Here is a truly weird column about Jewish intelligence by Dana Milbank, the WP columnist who slagged Walt and Mearsheimer last year, labeling them blue-eyed and Teutonic, i.e., Nazis. (In this column he refuses even to dignify W&M by naming them, though he gives Abe Foxman’s book a push.)
Milbank’s column covers an event yesterday at the American Enterprise Institute all about Charles Murray’s piece in Commentary on Jewish genius. There was a debate at AEI, and the funny thing is that no one took the opposite side. Murray said it’s genetic, the respondent said, It’s because Jews value learning. Well, she didn’t disagree with the premise. I say Milbank’s column is weird because he throws around Yiddish like "goyische kop"–the great old Yiddish expression for having a gentile mind, i.e., not the sharpest tool in the drawer–without explaining it to a larger readership, and suggests at one point that we shouldn’t be talking about Jewish intelligence, it’s a verboten subject. I find his point of view snaky and confusing. It feels like he’s secretly bragging. Also: I bridle when people throw around Yiddish without doing readers the service of explaining it. It’s as bad as old writers putting in a paragraph of German or French assuming you know what they’re saying…
Myself, I applaud AEI for having the panel, as I give two cheers to Murray for his investigation. Jewish achievement is something a lot of people wonder about. My answer is that Jews are smarter, for now. Per Yuri Slezkine’s great book, The Jewish Century, this moment in history has called on Jewish gifts. Yes, we value learning. Or valued it. I am reading the great Isaac Bashevis Singer’s More Tales from My Father’s Court. It’s about his rabbi father’s mediation in disputes among Jews in Warsaw between the wars. Beautiful. The father is constantly trying to return to his studies, and telling young Isaac to study harder. When a woman whose marriage the rabbi saves tries to give young Isaac a groschen, the father tells her not to, the boy will only spend it on sweets (and secular books!). The boy is angry.
But those were the values of my ancestors: learning above everything. When rich people come into the court, they are often treated with contempt. False values!
That’s why I have the headline I do. Jewish history is changing before our eyes. Our entrepreneurialism and dedication to learning have made us wealthier than ever, and we have come to celebrate wealth. But it’s corrupting. Look what privilege did to the WASPs, made them etiolated and entitled. Even more corrupting mentally is the intellectual burden on American Jews of arguing all the time that black is white: that The Palestinians are not oppressed, that a separate roadway system and checkpoints do not make apartheid. This is the prevaricating legalism to which great young minds are summoned by the Israel lobby!
Much of our intelligence was sharpened by outsider status. That’s over. History is fluid. Human gifts are shared. Our ancient values are now being widely emulated by many other peoples–as they should be. And if is genetic, well, our genes are being shared because so many others want to marry us. Yes, I agree, right now we are smarter. Not for long…
