Jewish primary school
children, in which Jews obtained an IQ one point higher than Whites
on a nonverbal test. However, in this study, the Jewish children
scored lower than the Whites on a language test. The explanation
for this is likely that many of the Jewish children spoke Yiddish as
their first language. The parents of the Jewish children were of lower
socioeconomic status; only 2.8 percent had fathers working in the
professions, compared with 18.1 percent of the Whites. This study also
reported results for a sample of 99 Romanian Jewish children, who
obtained a nonverbal IQ of 96.3, i.e. 4.7 points lower than Russian
Jewish children. Row 3 gives the Binet IQs of native-born White and
Jewish 5-7-year-olds. Both groups obtained the same average IQ.
Some of these Jewish children spoke Yiddish as their first language.
As the Binet test is largely verbal, the Jewish children would have been
handicapped.
Table 19.2. IQs of Jews in the United States
United States 275
Age | N Jews | N Gentiles | Test IQ |Reference
1| 9-15 500 500 Pressy 101 | Murdoch, 1920
2| 6-10 81 129 Trabue 101 | Jordan, 1921
: Pintner &
3| 5-7 79 367 Binet 100 Keller, 1922
10 100 200 Binet 109 | Bere, 1924
5 | 12-18 872 1,442 Army Alpha 99 | Feingold, 1924
6| 12 800 - NIT 102.5 si & Koldin,
7 6 47 60 Binet 106 | Graham, 1925
8| 9-13 702 1,030 PCPM 101.5 | Hirsch, 1926
9| 6-11 55 500 DAM 106 | Goodenough, 1926
10 | 8-13 445 8,130 NIT 99 | Rigg, 1928
11 | 7-8 174 811 Dearborn/Otis 100 | Easterbrooks, 1928
12| 13 378 - Terman Group 114 | Franzblau, 1934
13 | 10-15 91 - Pintner 103 Pininer &
Artensian, 1937
14 11 2,999 - NIT 101 eee
15 6 335 334 S. Binet 111 | Brown, 1944
16 - 2,453 - Binet/Otis/Pintner | 111 | Nardi, 1948
17| 14 246 160 Pintner 107 | Solomon, 1956
18| 4-5 2,083 - S. Binet 110 | Levinson, 1957a
19 5 1,451 - S. Binet 107 | Levinson, 1957b
20 | Adult 49 1,414 Vocabulary 117 | Miner, 1957
21 | Adult 64 - WAIS 116 | Levinson, 1958
22 5 117 - WISC 103 | Levinson, 1959
23 | 10-13 47 - WISC 106 | Levinson, 1960a
24| 16 65 2,171 Quick 110 | Bachman, 1970
25 | 12-18 720 - Otis 115 | Romanoff, 1976
26| 4-6 400 - S. Binet 111 a
27 6 324 - S. Binet 116 | Gross, 1986
28 | 14-23 98 9,426 AFQT 112.6 ee
276 THE CHOSEN PEOPLE
Age | N Jews | N Gentiles | Test IQ | Reference
29| 14 397 9,658 |Math 113 | Fejgin, 1995
30| 14 397 9,658 Reading 107 | Fejgin, 1995
31 | 18-70 150 5,300 Vocabulary 107.5 | Lynn, 2004
32 | 18-70 433 17,335 Vocabulary 109 Pr i
Row 4 gives the Binet IQs of Jewish, Italian, and Bohemian
children, in which Jews obtained an IQ nine points higher than the
Italians and Bohemians, who, one should keep in mind, were likely
not representative of the United States. Row 5 gives the IQs of native-
born White and first-generation Jewish high-school students, in which
Jews obtained an IQ one point lower than Whites on the verbal Army
Alpha test. Again, many of the first-generation Jewish children would
have spoken Yiddish as their first language and been handicapped
on the test. Row 6 gives the IQs for Jewish and Italian children of
foreign-born parents in New York for the National Intelligence Test,
which contains items of arithmetic, sentence completion, synonyms/
antonyms, “logical selection” (not defined), and digit symbol; it is
largely a verbal test of general intelligence. On the test norms, the
Jewish children obtained a mean IQ of 102.5 and the Italian children,
a mean IQ of 90.4. As both groups were recent immigrants and were
handicapped by an imperfect command of English, it is considered
that the best reading of the results is to take the 12 IQ point advantage
of the Jewish children as the best estimate of the Jewish IQ in relation
to European Gentiles.
Row 7 shows an IQ of 106 for Jewish children attending clinics
for problem children in Massachusetts, as compared with Italian
children. Row 8 gives results for 9-13-year-old native White American,
Polish Jewish, and Russian Jewish children who took the Pintner-
Cunningham Primary Mental Test. In relation to a White mean of 100,
75 Polish Jews obtained an IQ of 104.5 and 627 Russian Jews, an IQ of
101.2, giving a weighted average of 101.5.
Row 9 shows an IQ of 106 for Jewish children in California,
compared with European-American children. Row 10 gives an IQ of
98.7 for Jewish children on the National Intelligence Test. In this study
the Jewish children scored 3.1 points higher than Gentile Whites on an
United States 277
arithmetic test, but 2.5 points lower on a reading test, suggesting they
were handicapped in English. Row 11 gives an IQ of 100 for Jewish
children at schools near Boston. Row 12 gives an unusually high IQ of
114 for Jewish adolescents. Row 13 gives results for second-generation
Jewish children in New York public schools. This study gave IQs for
bilingual children brought up by parents whose first language was
Yiddish and monolingual children whose parents spoke English. The
bilingual children scored two IQ points lower than the monolinguals
on verbal IQ, but only 0.64 points lower on nonverbal IQ. The IQ for
the monolinguals is entered in the table, with a one-point deduction
for the Flynn Effect because the test was standardized approximately
three years before the study. Row 14 gives an IQ of 101 for another
sample of Jewish children in New York public schools. Row 15 gives
an IQ of 111 for second-generation Jewish and Scandinavian children
in Minneapolis public schools tested with the 1916 Stanford-Binet.
Jews scored one Binet IQ point higher than Scandinavians (108.3 vs.
107.3) and 1.5 IQ points higher on vocabulary. Row 16 gives results
for school students (ages not given) attending nine Hebrew schools
on the 1916 Stanford-Binet. Their mean IQ was 118.6. Adjusting for
the secular rise of intelligence at 2.5 IQ points a decade brings the
mean IQ down to 111. Row 17 gives an IQ of 107 for Jewish high-school
students who obtained an IQ seven points higher than a sample of
160 Gentiles attending the same school. Row 18 gives results for 4-5-
year-olds applying for New York Yeshiva schools who took the 1937
Stanford-Binet. Their mean IQ was 114.9. Adjusting for the secular
rise of IQ brings the mean IQ down to 110.
Row 19 gives an IQ of 107 for Jewish 5-year-olds in New York.
(This is a confusing paper with inconsistent data; the IQ entered is for
samples A and C.) Row 20 gives a vocabulary IQ of 117 for a sample of
Jewish adults. Row 21 gives an IQ of 116 for another sample of Jewish
adults. Row 22 gives an IQ of 103 for a sample of 5-year-olds applying
for New York Yeshiva schools. Row 23 gives an IQ of 106 for 11-13-
year-old Jewish children in New York schools. Row 24 gives an IQ
of 110 for a vocabulary test (the Quick Test) obtained by Jews in the
Youth in Transition study. Row 25 gives an IQ of 115 for a sample
of adults tested with the largely verbal Otis test. Row 26 gives an IQ
of 111 obtained by a sample of adults on the Stanford-Binet. Row 27
gives an IQ of 116 for 6-year-old Ashkenazi children entering Jewish
278 THE CHOSEN PEOPLE
parochial schools. This study also reported an IQ of 104 for Sephardic
children, confirming other studies showing that the Ashkenazim have
a higher IQ than the Sephardim. Row 28 gives an IQ of 112.6 for Jews
put forth by Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray (1994) in The
Bell Curve, a figure derived from the National Longitudinal Study
of Youth. The test was the Armed Forces Qualification Test (AFQT),
which consists of subtests of word knowledge, verbal comprehension,
arithmetical reasoning, and mathematics. This figure is in relation
to 100 for Whites, not for the whole American population including
Blacks and Hispanics, in comparison with whom, the Jewish IQ is 115.
Rows 29 and 30 give means of 113 for mathematics and 107 for
reading from the NELS national sample of eighth graders, aged
approximately 14 and tested in 1988. These results are treated here
as IQs. Row 31 gives an IQ of 107.5 for Jewish adults given a 10-word
vocabulary synonyms test in which a word is presented and the
task is to identify the synonym from five alternatives. Vocabulary
is a good measure of general intelligence. The test was given in the
General Social Surveys of representative samples from continental
United States (i.e. excluding Alaska and Hawaii); results presented
were for the years 1990-96. The IQ is a little lower than in the other
recent studies, possibly because the test is short and thus has reduced
reliability. Row 32 gives an IQ of 109 for Jewish adults calculated
from a more extensive analysis of the 10-word vocabulary test in the
General Social Surveys spanning the years 1972 through 2004.
It can be seen from inspection of the table that the IQs obtained
by Jews have tended to increase during the course of the 20th century
and into the early 21st. In the first 14 studies published between the
years 1920-1937, Jewish children obtained a median IQ of 101.5. In
the next nine studies published between 1944 and 1960, Jews obtained
a median IQ of 107. In the last nine studies published between 1970
and 2008, Jews obtained a median IQ of 111. The correlation between
the year of publication and IQ is 0.59 and is statistically significant
at p<0.01, showing that Jewish IQs have increased significantly
over this period. It appears that in the earlier studies, Jews were
handicapped, probably largely because many of them were relatively
recent immigrants who were impoverished, had poor nutrition and
health, and spoke Yiddish as their first language. Apparently, in the
1950s, some of them were still handicapped by speaking Yiddish;
United States 279
Boris Levinson (1959) reported that Jewish children who spoke only
English obtained an IQ six points higher than those who were bilingual
in English and Yiddish.
In addition to these general population studies, there have been
four studies of Jewish college students compared to Gentiles at the
same college. These are shown in Table 19.3, in which the Jewish IQs
are given in relation to White Gentile college students’ mean of 100
(Sds 15). In the first of these, Irma Cohen (1927) published a study of
the intelligence of native-born Jews and White Gentiles at Ohio State
University. Comparing 193 freshmen from each group, she found that
Jews had an average IQ 4.7 points higher than Gentiles; she also noted
that Jews were three percent of the population of the state but seven
percent of the student body. The two next studies also found Jewish
students obtained higher average IQs than White Gentiles. However,
the last study by A.M. Shuey (1942) for native-born Jews and Gentiles
at Washington Square College in New York showed virtually no
difference. She also presented data that included foreign-born subjects
with approximately the same negligible difference. Possibly, the more
intelligent Jews in New York secured admission to more prestigious
colleges.
Table 19.3. IQs of Jewish college students in the United States
College N Jews | N Gentiles Test IQ |Reference
Ohio State 193 193 OSUPE 104.7 |Cohen, 1927
Columbia 82 65 Thorndike | 113.7 | Garrett, 1929
Pittsburgh 158 158 ACPE 102.7 | Held, 1941
Washington Sq 1171 538 ACPE 100.8 | Shuey, 1942
OSUPE: Ohio State University Psychological Examination;
ACPE: American Council Psychological Examination
All these studies, which consistently show that Jews have
higher average IQs than European Gentiles, are corroborated
by further evidence that Jews are underrepresented among the
mentally retarded and overrepresented among the gifted. In a
study of military servicemen in World War I, Pearce Bailey (1922)
reported that 17.2 percent of the Jews were “mentally retarded,”
compared with 29.2 percent of the whole of the draft, suggesting
280 THE CHOSEN PEOPLE
that Jews had above-average IQs with fewer at the lower end of the
distribution. (Obviously, Bailey used a much broader definition of
“mental retardation” than that which is currently accepted. Today,
two per cent of the population is considered mentally retarded,
defined as having an IQ below 70.)
Similar results were reported in a 1931-1932 study of the
intelligence and educational progress of various racial and ethnic
groups in New York City schools by Julius Maller (1933). He
reported that Jews had the lowest percentage of slow educational
progress at 25.7 percent, compared with 29 percent for the whole
of the city. As for the gifted, in 1921, Lewis Terman collected data
on 1,528 children (on average, 11 years old) with IQs above 140. He
reported that 10.6 percent of them were Jewish, about twice the
proportion for Gentiles in the cities from which the samples were
recruited (Terman, 1925, p. 56). In another early study, Bertha
Luckey (1925) reported that in a sample of 3,779 children, 11.9
percent of Jews had IQs above 120, compared with 9.8 percent of
native-born Whites. In a later study, Paul Sheldon (1954) identified
all the children in the New York City public school system with IQs
of 170 or higher. He found there were 28; 24 of them were Jews.
3. The Jewish Intelligence Profile
Jews have higher verbal than visualization-spatial IQs. Seven
studies where these two abilities have been measured are summarized
in Table 19.4. The first four are based on general population samples.
The fifth is based on Yeshiva college students, who had a WAIS verbal
IQ of 123 and a performance IQ of 101. The sixth is based on a sample
of 216 older Jews (average age of 69) who attended Department of
Welfare day centers in New York City and whose WAIS verbal IQ was
99.3 and performance IQ was 91.5. This study is not given in Table
19.2 because most of the 192 subjects were foreign born and were
“not claimed as representative” (Levinson, 1962, p. 57).
The last study in Table 19.4 by Gerald Lesser, Gordon Fifer, and
Donald Clark (1965) requires some explanation. The study tested the
abilities of Jewish, Chinese, Black, and Puerto Rican 6-7-year-olds
in New York, with 80 children in each group. The absence of a White
group makes it difficult to make the usual comparison of the Jewish
United States 281
IQ with the White “Greenwich standard.” However, the scores of the
Black sample can be used as an alternative. It has long been known
that Blacks in the northern states have a higher average IQ than
those elsewhere; Alan Kaufman and Jerome Doppelt (1976) report
an average IQ of 93 for Blacks in the northeastern region. Adopting
this figure, the Jewish sample in this study obtained a higher verbal
IQ than the Black group by 16.5 points, giving them a verbal IQ of
109.5 in relation to a White IQ of 100; a higher numerical IQ by 13.5
points, and therefore a numerical IQ of 106.5 in relation to the White
mean; a higher nonverbal reasoning IQ of 9.5 points, and therefore a
nonverbal reasoning IQ of 102.5 in relation to Whites; and a higher
spatial IQ by 8.2 points, and therefore a spatial IQ of 101.2 in relation
to Whites.
Table 19.4. Verbal and visualization-spatial IQs of Jews in
the United States
Age | Test | Verbal | Visual-spatial | Diff |Reference
Adult |WAIS 125 105 20 | Levinson, 1958
5 WISC 106 103 3 | Levinson, 1959
10-13 | WISC 115 94 21 | Levinson, 1960a
5 WISC | 103.5 100.4 3 | Levinson, 1960b
20 |WAIS 123 101 22 | Levinson, 1960b
69 |WAIS 99.3 91.5 8 | Levinson, 1962
6-7 |- 109.5 101.2 7 |Lesser etal., 1965
Mean |- 111.6 99.5 12 |-
It will be seen that in all the studies summarized in Table 19.4,
Jews had higher verbal than visualization-spatial IQs. The average
disparity is 12 IQ points. It appears from these studies that the high
Jewish intelligence is verbal and their visualization-spatial intelligence
is about the same as that of Gentile Europeans.
A further study finding the same Jewish ability profile is
Margaret Backman’s (1972) analysis of the data in Project Talent,
a nationwide American survey of the abilities of 17-year-olds
carried outin 1960. The study was based on 1,236 Jewish and 1,051
non-Jewish Whites, in addition to 488 Blacks and 150 Orientals.
282 THE CHOSEN PEOPLE
IQs were calculated for six abilities. The mean IQs of the Jews
in relation to the non-Jewish White mean of 100 and standard
deviations of 15 were as follows: verbal knowledge (described as
“a general factor, but primarily a measure of general information”
and identifiable with Carroll’s (1993) verbal comprehension
factor): 107.8; English language: 99.5; mathematics: 111.0; visual
reasoning (a measure of reasoning with visual forms): 91.3;
perceptual speed and accuracy: 102.2; memory (short-term recall
of verbal symbols): 95.1. These are consistent with the other
reports that Jews perform well on tests of verbal ability (though
not always ofthe English language) and mathematics but less well
on visual and spatial tests. Nevertheless, the IQ of 91.3 for visual
reasoning is remarkably low. These differences were calculated
on Jews and Gentiles matched for socioeconomic status. Because
Jews have a higher average socioeconomic status than Gentiles,
the reported differences are not an accurate measure of the true
differences, and there is no way of estimating the Jewish IQ from
this study.
4. Literacy, 1889-1910
The percentages of Jews, Whites, and Blacks that were literate,
obtained in the censuses of 1880, 1900 and 1910, are given by
Darity, Dietrich, and Guilkey (1997) and are shown in Table 19.5.
Table 19.5. Racial and ethnic differences in literacy
1880-1910 (percentages)
Group | 1880 | 1900 | 1910
Whites 95 99 99
Jews 83 79 79
During this period, Whites were nearly all literate. (These
figures are for the ethnic English; non-English speaking Whites
were counted as illiterate if they could not read English, and this
applied to 14-20 percent of them in the given period.) But in 1880,
only 83 percent of Jews were literate. This is because 17 percent
of them still spoke Yiddish or German and were not counted as
United States 283
literate in English. The percentage of literate Jews fell to 79 in the
1900 and 1910 censuses due to the immigration of large numbers
of Jews from Russia, among whom a significant number continued
to speak Yiddish and was illiterate in English.
5. Overrepresentation in Ivy League Universities
As early as the 1910s, people began to comment on the high
intelligence and educational attainment of Jewish children. An
Industrial Commission Report of this period noted, “In the lower
schools the Jewish children are the delight of their teachers for
cleverness at their books, obedience and general good conduct”
(Steinberg, 1974, p. 9). By 1910, Jews began to outperform Gentiles
in the entrance tests for universities, which were first constructed
by the College Entrance Examination Board in 1899.
Some figures for the percentages of Jews in the Ivy League
colleges are shown in Table 19.6.
Table 19.6. Percentages of Jews at Ivy League colleges and
other universities
Year |College % Jews
1908 |All Ivy League 7:
1909 |Harvard 6
1919 | Harvard 20
1919 | Yale 13
1919 | Brown 20
1919 | Pennsylvania 25
1919 | Columbia 40
1920 | NY City College 90
1920 | Hunter College 90
1952 ‘| Harvard 24
1957 | Ivy League 23
1957 | Seven Sisters 16
Rows 1 and 2 show that in 1908 and 1909, the percentages of
Jews in all the colleges and at Harvard were seven and six percent,
284 THE CHOSEN PEOPLE
respectively. Rows 3 through 7 show that by 1919, thishad increased
to 20 percent ofthe students at Harvard and about the same figure
at Yale, Brown, and Pennsylvania; at Columbia, 40 percent of the
students were Jewish (Slezkine, 2004). Rows 8 and 9 show that in
1920, 90 percent of the students in the two colleges in New York
(City College and Hunter College) were Jewish. Rows 10, 11 and 12
show that in the 1950s, Jews were slightly more overrepresented
at Ivy League colleges than in 1919. For instance, Jews were 20
percent of students at Harvard in 1919; this rose to 24 percent in
1952. In 1957, Jews were 23 percent of students at all Ivy League
universities, a little higher than in 1919 (except in the case of
Columbia). The Ivy League universities were for men only at this
time, but there were the “seven sister” elite colleges for women
(Radcliffe, Smith, Bennington, Vassar, etc.) and in 1957, 16 percent
of the students at these were Jewish (Moynihan & Glazer, 1970).
The large numbers of Jews who were gaining admission to
the Ivy League colleges alarmed the WASPs who made up most of
the administration and faculty. They devised ways to restrict the
numbers of Jews, which have been described by Steven Farron
(2005). To keep the numbers of Jews down, the Ivy League
colleges introduced selection procedures using “character” tests for
“manliness, uprightness, cleanliness and native refinement” and
by regional quotas to combat what became known as “the Jewish
invasion.” Regional quotas limited the number of Jews, who lived
mainly in New York. Columbia University had a particularly large
Jewish intake as it is situated in Manhattan. In 1919, it introduced
a new application form that asked applicants about extracurricular
activities, required essays and letters of recommendation, the
purpose of which was to legitimize taking Gentile applicants with
lower examination marks than Jews. In 1922, Harvard tried a
different strategy of limiting the intake of Jews to 15 percent. The
problem here was that Jews did not always admit to being Jewish
and anglicized their names to conceal their ethnic identity. To
overcome this problem, Harvard’s application form asked, “What
change, if any, has been made since birth in your name or that
of your father?” Harvard, Yale, and Princeton also introduced
selection procedures that favored applicants who were the children
of alumni (Karabel, 1984).
United States 285
These strategies kept the numbers of Jewish students down to
more or less acceptable limits, except at Columbia, New York City
College, and Hunter College.
6. Anti-Semitism
The restriction on the numbers of Jews admitted to universities
was one expression of the anti-Semitism that was widespread in the
United States at this time. It developed following the immigration of
large numbers of Jews from Russia from 1881 onward. Anti-Semitism
was probably a significant factor in the 1924 Immigration Act, which
fixed quotas for the numbers of immigrants from different countries
in order to restrict the entry of Jews from Eastern Europe. According
to Daniel Moynihan and Nathan Glazer, these sentiments persisted
into the 1930s, when “anti-Semitism was becoming a major issue in
American life.... Jews were excluded from social clubs, preparatory
schools, better neighborhoods, the organized institutions of high
society, and the occupations associated with high status.” After World
War II, discrimination declined and “in New York City only social
and golf clubs and high society remained rigorously closed to Jews”
(Moynihan & Glazer, 1970, pp. 156,160).
Although Jews comprised about 20 percent of the students at Ivy
League and other major universities in the 1920s and 1930s, they
were only rarely appointed to the teaching faculty. It was not until
1946 that the first Jew was appointed to the faculty at Yale. With the
decline of anti-Semitism after 1945, Jews began to be appointed more
frequently, and by 1970 they were 22 percent of the faculty at Yale
(Hollinger, 2002, p. 149). By 1998, the presidents of Harvard, Yale,
and Princeton were all Jewish.
7. Education
In the second half of the 20th century, Jews had more education
than White Gentiles. Statistics showing this from 1957 through 1990
are given in Table 19.7. In 1957, a survey by the Bureau of the Census
of the years of education of different religious groups aged 25 and
over found that Jews had an average of 12.3 years of education as
compared with 10.7 for Protestant Whites, 10.4 for Catholics, and
286 THE CHOSEN PEOPLE
10.6 for the total White population (Chiswick, 1985). In the same
year, Jews also had a higher percentage ofthose aged 25 and over who
had obtained college degrees at 19.6 compared with 9.4 (Goldstein,
1971). The greater education of Jews was found again in the censuses
of 1980 and 1990, when higher percentages of Jews than Whites had
completed high school and had been awarded high-school diplomas
(Darity, Dietrich & Guilkey, 1997). In the 1990 census, the percentage
of Jews with college degrees again was more than twice that of
American Whites.
Table 19.7. Years of education and percentages of Jews
and Gentiles with High School Diplomas and College
Degrees
Years College HS HS College
Group | Education Degree Diploma | Diploma | Degree
1957 1957 1980 1990 1990
Jews 12.3 19.6 92 97 47
Whites 10.6 9.4 79 91 21
8. Earnings and Wealth
Average annual earnings (in thousands of U.S. dollars) for
Jewish and White Gentile men for 1957 through 1990 are given in
Table 19.8. Column 1 gives the median annual earnings for 1957 of
men aged 14-64 obtained in the 1957 Bureau of the Census study
(Chiswick, 1985). Column 2 gives the average annual earnings, for
1970, of men aged 25-64 obtained in that year’s census (Chiswick,
1985). The figure for Jews is for native-born men of foreign
parentage who reported Yiddish, Hebrew, or Latino as their mother
tongue (defined as the language spoken in the home as a child).
The figure for White Gentiles is also for native-born men of foreign
parentage. The mean earnings of Whites with native-born parents
were a little lower at $9,441. Similar data from the General Social
Surveys are given by Wade Clark Roof (1979).
Column 3 shows the average annual earnings (thousands of
U.S. dollars) for native-born men aged 25-54 given in the Bureau
United States 287
of the Census’s Public Use Microdata, a one-percent sample from
the 1980 census. The figure of those who identified themselves as
ethnic Russians are presented for Jews, because virtually all of
them were Jewish. Column 4 gives the median annual household
earnings (thousands of U.S. dollars) for 1990 found in the National
Survey of Religious Identification (Kosmin and Lachman, 1993, p.
260). The figures for the Gentiles are for Whites from the major
religious denominations. Inclusion of Blacks would lower these by
$1-2,000. In all four years, Jews had higher average earnings than
White Gentiles; the magnitude of this advantage remained about
the same, at approximately 130 percent of the average earnings of
White Gentiles.
Table 19.8. Incomes ($ 1000) of Jewish and White Gentile men
Group 1957 1970 1980 1990
Jews 4,900 | 16,176 | 32,400 | 36,700
Gentile Whites 3,608 | 10,431 | 23,400 | 28,080
By the 1990s, Jews were hugely overrepresented among the very
wealthly. Steve Silbiger (2000) has reported that Jews comprised
more than a quarter of the people on the Forbes Magazine list of the
richest 400 Americans, 45 percent of the top-40 richest Americans,
and a third of all American multimillionaires. These figures have been
confirmed for 2009 by Jacob Berkman (2009), who estimates that 130
of the Forbes Magazine richest four hundred Americans were Jewish
(32 percent).
9. Socioeconomic Status
The socioeconomic status of Jewish and White Gentiles
calculated from census data from 1880 to 1990 has been provided
by William Darity, Jason Dietrich and David Guilkey (1997).
Socioeconomic status was calculated by the Duncan Socioeconomic
Index, which gives a score to each occupation (e.g. physicians:
100, laborers: 1, etc.). These scores were then averaged to give a
mean for Jews and for the English and Scots-Irish as White Gentile
comparison groups. The results are given in Table 19.9. It will be
288 THE CHosEn PEOPLE
seen that in 1880, the Jews scored higher than the English and
the Scots-Irish. At this time the Jews were predominantly German
Ashkenazim who were established in the United States. In 1900
and again in 1910, the Jews scored a little lower than English
and the Scots-Irish. This reflects the large influx of impoverished
Jewish immigrants from Russia between 1881 and 1914, many of
whom worked in low socioeconomic-status occupations such as
the garment industry. By 1980 and 1990, the Jews had established
themselves in the United States and were well ahead of the English
and the Scots-Irish.
Table 19.9. Socioeconomic status of Jewish and White
Gentiles, 1880-1990
Group 1880 | 1900 | 1910 | 1980 | 1990
Jews 27.41 | 26.93 | 29.10 | 59.65 | 60.97
English 24.38 | 28.14 | 30.39 | 45.17 | 47.61
Scots-Irish 22.57 | 27.62 | 31.64 | 46.09 | 46.73
Barry Kosmin and Seymour Lachman (1993) determined
the numbers and percentages of Jews who were considered
“upper class” by the American Institute of Public Opinion in a
survey carried out in 1945. They also enumerated the Jews in
the U.S. Senate from 1989 to 1991 and Justices in the Supreme
Court from 1900 to 1990. They comment that there is “a marked
overrepresentation (given their numbers in the population) of
Jews” (p. 253). Their results are given in Table 19.10.
Table 19.10. Percentages of Jews in high status groups
Group Year % Jews | AQ
Upper Class 1945 22 7.3
U.S. Senate | 1989-1991 8 3.6
Judges 1900-1990 9 3.0
The percentage of Jews in the United States was approximately
three percent for the 20th century and 2.2 percent for 1990.
United States 289
Adopting these figures gives Jewish Achievement Quotients
of 7.3, 3.6, and 3.0 for these three elite positions in American
society. The occupational distribution of Jews as compared with
the general population for the years 1954 through 2000 is shown
for men in Table 19.11.
Table 19.11. Occupations of Jewish and White men in 1945
through 2000 (percentages)
1945 1957 1990 2000
Occupation |Jews | Pop. | Jews | Whites | Jews |Whites | Jews | Whites
Professional 14.4 | 10.5 | 20.3 9.9 42.3 19.0 | 53.0 19.7
Managerial 21.7 8.5 | 35.1 13.3 16.5 13.1 14.8 15.1
Sales - - 14.1 5.4 18.3 11.4 18.5 10.4
Clerical - - 8.0 6.9 7.9 7.1 3.1 6.0
Service 4.3 | 112 2.3 6.1 5.4 8.8 3.8 9.1
Farm laborers - - 0.1 2.5 0.0 1.3 0.2 0.9
Construction - - - - 4.8 16.6 2.8 18.7
Transportation - - - - 1.7 13.3 2.1 9.0
Production - - - - 2.8 9.3 1.7 11.0
The figures for 1945 are derived from an Office of Public
Opinion Research survey of 12,000 respondents and show that the
percentages of Jews in professional and managerial occupations
were higher than those in the general population, while the
percentage in service occupations were lower (Information Service,
1948). The figures for 1957, 1990, and 2000, compiled by Sidney
Goldstein (1971) and Barry Chiswick (1985, 2005), compare Jews
with White 25-64-year-olds. The data are taken from the Bureau of
the Census surveys.
The most salient feature of the results is the overrepresentation
of Jews in the professions in all these years and the increase of
this overrepresentation from 1945 to 1957, from 1957 to 1990, and
again from 1990 to 2000. In 1945, 14.4 percent of Jewish men were
in professional occupations compared with 10.5 percent of the
general population. By 1957, 20.3 percent of Jewish men were in
professional occupations compared with 9.9 percent of Whites (the
290 THE CHOSEN PEOPLE
definition of professional occupations may have changed in this
year compared with that in the 1945 survey). In 1970, 27 percent of
Jewish men were in professional occupations compared with 15.0
percent of Whites. In 1990, 42.3 percent of Jewish men were in
professional occupations, compared with 19.0 percent of Whites.
In 2000, the percentage of Jews in professional occupations had
increased to 53.0 percent, while the percentage of Whites had
barely increased at all (from 19.0 to 19.7 percent). Jews were also
overrepresented in managerial positions in 1957, 1970, and 1990,
though not in 2000. Evidently, Jews, who in the earlier years were
managers, became professionals in the later years. Further, Jews
continued to improve their socioeconomic position inthelast decade
of the 20th century. Jews are also conspicuously underrepresented
in the last four blue-collar occupations in the table (farm laborers,
construction, transportation, and production; farm owner and
managers are classified as “managerial”).
The occupational distribution of Jewish women given by
Goldstein (1971) and Chiswick (1985, 2007) for the years 1957 to
2000 is shown in Table 19.12.
Table 19.12. Occupations of Jewish and White women in
1957 through 2000 (percentages)
1957 1990 2000
Occupation Jews | Whites | Jews | Whites | Jews | Whites
Professional 15.5 12.2 41.8 23.4 51.4 28.5
Managerial 8.9 5.5 14.0 10.2 15.9 11.0
Sales 14.4 6.9 9.8 12.1 12.9 11.1
Clerical 43.9 30.3 24.7 15.4 12.1 25.1
Service 5.1 22.7 5.9 8.8 4.7 15.4
Farm laborers 0.0 3.0 0.0 0.4 0.0 0.3
Construction - - 1.9 2.3 1.7 0.8
Transportation - - 0.8 2.1 0.6 2.3
Production - - 1.0 6.6 0.3 5.8
In all the years, Jewish women were overrepresented in
the professions and management, and this overrepresentation
United States 291
increased throughout the period. In 1957, 15.5 percent of Jewish
women were in professional occupations, compared with 12.2
percent of Whites. In 1990, 41.8 percent of Jewish women were
in professional occupations, compared with 23.4 percent of
Whites. In 2000, the percentage of Jewish women in professional
occupations had increased to 51.4 percent, while the percentage
of Whites had only increased from 23.7 to 28.5 percent. Thus,
Jewish women, like Jewish men, were continuing to improve
their socioeconomic position up to the last decade of the 20th
century. Jewish women, like Jewish men, are also conspicuously
underrepresented in the last four blue-collar occupations in the
table (farming, construction, transportation, and production).
A breakdown of the professions in which Jews are overrepresented
has also been presented by Chiswick (2007). His figures for men are
given in Table 19.13. We see here that Jews are between 2.1 and 5.3
times overrepresented in the major professions of medicine (including
dentistry), law, and academics. They are only about two times
overrepresented in the minor professions aggregated as “Other.”
Table 19.13. Professional occupations of Jewish and White
men in 1990 and 2000 (percentages)
Profession 1990 2000
Jews | Whites | AQ | Jews | Whites | AQ
Medicine 3.4 1.0 3.4 4.8 0.9 5.3
Law 2.9 1.1 2.6 5.3 1.1 4.8
University 37 0.8 4.6 1.9 0.9 2.1
Other 32.4 16.1 2.0 41.0 16.8 2.4
Table 19.14 givesthesame breakdown for women and shows similar
differences, except that Jewish women were slightly underrepresented
among university faculties in 2000.
292 THE CHOSEN PEOPLE
Table 19.14. Professional occupations of Jewish and White
women in 1990 and 2000 (percentages)
Profession 1990 2000
Jews | Whites | AQ| Jews | Whites | AQ
Medicine 0.4 0.2 2.0 2.1 0.4 5.2
Law 2.3 0.6 3.8 3.3 0.5 6.6
University 2.3 0.6 3.8 0.8 0.9 0.8
Other 36.8 22.4 1.6 | 45.1 26.7 1.7
10. Eminence
The first study of the proportion of Jews to achieve eminence in
the United States was made by Nathaniel Weyl (1966). He used seven
reference books as sources of eminence (e.g. Who’s Who in America,
American Men and Women of Science, Who’s Who in Finance and
Industry, etc.), and he counted the numbers in these with identifiable
ethnic and racial names. (For instance, Cole and Spence are the
commonest English names; Schmid and Wagner are the commonest
German names; and Cohen and Rosenberg are the commonest Jewish
names.) Next, he expressed the frequency of ethnic and racial names
in the reference books as a ratio of their frequency in the general
population taken from Social Security rolls. The ratios for Jews and
White Gentiles were finally multiplied by 100 to give an “occupational
performance coefficient.” Thus, a performance coefficient of 100 is
the average for the total population and also the average for White
Gentiles, who formed the great majority ofthe population at this time.
He found that Jews had a performance coefficient of 448 (i.e. Jews
were overrepresented by a factor of 4.48).
A similar study was made by Stanley Lieberson and Donna
Carter (1979) for the years 1924-1925, 1944-1945, and 1974-1975;
Monica McDermot (2002) has updated their analysis for the years
1994-1995. They took Who’s Who in America as their source for
eminence and followed Weyl in categorizing those listed into ethnic
groups on the basis of their names. Thus, the names Bell, Bennet,
etc. were classified as English; Amato, Basso, etc. as Italian; Carlson,
Dahl, etc., as Scandinavian; and Abraham, Abrams, etc. as Jewish.
United States 293
The frequencies of the names in the general population were taken
from Social Security records. The rates of inclusion of the names in
Who’s Who in America were then calculated as rates per 10,000 of
the names in the general population. The results for Jews and for the
total population are shown in Table 19.15. We see that in the years
1924-1925 the Jewish index of 1.59 was significantly lower than the
2.27 for the total population. In 1944-1945, the Jewish index of 1.79
was still significantly lower than the 2.48 for the total population.
However, by 1974-1975, their index was more than twice as high
(8.39) as the 3.42 for the total population. By 1994-1995, it (16.62)
was more than four times higher than that of the total population. The
increasingly high Jewish indices reflect the two or three generations it
took for impoverished immigrants from Eastern Europe in the period
1880-1924 to establish themselves in the United States and get the
college education that is generally required to achieve the degree of
eminence for inclusion in Who’s Who in America.
Table 19.15. Rates of inclusion in Who’s Who in America
(per 10,000 population)
Group | 1924-1925 1944-1945 1974-1975 1994-1995
Jews 1.59 1.97 8.39 16.62
Total 2.27 2.48 3.42 3.55
In a further study of Jews and eminence, Charles Murray (2003,
p. 280) calculated the numbers of Jewish and Gentile “significant
figures” (i.e. great names in science and the arts) in the United States
whose careers fell in the years 1870-1950. He found 48 Jews and 261
Gentiles. Calculating the ratio of Jewish to Gentile “significant figures,”
he arrived at an Achievement Quotient (Jewish overrepresentation) of
5.1. This is about the same as the Jewish Achievement Quotients in the
professions shown in Tables 19.13 and 19.14.
Jews have also become highly overrepresented among the
business elite. In 1982, Forbes magazine reported a survey that
listed the 40 richest individuals in the United States. Forty percent
of these were Jews.
Jews are not equally overrepresented in all occupations, however.
Wey] (1966) has analyzed Jewish Achievement Quotients for a number
294 THE CHOSEN PEOPLE
ofoccupations for around the year 1960. His results are shown in Table
19.16. Jews have high Achievement Quotients ranging between 3.3
and 5.8 for psychiatrists, dentists, mathematicians, doctors, writers,
and lawyers. Achievement Quotients are substantially lower, ranging
between 0.5 and 1.7, for architects, engineers, artists, and military
officers. The most likely explanation for these differences is that the
professions for which Jews have higher Achievement Quotients require
strong verbal and mathematical abilities, which Jews possess, while the
professions for which Jews have lower Achievement Quotients require
strong visualization and spatial abilities (architecture, engineering,
painting), with which Jews are less often endowed (see Table 19.3).
The lowest Jewish Achievement Quotients is for the military, among
whose ranks, Jews are underrepresented. One explanation for this
is that Jews may sense (rightly or wrongly) that there could be an
element of anti-Semitism in the military and that this would hinder
their advancement.
Table 19.16. Jewish Achievement Quotients for different
professions, 1960
Occupation AQ |Occupation |AQ
Psychiatrists 5.8 | Lawyers 3.3
Dentists 4.0 | Architects 1.7
Mathematicians 3.8 | Engineers 1.1
Doctors 3.7 | Artists 1.4
Writers 3.4 | Military 0.5
11. The Academic Elite
In 1969, a survey was carried out of the number of Jews among
60,000 American academics. Harriet Zuckerman (1977) analyzed
the results and calculated that Jews were approximately three
times overrepresented among university faculty, and seven times
overrepresented among university faculty in elite colleges. His
figures for the percentages of Jews in the faculties of the 17 most
prestigious universities are shown in Table 19.17. Achievement
Quotients are calculated on the basis of Jews being 2.7 percent of
United States 295
the population at this time. Jews were massively overrepresented
in all areas.
Table 19.17. Jews in elite university faculties in 1969
(percentages)
Faculty % Jews| AQ
Law 36 13.3
Sociology 34 12.6
Economics 28 10.4
Physics 26 9.6
Political Science 24 8.9
History 22 8.1
Philosophy 20 7.4
Mathematics 20 7.4
A similar study of top American intellectuals in 1970 has been
published by Charles Kadushin (1974). The results are summarized in
Table 19.18. Row 1 shows that Jews were 50 percent of top American
intellectuals identified as those who published in the top twenty
intellectual journals. Rows 2 and 3 show that Jews were 56 percent of
top social scientists and 61 percent of those in the humanities.
Table 19.18. Jews in the academic elite in 1970
Group % Jews | AQ
Intellectuals 50 18.5
Social scientists 56 20.7
Humanities 61 22.6
12. Nobel Prize winners
It will come as no surprise to learn that Jews are overrepresented
among American Nobel Prize winners. A list of all United States Nobel
Prize winnersis given in Table 19.19; Jews are denoted by asterisks. The
list includes those born in the United States, and therefore excludes a
296 THE CHOSEN PEOPLE
number of those, like Einstein, who emigrated and made their homes
in America later in life. Of the 200 American Nobel Prize winners,
62 have been Jewish (31 percent). Jews were about three percent of
the population during the 20th century, giving them an Achievement
Quotient of 10. Jews were much less prominent in the first half of the
20th century, when they were only two out of 19 Prize winners (10.5
percent) than in the second half and up to 2008, when they were 60
out of the 181 Prize winners (33 percent). During this latter period,
Jews, who have been about 2.2 percent of the population, had a Nobel
Prize Achievement Quotient of 15.
This greater representation of Jews among Nobel Prize winners
in the second half of the 20th century is consistent with other results
such as the increasing overrepresentation of Jews in the higher
socioeconomic status occupations (see Table 19.9). This trend is
not surprising, since most of the Jews arrived penniless during
the years 1881-1924 and made a living in skilled manual work
like tailoring. It took a generation for them to learn English and
establish themselves to the extent that they could give their children
the education necessary to do work meriting a Nobel Prize. These
prizes are normally awarded to those in later middle age for work
done a number of years previously that is widely accepted as being
important. Thus, an immigrant arriving in, say, 1890 might have a
child born in 1900 who would be accepted at a good university in
1918. He (or, more rarely, she) might do brilliant work in the 1930s
and 1940s and be award a Nobel Prize in recognition of this in the
1950s and 1960s. Thus, the much greater number and percentage of
Jewish Nobel Prize winners in the second half of the 20th century
than in the first half is to be expected.
United States 297
Table 19.19. Nobel Prize winners (Jews are asterisked)
Year |Name Subject Year |Name Subject
1914 | Theodore Richards | Chemistry 1985 |Michael Brown* | Medicine
1930 | Sinclair Lewis Literature 1985 | Joseph Goldstein* | Medicine
1932 | Irving Langmuir Chemistry || 1986 | Herschbach Chemistry
1936 | Carl D. Anderson Physics 1986 |James Buchanan | Economics
1937 | Clinton Davisson Physics 1986 | Stanley Cohen* Medicine
1938 | Pearl Buck Literature 1987 | Donald J. Cram Chemistry
1939 | Ernest Lawrence Physics 1987 | Robert M. Solow* | Economics
1943 | Edward A. Doisy Medicine 1987 |Gertrude Elion* | Medicine
1944 | Joseph Erlanger* Medicine 1988 | George Hutchings | Medicine
1944 | Herbert S. Gasser Medicine 1988 |Leon Lederman* | Physics
1946 | John H. Northrop |Chemistry || 1988 | Melvin Schwartz* | Physics
1946 | Wendell M. Stanley |Chemistry || 1989 |Thomas R. Cech | Chemistry
1946 | James B. Sumner Chemistry || 1989 |J. Michael Bishop | Medicine
1946 | Hermann Muller* | Medicine 1989 | Harold Varnus* | Medicine
1946 | Percy Bridgman Physics 1989 |Norman Ramsey | Physics
1949 | William F. Giauque | Chemistry || 1990 | Elias Corey Chemistry
1949 | William Faulkner Literature 1990 |Markowitz* Economics
1950 | Philip S. Hench Medicine 1990 |Merton Miller* Economics
1950 | Edward C. Kendall | Medicine 1990 | William F. Sharpe | Economics
1951 | Edwin McMillan Chemistry || 1990 | Joseph E. Murray | Medicine
1951 | Glenn T. Seaborg Chemistry || 1990 |E. Donnall Thomas | Medicine
1952 |E. M. Purcell Physics 1990 _ | Jerome Friedman* | Physics
1954 | Linus Pauling Chemistry || 1990 | Harry Kendall Physics
1954 | Ernest Hemingway | Literature 1992 | Gary S. Becker* Economics
1954 | John F. Enders Medicine 1992 | Edwin G. Krebs Medicine
1954 | Frederick Robbins | Medicine 1993 | Kary B. Mullis Chemistry
1954 | Thomas H. Weller | Medicine 1993 |Robert W. Fogel | Economics
1955 | Vincent du Vigneaud | Chemistry 1993 | Douglass North Economics
1955 | Willis E. Lamb Physics 1993 |Toni Morrison Literature
1956 | Dickinson Richards | Medicine 1993 | Phillip A. Sharp Medicine
1956 | John Bardeen Physics 1993 |Russell A. Hulse | Physics
1956 | Walter H. Brattain | Physics 1993 |Joseph H. Taylor | Physics
298
THE CHOSEN PEOPLE
Year |Name Subject Year |Name Subject
1958 | George Beadle Medicine 1994 |John F. Nash Economics
1958 | Joshua Lederberg* | Medicine 1994 _ | Alfred G. Gilman* | Medicine
1958 | Edward Tatum Medicine 1994 | Martin Rodbell* | Medicine
1959 | Arthur Kornberg* Medicine 1994 _ | Clifford Schull Physics
1959 |Owen Chamberlain | Physics 1995 |F. Rowland Chemistry
1960 | Willard F. Libby Chemistry 1995 | Frederick Reines* | Physics
1960 | Donald A. Glaser* | Physics 1995 | Eric F. Wieschaus | Medicine
1961 | Melvin Calvin* Chemistry 1996 | Robert Curl Chemistry
1961 | Robert Hofstadter* | Physics 1996 |Richard Smalley | Chemistry
1962 | John Steinbeck Literature 1996 | David M. Lee* Physics
1962 | James Watson Medicine 1996 | Douglas Osheroff | Physics
1964 | Charles H. Townes | Physics 1996 | Robert Richardson | Physics
1965 | Robert B. Woodward | Chemistry || 1997 | Paul D. Boyer Chemistry
1965 | Richard P. Feynman* | Physics 1997 | Robert C. Merton | Economics
1965 | Julian Schwinger* | Physics 1997 |Stanley Prusiner* | Medicine
1966 | Robert S. Mulliken | Medicine 1997 |Steven Chu Physics
1966 | Charles B. Huggins | Chemistry 1997 | William Phillips | Physics
1966 | Peyton Rous Medicine 1998 | Robert Furchgott* | Medicine
1967 | Haldan K. Hartline | Medicine 1998 |Louis J. Ignarro | Medicine
1968 | Robert W. Holley Medicine 1998 | Ferid Murad Medicine
1968 | Marshall Nirenberg* | Medicine 1998 |Robert Laughlin | Physics
1968 | Luis Alvarez Physics 2000 | Alan Heeger* Chemistry
1969 | Alfred D. Hershey | Medicine 2000 | James J. Heckman | Economics
1969 | Murray Gell-Mann* | Physics 2000 | Daniel McFadden | Economics
1970 | Paul Samuelson* Economics || 2000 | Paul Greengard* | Medicine
1970 | Julius Axelrod* Medicine 2000 | Herbert Kroemer | Physics
1971 | Earl Sutherland Medicine 2001 | William Knowles | Chemistry
1972 | Christian Anfinsen* | Chemistry || 2001 |K. Barry Sharpless | Chemistry
1972 | Stanford Moore Chemistry || 2001 | George Akerlof Economics
1972 | William H. Stein* Chemistry || 2001 | Michael Spence Economics
1972 | Kenneth Arrow Economics || 2001 | Joseph Stiglitz* Economics
1972 | Gerald Edelman* Medicine 2001 | Leland Hartwell | Medicine
1972 | John Bardeen Physics 2001 | Eric A. Cornell Physics
1972 | Leon N. Cooper* Physics 2001 | Carl E. Wieman Physics
United States 299
Year |Name Subject Year |Name Subject
1972 | Robert Schrieffer Physics 2002 |John B. Fenn Chemistry
1975 | David Baltimore* Medicine 2002 |VernonL. Smith | Economics
1975 |Howard M. Temin* |Medicine 2002 |Robert Horvitz* | Medicine
1975 | James Rainwater Physics 2002 | Raymond Davis Physics
1976 | William Lipscomb | Chemistry || 2003 | Peter Agre Chemistry
1976 | Milton Friedman* | Economics || 2003 |R. MacKinnon Chemistry
1976 | Baruch Blumberg* | Medicine 2003 | Robert F. Engle Economics
1976 | Carleton Gajdusek | Medicine 2003 | Paul C. Lauterbur | Medicine
1976 | Burton Richter* Physics 2004 | Irwin Rose* Chemistry
1977 | Rosalyn Yalow* Medicine 2004 | Edward Prescott | Economics
1977 | John H. van Vleck |Physics 2004 | Richard Axel* Medicine
1978 | Herbert Simon* Economics || 2004 | David J. Gross* Physics
1978 | Daniel Nathans* Medicine 2004 | David Politzer* Physics
1978 | Robert Wilson Physics 2004 | Frank Wilczek Physics
1979 | Theodore Schultz Economics || 2004 | Linda B. Buck Medicine
1979 | Sheldon Glashow* | Physics 2005 | Robert Grubbs Chemistry
1979 | Steven Weinberg* | Physics 2005 | Thomas Schelling | Chemistry
1980 | Paul Berg* Chemistry || 2005 | Roy Glauber* Physics
1980 | Walter Gilbert* Chemistry || 2005 |John Hall Physics
1980 | Lawrence Klein* Economics || 2006 | Roger Kornberg* | Chemistry
1980 | George D. Snell Medicine 2006 |Edmund Phelps _ | Economics
1980 | James Cronin Physics 2007 | Eric Maskin* Economics
1980 | Val Fitch Physics 2007 | Roger Myerson* | Economics
1981 | James Tobin Economics || 2007 | Mario Capecchi Medicine
1981 | Roger W. Sperry Medicine 2008 | Paul Krugman* Economics
1981 | Arthur Schawlow Physics 2008 | Martin Shalfie Chemistry
1982 | George J. Stigler Economics || 2008 | Roger Tsien Chemistry
1982 | Kenneth G. Wilson | Physics 2009 | Carol Greider Medicine
1983 | B.McClintock Medicine 2009 | Thoms Steitz Chemistry
1983 | William A. Fowler | Physics 2009 | George Smith Physics
1984 | Bruce Merrifield Chemistry || 2009 | Elinor Ostrom Economics
1985 | Herbert Hauptman* | Chemistry || 2009 |O. Williamson Economics
1985 | Jerome Karle* Chemistry
300 THE CHOSEN PEOPLE
13. Mathematicians
The William Lowell Putnam Competition is an annual event
sponsored by the American Mathematical Society and is the most
prestigious mathematical competition for undergraduates in the
United States. Each year, there are about 3,000 contestants. During
the years 1994-2002, there were 242 participants who received
a prize or an honorable mention, of whom 51 (21 percent) were
Jewish. During these years Jews were approximately 2.1 percent of
the population, so they were 10 times overrepresented among these
gifted young mathematicians.
The United States has produced 16 of the world-class
mathematicians who have received the Fields Medal or the Wolf Prize
(Stephen Smale (b.1930) has been awarded both prizes, but is only
counted once.) These are listed in Table 19.20. Six of the 16 have been
Jews. Thus, Jews, who comprised about 2.2 percent ofthe population
during the second half of the 20th century, have produced 37.5 percent
oftop mathematicians, giving them an Achievement Quotient of 16.
Table 19.20. United States Mathematicians (Jews
are asterisked)
Year |Fields Medal Year |Wolf Prize
1936 | Jesse Douglas* 1982 | Hassler Whitney
1962 | John Milnor 1996 | Joseph Keller*
1966 | Paul Cohen* 2002 |John Tate
1966 | Stephen Smale 2007 |Stephen Smale
1970 | John Thompson 2008 | Phillip Griffiths
1978 | Charles Fefferman* || 2008 | David Mumford
1978 | Daniel Quillen
1982 | William Thurston
1986 | Michael Freedman*
1990 | Edward Witten*
1998 | Curtis McMullen
United States 301
14. Chess
Although the United States has not produced many top-rated
chess players, Jews have been prominent among them. In William
Rubinstein’s (2004) list of the 141 top-rated chess grandmasters
for each decade spanning the years 1851-2000, only five have been
American. Table 19.21 gives their names and dates.
Table 19.21. Chess grandmasters (Jews are asterisked)
Years Name Years Name
1851-1910 |Morphy 1930-2000 | Kashdan*
Pillsbury Fine*
Fischer*
In the first period from 1851 to 1910, the United States produced
two top-rated grandmasters; both were Gentiles. It would not be
expected that Jews would have made much of a showing in these
years, because most Jews were recent immigrants and were too busy
making a living to master serious chess. There were no top-rated
American grandmasters between 1910 and 1930. The nexttop-rated
American grandmaster, Issac Kashdan (1905-1985), appeared in
the 1930s, followed by Reuben Fine (1914-1993) in the 1940s, and
Bobby Fischer in the 1970s. All three were Jewish. Thus, Jews, who
were 3.55 percent of the population in 1927, produced 60 percent
of the top-rated chess players over the period 1851-2000, giving
them an Achievement Quotient of 16.9.
15. Bridge
In contrast to chess, the United States has produced many
top-rated bridge players. In 2004, 55 of the 156 top-rated bridge
players among the Open World Champions have been American.
The names of these are given in Table 19.22. Eighteen of the 55 are
Jews (33 percent). Thus, Jews, who were about two percent of the
population at the beginning of the 21st century, have produced 33
percent oftop bridge players, givingthem an Achievement Quotient
of 16.
302 THE CHOSEN PEOPLE
Table 19.22. United States Open World Bridge Champions
in 2004 (Jews are asterisked)
Bob Hamman Eddie Kantar* Ed Manfield*
Bobby Wolff* Bob Lipsitz* Lew Mathe
Billy Eisenberg* Nick Nickell Rose Meltzer
Chip Martel* Steve Robinson Don Oakie
Jeff Meckstroth Alan Sontag* Steve Parker
Eric Rodwell* Peter Weichsel* Mike Passell
Lew Stansby Russ Arnold Eric Paulsen
Paul Soloway* Roger Bates Peter Pender*
John Crawford Mike Becker Bud Reinhold
Bobby Goldman* Clifford Bishop William Rosen
Jim Jacoby Peter Boyd Michael Rosenberg*
Mike Lawrence Malcolm Brachman |Ira Rubin*
George Rapee Milton Ellenby Ronnie Rubin*
Hugh Ross Charles Goren Sidney Silodor
Howard Schenken* | Fred Hamilton John Solodar
Samuel Stayman Gaylor Kasle Douglas Steen
B J Becker Kyle Larsen John Swanson
Seymon Deutsch Bobby Levin*
Dick Freeman* Theodore Lightner
16. Pulitzer Prizes
The Pulitzer Prizes were established in 1917 by Joseph Pulitzer (who
was Jewish) and is widely regarded as the most prestigious American
award prize for literature. Prizes are normally given annually for
nonfiction, fiction, poetry, drama, history, and biography. Jews have
won 52 percent of the prizes for nonfiction, 15 percent of the prizes for
fiction, 20 percent of the prizes for poetry, and 34 percent of the prizes
for drama (it has not proved possible to find the ethnic identity of the
winners for history and biography). The Jewish winners for nonfiction
are listed below.
Theodore H. White (1962), The Making of the President, 1960
Barbara Tuchman (1963), The Guns of August
Richard Hofstadter (1964), Anti-Intellectualism in American Life
United States 303
David Brion Davis (1967), The Problem of Slavery in Western Culture
Ariel Durant (1968), Rousseau And Revolution
Norman Mailer (1969), The Armies Of The Night
Erik Erikson (1970), Gandhi’s Truth
Barbara Tuchman (1972), Stilwelland the American Experiencein China
Robert Coles (1973), Children of Crisis
Ernest Becker (1974), The Denial of Death
Carl Sagan (1978), The Dragons of Eden
Douglas Hofstatder (1980), Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid
Carl Schorske (1981), Fin-De-Siecle Vienna: Politics And Culture
Susan Margulies Sheehan (1983), Is There No Place on Earth for Me?
Paul Starr (1984), The Social Transformation Of American Medicine
Studs Terkel (1985), The Good War: An Oral History of World War II
Joseph Lelyveld (1986), Move Your Shadow: South Africa, Black
and White
J. Anthony Lukas (1986), Common Ground: A Turbulent Decade in
the Lives of Three American Families
Daniel Yergin (1992), The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money,
and Power
David Remnick (1994), Lenin’s Tomb: The Last Days of the Soviet Empire
Jonathan Weiner (1995), The Beak ofthe Finch: A Story of Evolution
in Our Time
Tina Rosenberg (1996), The Haunted Land: Facing Europe’s Ghosts
After Communism
Richard Kluger (1997), Ashes to Ashes: America’s Hundred-Year
Cigarette War, the Public Health, and the Unabashed Triumph
of Philip Morris
Jared Diamond (1998), Guns, Germs, and Steel
Herbert Bix (2001), Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan
Anne Applebaum (2004), Gulag: A History
Saul Friedlander (2008), The Years of Extermination: Nazi Germany
and the Jews, 1939-1945
304 THE CHOSEN PEOPLE
17. Music and Hollywood
From the 1920s on, Jews have dominated American music in
three areas: popular songs, musicals, and Classical. In the golden
age of “Tin Pan Alley” (1920 to 1960), about half the leading
songwriters were Jews. Luminaries of the genre included George
Gershwin (1898-1937), Jerome Kern (1885-1945), Richard
Rodgers (1902-1979), and Irving Berlin (1888-1989). The other
half of the leading songwriters were Gentiles, e.g. Cole Porter
(1891-1964), Harry Warren (1893-1981), Vincent Youmans
(1898-1946), Duke Ellington (1899-1974) (Rubinstein, 2004, p.
41). Perhaps the greatest of this group was Irving Berlin, who was
born in Russia as Israel Baline and brought to the United States at
the age of five. He later expressed his gratitude for this by writing
the song “God Bless America.” Further Jewish musicians who have
been successful worldwide in popular music including pioneer jazz
clarinetist Benny Goodman (born Gutman, 1909-1986), Bob Dylan
(born Zimmerman, 1941), unquestionably the greatest songwriter
and social commentator of the 1960s and ‘70s, and songwriters/
musicians Paul Simon (b.1941), and Randy Newman (b.1943).
William Rubinstein writes, “the Hollywood musical was almost
entirely a product of Jews” (2004, p. 41). Perhaps the most famous
and enduring are Show Boat (1927) written by Jerome Kern, with
lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein (1895-1960), and George Gershwin’s
An American in Paris (1928) and Porgy and Bess (1935).
In Classical music, Jews have produced the composers Aaron
Copland (1900-1990) and Leonard Bernstein (1918-1990); a number
of the greatest virtuosi, including the pianists Artur Schnabel (1882-
1951), Vladimir Horowitz (1903-1989), and Artur Rubinstein (1887-
1982); and the violinists Jascha Heifetz (1901-1987), Nathan Milstein
(1904-1992), Isaac Stern (1920-2001), and Yehudi Menuhin (1916-1999).
A quantification of the numbers of Jews in music in the early
decades of the 20th century was undertaken by Keith Sward
(1933), and his results are summarized in Table 19.23.
United States 305
Table 19.23. Jewish musicians, 1922-1932
Specialism N | %Jews | AQ
Players 1,048 26 7.2
Conductors 37 46 12.8
Virtuosi 145 37 10.0
Composers 42 24 6.7
Amusement 586 36 10.0
Row 1 gives number of players in the 12 leading American
symphony orchestras in the years 1922—1932 and shows that 26
percent were Jews. Row 2 shows the number of conductors in the
12 leading American symphony orchestras in 1932 and reveals
that 46 percent of these were Jews. Row 3 gives the number
of violin, piano, and cello virtuosi in the 12 leading American
symphony orchestras in 1932 and shows that 37 percent were
Jews. Row 4 gives the number of composer-artists who appeared
in the four leading American symphony orchestras (Boston, New
York, Chicago, and Philadelphia) in 1922-1932 and shows that
24 percent were Jews. Row 5 gives the number of players in 23
“amusement orchestras” in 1922—1932 and shows that 36 percent
were Jews. The achievement quotients are calculated on the basis
of Jews being 3.6 percent the population in 1927 and give Jews an
average achievement quotient of 9.4.
In the same study, Sward carried out exams to determine
whether Jews have a particularly strong musical ability, but he
found no difference between Jewish and Gentile 11-year-olds
matched for IQ on the Seashore and other tests of simple musical ability.
Jews played a major role in the development of Hollywood
and have continued to predominate in the film industry. Adoph
Zukor (1873-1976) and William Fox (1879-1952) immigrated
from Hungarian shetls to become the leaders of Paramount and
Fox Pictures. Carl Laemmle (1867-1939) came from Southern
Germany and founded Universal Studio in 1884, and Samuel
Goldwyn (formerly Goldfish) came from Warsaw around 1885.
Throughout the 20th century, Jews were prominent in Hollywood
as both producers and stars: “any list of the most influential
production executives at each of the major movie studios
306 THE CHOSEN PEOPLE
will produce a heavy majority of recognizably Jewish names”
(Medved, 1999). Among the best known that have retained their
Jewish names are the actors Barbra Streisand (b.1942), Deanna
Durbin (b.1921), Victor Borge (1909-2000), the Marx Brothers,
Paul Newman (1925-2008), and Dustin Hoffman (b.1937), as
well as the producer and director Steven Spielberg (b.1946).
But most have adopted English sounding names. These include
Woody Allen (Konigsberg), Douglas Fairbanks (Ullman), Danny
Kaye (Kaminsky), Binnie Barnes (Gittel), Tony Curtis (Schwartz),
Lili Palmer (Peiser), Melvyn Douglas (Hesselberg), John Garfield
(Garfinkle), Hedy Lamarr (Keisler), Judy Holiday (Tuvim), Paul
Muni (Weisenfreund), Edward Robinson (Goldenberg), Sylvia
Sidney (Koskow), Jack Benny (Kubelsky), Benny Baker (Zifkin),
Judy Garland (Gumm), Mary Livingston (Marks), George Burns
(Birnbaum), Edward Bromberg (Bromberger), and Sue Carol
(Lederer).
On December 19, 2008, Joel Stein wrote in the Los Angeles
Times: “How deeply Jewish is Hollywood?”:
When the studio chiefs took out a full-page ad in the Los Angeles
Times a few weeks ago, to demand that the Screen Actors Guild
settle its contract, the open letter was signed by: News Corp.
President Peter Chernin (Jewish), Paramount Pictures Chairman
Brad Grey (Jewish), Walt Disney Co. Chief Executive Robert Iger
(Jewish), Sony Pictures Chairman Michael Lynton (surprise, Dutch
Jew), Warner Bros. Chairman Barry Meyer (Jewish), CBS Corp.
Chief Executive Leslie Moonves (so Jewish his great-uncle was
the first prime minister of Israel), MGM Chairman Harry Sloan
(Jewish) and NBC Universal Chief Executive Jeff Zucker (mega
Jewish). If either of the Weinstein brothers had signed, this group
would have not only the power to shut down all film production but
to form a minyan with enough Fiji water on hand to fill a mikvah.
18. The Media
Jews have been prominent among the owners and
senior employees of American TV, radio, and newspapers.
Three companies broadcast most of the television news and
United States 307
entertainment: American BroadcastingCompany (ABC), Columbia
Broadcasting System (CBS), and National Broadcasting Company
(NBC). William Paley (1901-1990), whose parents were immigrant
Jews from Russia, ran CBS for more than halfa century. In 1928,
Paley bought United Independent Broadcasters and renamed it
Columbia Broadcasting System. He took the position of president,
became chairman of the board in 1946, and held that post until
his partial retirement in 1983. In 1986, Laurence Tisch (1923—
2003) became the chairman and CEO of CBS. NBC was formerly
a subsidiary of Radio Corporation of America (RCA). From 1930
to 1970, NBC was controlled by David Sarnoff (1891-1971), who
was of Russian Jewish origin. Following his death in 1970, his son
Robert (1918-1997) took over the corporation. In 1986, General
Electric Co. merged with RCA, and now NBC is a wholly owned
subsidiary of GE. In 1990, Steve Friedman (b.1950) became
executive producer of NBC Nightly News and was succeeded in
1993 by Jeff Zucker (b.1965).
In May 1990, American Film magazine listed the top 10 U.S.
entertainment companies (in terms of gross revenues in the
previous year) and their CEOs and ranked them by size. These
were Time Warner Communications (Steven J. Ross (1927-1992)),
Walt Disney Co. (Michael D. Eisner (b.1942)), NBC (Robert C.
Wright (b.1943)), Paramount Communications (Martin S. Davis
(1927-1999)), CBS (Laurence Tisch), 20th Century Fox (Barry
Diller (b.1942)), Columbia Pictures Entertainment (Victor A.
Kaufman (b.1942)), Viacom (Sumner Redstone (b.1923)), Capital
Cities/ ABC (Thomas Murphy (b.1925)), and MCA Inc. (Lew
Wasserman (1913-2002)). The CEOs of eight of these top 10
entertainment companies—Ross, Eisner, Davis, Tisch, Diller,
Kaufman, Redstone, and Wasserman—were Jewish.
The newspapers, too, have become largely owned by Jews.
Two of the most prestigious and influential, the New York Times
and the Washington Post, have been owned and largely staffed by
Jews. Two Gentiles, Henry J. Raymond (1820-1869) and George
Jones (1811-1891), founded the New York Times in 1851. After
their deaths, a wealthy Jewish publisher, Adolph Ochs (1858-
1935), purchased it in 1896. It remained in the family, and his
great-grandson, Arthur Ochs Sulzberger Jr., became the publisher
308 THE CHOSEN PEOPLE
and CEO. As of this writing, the Sulzberger family still controls the
Times and also owns 33 other newspapers, including the Boston
Globe, purchased in June 1993; 12 magazines, including McCall’s
and Family Circle, with circulations of more than five million each;
seven radio and TV broadcasting stations; a cable-TV system; and
three book publishing companies.
The Washington Post was established in 1877 by Stilson
Hutchins (1838-1912); purchased in 1905 by John R. McLean;
and later inherited by Edward B. McLean (1889-1941). These were
all Gentiles. In 1933, the newspaper was forced into bankruptcy.
It was purchased by Eugene Isaac Meyer (1875-1959), a Jewish
financier, and was successively run by his daughter, Katharine
Meyer Graham (1917-2001), and grandson, Donald (b. 1945). The
Washington Post Co. has a number of other media holdings in
newspapers, television, and magazines.
The Wall Street Journal is another influential paper and
was founded by Clarence Barron (1855-1928), a Gentile. It
has remained largely owned by the Barron family until Rupert
Murdoch (b.1931) bought it in 2007.
The three largest circulation news magazines-Time,
Newsweek, and U.S. News & World Report-are largely owned
and run by Jews. Time is published by a subsidiary of Time
Warner Communications, the media conglomerate formed by
the 1989 merger of Time Inc. with Warner Communications. The
Washington Post Co. publishes Newsweek. U.S. News & World
Report is owned, edited, and published by Mortimer Zuckerman
(b.1937), who also publishes New York’s tabloid the Daily News
and once owned The Atlantic Monthly. “The most widely-read
American journals like Commentary, The Public Interest, The
New York Review of Books, New Republic, and Partisan Review
are either explicitly Jewish or contain a disproportionately Jewish
input” (Rubinstein, 1982, p. 64).
A quantification of the proportion of Jews among the media
elites is given in Table 19.24. Row 1 shows the proportion of Jews
among the media elite in 1975 at 26 percent (Rubinstein, 1982, p.
61). Row 2, 3, and 4 give the results of a study published by Forbes
magazine in 1982. It estimated that Jews were 30 percent of media
elite, defined as those working on the news divisions of the three
television networks and the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS),
United States 309
the three leading news magazines (Time, Newsweek, and U.S.
News & World Report), and the four top newspapers. Rows 3 and
4 show that Jews were 46 percent of the directors and producers
of Hollywood TV and 66 percent ofthe directors and producers of
Hollywood movies. Row 5 gives the results of a Vanity Fair article
of 1994 that published profiles of the 23 most influential media
people. It was described as “the new establishment” and consisted
of “men and women from the entertainment, communications,
and computer industries.” Eleven of these (48 percent) were Jews.
Table 19.24. Media Elites
Year |Group % Jews | AQ
1975 | Media elite 26 10.0
1980 | Media elite 30 13.6
1980 | Hollywood movies 66 30.0
1980 | Hollywood TV 46 20.9
1994 | “New establishment” 48 21.8
19. Sport
Although it appears that Jews are good at almost everything,
there is a common stereotype that they do not fare well at sport. In
1921, Henry Ford opined,
Jews are not sportsmen.... Whether this is due to their physical
lethargy, their dislike of unnecessary physical action or their serious
cast of mind, others may decide.... It may be a defect of character;
it is nevertheless, a fact which discriminating Jews unhesitatingly
acknowledge. (Hoberman, 1991, p. 39)
This verdict was not, however, entirely correct. On the contrary,
in the first half of the 20th century, Jews excelled at basketball and boxing:
Jewish players dominated the American Basketball League in
numbers and accomplishments. Almost half the league (45 of
91 players) was Jewish in the 1937-1938 season. Even a decade
later in the 1945-1946 season, almost 45 percent (71 of 159) of the
players were Jewish. (Klein, 2000, p. 216)
310 THE CHOSEN PEOPLE
Jews were also prominent in boxing: “between 1910 and 1939,
the presence of Jewish fighters grew until they became the dominant
force.... In 1933, Jews held four of the eight division titles” (Klein,
1999, p. 216). In the 1930s there were 60 World Boxing Champions,
and 15.9 percent of them were Jewish (Riess, 1998).
After World War II, the Jewish presence in basketball and
boxing declined to insignificance. The most likely explanation for
the success of Jews in these sports in the first half of the century is
that these did not require years of investment in education. After
World War II, most Jewish families had succeeded to the extent
that they could give their children the education needed to enter
the professions and management, and these were more attractive
career options. By this time, “Jews are not a major sporting success
story because they don’t need to be” (Klein, 2000, p. 221).
20. Fertility and Infant Mortality
Jews in the United States, as elsewhere, have had low fertility in
the 20th century. Table 19.25 gives statistics, from a Bureau of the
Census survey of 1957, for this phenomenon expressed as children
ever born per 1,000 women aged 44 and over (see Chiswick,
1988a). It will be seen that Jewish women had substantially fewer
children than all other women. Chiswick notes that as early as the
19308,
A survey of contraceptive practices indicated that a higher
proportion of Jews used contraceptives, planned their pregnancies,
used more efficient methods of birth control, and began to use
contraception earlier in their marriages than Protestants and
Catholics. (Chiswick, 1988a, p. 587)
The table also gives identical birth rates for Jews and almost
identical birth rates for Whites for 1989, which were obtained in a
survey carried out by the Bureau of the Census (Goldstein, 1993).
(The comparison group for 1989 is Whites, while that for 1957 is
for the total population.)
United States 311
Table 19.25. Children ever born per 1,000 women aged 44+
Group 1957| 1989
Jews 5,3 2.2
Non-Jews 2.8 2.7
Infant mortality was lower among Jews in the late 19th century
and early 20th century. Studies showing this are summarized in
Table 19.26, where it will be seen that between 1885 and 1915, the
infant mortality of White Gentiles was approximately twice as high
as that of Jews. Infant mortality rates of Jews compared with Italians
in New York in the early 1930s again shows lower rates among Jews.
Table 19.26. Infant mortality per 1,000 live births
Years Jews | Gentiles |Reference
1885-1889 81 167 Condran & Kramarow, 1991
1911-1915 54 108 Condran & Kramarow, 1991
1930-1934 39 56 Pintner & Maller, 1937
According to Preston, Ewbank, and Hereward (1994), the low
Jewish rate of infant mortality is attributable to “unmeasured child
care practices, having mostly to do with feeding practices and general
hygienic standards.” These are attributable to higher Jewish IQs.
21. Crime
It is well known that crime is associated with low intelligence, so
we would expect that Jews would have low rates of crime. We noted
some evidence for this in the chapter on Germany. Low Jewish crime
rates have also been found in the United States. Statistics for the
percentages of criminals in the population and in reformatories and
jails in three locations have been given by Hans von Hentig (1948,
pp. 337-8) and Calvin Goldscheider and Jon Simpson (1967) and
are shown in Table 19.27.
312 THE CHOSEN PEOPLE
Table 19.27. Percentages of Jews and other denominations
in the population and among criminals
Location Group Jews | Protestants | Catholics | Others
1a |Massachusetts | Population 6.7 25.2 66.4 1.7
1b |Massachusetts | Criminals 3.9 28.6 66.3 1.2
2a |Pennsylvania | Population 4.3 27.8 23.3 44.6
2b |Pennsylvania | Criminals 1.2 64.3 33.0 1.5
3a _ | Allegheny Population 4.1 20.4 25.2 49.3
3b | Allegheny Criminals 1.3 49.6 46.0 2.3
4a | Los Angeles Population 6.6 57.8 21.5 2.7
4b | Los Angeles Criminals 37 - 35.2 -
Von Hentig gave data for three locations, in all of which Jews
were considerably underrepresented among criminals as compared
with their representation in the population. Rows ıa and ıb give
the percentages of Jews, Protestants, Catholics, and Others in
the population and the percentages in reformatories. This shows
that Jews were 6.7 percent of the population but only 3.9 percent
in reformatories. The other three groups have about the same
percentages in the population and in jails. There is a somewhat
greater underrepresentation of Jews among adult criminals in the
other two locations shown in rows 2a and 2b, and in rows 3a and
3b. The disparities in “Others” is due to the fact that this category
included “None”; many criminals claim to belong to religious
denominations hoping to be recommended for clemency by prison
chaplains (von Hentig, 1948, pp. 335, 342). Goldscheider and Simpson
(1967) have confirmed the underrepresentation of Jews among juvenile
delinquents in Los Angeles in 1960. Their results are given in rows 4a
and 4b, showing that Jews were 6.6 percent of the population but only
2.7 percent of juvenile delinquents.
CHAPTER 20
Theories of Jewish Intelligence
. Intelligence of the Four Jewish Peoples
Achievements of the Four Jewish Peoples
The Jewish Intelligence Profile
Genetic Basis of Jewish Intelligence
The Eugenic Hypothesis
The Persecution Hypothesis
The Discrimination Hypothesis
The Miscegenation Hypothesis
. The Apostasy Hypothesis
10. Genetics of the High Jewish IQ
Bennusupwpr
W: have seen in the body of this book that the Ashkenazim have
a high level of intelligence, but that there are four Jewish
peoples and that the other three—the Mizrahim, the Sephardim,
and the Ethiopians—are not remarkable in this regard. We begin
this chapter by summarizing these conclusions and then consider
the theories that attempt to explain how these differences have
arisen.
316 THE CHOSEN PEOPLE
1. Intelligence of the Four Jewish Peoples
The IQ of the Ashkenazim has been examined in Britain, Canada,
the United States, and Israel, where it has been calculated at 110, 109,
110, and 110. From these results, we conclude that the Ashkenazi Jews
have an average IQ of 110 in relation to a European Gentile mean of
100 (standard deviation of 15). This 10-point advantage should give
Ashkenazi Jews approximately four times the percentage of individuals
with an IQ of 130 and above and approximately six times the percentage
of individuals with an IQ of 145 and above. The effect of this should be
that Ashkenazi Jews should be considerably overrepresented among
the highly successful. We have seen that this is the case in all of the
17 countries and regions we have considered. Everywhere, Jews are
considerably overrepresented in the professions, among the wealthy,
and among intellectual elites.
The IQs of the four Jewish peoples are shown in Table 20.1. Also
shown for comparison are the IQs of the Gentiles among whom these
Jewish peoples have lived. The detailed evidence for the derivation of
these figures is set out for the Ethiopian Jews and for the Mizrahim in
the chapter on Israel, for the Sephardim in the chapter on the Balkans,
and for the Ashkenazim in the chapters on Britain, Canada, the United
States, and Israel. The evidence for the derivation of the IQs for the
Gentile peoples is given in my Race Differences in Intelligence (Lynn,
2006).
Table 20.1. IQs of Jews and Gentiles
Jews IQ [Gentiles IQ | IQ Difference
Ashkenazim 110 |European Gentiles | 100 10.0
Sephardim 98 | Balkans Gentiles 92.5 5.5
Mizrahim 91 | Arabs 84 6.0
Ethiopian Jews 69 | Negroids 67 -1.0
Looking at these paired comparisons, we see that the IQs of the
Ashkenazim, Sephardim, and Mizrahim are all higher than those of the
Gentile communities among whom they have lived. The Ashkenazim
have a 10-point advantage over the Northern and Central European
Gentiles, with IQs of 110 and 100, respectively. The Ashkenazi Jews
Theories of Jewish Intelligence 317
were originally an Arab people, which does not appear to have been
exceptionally intelligent and presumably had the same average IQ
(84) as other Arab peoples. Over the course of some 2,000 years, they
gained 26 IQ points (from 84 to 110) on their former Arab kinsmen
and 10 points on Central and Northern Europeans.
The second of the paired comparisons is between the Sephardic
Jews and the Balkan Gentiles among whom most of them have lived
for approximately the last 500 years (1492 to the 20th century.) Their
IQs are 98 and 92.5, respectively. Thus, the Sephardic Jews, also
originally Arabs, have gained 14 IQ points (from 84 to 98) on their
former Arab kinsmen, and 5.5 IQ points on their Gentile neighbors
in the Balkans. This is the second problem that requires explanation.
The third of the paired comparisons is between the Mizrahi Jews
and the Arabs among whom they have lived. Their IQs are 91 and 84,
respectively. The Mizrahi Jews were originally an Arab people and are
still closely related to Arabs genetically; they have lived among Arabs
for 2,000 years or more and interbred with them. Yet, the Mizrahim’s
average IQ is six points higher than the Arabs’. How this has occurred
is a further problem that requires explanation.
Finally, looking at the last of the paired comparisons between the
Ethiopian Jews and the Negroids (sub-Saharan Africans), we see that
their IQs are virtually identical at 69 and 67, respectively. The IQ of the
Negroids is derived as the median of 57 studies collected in my Race
Differences in Intelligence (2006). No significance can be attached to
the two IQ point difference between the two groups. Their IQs are the
same. This is what would be expected, because the Ethiopian Jews are
a Negroid people and have no genetic affinity with the Semitic Jews.
Nevertheless, there is a problem: the other three Jewish peoples have
all made intelligence gains on their Gentile host communities, while
this has not occurred in the case of the Ethiopian Jews. Why?
2. Achievements of the Four Jewish Peoples
The different IQs of the four Jewish peoples are consistent with
each one’s educational attainment, earnings, socioeconomic status,
and intellectual achievements. The Ashkenazim, with their IQ of 110,
have done much better in all these respects than the Gentiles in all of
the 17 countries and regions we have studied in Chapters 3 through
318 THE CHOSEN PEOPLE
19. The Sephardim did better in the Balkans than their Gentile host
communities. In Israel, parallel gradients of intelligence, educational
attainment, earnings, and socioeconomic status run from the
Ashkenazim to the Mizrahim, and then to the Ethiopian underclass.
The differences in intelligence among these four Jewish peoples
are also consistent with the extent to which they have produced
outstanding individuals. It is only the Ashkenazim that have produced
a large number of exceptionally talented people. In the 20th century,
there have only been two Sephardim among the 143 Jewish Nobel
Prize winners; these are the Bulgarian Elias Canetti, who won the
Nobel Prize for literature in 1981, and the English Harold Pinter (of
the Da Pinta Portuguese Jewish family), who won the Nobel Prize for
literature in 2005. None of the numerous Jewish chess champions and
top grandmasters from 1851 up to the present has been Sephardic;
William Rubinstein notes, “One can think of virtually no Sephardi
Jew who demonstrated great chess ability” (Rubinstein, 2004, p.
40). It is the same in the world of business. The big Jewish banking
and financial houses—the Rothschilds, Dresdner-Kleinworts, and
Goldman-Sachs—are all Ashkenazi.
The Sephardim have not produced anything like the huge number
of highly talented individuals that have come from the Ashkenazim.
Nevertheless, they have produced a handful of distinguished
individuals. The Sephardic Jews produced a number of moderately
gifted scholars in Spain during the period of Arab rule that lasted from
711 until 1492. David E. Smith (1958) has written, in his History of
Mathematics, “The most learned scholars in Spain at the close of the
11 century...were not Mohammedans” but Jews (p. 206). He gives the
four most important Jewish mathematicians in Spain during Arabic
rule as Savasorda (1065-1145), who produced the Liber Embadorum,
a treatise on geometry, and a mathematical encyclopedia; Abraham
ben Ezra (1089—1164), who wrote on the theory of numbers, the
calendar, and astronomy; Avenpace (1095-1138), who wrote on
geometry; and Averroes (1126-1198), who wrote on astronomy and
trigonometry (although it is not certain that he was Jewish). He also
lists a number of other lesser figures. However, none of these made
any significant advances in mathematics. They were compilers and
commentators on the work of the Greeks.
The only significant Sephardic Jews up to the end of the 19th
century have been Moses Maimonides—“the one Jewish philosopher
Theories of Jewish Intelligence 319
produced by the Spanish Jews” (Russell, 1961, p. 420); Michel de
Montaigne, the French philosopher, who was half-Jewish; Baruch
Spinoza, the philosopher in the Netherlands; David Ricardo, the
English economist; and Benjamin Disraeli, the British prime minister.
It has also been claimed that Miguel de Cervantes (1547-1616)
was descended from a family of Jewish conversos. This is quite an
impressive achievment, but considering that the Sephardim were
the majority of Jews until the middle of the 19th century, it is not so
impressive as the record of the Ashkenazim. In the 19th and 20th
centuries, “nearly every prominent Jew is Ashkenazi” (Rubinstein,
1985, p. 14). Nevertheless, in the 16th century, the Sephardic Jews
were prominent in commerce and medicine in the Balkans, and in the
17th century, they excelled in commerce in the Netherlands and Latin
America. This suggests they were at least as intelligent as European
Gentiles of the period.
The Mizrahim have produced fewer people of any great
intellectual or other kind of distinction. Nevertheless, as early
as the ninth century AD, some moderately gifted Mizrahi Jewish
mathematicians appeared in Baghdad. These were Sahl ibn Bishr
(786-845?),who wrote on algebra and astronomy, and Abu’ Taiyib,
who wrote on trigonometry and compiled a set of astronomical
tables. In the next century, another gifted Mizrahi Jewish
mathematician, Sa’adia ben Joseph (892?-942), appeared in Egypt
(Smith, 1958). But the non-Jewish Arabs, too, produced some
gifted mathematicians about this time, so the Mizrahi Jews were
not remarkably superior. In contemporary times, the contribution
of the Mizrahim to world civilization has been quite modest. It is
confined to Siegfried Sassoon (1886-1967), the poet of First World
War, and Charles and Maurice Saatchi (b.1943, 1946), the British
advertising tycoons. The families of these originally came from
Baghdad. Nevertheless, the Mizrahim did better in Arab countries
than their Arab hosts, as would be expected from their seven IQ
point advantage:
Beginning in the eighteenth century, the Middle East’s indigenous
Jews came increasingly to dominate the most lucrative sectors of
the local economy...[e]specially in new economic sectors, including
banking and insurance, they became decidedly more competitive
than the region’s Muslims. (Kuran, 2004, p. 72)
320 THE CHOSEN PEOPLE
It has not proved possible to find anyone of any distinction
produced by the Ethiopian Jews.
3. The Jewish Intelligence Profile.
In addition to their high IQs in relation to Gentiles, the Ashkenazim
in the United States, Canada, and Israel have a distinctive pattern or
profile of intelligence consisting of strong verbal and mathematical
abilities and weaker visualization-spatial abilities. (This profile is
not present in the Mizrahim in Israel (see Chapter 11).) Naturally,
this profile should cause the Ashkenazim to excel particularly in
fields requiring strong verbal and mathematical abilities, but to do
less well in fields requiring strong visualization-spatial abilities. It
has from time to time been observed that this is the case. Writing
in Germany in 1930, Fritz Lenz (1930, p. 672) maintained that Jews
are highly intelligent and good at most things, but added the proviso
that “very few distinguished painters have been Jews, and scarcely
any great sculptors or architects. The visualising and technical ability
of the Jews is comparatively small.” This observation seems to be
right. There were no Jews among the numerous great painters in
Renaissance Italy or in the Netherlands in the 17th century, although
Jews were prominent in banking and medicine in these countries
during this period. In more recent times, in the studies reviewed in
Chapter 1, Colin Berry (1999) found that in the years 1830-1929, Jews
had Achievement Quotients of 10.0 in mathematics (requiring strong
verbal and mathematical abilities) but only 1.6 in engineering and 6.7
in painting (requiring strong visualization-spatial abilities). Charles
Murray (2003), in an independent analysis for the years 1870-
1950, found similar results: Jews obtained Achievement Quotients
of 12.0 in mathematics and 12.0 in philosophy (par excellence, the
subject requiring strong verbal ability) but only 3.0 in engineering
and 5.0 in painting. Similar differences in achievement in different
fields were shown by Asher Tropp (1991) in 20th-century Britain,
where Jews obtained Achievement Quotients of 12.5 as barristers (a
profession requiring strong verbal ability) but only 3.6 as architects
and 2.2 as chartered surveyors (requiring strong visualization-spatial
abilities). Nevertheless, Jews have done better than Gentiles even in
engineering, architecture, and painting. There have certainly been a
Theories of Jewish Intelligence 321
handful of Jewish painters of moderate distinction, including Marc
Chagall, Chaim Soutine, Camille Pissarro, and Amedeo Modigliani
(1884-1929). The explanation for the achievements of Jews in these
fields is probably that it is only the average that does not seem to have
a natural aptitude for this kind of work, but there are some who do.
They also apply their general intelligence to achieve success.
In the 2oth century, the Jews’ strong verbal and weaker
visualization-spatial abilities are expressed in the extent to which
they are overrepresented in different professions. Typically, Jews
are highly overrepresented among doctors and lawyers (requiring
strong verbal ability), but much less overrepresented among
architects and engineers (requiring visualization-spatial ability).
Some figures showing this are given in Table 20.2 for Britain,
Canada, Russia, and the United States. (The doctors category
includes dentists.) It will be seen that Jewish Achievement Quotients
are consistently about twice as great for the “verbal professions” of
medicine and law as for the “visualization-spatial” of architecture and
engineering.
Table 20.2. Jewish Achievement Quotients for doctors,
lawyers, architects, and engineers
Year [Country Doctor | Lawyer | Architect | Engineer
1985 | Britain 7.4 9.5 3.6 -
1991 | Canada 9.2 4.5 1.1 1.1
1989 |Russia 7:0 - - 3.2
1960 | United States 3.8 3:3 1.7 1.1
4. Genetic Basis of Jewish Intelligence
The differences in the intelligence of the four Jewish peoples,
as well as between them and their respective Gentile hosts, are
considerable. The difference of 41 IQ points between the Ashkenazim
(110) and the Ethiopian Jews (69) is huge. To put this difference in
comparative perspective, it is virtually three times as great as the 15
IQ-point difference between Whites and Blacks in the United States
and Britain.
322 THE CHOSEN PEOPLE
There are environmental and genetic theories of the high IQ of
the Ashkenazim, as for other ethnic and racial differences. On the
environmental side, Christopher Jencks (1969, p. 28) has written,
“Jewish children do better on IQ tests than Christians at the same
socioeconomic level, but very few people conclude that Jews are
genetically superior.” Jencks does not mention the case for a genetic
basis for the high Ashkenazi IQ that had been made six years previously
by Nathaniel Weyl and Stefan Possony (1963). Nearly all sociologists
and economists who have documented the high achievements of the
Jews follow Jencks in failing to consider the possibility that Jews
could have a genetic advantage. Many rule this out as too disreputable
even to consider. Thus, Paul Burnstein (2007, p. 214) writes, “there
are three major reputable social-scientific explanations of why Jews
do so well-I emphasize ‘reputable’ and ‘social-scientific’ to exclude
genetic explanations.”
But as Arthur Jensen (1973, p. 60) observed in a response to Jencks:
The fact that very few people might suggest a genetic factor in the
Jewish vs. non-Jewish IQ difference (which averages about 8-10
IQ points)...does not make it an unreasonable hypothesis that
genetic factors are involved in this subpopulation difference.
A strong genetic component to the high Ashkenazi IQ has
more recently been argued by Kevin MacDonald (1994), as well as
Gregory Cochran, Jason Hardy, and Henry Harpending (2006).
There are five reasons to believe that there must be a substantial
genetic basis for the intelligence differences among the four Jewish
peoples. First, numerous twin studies have been carried out in Europe,
India, and Japan, and on Blacks and Whites in the United States; all
have found a high heritability of intelligence in national populations.
(These are reviewed in my Race Differences in Intelligence.) It is
highly improbable that intelligence would be heritable in populations
around the world, but not among Jews.
Second, the four Jewish peoples in Israel occupy a similar
environment, with the same access to healthcare and education,
but the intelligence differences between them are pronounced. We
noted in Chapter 11 that Jewish children with European parents and
with Mizrahim parents who were brought up in the same kibbutzim
have approximately the same 15-IQ-point difference as those raised
Theories of Jewish Intelligence 323
separately. Similarly, each of the pairs of Jews and Gentiles shown in
Table 20.1 has lived in the same societies and are therefore matched
for environmental inputs. From this, it can be reasonably assumed
that the IQ differences between the pairs are largely genotypic.
Third, it is doubtful whether any environmental theory can
explain the remarkable achievements of the Ashkenazim. Much has
been made of the importance attached by Jews to education, but Boris
Levinson and Zelick Block (1977) found that 400 Jewish 4-6-year-
olds in the United States had an IQ of 111, just about the same as that
of Jewish adults. If education were a factor responsible for the high
Ashkenazi IQ, their IQ advantage should become greater after several
years in school. But it does not.
Environmentalists such as Miles Storfer (1990) have argued that
the high intelligence of the Ashkenazi Jews is attributable to the
better infant care and stimulation provided by Jewish mothers. It
may well be that Jewish mothers provide an excellent environment
for nurturing the intelligence of their children, as suggested by their
low rates of infant mortality. However, this does not mean that the
high IQ of the Ashkenazim can be attributed to this favorable early
environment. There is now widespread acceptance of the principle of
genotype-environment co-variation, which states that the genes for
high intelligence tend to be associated with favorable environments
for the optimum development of intelligence (Plomin, 1994). Thus,
intelligent women who are pregnant typically refrain from smoking,
drinking alcohol excessively, and taking drugs, because they are aware
that these are likely to impair the growth of the brain and subsequent
intelligence of their babies. Intelligent parents tend to provide their
children with good-quality nutrition because they understand the
general principles of what constitutes a healthy diet, and a healthy diet
is adeterminant of intelligence. Intelligent parents are also more likely
to give their children cognitive stimulation, which is widely believed
to promote the development of the intelligence of their children.
This principle operates for populations. The populations with high
intelligence (such as the Ashkenazim) provide their children with the
double advantage of transmitting favorable genes to their children and
of providing them with a favorable environment with good nutrition,
healthcare, and cognitive stimulation that enhances the development
of their children’s intelligence. Conversely, the children of the less
324 THE CHOSEN PEOPLE
intelligent populations tend to transmit the double disadvantage of
poor-quality genes and poor-quality environment. Thus, the principle
of genotype-environment co-variation implies that differences in
intelligence between the populations for which the immediate cause is
environmental are also attributable to genetic factors that contribute
to the environmental differences.
Fourth, other environmentalists, such as Kevin Majoribanks
(1972), have argued that the high intelligence of the Ashkenazi Jews
is attributable to the typical “pushy Jewish mother.” In a study
carried out in Canada, he compared 100 Jewish boys aged 11 years
with 100 Protestant White boys and 100 White French Canadians and
assessed their mothers for “Press for Achievement,” i.e. the extent to
which mothers put pressure on their sons to achieve. He found that
the Jewish mothers scored higher on “Press for Achievement” than
Protestant mothers by five SD units and higher than French Canadian
mothers by eight SD units; he argued that this explains the high IQ of
the children. But this inference does not follow. There is no general
acceptance of the thesis that pushy mothers can raise the IQs of
their children. Indeed, the contemporary consensus is that family
environmental factors have no long-term effect on the intelligence of
children (Rowe, 1994).
Fifth, a final pointer to a genetic basis for the high Ashkenazi IQ
is their high prevalence of myopia (short-sightedness), an error of
refraction in which near objects can be seen clearly but distant objects
appear blurred. It has been shown in a number of twin studies that
myopia is largely genetically determined (Post, 1962; Sorsby, 1951).
There is a correlation of around 0.20 to 0.25 between myopia and
intelligence. This correlation has been found in many studies reviewed
by Sanford Cohn, Catherine Cohn, and Arthur Jensen (1988), who
also show that this is an intrinsic correlation that is present within
families, such that adolescents with high IQs have a greater prevalence
of myopia than their siblings with lower IQs. Jensen proposes that the
reason for this relationship is pleiotropy, i.e. a gene or genes that are
responsible for myopia also increase intelligence. Consistent with this
theory is the fact shown by Richard Post (1962) that the prevalence of
myopia is highest in East Asians (Chinese and Japanese), intermediate
in Europeans, and lowest in Blacks. Hence, the prevalence of myopia in
these three major races runs parallel to the differences in intelligence.
Theories of Jewish Intelligence 325
Thesignificance ofthe association between myopia and intelligence
is that there is a high prevalence of myopia among the Ashkenazim.
This association was found by Karl Pearson and Margaret Moul (1927)
in London schoolboys, among whom myopia was present in 13.3
percent of a sample of 900 Jews but only 2.3 percent in a sample of
10,416 Gentiles. This result was confirmed in another British study
by A. Sourasky (1928), who reported that 43.2 percent of a sample
of 1,649 Jewish boys aged 6-14 failed a reading test, as compared
with only 21.7 percent in a sample of 600 Gentiles. The main reason
for the difference was “the rather higher incidence of myopia among
the Jewish children” (p. 211). He noted that the higher incidence of
myopia among the Jewish children was present among 6-year-olds,
and did not increase with age so that “it is apparently not produced by
the excessive amount of close work done by Jewish boys.”
It can be inferred from these studies that the gene or genes
responsible for myopia and high intelligence are more frequent
in Ashkenazi Jews than in European Gentiles. It would be useful
and interesting to know whether the association between myopia
and intelligence is present within Jewish populations and whether
Ashkenazi Jews have a higher incidence of myopia than the Sephardim
and Mizrahim.
For all these reasons, it is impossible to avoid the conclusion that
there must bea substantial genetic basis for the intelligence differences
among the four Jewish peoples and between the Jews and the Gentiles
among whom they have lived. There is no reason to suppose that
the intelligence of the original Jews who lived in Palestine was any
different from that of the other Arab peoples of the Near East. The
high intelligence of the Ashkenazim and the lesser intelligence of
the Sephardim and Mizrahim must have evolved as a result of their
different experiences after the Diasporas.
5. The Eugenic Hypothesis
There are three problems that require explanation. First, what has
brought about these different IQs of the Ashkenazim, the Sephardim,
and the Mizrahim? Second, why have these three subpopulations of
Jews developed higher IQs than the Gentiles among whom they have
lived? Third, why have the Ashkenazim acquired their pattern of high
326 THE CHOSEN PEOPLE
verbal, mathematical, and reasoning abilities but weaker visual and
spatial abilities? We consider now the main theories that have been or
can be advanced to explain these problems.
The Eugenic Hypothesis states that the Jews in general, and the
Ashkenazim in particular, have practiced eugenics, and it is this that
has been responsible for raising their intelligence. Eugenics consists
of customs and practices that promote a greater number of surviving
children of the more intelligent (and of those with other desirable
qualities such as good health and sound moral character), as compared
with the less intelligent. The greater reproductive success of the more
intelligent can occur in two ways. First, by differential birth rates
such that the more intelligent have greater numbers of children than
the less intelligent. Second, by the children of the more intelligent
surviving to adulthood in greater numbers than the children of the
less intelligent. If either of these two conditions is present, the more
intelligent will have more children surviving to adulthood than the less
intelligent, who would be more likely to reproduce and transmit their
genes for high intelligence to the next generation. The effect of these
factors is to increase the proportion of genes for high intelligence in
the population.
A good case for the eugenic hypothesis as an explanation for the
high Jewish IQ has been made by MacDonald (1994, pp. 184-8). He
notes, first, that Judaism has had a long tradition of according high
status to scholars and wealth, and that the wealthy have been enjoined
to marry their daughters to scholars. Thus, the Mishnah advises,
“under all circumstances a man should sell everything he possesses in
order to marry the daughter of a scholar, as well as to give his daughter
to a scholar in marriage.... Never should he marry his daughter to
an illiterate man” (see MacDonald, 1994, p. 184). These “eugenic
marriages” brought wealth and intelligence together and normally
produced relatively large numbers of surviving children, because
historically the wealthy had greater numbers of surviving children
than the poor, largely because they were able to provide them with
better nutrition and healthcare. The effect of this would have been
that the more intelligent would have had more surviving children
than the less intelligent, and hence the intelligence of the Jews would
increase over the generations.
Theories of Jewish Intelligence 327
Second, Jews also practiced negative eugenics, the limitation of
the reproduction of the less intelligent, insofar as at some times they
restricted the marriages of the poor. This occurred when the Gentiles
among whom the Jews lived placed a limit on the numbers of Jewish
marriages allowed each year, which was widespread throughout
Austria and Germany in the 18th century. A third factor mentioned by
MacDonald (1994, p. 184) is that poor (and less intelligent) Jews were
more likely to defect from Judaism, thereby raising the average level
of intelligence of the remaining community. A fourth eugenic factor
may have been the requirement of Christian clergy to be celibate for
much of the last two thousand years. It is a reasonable assumption
that the Christian clergy had above average IQs, and especially higher
verbal IQs, since the Catholic church was the principal avenue of
advancement for intelligent children, through which they were able
to acquire positions of considerable power as bishops, abbots, and so
on. However, clerics were required to be celibate, and this obligation
(although not always observed, as in the cases of Abelard and Heloise,
a few of the popes, and a number of more lowly priests) would have
reduced the intelligence of the Gentiles because a high proportion of
the most intelligent were childless in each generation. In contrast,
Jewish rabbis were encouraged to marry young and have children,
which would have increased the intelligence of the Jews relative to
that of Gentiles. A fifth factor may have been that the intelligent rabbis
were frequently physicians and with their medical knowledge, would
have been better able to care for the health of their children.
The eugenic hypothesis seems to provide a persuasive explanation
for the high IQ of the Ashkenazim as compared with their Gentile
neighbors. The effect of Jewish eugenic customs would only need to
be quite small in each generation to explain the Ashkenazim IQ of 110.
These eugenic customs appear to have been in place for some 2,000
years, during which they would have had to raise the Jewish IQ from
84 (the average IQ of Arabs in the Near East given in Lynn, 2006) to
110, i.e. 26 IQ points. This works out to an increase of 1.25 IQ points
per century and 0.3 IQ points per generation. The impact of eugenic
customs in producing IQ gains of this magnitude seems quite plausible.
The eugenic hypothesis also seems to provide a reasonable
explanation for the high verbal IQ and more moderate visualization-
spatial IQ of the Ashkenazim. The scholars and rabbis to whom
328 THE CHOSEN PEOPLE
wealthy Jews were enjoined to marry their daughters would have had
the high verbal IQs required to master the Torah and other sacred
Jewish texts, but would not have had high visualization-spatial
IQs. Hence, the genes for high verbal intelligence would have been
increased, but not the genes for high visualization-spatial intelligence,
bringing about the high verbal/lower visualization-spatial IQ profile
typical of Ashkenazim. It is known that there are some genes that
determine general intelligence and other genes that determine verbal
ability and visualization-spatial ability (e.g. Kovas, Harlaar, Petrill,
and Plomin, 2005). It would have been the genes that determine
general intelligence and verbal ability that would have been especially
enhanced by Jewish eugenic customs.
However, the eugenic hypothesis may have difficulty in explaining
why the Ashkenazim have a substantially higher average IQ than the
Sephardim, Mizrahim, and Ethiopian Jews. MacDonald (1994, p. 186)
states that “wealthy men would marry their daughters to promising
scholars and support the couple to adulthood. This practice became a
religiously sanctioned policy and persisted both among the Ashkenazim
and the Sephardim.” How, therefore, did this eugenic custom raise
the intelligence of the Ashkenazim so much higher than that of the
Sephardim? Possibly, these eugenic customs were less complied with
among the Sephardim, but it has not proved possible to find any
evidence for this theory. There is the further problem of the low IQ of
the Mizrahim and Ethiopian Jews. MacDonald (1994, p. 198) offers
an explanation for the low IQ of the Mizrahim in Yemen. He suggests
that Yemen was so poor and rural that there were too few Mizrahim
for them to form a class of money-lenders and tax farmers, and that
they suffered intense persecution “generally considered to have been
the most extreme in the Muslim world.” He does not mention less
adherence to eugenic customs among this group or among the much
more numerous and wealthy Jewish community of Baghdad, which
numbered around 40,000 in 1170 and from the eighth century on,
provided court doctors and officials. It may be that for some reason,
eugenic customs were practiced less among the Mizrahim, or that some
other explanation is required such as that they were less persecuted
and discriminated against than the Ashkenazim. The Ethiopian Jews
have essentially the same IQ as other Negroid peoples. The most likely
explanation for this is that they did not practice the eugenic customs
of the other Jews at all.
Theories of Jewish Intelligence 329
6. The Persecution Hypothesis
The Persecution Hypothesis states that Gentiles have persecuted
Jews for some 2,000 years; that in these persecutions, Jews
were frequently killed; and that it can be surmised that the more
intelligent Jews have been able to avoid being killed by foreseeing
the danger in good times and moving to more friendly countries, by
going into hiding, or by paying ransom to their persecutors. The less
intelligent Jews have been eliminated. MacDonald has discussed this
theory in detail (1994, p. 192), although he prefers to call itthe Gentile
Selection Hypothesis.
There is no doubt that Jews have frequently been persecuted
and killed by Gentiles in Europe in large numbers and on numerous
occasions (see Costello & Kagan, 1994 and Barnaav, 1998). In 1012,
the Jews were expelled from Mainz, and those who remained were
burned at the stake. Similar expulsions and retribution for those
who failed to leave took place in Bavaria and Austria in 1298, when
it is estimated that approximately 100,000 Jews were killed. In the
14th century, Jews were expelled from France (1394). In the first
half of the 15th century, Jews were expelled from Austria (1422),
Cologne (1426), and Brandenburg (1446). In the second half of the
15th century, Jews were expelled from Spain (1492), Naples (1493),
and Portugal (1496). In the 16th century, Jews were expelled from
most of Italy, beginning with their expulsion from the Kingdom
of Naples in 1510. Pope Pius V expelled the Jews from all the
Papal States, except Rome, in 1569. In 1571, Jews were expelled
from Tuscany except for the ghettos in Florence and Sienna; in
1597, the Jews were expelled from Milan. The persecution of the
Jews in Russia began in 1881, following the assassination of the
Tsar. One of the assassins was identified as a Jewish woman, and
the act was widely believed to be a Jewish conspiracy. The final
major persecution of the Ashkenazi Jews occurred in the 1930s in
Germany and in the early ’40s in German-occupied Europe.
While it is difficult to show conclusively that the more intelligent
Jews have tended to survive these persecutions, it is a reasonable
conjecture that this is likely to have been the case. And there are
occasional instances where this has been recorded. For example,
Bernard Weinryb (1972) states that in the Cossacks’ attacks on the
Jews in Russia in 1648, it was the poor Jews who were unable to flee or
330 THE CHOSEN PEOPLE
pay ransom and were thus disproportionately killed. The hypothesis
rests on the assumption that the rich Jews who survived were more
intelligent than the poor Jews who were killed; this is a reasonable
conjecture considering the association between intelligence and
earnings that has frequently been found (for a review, see Lynn
and Vanhanen, 2006). In recent times, there is a fair amount of
evidence that during World War II, there was a tendency for the
more intelligent Jews to avoid being sent to concentration camps.
The Germans allowed Jews to emigrate in the 1930s on payment
of large sums, and these could have been paid more easily by the
more intelligent. Blom, Fuks-Mansfeld, and Schoffer (1996) note
that during the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands in World War
II, about 25,000 Jews escaped deportation to the concentration
camps and that these were largely middle class. A number of
countries such as Turkey, Britain, and the United States accepted
only or mainly qualified professionals and academics as refugees.
Other Jews escaped the concentration camps by getting to neutral
Spain, Switzerland, and Turkey, by going into hiding, or by forging
Gentile identity papers. All these actions require intelligence.
The Persecution Hypothesis provides a reasonable explanation
of why the Ashkenazim have acquired higher IQs than the
Sephardim, Mizrahim, and Ethiopian Jews: the Sephardim,
Mizrahim, and Ethiopian Jews were not persecuted as much as the
Ashkenazim. During their sojourn in Spain and Portugal, and their
five centuries in the Ottoman Empire, the Sephardic Jews were well
treated. As we have seen in the chapter on the Balkans, “the fate of
the Jews in the hands of Islam had on the whole been far more
tolerable than in other parts of Europe” (Silvera, 1995, p. 56); and
in the Ottoman Empire, the reign of Sultan Murad II (1421-1451)
“began a period of prosperity that lasted for two centuries and
which is unequalled in their history in any other country.” Jews
had influential positions at court; they engaged in unrestricted
trade and commerce; they dressed and lived as they pleased; and
they traveled at their pleasure in all parts of the country. Murad II
had a Jewish physician-in-chief, and this marked the beginning of
a long line of Jewish physicians who obtained power and influence
at court. The condition of Jews about the middle of the 15th century
was so prosperous and in such contrast to the hardships endured
Theories of Jewish Intelligence 331
by their fellow Israelites in Germany and Europe generally that
Isaac Zarfati was moved to send a circular letter to all the Jewish
communities in Germany and Hungary inviting their members
to immigrate to Turkey. This letter caused an influx of Ashkenazi
Jews (Montgomery, 1902, pp. 279-291).
The Mizrahim were also fairly well treated in the Near East and
North Africa. As Bertrand Russell noted:
Throughout the Middle Ages, the Mohammedans were more
civilized and more humane than the Christians. Christians
persecuted Jews, especially at times of religious excitement; the
Crusades were associated with appalling pogroms. In Mohammedan
countries, on the contrary, Jews were not in any way ill-treated.
(Russell, 1945, p. 323)
Similarly, in contrast to their frequent persecutions in Europe,
“the Jews found it easier to live and prosper in Islamic territories”
(Johnson, 2004, pp. 176, 181). Nevertheless, over the course of
2,000 years, the Sephardim and the Mizrahim did suffer some
persecution, sufficient to raise their IQs somewhat higher than
those of the Gentiles among whom they lived. It can be posited
further that the Ethiopian Jews were not persecuted by their
African neighbors, their IQ thus remained the same as that of other
Negroid peoples.
The Persecution Hypothesis can also explain why the Ashkenazi
Jews have acquired their pattern of high verbal, mathematical, and
reasoning abilities but weaker visual and spatial abilities. Those
with high verbal IQs were the ones that acquired status and wealth,
and they would have been able to use these to avoid being killed
during pogroms, because they would have had the money and
connections enabling them to escape.
7. The Discrimination Hypothesis
The Discrimination Hypothesis states that Gentiles in Europe
discriminated against Jews by limiting the kinds of occupations
they were permitted to pursue. Cochran, Hardy, and Harpending
have set out the theory (2006). It states that Jews were generally
not allowed to own land and work as farmers, or to work in the craft
332 THE CHOSEN PEOPLE
trades such as stone masons, blacksmiths, carpenters, thatchers,
wheelwrights, cart wrights, coopers (barrel makers), fletchers
(arrow makers), etc. The discrimination against Jews largely began
around the 13th century. Until then “they suffered from no explicit
economic restrictions; they were farmers, laborers, craftsmen,
merchants, artisans, peddlers; if any occupation was characteristic
of them it was wholesale trade and certain branches of the textile
industry” (Roth, 1946, p. 103). From the 13th century, Jews were
excluded from the craft trades that were controlled by the guilds.
The guilds were religious as well as trade associations, and this
excluded Jews on religious grounds and as unwelcome competitors.
Jews were allowed to be money-lenders, to open banks and charge
interest on loans, which was prohibited for Christians, to work
as tax collectors and import-export merchants, and to deal in
second-hand goods as peddlers. Those who were money-lenders,
tax collectors, and import-export merchants made a reasonable
living and were able to rear children who survived to adulthood.
Those who worked as peddlers would have found it hard to make
much of a living and would have been less able to rear children.
Throughout historical times and up to around 1880, people had
high birth rates and high infant and child mortality rates, and in
general, the more affluent and more intelligent had more children
who survived to adulthood. This selection differential would likely
have been greater for Jews.
Although difficult to prove, the Discrimination Hypothesis
is plausible. There is no doubt that Jews have frequently been
discriminated against in Europe for some 2,000 years. This
discrimination has been described for many countries in the body
of this book. Even a small tendency for the more intelligent Jews to
overcome this discrimination would have been sufficient to increase
the average Ashkenazim IQ to the level of around 110 that it has
become in the 20th century. The Discrimination Hypothesis also
provides a plausible explanation of why the Ashkenazi Jews have
acquired their pattern of high verbal, mathematical, and reasoning
abilities but weaker visual and spatial abilities. To succeed as
money-lenders, tax farmers, and import-export merchants, Jews
would have needed strong verbal, mathematical, and reasoning
abilities to assess risk and make calculations. The greater survival
Theories of Jewish Intelligence 333
of Jews who had these abilities would have increased the genes
responsible for them. These Jews would not have needed strong
visual and spatial abilities. By contrast, the many Gentiles who
worked as craftsmen would have needed strong visualization and
spatial abilities. Hence there would have been selection pressure
for strong visual and spatial abilities in Gentiles but not in Jews,
bringing about the distinctive cognitive profiles of the two peoples.
Cochran, Hardy, and Harpending:
The Jews of Islam, although reproductively isolated, seem not to
have had the necessary concentration of occupations with high IQ
elasticity. Some had such jobs in some of the Arab world, in some
periods, but it seems it was never the case that most did. In part this
was because other minority groups competed successfully for these
jobs—Greek Christians, Armenians, etc., in part because Moslems,
at least some of the time, took many of those jobs themselves,
valuing non-warrior occupations more highly than did medieval
Christians. In fact, to a large extent, and especially during the last
six or seven hundred years of relative Moslem decline, the Jews
of Islam tended to have “dirty” jobs. These included such tasks
as cleaning cesspools and drying the contents for use as fuel—a
common Jewish occupation in Morocco, Yemen, Irag, Iran, and
Central Asia. Jews were also found as tanners, butchers, hangmen,
and other disagreeable or despised occupations. Such jobs must
have had low IQ elasticity; brilliant tanners and hangmen almost
certainly did not become rich.
The suggested selective process explains the pattern of mental
abilities in Ashkenazi Jews—high verbal and mathematical ability
but relatively low spatial-visual ability. Verbal and mathematical
talent helped medieval businessmen succeed, while spatial-visual
abilities were irrelevant. (Cochran, Hardy & Harpending, 2006).
Overall, the Discrimination Hypothesis plausibly explains
high Ashkenazi IQ vis-à-vis the Sephardim and Ethiopian Jews;
it also dovetails, in many ways, with the Persecution Hypothesis
discussed above. Cochran and Harpending have developed these
ideas further in their book The 10,000 Year Explosion (2009).
334 THE CHOSEN PEOPLE
8. The Miscegenation Hypothesis
A further factor that has contributed to the explanation of
the differences in intelligence between Ashkenazim, Sephardim,
Mizrahim, and the Ethiopian Jews arises from interbreeding
with the Gentile communities among whom they lived, that is,
miscegenation. Despite strict Jewish prohibitions on exogamy,
there has always been some intermarriage and interbreeding
between Jews and non-Jews living in the same localities. Even a
small amount of miscegenation over many generations has been
sufficient to introduce significant proportions of Gentile genes into
the Jewish gene pool. The effects of this are visible in Ashkenazi
Jews, a number of whom have fair hair and blue eyes. We have
noted that Fisberg (1904) summarized a dozen studies of a total of
75,377 Ashkenazi Jews in Germany carried out at the end of the 19th
century and found that approximately 47 percent had the dark hair
and dark eyes of the original southwest Asian stock, 42 percent had
mixed hair and eye color (fair hair with dark eyes or dark hair with
blue eyes), while 11 percent had fair hair and blue eyes. Thus, at least
53 percent of German Jews had some Northern European ancestry.
The average IQ of Gentiles in Central and Northern Europe is 100
(Lynn, 2006). If it is assumed that all Jews began with an IQ of 84,
typical of the Near East, the effect of miscegenation with Northern
Europeans would have increased their IQ to about 90, assuming
the proportions of Northern European ancestry reported by
Fisberg (1904). Clearly, miscegenation with Northern Europeans is
nowhere near sufficient to explain the IQ of 110 of Ashkenazi Jews.
It should only have raised their IQ by about six points, leaving the
additional 20 IQ points to be explained by one or more of the other
hypotheses. Nevertheless, miscegenation with Northern Europeans
may explain about one fifth of the the 26-point increase (from 84
to 110) of Ashkenazi Jews during the course of some 2,000 years.
One factor contributing to the IQ differences between the
Ashkenazi, Sephardic, and Mizrahi Jews is likely that there was less
miscegenation with local host populations among the Ashkenazim.
As Jon Entine notes:
There are fewer genetic disorders specific to Sephardic Jews,
Oriental Jews, and other small Jewish populations, probably
Theories of Jewish Intelligence 335
because they intermingled more with gentiles than did European
Jews. Consequently, they often manifestthe same genetic disorders
that occur in the non-Jewish population of their native countries.
(Entine, 2007, p. 276)
In addition, miscegenation would have reduced the IQs of the
Sephardi and Mizrahim more than of the Ashkenazim because the
local populations with whom they interbred had lower IQs. The
Sephardic Jews that were expelled from Spain and Portugal in
the 1490s mainly moved to the Balkans, where the average IQ of
Gentiles is approximately 92, while in the Near East, the IQ of the
indigenous populations is approximately 84. Although there was,
no doubt, some miscegenation of the Ethiopian Jews with local
Negroid peoples, this would not have had any effect on their IQ,
since both populations have the same intelligence.
9. The Apostasy Hypothesis
The Apostasy Hypothesis of the high Jewish IQ has been proposed
by Charles Murray (2007). He notes that in 64 AD, the Jewish High
Priest Joshua ben Gamala issued an ordinance requiring all boys to
attend school from the age of about six. The ordinance was implemented,
and within about a century, the Jews had established universal male
literacy and numeracy. Jewish education involved the study of the
Torah and the Talmud. These are difficult texts, and only those with
high verbal intelligence would have been able to cope with them. The
result of this was that many Jews who did not possess high verbal ability
became discouraged and renounced their faith. Murray suggests that
this explains why the number of Jews fell from about 4.5 million in
the first century AD to about one to 1.5 million in the sixth century. He
concedes that some of this decline was due to about one million Jews
being killed in the revolts against the Romans in Judea and Egypt; that
there were some forced conversions from Judaism to other religions;
and that some of the reduction may be associated with a general drop in
population that accompanied the decline and fall of the Roman Empire.
Nevertheless, there was a huge number of Jews who just disappeared.
These, Murray suggests, were predominantly those with lower verbal
abilities who abandoned the faith. He proposes that by around the
year 1,000 AD, all Jews had a higher verbal IQ than Gentiles. During
336 THE CHOSEN PEOPLE
the next millennium, the IQs of the Ashkenazi were maintained or
perhaps increased by discrimination and persecution, while the IQ of
the Oriental Jews living in the Islamic world declined, possibly because
they were less subjected to discrimination and persecution, or through
intermarriage with Gentiles.
It is difficult to find definitive evidence for or against the five
theories to explain the evolution of the different IQs of the four Jewish
peoples (the Eugenic, Persecution, Discrimination, Miscegenation, and
Apostasy Hypotheses). It may well be that several or all of these factors
played important roles in the differentiation of Jewish intelligence.
10. Genetics of the High Jewish IQ
There are two genetic processes that may have occurred in the
evolution of high intelligence in the Ashkenazim and, to a lesser
extent, in the Sephardim and Mizrahim, but not in the Arabs.
The first of these is that differences in the frequencies of the
alleles for high and low intelligence may have evolved in the three
populations; the second is that new alleles for high intelligence
may have appeared as mutations in Ashkenazim but not in the
Sephardim, Mizrahim, Ethiopian Jews, and Arabs.
The first of these processes is quite straightforward. It
posits that the more intelligent of the Ashkenazim more often
survived, and had more surviving children, because they had the
most eugenic customs, were the most persecuted, discriminated
against, etc. The result of this would have been that alleles for high
intelligence became more frequent in the Ashkenazim population.
Many of the less intelligent Ashkenazim carrying the alleles for low
intelligence would have been unable to survive and rear children
because of the eugenic customs, persecution, discrimination, etc.;
this would have reduced the alleles for low intelligence in the
Ashkenazi population. The Sephardim, Mizrahim, Ethiopian Jews,
and Arabs had weaker eugenic customs, were less persecuted,
less discriminated against, etc.; so more of those with lower
intelligence survived and had surviving children (as compared
with the Ashkenazim); and more of the alleles for low intelligence
remained in the populations.
A second genetic process in the evolution of higher intelligence
in the Ashkenazim may have been in the appearance of one or more
Theories of Jewish Intelligence 337
new alleles for high intelligence as mutations in Ashkenazim but
not in the Sephardim, Mizrahim, Ethiopian Jews, and Arabs (or
fewer ofthem appeared in these populations, or they appeared in
these but were not selected for). Cochran, Hardy, and Harpending
advance this theory (2006). They propose that the clusters
of Ashkenazi genetic diseases-the sphingolipid cluster (Tay-
Sachs, Gaucher, Niemann-Pick, and mucolipidosis type IV) and
the DNA repair cluster in particular, and possibly also dystonia
and the disorders of steroid synthesis-increase intelligence in
heterozygotes (those with one copy of the gene). The authors cite
direct evidence for this in the case of Gaucher disease. They argue
that the high prevalence of these diseases of biochemically related
mutations is extremely unlikely to have occurred by chance or by
genetic drift and that the existence of these categories or disease
clusters among the Ashkenazi Jews suggests selective forces at
work. This process is similar to the sickle-cell anemia disorders
prevalent in Africa and around the Mediterranean, which are
known to confer resistance to malaria in heterozygotes, although
the disease also impairs homozygotes. Thus, the more numerous
heterozygotes have an advantage. In the case of the Ashkenazim,
the theory is that high intelligence was selected for because of the
social niche they found in cognitively demanding occupations of
money-lenders and tax farmers. This brought about an increase
in the alleles for these intelligence-enhancing mutations in the
Ashkenazim but not in their host populations of Gentiles, or in
the Sephardim, Mizrahim, Ethiopian Jews, or Arabs.
Cochran, Hardy, and Harpending (2006) provide additional
evidence in support of this theory for Gaucher disease. They cite
evidence on the occupations of 302 Gaucher patients in Israel.
These are virtually all the Gaucher patients in the country. Of the
255 patients who were employed, 81 were high-IQ occupations.
There were 13 academics, 23 engineers, 14 scientists, and 31
in other high-IQ occupations like accountants, physicians,
or lawyers. In Israel at large, 1.35 percent of the working-age
population are engineers or scientists, while in the Gaucher-
patient sample, 37 of the total of 255 (45 percent) were engineers
or scientists. They assert that Ashkenazim make up 60 percent of
the workforce in Israel, so a conservative base rate for engineers
338 THE CHOSEN PEOPLE
and scientists among Ashkenazim is 2.25 percent, assuming that
all engineers and scientists are Ashkenazi. With this rate, six in
the sample would be expected, but the actual number was 37.
The chance of 37 or more scientists and engineers appearing in
the sample is a highly improbable overrepresentation. They also
found that there were five physicists and five unskilled workers
in the sample and note that in the United States, the fraction of
people with undergraduate or higher degrees in physics is one
per thousand. Assuming that this fraction applies approximately
to Israel, the expected number of physicists in the sample would
be 0.25, while the observed number is five, i.e. twenty times the
expected number. They conclude, “Gaucher patients are clearly a
very high IQ sub-sample of the general population.”
They advance similar arguments for the intelligence-enhancing
properties ofthe second major cluster of Ashkenazi mutations, namely
the DNA repair cluster, involving BRCA1, BRCA2, Fanconi’s anemia,
and Bloom syndrome. These diseases all affect a group of functionally
related proteins involved in DNA repair. This is mainly an Ashkenazi
cluster, though a common Ashkenazi BRCA1 mutation, 187delAG, is
also common in Sephardim. They show that microcephalin, a gene
controlling human brain size, has evolved rapidly throughout the
primate lineage leading to humans and that this evolutionary process
exhibits strong signs of positive selection.
Cochran, Hardy, and Harpending argue further that the time
of the appearance of the Ashkenazi mutations is consistent with
their theory. It would be expected that the IQ-increasing mutations
with the highest frequency today should have originated shortly
after conditions began favoring high IQ among the Ashkenazim,
that is, shortly after they began to occupy their niche as money-
lenders. Mutations that came into existence earlier, when IQ did
not have an unusually high reproductive payoff, would have very
likely disappeared by chance. It might be that a mutation would
have side effects that would, in the absence of high payoffs to IQ,
actually reduce carrier fitness. This must be the case for torsion
dystonia. IQ-increasing mutations could have originated later,
but would not have had as many generations in which to spread
through the population. This implies that almost all of this class of
mutations should have originated after the Ashkenazim began to
Theories of Jewish Intelligence 339
occupy their niche as money-lenders, perhaps 800 years ago, with
the most common mutations originating early in this period. They
cite evidence that seven of the most common Ashkenazi mutations
seem to have originated around that time.
Once a new mutant allele for higher intelligence had appeared, it
would have conferred a selection advantage and would have spread
through the Ashkenazim. The frequent migrations of the Ashkenazim
to escape persecution would have provided ideal conditions for the
spread of one or more new mutant alleles for higher intelligence that
conferred a selection advantage.
CHAPTER 21
Conclusions
1. Jewish cultural values
2. Jewish motivation for achievement
3. Three troubling conclusions
4. The future ofthe Jewish people
W: have seen in the body of this book that in all countries and
regions that have been considered, the Ashkenazim have been
far more successful than their Gentile hosts in education, earnings,
and socioeconomic status, among chess grandmasters and top
bridge players, and in the highest levels of intellectual achievement,
indexed by the award of Nobel Prizes, Fields Medals, and Wolf Prizes
for outstanding work in mathematics. We have also seen that the
Ashkenazim have a high IQ; this book has argued that this goes
some way toward explaining their remarkable achievements. In
this concluding chapter, we consider whether the high Ashkenazi
IQ is sufficient to explain their high achievements or whether they
have some other traits that contribute to their successes. We also
discuss some implications of the high IQ and achievements of the
Ashkenazim, and consider finally the future of the Jewish peoples.
342 THE CHOSEN PEOPLE
1. Jewish Cultural Values
Many of those who have discussed the success of the Ashkenazim
have not considered their high intelligence but have attributed
their achievements to other qualities, such as their cultural values
regarding the importance of success and their strong motivation for
achievement or work ethic. Thus, Gary Becker, the Nobel Prize winner
for economics, concluded “the high achievement and low fertility
of Jewish families are explained by high marginal rates of return to
investments in the education, health, and other human capital of their
children that lower the price of quality relative to quantity” (Becker,
1981, p. 110). Another economist, Barry Chiswick, has also noted that
Jews do better than would be predicted from the amount of education
they receive and wondered how this can be. He suggests,
Jews maylearn moreinschoolor on thejob because ofsupplemental
training received in the home or in the Jewish community prior to
or concurrent with schooling. Or it may be that there are cultural
characteristics that enable Jews to be more productive in the labor
market with the human characteristics embodied in them.”
Chiswick concludes somewhat lamely, “the reasons for ethnic
group differences in ratesofreturn on human capital warrant further study.”
It is likely that the Ashkenazim do have some motivational
qualities that contribute to their high achievement. Although their
high intelligence is undoubtedly an important factor, it is doubtful
whether the Ashkenazic IQ of 110 is sufficient to explain their
successes. This problem can be usefully considered in the following
way. A population of Gentiles with an average IQ of 100 has 16
percent of individuals with an IQ of 115 and above, which is about
the minimum required to become a physician, lawyer, or other major
professional. The Ashkenazim, with an average IQ of 110, should have
approximately double the proportion of individuals with this IQ.
Consequently, if their high intelligence was the only factor involved in
their high achievement, they should have about double the proportion
of physicians, lawyers, and other major professionals, as compared
with Gentiles. In fact, however, we have seen that in all the countries
we have examined, the proportion of Ashkenazim has been more than
double in these professions and in most countries, considerably more
than double. These results are brought together for physicians and
Conclusions 343
lawyers in Table 21.1 in which Jewish overrepresentation is expressed
as Achievement Quotients (calculated by dividing the percentage
of Jewish achievements by their percentage in the population). The
median of the Jewish Achievement Quotients is 9.2, more than four
times greater than the 2.0 that would be predicted from the higher
Ashkenazim IQ. This suggests that the success of the Ashkenazim is
attributable to more than just their high IQs and that they also possess
strong motivational and work-ethic qualities.
Table 21.1. Jewish Achievement Quotients for physicians
and lawyers
Country Years Physicians | Lawyers
Austria 1883-1910 14.7 17.7
Benelux 1930 2.7 2.3
Britain 1985 6.6 9.5
Canada 1991 9.2 4.5
Germany 1918-1933 16.0 25.0
Hungary 1920 12.0 10.1
Poland 1931 5.6 3.3
Soviet Union 1928-1939 11.1 -
United States 2000 5.3 4.8
We can apply the same argument to the large number of Jewish
Nobel Prize winners. It is reasonable to suppose that an IQ of at least
130 is required for the work meriting the award of a Nobel Prize.
A Gentile population with an IQ of 100 will have approximately two
percent with IQs above this level, while the Ashkenazim, with an IQ of
110, will have about nine percent, four and a half times more. If their
high intelligence were the only factor involved in the Ashkenazim high
achievement, we would expect that they would be around four and a
half times overrepresented among Nobel Prize winners. Ashkenazim
Achievement Quotients for Nobel Prize winners are shown for 16
countries in Table 21.2. The median Jewish Achievement Quotient is
24.5, much greater than would be predicted from the Jewish IQ.
It may be considered that for the very high level of intellectual
achievement represented by a Nobel Prize, the minimum IQ is greater
344 THE CHOSEN PEOPLE
than 130. The minimum IQ required for winning a Nobel Prize may be
more like 145. In Gentile populations with an average IQ of 100, this
is possessed by approximately 0.13 percent of individuals, while the
Ashkenazim have approximately 0.98 percent at this level, 7.5 times
as many. It would therefore be expected that the Ashkenazim would
be around 7.5 times overrepresented among Nobel Prize winners. Yet,
we see in Table 21.2 that the actual Jewish Achievement Quotients
for Nobel Prize winners in all the countries except Britain is greater
than this; in most countries, it is considerably greater. We are drawn
to the same conclusion for the Jewish overrepresentation among
physicians and lawyers. Jews are so hugely overrepresented among
Nobel Prize winners that it would seem that there must be something
more involved in their remarkable achievement than their high IQs.
Table 21.2. Jewish achievement quotients for Nobel Prize
winners
Country Nobel AQs |Country Nobel AQs
Austria 24 Hungary 25
Balkans 23 Italy 320
Benelux 22 Latin America 220
Britain 6 Poland 8
Canada 35 Russia 33
Denmark 270 South Africa 16
France 19 Switzerland 60
Germany 31 United States 10
Several times, it has been suggested that Jews have cultural values
that promote success. It is asserted that a high valuation of success has
become a cultural norm in Jewish families, in which parents bring up
their children to achieve and socialize them to value success.
Success is so vitally important to the Jewish family ethos that we
can hardly overemphasize it.... We cannot hope to understand
the Jewish family without understanding the place that success
for men (and recently for women) plays in the system. (Herz and
Rozen, 1982, p. 306)
Conclusions 345
The historian Stephan Thernstrom and his wife assert that the
achievements of the Jews are “the product of cultural values that they
have brought with them and transmitted from generation to generation
over a very long time” (Thernstrom and Thernstrom, 2003, p. 98).
There may be some plausibility in the theory that Jews have
cultural values that promote achievement and that this is a major
factor responsible for their success, but these assertions do not have a
strong empirical base. I have therefore (in collaboration with Satoshi
Kanazawa) examined this theory by looking at some data collected
by the American National Opinion Research Center (NORC). This
organization carries out annual or biannual surveys on approximately
1,500 individuals in the continental United States (i.e. excluding
Hawaii and Alaska). These are known as the General Social Surveys
(GSS). The surveys were first carried out in 1972. The samples are
representative of the adult population of those aged 18 years and
over, except that they exclude those who cannot speak English and in
institutions such as prisons and hospitals.
Some of the GSS surveys have collected information about the
respondents’ cultural values, measured by their responses to a
question on the values parents would most like in their children. The
surveys have given 13 values and ask respondents to identify the one
that they would most like their children to possess, as well as their
top three choices. These values are as follows: (1) Success: “that he
tries hard to succeed”; (2) Studiousness: “that he is a good student”;
(3) Amicability: “that he gets along well with other children”; (4)
Cleanliness: “that he is neat and clean”; (5) Considerateness: “that
he is considerate of others”; (6) Control: “that he has self-control”;
(7) Honesty: “that he is honest”; (8) Interest: “that he is interested in
how and why things happen”; (9) Judgment: “that he has good sense
and sound judgment”; (10) Manners: “that he has good manners”;
(11) Obedience: “that he obeys his parents well”; (12) Responsibility:
“that he is responsible” (13) Sex role: “that he acts like a boy (she
acts like a girl).” For an analysis of whether Jews attach greater value
than Gentiles to their children’s success, the GSS samples have been
analyzed for the years 1972 through 2004. This gives a total sample
of 10,700, of whom there are 228 who identified themselves as Jews.
These are 2.1 percent of the sample, which is about the percentage of
Jews in the American population.
346 THE CHosEn PEOPLE
The differences between the Jews and non-Jews in the value they
would most like their children to have are shown in Table 21.3. This gives
the percentages of the respondents selecting each of the 13 values they
would most like their children to have, for five religious categories. The
right-hand column gives the values of t for the statistical significance
of the different percentages of Jews compared with the remainder of
the sample selecting each value as the most desired in their children
(minus signs indicate that Jews attach less importance to these values).
There are only two values in which Jews are significantly different from
others. These are honesty, which Jews desire in their children less than
do others, and judgment, which Jews desire in their children more than
do others.
Table 21.3. Most important values: percentages
Values Jews Prot. Cath. None | Other t
Numbers 228 6774 2736 781 181 -
Success 1.8 2.7 3.7 2.9 5.0 -1.14
Studiousness 0.0 0.8 1.2 0.9 2.2 -1.49
Amicability 1.8 1.7 2.3 2.3 0.6 0.11
Cleanliness 0.1 0.7 0.8 0.9 0.6 -0.51
Considerateness 9.2 5.8 9.0 13.1 9.9 1.14
Control 0.9 2,7 3.0 2.6 5.5 -1.77
Honesty 26.3 37.8 33.8 27.5 29.3 -2.96*
Interest 3.5 2.7 3.0 8.8 6.6 0.21
Judgment 32.0 16.9 17.3 20.4 12.7 5.82***
Manners 1.3 3:3 2.9 2.4 6.1 -1.57
Obedience 11.8 16.8 13.2 8.5 12.2 -1.39
Responsibility 10.1 71 9.0 9.0 9.4 1.28
Sex role 0.0 0.8 0.7 0.8 0.0 -1.31
* and *** denote statistically significant differences
at p<0.05 and p<0.001, respectively
Table 21.4 gives similar results for values being one of the three
most important that the respondents would most like their children
to possess. The right-hand column gives the values of t for the
Conclusions 347
statistical significance of the different percentages of Jews compared
with the remainder of the sample selecting each value as the one
of the three most desired in their children. There are eight values
in which Jews are significantly different from others. Jews attach
less importance to cleanliness, honesty, manners and obedience, but
they attach more importance to considerateness, interest in how and
why things happen, judgment and responsibility. (Fuller details of
this study are given in Lynn and Kanazawa (2008).)
Table 21.4. One of three most important values:
percentages
Values Jews Prot. Cath. None | Other t
Numbers 228 6774 2736 781 181 -
Success 10.5 14.4 15.6 15.0 17.7 -1.81
Studiousness 5.3 6.2 81 5.9 11.0 -0.90
Amicability 14.9 12.2 14.7 12.7 13.8 0.91
Cleanliness 3.9 8.3 6.2 5.5 3.3 -1.99*
Considerateness 41.2 37.1 30.7 36.0 34.3 4.07***
Control 13.2 17.3 15.5 12.9 21.0 -1.36
Honesty 58.8 67.6 63.6 58.8 55.8 -2.16*
Interest 27.6 15.0 16.3 34.4 23.8 4.26***
Judgment 52.2 36.9 37.1 43.1 35.4 4.55***
Manners 10.5 24.4 23.3 16.9 22.7 -4.60***
Obedience 19.7 35.0 29.2 17.8 24.3 -3.94***
Responsibility 39.0 30.7 35.5 36.1 34.8 2.11*
Sex role 1.8 4.0 3.4 3:7 1.1 -1.59
* and *** denote statistically significant differences
at p<0.05 and p<0.001, respectively
The results evidently provide no support for the theory that
Jews attach more importance to success or to studiousness than
non-Jews. In fact, Jews attach less importance to success and
to studiousness than non-Jews, although the differences are not
statistically significant. Jews do attach more importance to four
values than non-Jews. These are considerateness, interest in how
348 THE CHOSEN PEOPLE
and why things happen, judgment, and responsibility, but it is not
easy to see how these would contribute to the success of Jews in
virtually all walks of life. The results that Jewish parents are more
likely to foster interest in how and why things happen suggest that
this might contribute to the high Jewish achievement in science,
but Jews have been equally successful in law, the humanities, and
business, for which an interest in how and why things happen would
not seem to confer any obvious advantage. In general, the results
show that Jews do not differ much from Gentiles in the values they
would most like their children to have. Jews and non-Jews attach
most importance to their children being considerate, honest, and
responsible, and Jews and non-Jews attach least importance to their
children valuing cleanliness and appropriate sex-role behavior.
2. Jewish Motivation for Achievement
Although Jews do not seem to attach more importance to
success than do non-Jews, it is possible that Jews possess some
kind of strong motivational or work ethic advantage that contributes
to their achievements. This theory has been proposed by several
scholars including Francis Hsu (1972), E. Kallen (1976), and James
Flynn (1991). There is some evidence in support of the theory.
For instance, Bernard Rosen (1959) proposed that the racial and
ethnic populations in North America differed in what he called an
“achievement syndrome” consisting of “achievement motivation,”
“value orientation,” and “educational-occupational aspiration.”
He showed in an empirical study that Greeks, Jews, and White
Protestants had a strong “achievement syndrome” and argued
that this was responsible for their educational and socioeconomic
achievements; Blacks, Catholic Italians, and Catholic French-
Canadians had a weaker “achievement syndrome,” and this was
responsible for their lower educational and socioeconomic success.
In support of this thesis, Richard Carney and Wilbert McKeachie
(1962) have reported a study finding that Jewish college students
had higher achievement motivation than those of any other
denomination. The strong Jewish achievement motivation/work
ethic theory received some further confirmation from a study carried
out in the United States by Gerhard Lenski (1963), from which he
Conclusions 349
concluded that Jews have done well because they have a strong form
of the Protestant work ethic. He concluded that Jews are like White
Protestants in possessing “individualistic, competitive patterns of
thought and action linked with the middle class and historically
associated with the Protestant ethic or its secular counterpart, the
spirit of capitalism.” Catholics and Blacks, he argued, have “the
collectivist, security-oriented working class patterns of action,
historically opposed to the Protestant ethic.”
Some further supporting evidence for strong Jewish motivation
for achievement was found by J. Kosa (1969) in a study of 2,630
American medical students. They were divided into Jews, Protestants,
Catholics, and agnostics and were asked how much importance they
attached to having a high income and high prestige. The results are
given in Table 21.5 and show a higher percentage of Jews attached
importance to having a high income and high prestige compared to
the other three groups.
Table 21.5. Jewish-Gentile differences in importance
they attached to having a high income and high
prestige (percentages)
Jews | Protestants | Catholics | Agnostics
High income 30 19 20 26
High prestige 44 35 28 23
A study carried out by Naomi Fejgin (1995) suggests the same
differences. She analyzed the 1988 data of the American NELS
national sample of eighth graders, aged approximately 14. These
students were tested in mathematics and reading, on both of
which they scored higher than White Gentiles (see Table 19.2).
They also reported having higher educational aspirations (0.71d),
doing more homework (0.20d), and watching less television
(0.47d) than White Gentiles. The results are shown in Table 21.6.
All three differences suggest Jews have stronger motivation for
achievement.
350 THE CHOSEN PEOPLE
Table 21.6. Jewish-Gentile differences in measures of
motivation (sds in brackets)
Measure Jews Whites
Number 431 10,625
Educational aspirations 5.53 (2.28) | 3.88 (2.37)
Homework (hours per week) 5.29 (2.72) | 4.75 (2.66)
TV watching (hours per day) 2.01(1.49) | 2.71 (4.53)
Yet another study showing higher motivation for achievement
in Jews compared samples in Israel, the United States, and
Germany and found that Israelis had higher achievement
motivation than both Americans (d=0.41) and Germans (d=0.51)
(Byrne, Mueller-Hanson, Cardador, Thornton, Schuler, Frintrup,
& Fox, 2004).
The results of all these studies suggest that Jews have stronger
motivation for achievement than Gentiles. The high achievements
of the Jews can be understood in terms of the formula IQ x
Motivation x Opportunity = Achievement. It is the multiplicative
interaction of IQ with motivation and opportunity that explains
the huge overrepresentation of the Ashkenazim in all indices of
high achievement. A Jewish advantage of around 0.4d to 0.5d in
motivation interacting multiplicatively with a 0.67d (10 IQ points)
advantage in IQ is sufficient to explain the huge Jewish advantage
in achievement. Notice also that if any of the terms in the equation
is zero, there can be no achievement. This was the case with Jews
before their emancipation in the 19th century. They must have
possessed their high IQ and motivation because these will have
evolved over centuries, but they generally achieved little because
they were denied the opportunity, except in a few places like
Britain and the Netherlands. Once the Jews were emancipated, all
three components of the equation for achievement were present
and the Jews rapidly outperformed Gentiles in all areas.
The high Jewish motivation for achievement, together with
high intelligence, most likely has a genetic basis, brought about
through having been selected for by eugenic customs, persecution,
and discrimination.
Conclusions 351
3. Three Troubling Conclusions
Studies reporting the high intelligence and achievements of the
Ashkenazim that have been reviewed in this book have been around for
many decades. The high intelligence of the Ashkenazim was first found
in the 1920s in the United States and Britain. Over the next decades
these high IQs were confirmed by many more studies published in the
United States, two more studies in Britain, and two studies in Canada
published in 1968 and 1973 that reported Jewish IQs of 107.1 and 110.5.
Strangely, however, the high intelligence of the Ashkenazim is
hardly ever mentioned by social scientists. Of the several hundred
social scientists who have documented the high achievements of the
Jews and whose work has been summarized in this book, only Weyl
and Possony (1963), Weyl (1989), Storfer (1990), MacDonald (1994),
Herrnstein and Murray (1994), and Cochran, Hardy, and Harpending
(2006) have noted and discussed the high Jewish IQ. All others have
ignored it. For instance, the Harvard sociologist Stanley Lieberson
and his colleague Donna Carter, who showed the remarkable
overrepresentation of Jews in Who’s Who in America, make no
mention of the high Jewish IQ as a likely explanation (Lieberson
& Carter, 1979). There is no mention of the high IQ of the Jews in
discussions of Jewish successes by Harvard historians Thernstrom
and Thernstrom (2003), or by the economists Gary Becker (1981) and
Barry Chiswick (1985, 1988, 1999, 2007), the latter having devoted a
quarter of a century to considering why Jews have done so well. The
British sociologist Asher Tropp (1991), whose book documents the
overrepresentation of Jews in the professions in Britain, curiously fails
to make any mention of the studies showing that Jews have high IQs.
There is also no mention of the high IQ of the Jews by the Canadian
sociologist Edward Herberg (1990a, 1990b), who has documented the
economic and professional achievements of Jews in Canada.
Nor is there any mention of the high IQ of the Jews in textbooks of
sociology (e.g. Giddens, 1993) or of psychology (too numerous to cite),
or even in textbooks on intelligence, suchas Nathan Brody’s Intelligence
(1992), Nicholas Mackintosh’s IQ and Human Intelligence (1998),
Robert Sternberg’s Handbook of Intelligence (2000), and Earl Hunt’s
Human Intelligence (2011). In 1994, the American Psychological
Association set up a committee of experts on intelligence to produce
a report on all the important facts that are known about intelligence.
352 THE CHOSEN PEOPLE
This report included a discussion of the heritability of intelligence, the
high IQ ofthe Chinese and Japanese, and the low IQ of Blacks (Neisser
et al., 1996: Intelligence: Knowns and Unknowns). Strangely, absent
in all these works has been any mention of the high IQ of the Jews.
How can this silence about the high IQ of the Jews be explained?
While some of the historians, sociologists, and economists who have
published studies documenting the Jews’ high educational attainment,
high earnings, high socioeconomic status, and remarkable intellectual
achievements are, no doubt, ignorant of the high Jewish IQ, others
must surely be aware of it and how it must be a major factor in
Jewish successes. The contribution of intelligence to educational and
socioeconomic status is quite well known in the social sciences as a
result of the work of the sociologist Christopher Jencks (1972), and the
well-publicized work of Herrnstein and Murray (1994) in the United
States, and that of the sociologists Bond and Saunders (1999) in Britain.
It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that sociologists know about high
Jewish IQ, but have chosen to ignore it. It is certainly well known in
psychology that intelligence is a major determinant of educational and
socioeconomic achievement (see, e.g. Brand, 1996; Lynn, 1988; Nettle,
2003). The psychologists who are experts on intelligence must be aware
of the studies of the high IQ of the Jews, but have likewise opted to
ignore these.
Why should this be? Possibly, the reason for this omission is that
the high IQ of the Jews raises three awkward problems: (1) the high
IQ of the Jews must have a genetic basis; (2) Jewish eugenic customs
have contributed to the high Jewish IQ, and hence eugenic practices are
effective in raising the intelligence of a people; and (3) a minority ethnic
group with a high IQ succeeds despite discrimination.
The first troubling conclusion raised by the high Jewish IQ is that
it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that their high IQ must have a
genetic basis. Five reasons for the inescapability of this conclusion have
been given in Chapter 20. How else can we explain the extraordinary
achievements of these peoples throughout the United States, Britain,
Continental Europe, Canada, and elsewhere from the later decades of
the 19th century onward? Jews arrived in these foreign countries as
penniless refugees, and yet their children and grandchildren obtained
higher average IQs (where this has been tested) than their Gentile
hosts, outperformed them in educational attainment, earnings,
socioeconomic status, and in intellectual achievements.
Conclusions 353
It is impossible to avoid the conclusion that a significant factor in
these Jewish achievements is their high IQ and that this must have a
substantial genetic basis. Once this conclusion has been reached, it
inevitably invites the question of why other ethnic and racial groups,
notably Blacks, American Indians, and Hispanics in the United States,
Canada, and throughout Latin America, have failed to achieve equality
with Whites, and why Blacks, North Africans, and South Asians have
likewise failed to achieve equality with Whites in Britain and Continental
Europe. If the Jews have done better than White Gentiles because
they have a higher IQ, we are drawn to the conclusion that Blacks,
American Indians, non-white Hispanics, and South Asians have failed
to succeed because they have lower IQs. This was the conclusion drawn
by Herrnstein and Murray (2004) in The Bell Curve, whose publication
was met by a barrage of attacks. Most social scientists are reluctant
to spell out this conclusion, either because they are ideologically
committed equalitarians on race differences, or because they fear the
criticisms they would be certain to incur.
The second troubling conclusion that has to be drawn from the
high IQ of the Jews is that it seems to have been a eugenics success
story. We have seen that there is a strong case that the eugenic
customs and practices of the Ashkenazim (according high status to
intelligent rabbis and other scholars and promoting their marriage
to the daughters of wealthy merchants) seem to have been a major
factor responsible for the evolution of their high intelligence. But who
wants to admit that eugenics works and has contributed to the high
intelligence and achievements of this extraordinarily gifted people?
Evidently not those who have written textbooks on psychology,
sociology, and intelligence.
The high IQ and achievements of the Jews lead to a third troubling
conclusion. This is that an ethnic group with a high IQ succeeds
despite discrimination, and this raises the question of why other
ethnic groups have failed to succeed. The standard explanation of
why Blacks, non-white Hispanics, and American Indians do poorly
in IQ, education, earnings, and socioeconomic status is that Whites
discriminate against them. The same explanation is routinely advanced
to explain why Mestizos and indigenous peoples do poorly throughout
Latin America, why Aborigines do poorly in Australia, and why Maoris
do poorly in New Zealand. Yet, the Jews have suffered a great deal of
discrimination over the last 2,000 years, and it has apparently not had
354 THE CHOSEN PEOPLE
an adverse effect on their intelligence or their achievements. How can
this be explained? Jews have everywhere experienced anti-Semitism
and discrimination, yet they have invariably done better in earnings,
socioeconomic status, and intellectual achievement than Europeans.
The only possible inference that can be drawn is that an ethnic group
with a high IQ succeeds despite discrimination. This, in turn, discredits
the theory that Blacks, Hispanics, and American Indians have failed
to achieve equality with Whites because of discrimination. Those such
as Sandra Scarr (1995), who maintain that racial discrimination is an
important cause of Blacks’ low IQ, have a problem explaining the high
IQ of the Jews. Why Jews have succeeded where Blacks, Hispanics,
and Native American Indians have failed poses a problem that many
social scientists find hard to explain, and thus prefer not to address.
It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that this is another ofthe reasons
why a discreet veil of silence has been drawn over the high Jewish IQ.
4. The Future of the Jewish People
The Jews are unique in having survived as a people for around
2,000 years without a homeland and despite numerous persecutions.
Normally, immigrant peoples become assimilated with their host
populations within a century or two. The Normans who conquered
England in 1066 preserved their French language and names for
about 200 years, but after this, became assimilated with the native
English, intermarried with them, adopted the English language, and
disappeared as an ethnic group. The French established and ruled
a colony around Istanbul in 1204 following the Fourth Crusade,
but within two centuries they became assimilated. The Jews, on the
other hand, have preserved their identity for 2,000 years. There are
indications, however, that their continued survival as minority groups
in Western countries and in Israel is in jeopardy.
The three major bonds through which the Jews have preserved
their identity throughout the centuries have been their religion, their
language, and their prohibition on marrying Gentiles. The strength
of all three of these began to weaken in the 19th century, a process
that was accelerated in the 20th. The first to go was the language.
Until the 19th century, virtually all the Ashkenazim lived in Russia,
Poland, Germany, and the Austro-Hungarian Empire, where they
Conclusions 355
spoke Yiddish. In the 19th century, Jews in Germany and the Austro-
Hungarian Empire gave up Yiddish and adopted the German or
Hungarian languages. This facilitated their assimilation and successful
Jews began to mix socially with Gentiles and intermarry with them.
The proportion of Jews marrying Gentiles gradually increased until
by the 1930s, it reached about halfin Germany, Austria, and Hungary.
The future numbers of the Jewish people throughout the world,
assuming the continuation of medium fertility, have been estimated
by Sergio Della Pergola, Uzi Rebhun, and Mark Tolts (2000) for the
years 2030 and 2080. Their estimates together with their figures for
the year 2000 are given in Table 21.7. We see that they project declines
in the numbers of Jews throughout the world, except in Israel, where
the numbers of Jews is expected to increase and more than double from
2000 to 2080.
Table 21.7. Population projections for the Jewish
people (thousands)
Region 2000 | 2030 | 2080
Total world 13,109 | 14,125 | 15,574
Israel 4,874 | 6,876 | 10,558
North America 6,065 | 5,763 | 4,094
Latin America 420 335 199
Europe 1,125 962 609
Former Soviet Union 413 22 (0)
Asia, Africa, Oceania 212 168 114
The projected decline in the numbers of Jews throughout the
world (except in Israel) is attributed to four factors: continued
migration to Israel, intermarriage with Gentiles, loss of faith, and
below-replacement fertility. They assume continued anti-Semitism
will likely be responsible for significant numbers of Jews migrating
to Israel. Intermarriage with Gentiles reduces the numbers of
Jews because most couples in these mixed marriages bring up
their children as Gentiles and became assimilated into their host
communities. In the 20th century, increasing numbers of Jews
married Gentiles, but the extent ofintermarriage varied in different
356 THE CHosEn PEOPLE
countries. In Canada, only 12.9 percent of Jews had married
Gentiles in 1991, but in the United States the 1990 National Jewish
Population Survey showed that 52 percent of Jews had married
non-Jews, and only 25 percent of children reared in Jewish-Gentile
mixed marriages were being raised as Jews (Kosmin & Lachman,
1993). In the Netherlands between 1946 and 1999, 54 percent of
Jews married Gentiles (Kalmijn, Liefbroer, van Poppel, & van
Solinge, 2006), almost exactly the same as the 52 percent in the
United States.
As significant numbers of Jews have lost their faith, they have
ceased to accept the injunction against marrying Gentiles and
instead have assimilated with them. This has been a major factor
responsible for Jewish assimilation into Gentile communities that
began throughout Europe in the middle decades of the 19th century
and spread to the United States in the 2oth. For instance, a survey
of students at UCLA carried out in 1991 found that 17 percent
of Jewish students had abandoned their parents’ religion; this
percentage was expected to increase as they grew older (Kosmin
& Lachman, 1993). It seems likely that this trend will continue
throughout the country. Indeed, many ethnically conscious Jews
have perceived this and are concerned about it, but it is doubtful
there is anything they could do to reverse it.
In addition to increasing assimilation with Gentiles, Jews have
been having relatively few children. We have seen this in Canada,
where in 1981, Jewish women aged 44 and over had an average of
2.24 children, barely two thirds of the 3.30 for the whole population.
In the United States, as early as 1957, Jewish women aged 44 and
over had an average of 2.22 children, significantly fewer than the
2.80 for the whole population. At the end of the 20th century, the
fertility of Jewish women in the United States had fallen to 1.86, well
below the 2.1 figure needed for replacement (Wertheimer, 2005).
This is an expression of the general tendency for fertility to be below
replacement present throughout economically developed countries,
particularly among the better educated and the more intelligent.
The result of emigration to Israel, the lessening of religious
commitment to Judaism, increasing rates of intermarriage with
Gentiles, and below replacement fertility has been that the Jewish
populations have declined significantly in Western countries. For
Conclusions 357
instance, in Britain, the number of Jews declined from 360,000 in
1970 to 267,000 in 2001. The absolute number of Jews in a country
is a critical factor determining whether they retain their identity.
Where there are relatively few Jews, as in Britain, Continental
Europe, and most of the rest of the world, it is difficult for Jews
to find suitable Jewish marriage partners, so many of them marry
Gentiles and lose their Jewish identity. This has been happening on
an increasing scale even in the United States, where about half the
Jewish population marry Gentiles, and almost three quarters of the
children of these marriages are raised as Gentiles (Wertheimer, 2005).
It seems probable, even inevitable, that these trends will
continue and that Jews as an ethnic group will continue to decline
in numbers throughout Western countries up to the end of the 21st
century. To estimate the extent of this decline in the United States,
we can take Jewish fertility at 1.86 per woman, of whom half are
born to Gentile partners of whom three quarters lose their Jewish
identity. The effect of this is a replacement of 1.16 Jewish children
per Jewish woman. This will result in an approximate halving of
the Jewish population in each generation.
Despite this reduction in numbers, Jews are likely to remain
an influential force in the United States by virtue of their high IQs,
power, and wealth; it is also likely there will be a sufficient number
for them to retain their identity and remain a significant element in
the population, at least until the end of the 21st century.
Only in Israel is the number of Jews projected to increase. But the
Jews in Israel face two problems. The first is the implacable hostility
of their Arab neighbors. In the second half of the 20th century, the
Jews in Israel did not have much difficulty in containing this by
virtue of their higher intelligence, but whether they will be able
to continue to do this if and when one or more of their neighbors
secure nuclear weapons is questionable. A second problem lies in
the differences in the fertility of the European Jews, the Mizrahim,
and the Arabs. As we saw in Chapter 11, the European Jews are the
elite with the highest IQs and educational achievement, and they
form the majority of the professional and middle class. Yet, their
numbers of children have been below those of the Mizrahim and
the Arabs. In 2000, the fertility difference between the European
Jews and Mizrahim had narrowed, especially for those born in
358 THE CHOSEN PEOPLE
Israel, among whom fertility had become almost the same at 2.58
and 2.62, respectively. However, the fertility of the Arabs has been
much greater than that ofthe Jews. In 1960, the average number of
children of the Arabs was 9.31, compared with 3.94 for Jews born
in Israel. This fertility difference has narrowed until by the year
2007, it reached 2.8 for Jews born in Israel and 3.9 for Arabs. It
may be that the fertility ofthe Arabs will continue to decline until it
becomes the same as that of the Jews. It seems more likely that the
Arabs will continue to have more children than the Jews, with the
result that they become an increasing proportion ofthe population.
Arabs could even become the majority toward the end of the 21st
century, raising the possibility that Jews could be displaced in their
own country.
A pessimistic view of the future of Israel was taken by the U.S.
Central Intelligence Agency in a report issued in March 2009.
It predicted that Israel and Palestine would merge in a “one-
state solution” and that the fertility of the Palestinians would
be so much greater than that of Jews that they would inevitably
become a majority of the population. Jews would then find Israel
uncomfortable, and large numbers would emigrate. Even if
this does not take place, increasing numbers of Jews will likely
leave Israel. Many Jews already foresee these alarming potential
possibilities and are considering emigration. The CIA report notes,
“Over 500,000 Israelis have American passports and those who
do not have American or Western passports, have already applied
for them.” The study further predicts the return of over 1.5 million
Israelis to Russia and other parts of Europe. The report concluded
that Israel may well not survive as a Jewish state beyond the next
20 years. Even if this timescale is excessively short, it is difficult
to be optimistic about the survival of Israel as a Jewish state over
the longer term.
For all these reasons, it is impossible to be other than
pessimistic about the survival of the Jews as an ethnic group in
the medium term. Israel will likely be lost as the Jewish homeland,
as the numbers of Arabs increase and Jews emigrate. Elsewhere,
apart from a small number of Hasidim, it seems likely that
increasing numbers of Jews will lose their faith, marry non-Jews,
and raise their children as Gentiles; more and more Jews will be
Conclusions 359
assimilated with their Gentile host communities and lose their
Jewish identity. This will be bad news for Jews who value their
genetic and cultural heritage. On the other hand, it will be good
news for Gentiles, who will benefit from an infusion of Jewish
genes that have contributed so much to world culture.
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Index
A
Abbasid dynasty 22
ABC (American Broadcasting Company)
307
Abrikosov, Alexei 230
academia. See education
Achievement Quotients, Jewish 6-10,
36, 37, 42, 45, 46, 48, 53, 67, 81,
83, 84, 85, 86, 89, 107, 114, 125,
127, 128, 144, 146, 157, 189, 200,
209, 230, 231, 242, 251, 265,
289, 293, 294-300, 321, 343
Adam, Adolphe 124
Agursky, Mikhail 227
Albu, Sir George 238
Alekhine, Alexander 66
Alexander II, Tsar 220
Alferov, Zhores 230
alleles 336-337
Allende, Salvador 197
Allen, Woody 305
American Jewish Yearbook 42, 63,
238, 260
American National Opinion Research
Center 345
American Psychological Association 18,
351
Amsterdam, Jews in 65
A. M. Turing Awards 2
ancient Greeks 6, 8
ancient world, Jews in the 6, 22, 181,
253, 336
Anglo-American Corporation of South
Africa 238
anti-Semitism 354, 355. See also dis-
crimination, anti-Jewish; See
also persecution, anti-Jewish
anti-Semitic violence 23, 206, 208-
210, 213, 220, 245, 246-247,
254, 262, 329. See also pogroms
in Britain and Ireland 92
in Central and Eastern Europe 35, 49,
51, 206-208
in France 121, 122
in Germany 15, 62, 132, 330
in Italy 183, 185
in Latin America 193, 199
in Romania 262
in Russia 224, 226
in Switzerland 249
in the Ivy League 284
in the Ottoman Empire 23
in the United States 285
in Yugoslavia 264
National Socialist 62, 208, 249, 260
Antokolsky, Mark 218
Antonescu, Ion 263
Antwerp, Belgium 58, 59, 61
Applebaum, Anne 303
Arabs
in Israel 152, 160-166, 357-358. See
also socioeconomic status
intelligence 152-153
Jews under Arab rule 22
Arber, Werner 250
Argentina, Jews in 192-194
population estimates 193
Aristotle 8, 24
Aron, Raymond 124
Aryans (Northern Europeans) 3, 121,
187
Ashkenazim. See Jews
Ashkenazi, Szymon 207
Ashley, Lord (Anthony Ashley Cooper)
3
Asser, Tobias 67
assimilation, into Gentile society 61,
112, 133, 135, 141, 184-186, 192,
224, 234
Jewish resistance to assimilation 354
Atlantic Monthly, The 308
390 THE CHOSEN PEOPLE
Attali, Jacques 124
attitude towards Jews (Gentile) 233
Australia, Jews in 33-40
Austria, Jewsin 42-45
B
Babylon 22. See also ancient world,
Jews in the
Backman, Margaret 281
Baghdad, Jews in 22
Bailey, Pearce 279
Baker, Benny 305
Bakst, Leon 217
Balfour, Arthur 150
Balfour Declaration, the 150
Balkans, the
Jews in 253-270
Bamberger family (France) 120
banking, Jews in 13
in Benelux 59
in Central Europe 49
in France 120
in Germany 135, 136
in Italy 185, 186
in Latin America 196
in Poland 205
in Russia 220
in Switzerland 250, 251
in the Austro-Hungarian Empire 42,
43, 49
in the Middle East 319
Barnes, Binnie 305
Barron, Clarence 308
basketball, Jews in 309
Basov, Nicolay G. 230
Basser, Sir Adolph 34
Bat-Miriam, M. 26
Becker, Ernest 303
Becker, Gary 14, 342, 351
Beers family (Germany) 135
Beit, Alfred 238
Bell Curve, The 278, 353. See also Mur-
ray, Charles; See also Herrnstein,
Richard
Benelux, Jews in 57-70
population estimates 62
Benny, Jack 305
Berezovsky, Boris 233
Bergson, Henri 125
Berhanu, Girma 172
Berlin, Irving 303
Bernal, Maestre 191
Bernhardt, Sarah 120
Bernstein, Leonard 304
Berry, Colin 8, 320
birthrates, Jewish. See fertility, Jewish
Birt, John 87
Bischoffsheim family (France) 120
Bishr, Sahl ibn 319
Bismarck, Otto von 132, 134
Bix, Herbert 303
Bizet, Georges 120
Black Death, the. See bubonic plague
Blacks, in America 13, 353
Bleustein, Marcel 124
Bloch, Felix 250
“blood libel” accusations 245, 246
Blum, Léon 120, 123
Boas family (The Netherlands) 60
Boas, Franz 218
Bohr, Aage Neils 113, 114
Bohr, Niels 113
Bolshevik Revolution 218, 221, 250
Bolshevik Party, the 221
Borge, Victor 112, 306
Bosnia-Hertzegovina 255, 259
Boston Globe 308
Botvinnik, Mikhail 2
Boublil, Alain 124
Bourgain, Jean 67
Bovet, Daniel 250
boxing, Jews in 309
Brazile, Jews in 195-197
population estimates 195-196
Brenner, Sydney 242
bridge, Jews in 2
in Britain 88
in France 128
in the United States 301-302
Brigham, Carl 273
Britain, Jews in 71-96
population estimates 73-75
British Academy 85-86
British Chess Federation 88
Brodsky, Joseph 230
Bromberg, Edward 306
Brookdale Institute 169
Brook, Peter 87
Brook, Stephen 73
Brown, Herbert 89
Brown University. See Ivy League, Jews
in the
bubonic plague, the 58, 119, 132, 245
Bulgaria
Jewsin 259-261
population estimates 260
Bunin, Ivan 230
bureacracy, Jews in. See civil adminis-
tration, Jews in
Burns, George 305
Burnstein, Paul 17
Byzantium. See Roman Empire
C
Canada, Jews in 97-110
population estimates 98
Canetti, Elias 124, 265
Canetti, Jacques 124
Carasso, Isaac and Daniel 124
Caribbean, Jews in the 60, 61
Caro, Heinrich 135
Carol, Sue 305
Cassin, René 124
Castro, Isaac de 195
Catholic Church 182, 183, 329
CBS (Columbia Broadcasting System)
307
Ceausescu, Nicolae 263
celibacy, Catholic 327-328
Central Europe, Jews in 41-56
Central Intelligence Agency 358
Cervantes, Miguel de 319
Chagall, Mare 217, 321
Chamberlain, Houston Stewart 13, 14
Charlemagne 25, 117-118, 131
Charles V 58
Charpak, Georges 207, 209
Chavez, Hugo 199
Index 391
Cheka, the (Soviet Union) 221
Chemistry, Jews in. See Nobel Prize win-
ners, Royal Society
Cherenkov, Pavel 230
chess, Jews in 2, 16-17, 318
in Benelux 66
in Britain 87
in Central Europe 45, 53, 208, 210
in Germany 143
in Russia 228-229
in the Balkans 266
in the United States 300
Chile, Jews in 196-197
Chiswick, Barry 290, 291, 310, 342, 351
Christopher Jencks 5
Citroén, André 124
civil administration, Jews in 122, 187
Classical music, Jews in 304
Cochran, Gregory 322, 331-333,
337-339, 351
Coetzee, J. M. 242
Cohen family (Australia) 33
Cohen family (London) 73
Cohen, Irma 279
Cohen-Tannoudji, Claude 125
Cohn-Bendit, Daniel 124
Coles, Robert 303
Columbia University 187. See see Ivy
League
Columbus, Christopher 191
Commentary (journal) 6, 308
Conquering Jew, The 3
Constantine, Emperor 253
Constantinople, Byzantium 253, 254,
257
conversion, religious 335. See also Apos-
tasy Hypothesis
to Christianity 254
in Italy 184
in Latin America 191-192, 195
in Spain 24, 191
to Judaism 28, 167
Conversos. See conversion
Copland, Aaron 304
Cormack, Allan 242
Cortez, Hernando 197
392 THE CHOSEN PEOPLE
Cossacks 329
“Court Jews” 132, 133
crime, Jews in 64, 138, 171, 311-312
Cromwell, Oliver 72
Crusades, the 72, 118, 132, 203, 354
crypto-Jews 191, 195, 254
Cullen, Paul 33
Curtis, Tony 306
D
da Costa family (Germany) 132
Dagobert, King of the Franks 25, 117
Darity, William et al. 287
Dark Ages 10
Dar, Y. 157
Dassault, Marcel 124
David, Hanna 163
Davis, David Brion 303
Davis, Martin S. 307
Debré, Michel 123
Deligne, Pierre 67
De Pass brothers (South Africa) 237
Derrida, Jacques 124
Deutsch family (France) 120
Diamond, Jared 303
diamond trade
importation 60, 61
mining in South Africa 238
diasporas, Jewish 22
Diller, Barry 307
Discount Bank & Trust Company 251
discrimination, anti-Jewish 354
in Britain 72
in Central Europe 51, 206-207
in Denmark 111
in France 118-119, 123
in Germany 132, 133, 143
in Italy 183, 185, 187
in Latin America 193
in Romania 263
in Russia 214, 220
in th Soviet Union 225
Disraeli, Benjamin 72, 319
Distel, Sacha 124
Douglas, Melvyn 305
Dreifuss, Ruth 251
Dresdner-Kleinworts 318
Dreyfus Affair, the 122
Dreyfus, Alfred. See Dreyfus Affair, the
Dreyfus Bank (Basel, Switzerland) 251
Drumont, Edouard 121
Dublin, Ireland 91, 93
Durant, Ariel 303
Duras, Oldrich 46
Durbin, Deanna 306
Durkheim, Emile 120
Dutch East India Company 59, 237
Dylan, Bob 303
E
Ecole Polytechnique 121
Edirne (Adrianople), Balkans 254, 255,
256, 264
education
higher education, Jews in
in Benelux 60, 65, 66
in Britain 84-85
in Canada 101-102
in Central Europe 42, 46, 48
in Denmark 112
in France 119
in Israel 163-164
in Italy 185, 187
in Russia 216, 223
Jewish achievement in
in Australia 36
in Britain 78-79
in Canada 99-102
in Israel 157-158, 161-164, 169-170
in Latin America 193
in Russia 216, 218
in South Africa 239
in the United States 285
Jewish valuing of 14, 66, 326, 342
Edward I, King 72
Eichmann, Adolf 193
Eilenberg, Samuel 209
Einstein, Albert 135, 250, 296
Eisner, Michael D. 307
elites, Jewish. See also “significant
figures”
academic 294
economic/business 36, 49-50, 80-81,
139-140, 141, 233, 287, 293
in Australia 37
in Britain 86-87
in Central Europe 48, 207
in Germany 135-137, 139-140, 141
in Latin America 197, 198
in South Africa 238
in Spain 24
in the Soviet Union 13, 221, 224-225,
226
in the United States 287, 292-296
media 308
professional 223, 225, 228, 232
Ellis Island 273. See also immigration
emancipation, Jewish 10
in Austria 42
in Benelux 60, 61
in Bulgaria 262
in Denmark 111
in France 119
in Germany 133, 134
in Italy 182-183
in Latin America 193-192, 195
in Poland 205
in Switzerland 247, 248
emigration, Jewish
from Central and Eastern Europe 25,
35, 36-37, 61, 63, 72, 73, 91, 97,
104, 108, 111, 112, 150, 151-152,
192, 193-194, 199, 203, 204, 209,
210, 261, 263, 265
from Ethiopia 152
from France 192
from Germany 132, 150, 197, 199
from Hungary 254, 305
from Israel 63
from Latin America 195, 196
from National Socialist Germany
119-120, 199
from North Africa 123
from Portugal 58, 97, 119, 182
from Russia 61, 91, 97, 108, 112,
119-120, 134, 150, 193-194, 216,
232, 272, 283, 288
Index 393
from South Africa 35, 238
from Spain 24, 97, 182
from the Middle East 35, 123,
151-152, 193
from the Near East 35
from the Soviet Union 151, 227
from Western Europe 203
eminence, Jewish. See elites, Jewish
Emmanuel III, King Victor 184
Englander, Martin 141
Ephtussi family (France) 120
Erikson, Erik 303
Ernst, Richard 250
Ethiopian Jews. See Jews
Euclid 8
eugenics 325-328, 352-353
Euwe, Max 66
expulsion of Jews 25, 329
from Benelux 58
from Central Europe 41
from England 25, 57, 72, 204
from France 25, 119, 123, 204, 213,
254, 256
from German states 25, 132, 204, 213
from Hungary 41, 254, 255
from Italy and Italian cities 181-182,
188
from Palestine 149
from Portugal 24, 58, 72, 151, 254, 266
from Spain 24, 72, 151, 191, 195, 254,
266
from Switzerland 245, 246-247
Eysenck, Hans 5
Ezra, Abraham ben 318
F
Fabius, Laurent 123
Fairbanks, Douglas 306
Falashas. See Ethiopian Jews
Falk, Gerhard 136
family, Jewish the 13
Farron, Steven 284
Fejgin, Naomi 349
Ferdinand II of Aragon 191
394 THE CHOSEN PEOPLE
Fermi, Enrico 187
fertility, Jewish 356
in Benelux 67
in Canada 107
in Germany 134
in Israel 173-174, 357
in Italy 183, 188
in Latin America 194
in South Africa 242
in the Balkans 267
in the United States 273, 310-311
Fields Medalist, Jewish
in Britain 91
in France 126-127
in Germany 146
in Russia 230
Fine, Reuben 301
fingerprint (whorl) analysis 26
Fisberg, M. 28
Fischer, Bobby 2, 301
Fischer, Edmond 250
Flohr, Solomon 46
“Flynn Effect”. See intelligence
Flynn, James 348
Forbes 308
Ford, Henry 309
Foster, Norman 87
“Fortune 400” richest Americans 287
Fox Pictures 306
Fox, William 305
France, Jews in 117-127
population estimates 119-120
Frankfurt, Jews in 132
Frank, Il'ja M. 230
Fraser, John 3
Fridman, Mikhail 233
Friedlander, Saul 303
Friedman, Steve 307
Frydman, Marcel 17
Galton, Francis 3
Gama, Gaspar da 195
Gamala, Joshua ben 335
Garfield, John 306
Garland, Judy 306
Gaucher disease 337
Gelfand, Izrail 226
General Electric Co. 306
General Mental Ability. See intelligence
General Social Survey 278, 286,
345-347
genetic affinity of Jewish peoples.
See Jews
genetic drift 27
genetic mutations 27, 337-340
genetic profile of Jews. See Jews
Genetic Similarity Theory 257
genetic studies of Jews 26
mitochondrial DNA analysis 29
Y-chromosome analysis 29
German Jews. See Jews and Germany
Germany, Jews in 131-148
population estimates 133-134
Gershwin, George 304
Gessen brothers (Russia) 214
ghettos and ghettoization, Jewish
in Germany 132
in Italy 181-183
in Switzerland 246
Gintsburg family (Russia) 214
Ginzburg, Vitaly L. 230
Girodias, Maurice 124
Glazer, Nathan 16
Gnesin family (Russia) 217
Gobineau, Joseph Arthur Comte de 3,
121
Goddard, Henry Herbert 273
Godley, A. 17
Goldman-Sachs 318
Goldscheider, Calvin 311
Goldschmidt family (Germany) 135
Goldsmid family (London) 73
Gompertz family (The Netherlands) 60
Gorbachev, Mikhail 232
Gordimer, Nadine 242
Gorky, Maxim 215
Gould, Stephen Jay 273
Graham, David 79
Great Council of Helvetia 247
Great Terror, The. See purges in the
Soviet Union
Greece, Jewsin 261
Grey, Brad 306
Guggenheim, Meyer 248
Guide to the Perplexed 24
Guillaume, Charles 250
gulags, Soviet 224
Gusinsky, Vladimir 233
Haber, Fitz 135
Hammer, M.F. 27, 28-30
Hamon, Moses 256
Hardy, Jason 322, 331-333, 337-339,
351
Harpending, Henry 322, 331-333,
337-339, 351
Harris, Sir David 238
Harvard University. See Ivy League
Hassidic Jews 205, 358
Hayek, Friedrich von 44
Heifetz, Jascha 304
Heine family (France) 120
Heine, Heinrich 135
Heisenberg, Werner 113
Henry II, King (France) 119
Hentig, Hans von 311
heraldry 86-87, 135-136
Hereditary Genius 3
Herrnstein, Richard 5, 54, 278, 351,
352, 353
Herschel, Sir William 72
Herzog, Chaim 92
Herzog, Emile 120
Hess, Walter 250
Hevesy, Georg von 52
Himmler, Heinrich 188
Index 395
Hirsch family (France) 120
Hirsch family (Germany) 135
Hitler, Adolf 143
Hobsbawm, Eric 87
Hobson, J. A. 238
Hoffman, Dustin 306
Hoffman, Roald 209
Hofstadter, Richard Pu
Hofstatder, Douglas 303
Holiday, Judy 306
Hollinger, David 15
Hollywood, Jews in 305-306
Holocaust, the 35, 42, 53, 62, 134, 143,
151, 188, 207, 208, 209, 210, 249,
260, 265, 272
compensation for victims 249
Holy Roman Empire 246
Horowitz, Vladimir 304
Horthy, Miklös 49, 51
Hsu, Francis 348
Hungary, Jews in 46-51
Hunter College, Jews in 284
Hurwicz, Leonid 230
Hutchins, Stilson 308
Iger, Robert 306
immigration, Jewish
into Australia 25, 33, 35
into Benelux 24, 63, 204, 254
into Britain 25, 73
into Canada 25, 97, 104, 108
into Denmark 112
into Eastern Europe 25
into England 61, 72
into France 24, 119-120, 123, 126
into Germany 58, 134
into Ireland 91
into Israel 24, 25, 150, 151-152, 196,
216, 227, 261, 263, 265. See
also Zionism
of Ethiopian Jews 26, 152
into Italy 24, 182
into Latin America 192, 193, 197, 199
396 THE CHOSEN PEOPLE
into North Africa 24, 266
into Palestine 150, 207
into Poland 203, 210
into South Africa 25, 238, 239
1930 Quota Act 238
into South America 25
into Switzerland 247
flight from National Socialist Ger-
many 249
into the Balkans 24
into the United States 25, 227-228,
232, 272, 283, 288, 305
into Turkey 264
infant mortality, among Jews
in Austria-Hungary 54
in Benelux 67
in Britain 75
in Canada 108-110
in Germany 138
in Ireland 93
in Israel 174
in Italy 189
in Poland 205
in Russia 220
in the Balkans 259
in the United States 310
Inquisition, the 58, 119, 183, 192, 195,
198, 254
Institute of Literature of the Academy of
Sciences 224
intelligence
Ashkenazi superior intelligence 29,
153-156, 157-164, 175-178, 316,
341
definition of intelligence 18
denial of Jewish intelligence in schol-
arship 351-353
determinant of success 18
evidence for heritability 159-160
“Flynn Effect” 98, 274, 277
general intelligence 18
genetic basis 321-325, 336-338
intelligence testing 141, 276-281
Armed Forces Qualification Test 5,
278
Army Alpha test 276
Binet test 273
British National Cohort Study 77
College Entrance Examination Board
283
Colored Progressive Matrices 168
Dominos Test 156
Key Stage 2 test 78
Milta test 153
Mory House Test 76
National Intelligence Test 276
Northumberland Test 75
Otis Test 277
Pintner-Cunningham Primary Men-
tal Test 276
Project Talent 281
Standard Progressive Matrices 168
Stanford-Binet Intelligence Scales
274, 277
Third International Mathematics
and Science Study 160
Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale
(WAIS) 274, 280
Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Chil-
dren (WISC) 98, 152, 153, 160
Wechsler Preschool and Primary
Test (WPPSI) 153
IQ
correlation between IQ and income
5
“Greenwich standard” IQ 29, 168,
175, 274, 276, 280, 316
of Ashkenazim 29
of Ethiopian Jews 29, 167-168
of Jews in Australia 39
of Jews in Britain 75-77
of Jews in Canada 98-99
of Jews in Israel 152-157, 175-176,
267
of Jews in the United States 273-
280
of Mizrahim 29
of Northern European Whites 29
of Sephardim 29, 266
of Turks 255
Jewish intelligence in literature 3-4,
139, 283
mental retardation 279
of Jews in the United States 273-280
of Mizrahim (Oriental) Jews 153-156
theories of Jewish intelligence
315-340
Apostast Hypothesis 335-336
environmentalism 322-325
Eugenic Hypothesis 325-328
genotype-environment co-variation
324
Miscegenation Hypothesis 334-336
Persecution Hypothesis 329-332
varying intelligences among Jew-
ish peoples 157-164, 175-178,
316-317, 328
verbal vs. spatial intelligence among
Jews 83, 154-156, 281, 320
intermarriage and interbreeding
between Sephardic and Ashkenazi
Jews 59
Jewish and Gentile 28, 29, 134,
334-336, 356
in Australia 38
in Benelux 63, 65, 68
in Canada 107
in Central Europe 46, 50, 211
in Denmark 112
in Germany 133, 141,143
in Italy 184
in Latin America 192, 196, 199
in Russia 224, 233-234
IQ See intelligence
IQ and Global Inequality 5
Ireland, Jews in 91-94
population estimates 92
Isaacs, Sir Isaac 34
Isabella I of Castile 191
ISI Web of Science 30
Israel, Jews in 149-180, 225, 356-358
population estimates 150-152
Istanbul, Jews in 255, 264
Italy, Jews in 181-190
population estimates 184
Ivy League, Jews in the 271, 283
Index 397
J
Jacob Berkman 287
Jacobsen, I.C. 112
Jacobs, Simeon 238
Jaenisch, Carl von 229
Jencks, Christopher 352
Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee 225
Jewish Colonization Association 193
Jewish Journal of Sociology 6
Jews
Ashkenazim 5, 24-25, 27, 28, 29, 131,
151
Ethiopian Jews (Falashas) 25-26, 27,
29, 152, 167-171, 317, 331
question of Jewish ethnicity 26-25,
317
the Israeli underclass 168-171
four Jewish peoples 21
genetic affınity
among Jewish peoples 26-27
with Africans (Lemba) 28
with Gentile populations 28
with North Africans 28
with Turks 257
genetic differentiations between Jew-
ish peoples 27-29
German Jews in the United States 288
Indian Jews 26
Jewish women 106, 233, 290, 356
Mizrahim (Oriental Jews) 21-22, 28,
151-156, 319, 331-332
Romaniot 253, 254, 255
Russian Jews
in Latin America 196
in the United States 217, 218, 225,
276
Semitic ancestory 27-28, 317-318
Sephardim 23-24, 151, 330
Tibeto-Burmese Jews 26
Johnson, Paul 16, 189, 253, 272
Jones, D.C. 160
Jones, George 307
Joseph Jacobs 4
Joseph, Sa’adia ben 319
Josephson, Brian 89
Julius Bar (Zürich, Switzerland) 251
398 THE CHOSEN PEOPLE
K
Kadushin, Charles 295
Kahn, Philippe 124
Kamenev, Lev 221
Kanazawa, Satoshi 345
Kantorovich, Leonid 226, 230
Kapitsa, Pyotr 230
Kärmän, Theodor von 52
Karrer, Paul 250
Kashdan, Issac 301
Kaskell family (Germany) 135
Kasparov, Gari 229
Kaufman, Alan 281
Kaufman, Victor A. 307
Kaulla family (Germany) 135
Kaye, Danny 306
Kazemipur, Abdolmohammad 104
Kern, Jerome 304
Khazars, Caucasian
theory of Jewish descent 25
Khodorkovsky, Mikhail 233
Khvol’son, Daniel 214
Kische family, the (South Africa) 238
Klug, Aaron 230
Kluger, Richard 303
Kocher, Theodor 250
Koestler, Arthur 25, 48, 123
Kokovtsev, V. 220
Koopmans, Tjalling 67
Kouchner, Bernard 124
Krause, E. 79, 81
Krivine, Alain 124
Kun, Bela 49
Kuznets, Simon 230
L
Lacan, Jacques 121
Laemmle, Carl 305
Lamarckian evolution 16, 122
Lamarr, Hedy 306
Lambert, Emmanuel 120
Landau, Lev 226, 230
Landowska, Wanda 207
Latin America, Jews in 191-202
population estimates 192
Latvia, Jews in 210
Lazard, Elie 124
Lelyveld, Joseph 303
Leningrad, Jews in 223, 226
Lenin Prize 231
Lenin, Vladimir 215, 218, 224
Lenski, Gerhard 13, 348
Lenz, Fritz 141, 320
Leontief, Wassily 230
Lerner, Jaime 196
Leroy-Beaulieu, Anatole 122
Lesser, Gerald 280
Levinson, Boris 278
Lévi-Strauss, Claude 120, 124
Levitan, Isaak 218
Lévy, Maurice 124
Lieberson, Stanley 351
life expectancy, Jewish
in Israel 174
in Italy 188
Lilienfeld family (South Africa) 238
Lippman family (France) 120
Lippmann, Gabriel 125
Lithuania, Jews in 209-212
population estimates 209
Livingston, Mary 306
Lombroso, Cesare 183
London, England 61, 71, 72, 73, 75, 76,
81, 91
Luckey, Bertha 280
Lukas, J. Anthony 303
Lustiger, Jean-Marie 124
Luzzati, Luigi 183
Lwoff, André 125
Lynn, Richard 5, 17, 316
M
MacDonald, Kevin 258-259, 322,
325-328, 351
Mahler, Gustav 205
Mailer, Norman 303
Maimonides, Moses 24, 319
Majoribanks, Kevin 98
malaria
genetic protection against 27
Maller, Julius 280
Manchester, England 73
Mandelbrot, Benoit 209
Manhattan Project, the 52, 113, 187
Marciano, Paul 124
Margulis, Gregori 231
Marranos. See crypto-Jews
Marx Brothers 306
Marxism 224
Marx, Karl 135
mathematics, Jews in
in Benelux 67
in Britain 91
in Canada 106
in Central Europe 52, 209
in France 126-127
in Germany 146
in Israel 167
in Latin America 200
in Russia 230
in Spain 318
in the United States 300
Maxim Gorky 215
Mayerbeer, Giacomo 135
Mayer, René 123
McLean, John R. 308
Mechnikoy, Ilya 230
media, Jews in the 306-309
Mendelsohn, Ezra 45, 207
Mendelssohn family (South Africa) 238
Mendelssohn, Felix 135
Mendes family 258
Mendes-France, Pierre 123, 258
Menuhin, Yehudi 304
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) 306
Mexico, Jews in 197-198
population estimates 198
Meyer, Barry 306
Meyer, Eugene Isaac 307
Michaelis family (Australia) 34
Middle Ages, Jews in 6, 57, 213,
245-246
restrictions, regulations, and legal
status 58, 117-118, 131-132, 246,
246-247
Index 399
Middle East, Jews inthe 22, 29-30,
149-180. See also Israel
Mikhoels, Solomon 225
military, Jews in the 121, 122, 172, 184,
187, 279, 294
Milstein, Nathan 304
mining, Jewsin 34, 214
Minkowitch, Avram 158
Mocatta family (London) 73
Modigliani, Amedeo 183, 321
Mohammed the Conqueror, Sultan (Ot-
toman Empire) 256
Moissan, Henri 125
Molotov, Vyacheslav 225
Monash, General Sir John 34
Monash University (Australia) 34
money-lending 25, 57, 94, 118, 246. See
also usury
Montaigne, Michel de 119, 319
Montefiore family (London) 73
Montefiore, Sir Moses 72
Moonves, Leslie 306
Moravia, Alberto 184
Moscow Institute of Jurisprudence 224
Moscow, Jews in 222, 226
Mosely family (South Africa) 238
Mosenthal family (South Africa) 237
Mosse, Werner E. 133, 139, 141
Mottelson, Benjamin 113
Moynihan, Daniel Patrick 16
Miiller, Karl 250
Muller, Paul 250
Mumbai (Bombay), India 26
Muni, Paul 306
Murad II, Sultan 330
Murphy, Thomas 307
Murray, Charles 5, 8, 9-11, 42, 54, 86,
127, 146, 231, 278, 293, 335,
351-352
musicals, Jewish composers of 304
music, Jews in
in Benelux 66
in the United States 304-305
Mussolini, Benito 185, 187
Myers family (Australia) 34
myopia (correlation with intelligence)
324-325
400 THE CHOSEN PEOPLE
N
Napier, Lewis Bernstein 15
Napoleon 1, 61, 182-183
National Academy of Sciences 114
National Broadcasting Company (NBC)
307
National Socialist Germany 24, 143-144
accords with Switzerland 249
occupation of Denmark 112-113
occupation of France 123
policies in Italy 188
Near East, Jews in the 22, 255-259. See
also Ottoman Empire
Neisser, Ulrich 18
Nemeck, Ottokar 141
Neumann family, the (South Africa) 238
Neumann, John von 52
Newman, Paul 306
Newman, Randy 304
New Republic, The 308
News Corporation 306
newspapers, Jews in 307-308
Newsweek 307
New York City College, Jews in 285
New York City, Jews, in 274, 280, 285
New York Review of Books 308
New York Times 307
Nietzsche, Friedrich 139
Nimzovitch, Aron 210
NKVD, the (Soviet Union) 222
Nobel Prize, the 8-9, 343-344
in economics 19
Nobel Prize winners, Jewish 2, 343-344
in Benelux 67
in Britain 89
in Canada 106
in Central Europe 43, 44, 52, 209
in Denmark 113-114
in France 125
in Germany 144-145
in Israel 4, 167
in Italy 189
in Latin America 200
in Russia 230
in South Africa 241
in Switzerland 250
in the Balkans 265, 267
in the United States 295-299
Norman Conquest (of England) 25, 71
North Africa, Jews in 22
Nuremberg Laws 143
O
occupations (professions), Jewish
342-343. See also socioeconomic
status
in Australia 37
in Benelux 65
in Britain 81-85, 267
in Canada 104-106
in Central Europe 43, 47-48, 49, 205,
207, 210
in France 118, 121, 125
in Germany 132, 135, 137, 140
in Ireland 91
in Israel 166, 170, 337
in Italy 186-187
in Latin America 194, 198, 199
in Romania 263
in Russia 214, 217, 219, 223, 232
in South Africa 241
in Switzerland 250, 251
in the Middle East 22-23
in the Ottoman Empire 257-258
in the United States 288-290,
294-295
in Turkey 264
Odessa, Russian Empire 218
Offenbach, Jacques 135
O’Grada, Cormac 18, 94
“oligarchs,” Russian 233
Oppenheimer, Sir Ernest 238
Oppenheim family (Germany) 133, 135
Oriental Jews. See Mizrahim
Ortar, Gina 157
Ottoman Empire 22, 149, 254
Jewsin 22-23, 255-258, 330
Jewish physicians 258
population estimates 255
P
painting, Jewsin 320
Pale of Settlement (Russian Empire)
213
Palestinian Arabs 357-358
genetic affinity to Jews 27
Papaport family (South Africa) 238
Paramount Pictures 306
Paris Peace Conference (1919) 264
Partisan Review, The 308
Pasternak, Boris 218, 226, 230
Pasternak, Leonid 218
Patai, Raphael 7
Pavlov, Ivan 230
Pereire family (France) 61
Perelman, Grigori 231
Periere family (France) 120
persecution, anti-Jewish 329-332
in Benelux 62
in Central Europe 41, 51
in France 118-119, 123
in Germany 132, 143
in Latin America 195, 199
in Poland and Lithuania 204
in Romania 263
in Russia 73
in Switzerland 246-247
in the Byzantine Empire 253
Peru, Jews in 198
Petain, Marshal Philippe 123
Peter Chernin 306
Pfeiffer family (Germany) 135
Phillips, Sir Lionel 238
physics, Jews in. See Nobel Prize win-
ners, Royal Society
Pinter, Harold 87, 89
Pissarro, Camille 120, 321
Plekhanov, Georgi Valentinovich 250
pogroms
as selectively eliminating the less intel-
ligent 269
in Central Europe 49, 208-210
in Eastern Europe 269, 272
in France 203
in Germany 143, 203
Index 401
in Latin America 193
in Russia 2, 25, 34, 93, 112, 193, 197,
214, 220, 329
Poland, Jews in 204-209
population estimates 204-205
Polanyi, Michael 52
Polgar, Judit 53
Pope Paul IV 182
Pope Pius VII 183
Popper, Karl 42
Possony, Stefan 351
Preston, Samuel 310
Prigogine, Ilya 230
professions, Jewish involvement in.
See occupations, Jewish
Prokhorov, Alexander 230
prostitution, Jews in 193
Protestant work ethic 12-13, 349
Proust, Marcel 120
Prussia, Jews in 132
PsychINFO 30
PsychNet 30
Ptolemy 8
Public Interest, The 308
public services, Jews in. See civil admin-
istration, Jews in
Pulitzer Prizes 302-303
purges in the Soviet Union
anti-Semitic nature 225
The Great Terror 224
Pythagoras 8
R
Rabinowitze family (South Africa) 238
Race Differences in Intelligence 322
Raymond, Henry J. 307
Redstone, Sumner 307
Rees-Mogg, William 87
Reichstein, Tadeus 250
Reinach family (France) 120
Reinach, Rabrice 123
Remnick, David 303
Renan, Ernst 121
Republic National Bank of New York
251
402 THE CHOSEN PEOPLE
Revolution of 1848 182
Ricardo, David 319
Robinson, Edward 306
Rodgers, Richard 304
Rohrer, Heinrich 250
Roman Empire, Jews in the 23, 181,
246, 335
Byzantine Empire, Jews in 253
Rome University 187
Rosenberg, Tina 303
Rosen, Bernard 348
Ross, Steven J. 307
Rothschild family 42, 61, 73, 120, 133,
135, 214, 318
Mayer Amschel Rothschild 72
Nathan Mayer Rothschild (fils) 72
Nathan Mayer Rothschild (pére) 72,
87
Rothschild, Lionel de 72
Rothschild, Maurice de 123
Rotterdam, The Netherlands 59
Royal Danish Academy 114
Royal Society, the 84-85, 114
Rubinstein, Artur 304
Rubinstein family (Russia) 217
Rubinstein, Helena 35
Rubinstein, William 16, 45, 80
Rushton, J. Phillipe 273
Russell, Bertrand 6, 90
Russia, Jews in 213-233
in the Russian Federation 216, 232
in the Soviet Union 221-228
population estimates 215, 228
Rutland, Suzanne 14, 39
S
Saatchi, Charles and Maurice 87, 319
Sachs, L. 26
Sagan, Carl 303
Sakharov, Andrei 226
Salonica, Greece 255, 256, 259
Samuel family (London) 73
Saracens 118
Sarfatti, Michele 186
Sarnoff, David 307
Sarnof, Robert 307
Sassoon, Siegfried 319
Savasorda 318
Schnabel, Artur 304
Schonberg, Claude-Michel 124
Schorske, Carl 303
science, Jews in. See Nobel Prize win-
ners, Royal Society
Scofield, Paul 87
Scots-Irish 287-288
Segré, Emilio 187
Seligman family (Germany) 135
Seligman family (United States) 272
settlers, Jewish
in South Africa 237
Sheehan, Susan Margulies 303
Sheldon, Paul 280
sickle-cell anemia 337
Sidney, Sylvia 306
“significant figures” (Charles Murray)
42, 86, 127, 146, 231, 293. See
also elites, Jewish
Simon, Paul 304
Simpson, Jon 311
Singer, Isaac Bashevis 209
Six-Day War (1967) 199, 227
Slezkine, Yuri 14, 43, 131-148, 213-236
Sloan, Harry 306
Slonimski, Antoni 207
Smale, Stephen 299
Smith, David E. 318
Smolensky, Alexander 233
Smyslov, Vasily 2, 229
socioeconomic status. See also occupa-
tions
Duncan Socioeconomic Index 287
in Russia 214
Jewish status hierarchy in Israel 267
of Arabs in Israel 165-166
of Jews in Australia 34, 36
of Jews in Benelux 63
of Jews in Britain 80-82
of Jews in Canada 104
of Jews in Central Europe 205, 210
of Jews in Denmark 111
of Jews in France 125-126
of Jews in Germany 134
of Jews in Ireland 92
of Jews in Israel 154-155, 165-167
of Jews in Italy 186-187
of Jews in Latin America 193-194, 198
of Jews in South Africa 240
of Jews in the United States 274,
286-290
Wealth Quotients 80-81
Solomon family (South Africa) 238
Solzhenitsyn, Alexandr 230
Sombart, Werner 13
Sonnino, Sidney 183
Sony Pictures 306
Sophia, Bulgaria 260
South Africa, Jews in 237-244
population estimates 238
Soutine, Chaim 210, 321
Soviet Union, Jews in. See Russia
Spain
Arab invasion of 24
Jews in 23
Spasovich, V.D. 220
Spassky, Boris 2, 229
Speyer family (United States) 272
Spielberg, Steven 306
Spinoza, Baruch 60, 319
Spitteler, Carl 250
sport, Jews in 309-310
Stalin, Joseph 224, 225
Starr, Paul 303
Steinberg, Stephen 16
Stein, Elias 67
Steiner, George 124
Steinitz, Wilhelm 2, 46
Stein, Joel 306
Stern family (France) 120
Stern, Isaac 304
stockbroking, Jews in 60, 219. See
also banking,
Stoppard, Tom 87
Storfer, Miles 159, 323
St. Petersburg, Russia 219-220
Strauss-Kahn, Dominique 124
Streisand, Barbra 306
success, Jewish 342-349. See also work
ethic, Jewish
Theories of Jewish Success 12, 39, 94
Index 403
Luck 17
Marginal Man Theory 15
Special Aptitudes 15-16
Strong Family and Ethnic Networks
14, 323
Strong Work Motivation Theory
12-13, 323
sugar industry, Jews in 195, 197
Sulaiman the Magnificent 257
Sulzberger, Arthur Ochs Jr. 307
Sutherland, Joan 87
Sverdlov, Yakov 221
Sveriges Riksbank (Swedish Central
Bank) 19
Switzerland, Jews in 245-250
population estimates 247-248
Szilard, Leo 52
Taiyib, Abu’l 319
Tal, Mikhail 2, 210
Tamm, Igor Y. 226, 230
Tay-Sachs disease 28, 337
Teller, Edward 52
Terkel, Studs 303
Theiler, Max 242
Thernstrom, Stephan 14, 345, 351
Thirty Years War 132
Thomson, J.J. 113
Time (magazine) 308
Time Warner Communications 307,
308
Timman, Jan 66
Tin Pan Alley 304
Tisch, Laurence 307
titles. See heraldry
toleration of Jews. See also anti-Semi-
tism
in the Ottoman Empire 255-257
Torres, Luis De 192
Treitschke, Heinrich von 139
Trianav, Rodrigo De 191
Trigano, Gilbert 124
Tropp, Asher 82, 351
Trotsky, Leon 218, 221, 250
404 THE CHOSEN PEOPLE
Tuchman, Barbara 302
Turkey, Jews in 264
population estimates 264
Turks 27, 254, 255, 257, 259, 266
Tuwim, Julian 207
Twain, Mark 3
U
United States, Jews in the 271-314
population estimates 272-273
Universal Studio 306
University of Berlin 52
University of Copenhagen 112, 113
University of Kharkov 216
University of Melbourne 34
University of Pennsylvania. See Ivy
League, Jews in the
niversity of Sydney 34
niversity of Vienna 43, 45
U.S. News & World Report 308
usury 57, 118. See also money-lending
V
Vanity Fair (magazine) 309
Veblen, Thorstein 4, 15
Venezuela, Jews in 199
Viacom 307
Vienna, Austria 43, 45, 54, 255
Villiger, Kastar 249
Visigoths, Jews under the 23
W
Waksman, Selman 230
Wald, George 209
Wall Street Journal 308
Walt Disney Co. 306, 307
Warburg family (Germany and Britain)
135
Warner Bros. 306
Washington Post 308
WASPs, the American Elite 284
Wasserman, Lew 307
Waterman, Stanley 73, 79
wealth, Jewish. See socioeconomic status
Web of Knowledge 30
Weidenfeld, George 87
Weil, Simone 124
Weimar Republic (Germany) 141-143
Weiner, Jonathan 303
Weinryb, Bernard 329
Weinstein brothers (Harvey and Bob) 306
Weizmann, Chaim 250
Wendt, R. A. 98
Werner, Alfred 250
Wertheimer, Pierre 124
Weyl, Nathaniel 5, 9, 292, 351
White, Theodore H. 302
Who’s Who in America 292, 293, 351
Wigner, Eugene 52
William Lowell Putnam Competition 300
William Paley 307
Winawer, Szymon 229
Wittgenstein, Ludwig 42, 44
Wolf Prize winners, Jewish
in Britain 91
in Canada 106
in Central Europe 52, 209
in France 126
in Germany 146
in Latin America 200
in Russia 230
in the United States 300
women, Jewish. See Jews
work ethic, Jewish 342-349. See also suc-
cess, Jewish
World War I 41, 204, 215, 220
World War II 24, 35, 46, 51, 63, 68, 113,
119, 121, 123, 184, 188, 196, 204,
208, 216, 224, 228, 240, 261, 272,
285, 309, 330
Wright, Robert C. 307
Wiithrich, Kurt 250
Index 405
Y
Yale University. See Ivy League
Yergin, Daniel 303
Yiddish 1, 24, 61, 92, 192, 214, 274, 277,
278, 282, 286, 355
Yugoslavia, Jews in 264-265
Z
Zinkernagel, Rolf 250
Zionism 150-151. See also Israel
Zucker, Jeff 306
Zuckerman, Harriet 294
Zukor, Adoph 305
Richard Lynn
ichard Lynn graduated in Psychology and took his Ph.D. at the
University of Cambridge. He has been Lecturer in Psychology at
the University of Exeter, Professor of Psychology at the Economic
and Social Research Institute, Dublin, and Professor and head of
the Department of Psychology at the University of Ulster. Currently,
he is Emeritus Professor of Psychology at the University of Ulster,
Coleraine, Northern Ireland. His main work has been on intelligence
and personality.
His books include Personality and National Character (1972),
Dimensions of Personality (1980), Educational Achievement in Japan
(1988), Dysgenics: Genetic Deterioration in Modern Populations
(1996), Eugenics: A Reassessment (2001), (co-author) IQ and the
Wealth of Nations (2002), Race Differences in Intelligence (2006),
(co-author) IQ and Global Inequality (2006), and The Global Bell
Curve (2008).
He has received awards including the Passingham Prize at
Cambridge University for the best Psychology student of the year and
the U.S. Mensa Awards for Excellence in 1985, 1993, and 2007 for
work on intelligence.
Cover images, clockwise from top left:
Sigmund Freud, Felix Mendelssohn, Maimonides, Karl Marx,
Mayer Amschel Rothschild, Albert Einstein, Ludwig Wittgenstein,
and Baruch Spinoza.
Einstein...Shylock...Rothschild...Trotsky...Jesus. The scientist and philosopher...the greedy money-
lender and middle man...the impoverished immigrant...the elite of politics and finance...the prophet...
the revolutionary. All of these have been faces of the Jewish people over the centuries. They have
inspired admiration, envy, suspicion, and hatred and overflowed with world-changing personages.
The historian Yuri Slezkine claimed that the 20th century was nothing less than the “Jewish century,”
so indispensable were Jews to the creation of the modern world.
With The Chosen People, Richard Lynn undertakes a systematic inquiry into the general intelligence
of Jews worldwide. Calling upon history as well as the latest advances in genetic analysis and
evolutionary theory, Lynn demonstrates that in the past 250 years, high IQ has been the foundation
of Jewish influence, success, and power. This study is integrated with concise narratives of the Jewish
experience in various countries and regions, as well as a discussion of the cultural and genetic divisions
within the Jewish ethnos. The Chosen People will be valued by historians, evolutionary scientists, and
anyone who wants to understand more fully this remarkable people.
Richard Lynn is Emeritus Professor of Psychology of the University
of Ulster. He holds a PhD in Psychology from the University of
Cambridge and has authored over 200 scholarly articles. His
\ 4 books include Dysgenics, Eugenics, Race Differences in
Í í. | Intelligence, and with Tatu Vanhanen, IQ and the Wealth of
l Mus MMi) Nations and IQ and Global Inequality.
“In The Chosen People, Professor Lynn has shown once again his talent for combining
exhaustive research with daring scholarship....We ignore this historically significant subject at
our peril and at the cost of future generations."
Professor Paul Gottfried, Elizabethtown College
“[T]his courageous and dispassionate book provides a platform for the study of a topic that is of
considerable importance on the scientific plane and—for the sophisticated reader—of even greater
importance in the world of politics.”
Professor John Glad, author of Jewish Eugenics
Washington Summit Publishers
53-59 A National Policy Institute Book
ISBN 978-1-59368-036-7
36
| | 52799> 2011
| | WSP
9 781593 680367