Anti-Semitism

(Regard the following introduction as simply one way to frame the difficult, complicated, and even visceral subject matter of anti-Semitism throughout the ages. The cited focus article comes from Tablet, an American online Jewish magazine created in 2009. Highland City Club generally, and the Member Monday forum specifically, prides itself as a safe place in which to discuss all issues openly, honestly, and with utmost respect for other points of view. Please treat this subject accordingly)

Who knew. The root cause of anti-semitism over the last two millennia?: gentile envy.

Jews migrated to Roman Egypt and quickly outmatched the local Greek-speaking elite. Primitive Hebrew shepherds and peasants arrived and took over everything, even Greek philosophy and literature. Thus arose the original denunciation of the Jews by then-famous "philosopher" Apion. The Greeks reacted by attacking, rather than competing with, this unique, remote, and self-isolating sect. Such is the Jewish account as set forth in the texts by Josephus and Philo. Anti-semitism was thus born. Consider as conjecture our focus article (click: A Misunderstanding About Anti-Semitism – Tablet Magazine) to be supported, refuted, and debated based upon your own supplemental research and perspective.

Of little debate, however, is the disproportionate achievement of the Jewish people. Perhaps nowhere is this better highlighted than in America, where they've made up fewer than three percent of the 20th century population but represent over thirty percent (62 of 200) of Nobel Prize winners for science, literature, and economics, as well as thirty-two percent of Forbes' four hundred richest Americans. Such leads to the question, whence comes such outsized success.

Perhaps it arises out of an innate intellectual advantage. The average IQ of Ashkenazi Jews is between 109 and 115 depending upon the type of cognitive battery test applied. This twelve-point advantage is seen in every country in which they reside, whether America, Russia, Latin America, or Israel. The Ashkenazi superiority, when it comes to a higher average mathematical and verbal IQ, is not, however, necessarily shared by other Jewish sects. Thus, perhaps, the secret sauce of Jewish hyper-achievement lies within the culture itself -- the vital importance of family and communal support, of individual skills, education, autonomy, entrepreneurship.

Introduce now the element of anti-Semitism into the Jewish experience. A facile proposed solution: intermarriage. Homogeneity might be the ultimate key to eliminate as potential targets as those who'd suffered such horrific attacks on Pittsburgh's Tree of Life synagogue (one-year anniversary, this week) along with the thirty additional ensuing incidents against Jewish institutions. Take the oxygen away from that which apparently fuels such white supremacist rage.

Nonsense. The proposal itself smacks of culturocide. Already there is some suggestion that the disproportionate Jewish achievement may be in some decline due to assimilation in which some Jews no longer identify with and retain the strong cultural values to be passed on to their offspring.

Dilution aside, there is something to be said for adversity itself or, as Eric Hobsbawn writes in Benefits of the Diaspora, "A certain degree of uneasiness in relations between Jews and gentiles has proved historically useful." Discuss: for two thousand years, Jews have faced anti-Semitic threats (even existential) and those have helped shape their culture; adversity itself has contributed to remarkable Jewish achievement. Think Israel.