Jewish Genius Charles Murray

ince its first issue in 1945, Commentary has IQ as an explanation for that accomplishment; and S published hundreds of articles about Jews and current theories about how the Jews acquired their Judaism. As one would expect, they cover just elevated IQ. about every important aspect of the topic. But there is a lacuna, and not one involving some ob- rom 800 b.c.e. through the first millennium scure bit of Judaica. Commentary has never pub- F of the Common Era, we have just two exam- lished a systematic discussion of one of the most ples of great Jewish accomplishment, and neither obvious topics of all: the extravagant overrepresen- falls strictly within the realms of the arts or sci- tation of Jews, relative to their numbers, in the top ences. But what a pair they are. The first is the ranks of the arts, sciences, law, medicine, finance, fully realized conceptualization of monotheism, entrepreneurship, and the media. expressed through one of the literary treasures of I have personal experience with the reluctance of the world, the Hebrew Bible. It not only laid the Jews to talk about Jewish accomplishment—my co- foundation for three great religions but, as author, the late Richard Herrnstein, gently resist- Thomas Cahill describes in The Gifts of the Jews ed the paragraphs on Jewish IQ that I insisted on (1998), introduced a way of looking at the mean- putting in The Bell Curve (1994). Both history and ing of human life and the nature of history that the contemporary revival of anti-Semitism in Eu- defines core elements of the modern sensibility. rope make it easy to understand the reasons for The second achievement is not often treated as a that reluctance. But Jewish accomplishment con- Jewish one but clearly is: Christian theology ex- stitutes a fascinating and important story. Recent pressed through the New Testament, an accom- scholarship is expanding our understanding of its plishment that has spilled into every aspect of origins. Western civilization. And so this Scots-Irish Gentile from Iowa here- But religious literature is the exception. The by undertakes to tell the story. I cover three topics: Jews do not appear in the annals of philosophy, the timing and nature of Jewish accomplishment, drama, visual art, mathematics, or the natural sci- focusing on the arts and sciences; elevated Jewish ences during the eighteen centuries from the time Charles Murray is the W.H. Brady scholar at the Amer- of Homer through the first millennium c.e., when ican Enterprise Institute and the author most recently of In so much was happening in Greece, China, and Our Hands: A Plan to Replace the Welfare State (2006). South Asia. It is unclear to what extent this reflects This article has been adapted from a presentation at the an- a lack of activity or the lack of a readily available nual Herzliya Conference in Israel in January. record. For example, only a handful of the scien-

[29] Commentary April 2007 tists of the Middle Ages are mentioned in most his- contemporaneous devastation of European Jewry, tories of science, and none was a Jew. But when the number of significant figures almost triples, George Sarton put a high-powered lens to the to 114. Middle Ages in his monumental Introduction to the To get a sense of the density of accomplishment History of Science (1927-48), he found that 95 of the these numbers represent, I will focus on 1870 on- 626 known scientists working everywhere in the ward, after legal emancipation had been achieved world from 1150 to 1300 were Jews—15 percent of throughout Central and Western Europe. How the total, far out of proportion to the Jewish pop- does the actual number of significant figures com- ulation. pare to what would be expected given the Jewish As it happens, that same period overlaps with proportion of the European and North American the life of the most famous Jewish philosopher of population? From 1870 to 1950, Jewish represen- medieval times, Maimonides (1135–1204), and of tation in literature was four times the number one others less well known, not to mention the Jew- would expect. In music, five times. In the visual ish poets, grammarians, religious thinkers, schol- arts, five times. In biology, eight times. In chem- ars, physicians, and courtiers of Spain in the istry, six times. In physics, nine times. In mathe- “Golden Age,” or the brilliant exegetes and rab- matics, twelve times. In philosophy, fourteen binical legislators of northern France and Ger- times. many. But this only exemplifies the difficulty of Disproportionate Jewish accomplishment in the assessing Jewish intellectual activity in that peri- arts and sciences continues to this day. My inven- od. Aside from Maimonides and a few others, tories end with 1950, but many other measures are these thinkers and artists did not perceptibly in- available, of which the best known is the Nobel fluence history or culture outside the confines of Prize. In the first half of the 20th century, despite the Jewish world. pervasive and continuing social discrimination Generally speaking, this remained the case well against Jews throughout the Western world, de- into the Renaissance and beyond. When writing a spite the retraction of legal rights, and despite the book called Human Accomplishment (2003), I com- Holocaust, Jews won 14 percent of Nobel Prizes in piled inventories of “significant figures” in the arts literature, chemistry, physics, and medicine/physi- and sciences, defined as people who are mentioned ology. In the second half of the 20th century, when in at least half of the major histories of their re- Nobel Prizes began to be awarded to people from spective fields. From 1200 to 1800, only seven Jews all over the world, that figure rose to 29 percent. are among those significant figures, and only two So far, in the 21st century, it has been 32 percent. were important enough to have names that are still Jews constitute about two-tenths of one percent of widely recognized: Spinoza and Montaigne (whose the world’s population. You do the math. mother was Jewish). hat accounts for this remarkable record? he sparse representation of Jews during the W A full answer must call on many character- T flowering of the European arts and sciences is istics of Jewish culture, but intelligence has to be not hard to explain. They were systematically ex- at the center of the answer. Jews have been found cluded, both by legal restrictions on the occupa- to have an unusually high mean intelligence as tions they could enter and by savage social dis- measured by IQ tests since the first Jewish sam- crimination. Then came legal emancipation, be- ples were tested. (The widely repeated story that ginning in the late 1700’s in a few countries and Jewish immigrants to this country in the early completed in Western Europe by the 1870’s, and 20th century tested low on IQ is a canard.) Exact- with it one of the most extraordinary stories of any ly how high has been difficult to pin down, be- ethnic group at any point in human history. cause Jewish sub-samples in the available surveys As soon as Jewish children born under legal are seldom perfectly representative. But it is cur- emancipation had time to grow to adulthood, they rently accepted that the mean is somewhere in the started appearing in the first ranks of the arts and range of 107 to 115, with 110 being a plausible sciences. During the four decades from 1830 to compromise. 1870, when the first Jews to live under emancipa- The IQ mean for the American population is tion reached their forties, 16 significant Jewish “normed” to be 100, with a standard deviation of figures appear. In the next four decades, from 15. If the Jewish mean is 110, then the mathemat- 1870 to 1910, the number jumps to 40. During ics of the normal distribution says that the average the next four decades, 1910–1950, despite the Jew is at the 75th percentile. Underlying that

[30] Jewish Genius mean in overall IQ is a consistent pattern on IQ means of data. And so we come to the great ques- subtests: Jews are only about average on the sub- tion: how and when did this elevated Jewish IQ tests measuring visuo-spatial skills, but extremely come about? Here, the discussion must become high on subtests that measure verbal and reason- speculative. Geneticists and historians are still as- ing skills. sembling the pieces of the explanation, and there is A group’s mean intelligence is important in ex- much room for disagreement. plaining outcomes such as mean educational at- I begin with the assumption that elevated Jewish tainment or mean income. The key indicator for intelligence is grounded in genetics. It is no longer predicting exceptional accomplishment (like win- seriously disputed that intelligence in Homo sapiens ning a Nobel Prize) is the incidence of exception- is substantially heritable. In the last two decades, it al intelligence. Consider an IQ score of 140 or has also been established that obvious environmen- higher, denoting the level of intelligence that can tal factors such as high income, books in the house, permit people to excel in fields like theoretical and parental reading to children are not as potent physics and pure mathematics. If the mean Jewish as one might expect. A “good enough” environ- IQ is 110 and the standard deviation is 15, then ment is important for the nurture of intellectual the proportion of Jews with IQ’s of 140 or higher potential, but the requirements for “good enough” is somewhere around six times the proportion of are not high. Even the very best home environ- everyone else. ments add only a few points, if that, to a merely The imbalance continues to increase for still okay environment. It is also known that children higher IQ’s. New York City’s public-school system adopted at birth do not achieve the IQ’s predicted used to administer a pencil-and-paper IQ test to by their parents’ IQ. its entire school population. In 1954, a psycholo- To put it another way, we have good reason to gist used those test results to identify all 28 chil- think that Gentile children raised in Jewish fami- dren in the New York public-school system with lies do not acquire Jewish intelligence. Hence my measured IQ’s of 170 or higher. Of those 28, 24 view that something in the genes explains elevated were Jews. Jewish IQ. That conclusion is not logically neces- Exceptional intelligence is not enough to ex- sary but, given what we know about heritability plain exceptional accomplishment. Qualities such and environmental effects on intelligence in hu- as imagination, ambition, perseverance, and cu- mans as a species, it is extremely plausible. riosity are decisive in separating the merely smart Two potential explanations for a Jewish gene from the highly productive. The role of intelli- pool favoring high intelligence are so obvious that gence is nicely expressed in an analogy suggested many people assume they must be true: winnow- to me years ago by the sociologist Steven Gold- ing by persecution (only the smartest Jews either berg: intelligence plays the same role in an intel- survived or remained Jews) and marrying for lectually demanding task that weight plays in the brains (scholars and children of scholars were so- performance of NFL offensive tackles. The heav- cially desirable spouses). I too think that both of iest offensive tackle is not necessarily the best. In- these must have played some role, but how much deed, the correlation between weight and perfor- of a role is open to question. mance among NFL offensive tackles is probably In the case of winnowing through persecution, quite low. But they all weigh more than 300 the logic cuts both ways. Yes, those who remained pounds. faithful during the many persecutions of the Jews So with intelligence. The other things count, but were self-selected for commitment to Judaism, and you must be very smart to have even a chance of the role of scholarship in that commitment proba- achieving great work. A randomly selected Jew has bly means that intelligence was one of the factors a higher probability of possessing that level of in- in self-selection. The foresight that goes with in- telligence than a randomly selected member of any telligence might also have had some survival value other ethnic or national group, by far. (as in anticipating pogroms), though it is not ob- vious that its effect would be large enough to ex- othing that I have presented up to this plain much. N point is scientifically controversial. The pro- But once the Cossacks are sweeping through file of disproportionately high Jewish accomplish- town, the kind of intelligence that leads to business ment in the arts and sciences since the 18th centu- success or rabbinical acumen is no help at all. On ry, the reality of elevated Jewish IQ, and the con- the contrary, the most successful people could eas- nection between the two are not to be denied by ily have become the most likely to be killed, by

[31] Commentary April 2007 virtue of being more visible and the targets of cessful leads to strong selection for the cognitive greater envy. Furthermore, other groups, such as and psychological traits that produce that fitness, the Gypsies, have been persecuted for centuries intensified when there is a low inward gene flow without developing elevated intelligence. Consid- from other populations—as was the case with ered closely, the winnowing-by-persecution logic is Ashkenazim. not as compelling as it may first appear. Sephardi and Oriental Jews—i.e., those from the What of the marrying-for-brains theory? “A Iberian peninsula, the Mediterranean littoral, and man should sell all he possesses in order to marry the Islamic East—were also engaged in urban oc- the daughter of a scholar, as well as to marry his cupations during the same centuries. But the au- daughter to a scholar,” advises the Talmud (Pe- thors cite evidence that, as a rule, they were less sahim 49a), and scholarship did in fact have social concentrated in occupations that selected for IQ cachet within many Jewish communities before and instead more commonly worked in craft trades. (and after) emancipation. The combination could Thus, elevated intelligence did not develop among have been potent: by marrying the children of Sephardi and Oriental Jews—as manifested by con- scholars to the children of successful merchants, temporary test results in Israel that show the IQ’s Jews were in effect joining those selected for ab- of non-European Jews to be roughly similar to the stract reasoning ability with those selected for prac- IQ’s of Gentiles. tical intelligence. The three authors conclude this part of their ar- Once again, however, it is difficult to be more gument with an elegant corollary that matches the specific about how much effect this might have known test profiles of today’s Ashkenazim with the had. Arguments have been advanced that rich mer- historical experience of their ancestors: chants were in fact often reluctant to entrust their daughters to penniless and unworldly scholars. Nor The suggested selective process explains the pattern of mental abilities in Ashkenazi Jews: is it clear that the fertility rate of scholars, or their high verbal and mathematical ability but rela- numbers, were high enough to account for a major tively low spatio-visual ability. Verbal and effect on intelligence. The attractiveness of brains mathematical talent helped medieval business- in prospective marriage partners surely played men succeed, while spatio-visual abilities were some role but, once again, the data for assessing irrelevant. how much have not been assembled. The rest of their presentation is a lengthy and gainst this backdrop of uncertainty, a data- technical discussion of the genetics of selection for A driven theory for explaining elevated Jewish IQ, indirect evidence linking elevated Jewish IQ IQ appeared in 2006 in the Journal of Biosocial Sci- with a variety of genetically based diseases found ence. In an article entitled “Natural History of among Ashkenazim, and evidence that most of Ashkenazi Intelligence,” Gregory Cochran (a these selection effects have occurred within the last physicist) and Jason Hardy and Henry Harpending 1,200 years. (anthropologists) contend that elevated Jewish IQ is confined to the Ashkenazi Jews of northern and o one has yet presented an alternative to the central Europe, and developed from the Middle N Cochran-Hardy-Harpending theory that can Ages onward, primarily from 800 to 1600 c.e. match it for documentation. But, as someone who In the analysis of these authors, the key factor suspects that elevated Jewish intelligence was (a) explaining elevated Jewish intelligence is occupa- not confined to Ashkenazim and (b) antedates the tional selection. From the time Jews became es- Middle Ages, I will outline the strands of an alter- tablished north of the Pyrenees-Balkans line, native explanation that should be explored. around 800 c.e., they were in most places and at It begins with evidence that Jews who remained most times restricted to occupations involving in the Islamic world exhibited unusually high lev- sales, finance, and trade. Economic success in all els of accomplishment as of the beginning of the of these occupations is far more highly selected for second millennium. The hardest evidence is Sar- intelligence than success in the chief occupation of ton’s enumeration of scientists mentioned earlier, non-Jews: namely, farming. Economic success is in of whom 15 percent were Jews. These were not turn related to reproductive success, because high- Ashkenazim in northern Europe, where Jews were er income means lower infant mortality, better nu- still largely excluded from the world of scientific trition, and, more generally, reproductive “fit- scholarship, but Sephardim in the Iberian peninsu- ness.” Over time, increased fitness among the suc- la, in Baghdad, and in other Islamic centers of

[32] Jewish Genius learning. I have also mentioned the more diffuse only about 10–20 percent of Jews were farmers by cultural evidence from Spain, where, under both the end of the first millennium. No other ethnic Muslim and Christian rule, Jews attained eminent group underwent this same kind of occupational positions in the professions, commerce, and gov- shift. For the story of why this happened, I turn to ernment as well as in elite literary and intellectual a discussion by Maristella Botticini and Zvi Eck- circles. stein entitled “Jewish Occupational Selection: Ed- After being expelled from Spain at the end of the ucation, Restrictions, or Minorities?” which ap- 15th century, Sephardi Jews rose to distinction in peared in the Journal of Economic History in 2005. many of the countries where they settled. Some Rejecting the explanation that Jews became economic historians have traced the decline of merchants because they were restricted from Spain after 1500, and the subsequent rise of the farming, Botticini and Eckstein point to cases in Netherlands, in part to the Sephardi commercial which Jews who were free to own land and engage talent that was transferred from the one to the in agriculture made the same shift to urban, other. Centuries later, in England, one could point skilled occupations that Jews exhibited where re- to such Sephardi eminences as Benjamin Disraeli strictions were in force. Instead, they focus on an and the economist David Ricardo. event that occurred in 64 c.e., when the Palestin- In sum, I propose that a strong case could be as- ian sage Joshua ben Gamla issued an ordinance sembled that Jews everywhere had unusually high mandating universal schooling for all males start- intellectual resources that manifested themselves ing at about age six. The ordinance was not only outside of Ashkenaz and well before the period issued; it was implemented. Within about a cen- when non-rabbinic Ashkenazi accomplishment tury, the Jews, uniquely among the peoples of the manifested itself. world, had effectively established universal male How is this case to be sustained in the face of literacy and numeracy. contemporary test data indicating that non-Ashke- The authors’ explanation for the subsequent nazi Jews do not have the elevated mean of today’s shift from farming to urban occupations reduces Ashkenazim? The logical inconsistency disappears to this: if you were educated, you possessed an if one posits that Jews circa 1000 c.e. had elevated asset that had economic value in occupations that intelligence everywhere, but that it subsequently required literacy and numeracy, such as those in- was augmented still further among Ashkenazim volving sales and transactions. If you remained a and declined for Jews living in the Islamic world— farmer, your education had little or no value. perhaps because of the dynamics described by Over the centuries, this basic economic reality Cochran, Hardy, and Harpending (that is, Orien- led Jews to leave farming and engage in urban tal Jews were concentrated in trades for which high occupations. intelligence did not yield wealth). So far, Botticini and Eckstein have provided an Recent advances in the use of genetic markers to explanatory backdrop to the shift in occupations characterize populations enable us to pursue such that in turn produced the selection pressures for possibilities systematically. I offer this testable hy- intelligence described by Cochran, Hardy, and pothesis as just one of many possibilities: if genetic Harpending. But selection pressure in this classic markers are used to discriminate among non- form was probably not the only force at work. Be- Ashkenazi Jews, it will be found that those who are tween the 1st and 6th centuries c.e., the number closest genetically to the Sephardim of Golden Age of Jews in the world plummeted from about 4.5 Spain have an elevated mean IQ, though perhaps million to 1.5 million or fewer. About 1 million not so high as the contemporary Ashkenazi IQ. Jews were killed in the revolts against the Romans in Judea and Egypt. There were scattered forced he next strand of an alternative to the conversions from Judaism to another religion. T Cochran-Hardy-Harpending theory involves Some of the reduction may be associated with a reasons for thinking that some of the elevation of general drop in population that accompanied the Jewish intelligence occurred even before Jews decline and fall of the Roman Empire. But that moved into occupations selected for intelligence, still leaves a huge number of Jews who just disap- because of the shift in ancient Judaism from a rite- peared. based to a learning-based religion. What happened to them? Botticini and Eckstein All scholars who have examined the topic agree argue that an economic force was at work: for Jews that about 80–90 percent of all Jews were farmers who remained farmers, universal education in- at the beginning of the Common Era, and that volved a cost that had little economic benefit. As

[33] Commentary April 2007 time went on, they drifted away from Judaism. I am stories that speak so eloquently to the human con- sure this explanation has some merit. But a more dition that they have inspired great art, music, and direct explanation could involve the increased in- literature for millennia, was produced by an intel- tellectual demands of Judaism. lectually run-of-the-mill Levantine tribe? Joshua ben Gamla’s ordinance mandating litera- In The Evolution of Man and Society (1969), the ge- cy occurred at about the same time as the destruc- neticist Cyril Darlington presented the thesis that tion of the Second Temple—64 c.e. and 70 c.e., Jews and Judaism were decisively shaped much ear- respectively. Both mark the moment when Ju- lier than the 1st century c.e., namely, by the Baby- daism began actively to transform itself from a re- lonian captivity that began with the fall of Jerusalem ligion centered on rites and sacrifices at the Tem- to the forces of Nebuchadnezzar in 586 b.c.e. ple in Jerusalem to a religion centered on prayer Darlington’s analysis touches on many issues, but and the study of the Torah at decentralized syna- I will focus on just the intelligence question. The gogues and study houses. Rabbis and scholars took biblical account clearly states that only a select on a much larger role as leaders of local commu- group of Jews were taken to Babylon. We read that nities. Since worship of God involved not only Nebuchadnezzar “carried into exile all Jerusalem: prayer but study, all Jewish males had to read if all the officers and fighting men, and all the crafts- they were to practice their faith—and not only men and artisans. . . . Only the poorest people of read in private but be able to read aloud in the the land were left” (2 Kings 24:10). presence of others. In effect, the Babylonians took away the Jewish In this context, consider the intellectual require- elites, selected in part for high intelligence, and left ments of literacy. People with modest intelligence behind the poor and unskilled, selected in part for can become functionally literate, but they are able low intelligence. By the time the exiles returned, to read only simple texts. The Torah and the He- more than a century later, many of those remain- brew prayer book are not simple texts; even to be ing behind in Judah had been absorbed into other able to read them mechanically requires fairly ad- religions. Following Ezra’s command to “separate vanced literacy. To study the Talmud and its com- yourselves from the peoples around you and from mentaries with any understanding requires consid- your foreign wives” (Ezra 10:9), only those who re- erable intellectual capacity. In short, during the nounced their foreign wives and children were per- centuries after Rome’s destruction of the Temple, mitted to stay within the group. The returned ex- Judaism evolved in such a way that to be a good iles, who formed the bulk of the reconstituted Jew- Jew meant that a man had to be smart. ish community, comprised mainly the descendants What happened to the millions of Jews who dis- of the Jewish elites—plausibly a far more able pop- appeared? It is not necessary to maintain that Jews ulation, on average, than the pre-captivity popula- of low intelligence were run out of town because tion. they could not read the Torah and commentaries I offer the Babylonian captivity as a concrete fluently. Rather, few people enjoy being in a posi- mechanism whereby Jewish intelligence may have tion where their inadequacies are constantly high- been elevated very early, but I am not wedded to it. lighted. It is human nature to withdraw from such Even without that mechanism, there is reason to situations. I suggest that the Jews who fell away think that selection for intelligence antedates the from Judaism from the 1st to 6th centuries c.e. 1st century c.e. were heavily concentrated among those who could From its very outset, apparently going back to not learn to read well enough to be good Jews— the time of Moses, Judaism was intertwined with meaning those from the lower half of the intelli- intellectual complexity. Jews were commanded by gence distribution. Even before the selection pres- God to heed the law, which meant they had to sures arising from urban occupations began to have learn the law. The law was so extensive and com- an effect, I am arguing, the remaining self-identi- plicated that this process of learning and reviewing fied Jews circa 800 c.e. already had elevated intel- was never complete. Moreover, Jewish males were ligence. not free to pretend that they had learned the law, for fathers were commanded to teach the law to loose end remains. Is it the case that, before their children. It became obvious to all when fa- A the 1st century c.e., Jews were intellectually thers failed in their duty. No other religion made ordinary? Are we to believe that the Bible, a work so many intellectual demands upon the whole body compiled over centuries and incorporating every- of its believers. Long before Joshua ben Gamla and thing from brilliant poetry to profound ethics, with the destruction of the Second Temple, the require-

[34] Jewish Genius ments for being a good Jew had provided incen- c.e.; but I find it much more plausible that only tives for the less intelligent to fall away. people who already possessed high verbal skills Assessing the events of the 1st century c.e. thus would dream of installing such a demanding re- poses a chicken-and-egg problem. By way of an quirement. analogy, consider written Chinese with its thou- This reasoning pushes me even farther into the sands of unique characters. On cognitive tests, realm of speculation. Insofar as I am suggesting today’s Chinese do especially well on visuo-spatial that the Jews may have had some degree of unusu- skills. It is possible, I suppose, that their high visuo- al verbal skills going back to the time of Moses, I spatial skills have been fostered by having to learn am naked before the evolutionary psychologists’ ul- written Chinese; but I find it much more plausible timate challenge. Why should one particular tribe that only people who already possessed high visuo- at the time of Moses, living in the same environ- spatial skills would ever devise such a ferociously ment as other nomadic and agricultural peoples of difficult written language. Similarly, I suppose it is the Middle East, have already evolved elevated in- possible that the Jews’ high verbal skills were fos- telligence when the others did not? tered, through secondary and tertiary effects, by At this point, I take sanctuary in my remaining the requirement that they be able to read and un- hypothesis, uniquely parsimonious and happily ir- derstand complicated texts after the 1st century refutable. The Jews are God’s chosen people.

[35]