What Is It About The Jews?

Returning From The Edge Of Extinction

Talking and writing about Jews is always touchy. Jews are immediately on their guard, conditioned into sensitivity by the experiences they have had in their lives. Many are worried that something will be said or implied that will raise negative perceptions regarding their background. Conditions are very different from what they were when I was growing up some eighty years ago, with quotas applied to Jewish students’ educational options, and no-go areas for house-buying or renting, even outright bans in hiring in some areas of work. And then we had the Holocaust, aiming to eliminate Jews from existence.

Until fairly recently, it was considered impolite to be anti-Semitic, and some words referring to Jews are banned in public. But all over the world anti-Semitism has had a resurgence and being anti-Israel is considered a populist icon. And we know, even though it is under-reported, Jews are being aggressed against every day around the world. So, yes, Jewish people get nervous when we begin to talk about Jews. And how embarrassing is it when the criticisms are being raised by people who call themselves Jews.

But I have to talk about Jews because we need to unravel why it is that Jews, being such a small proportion of the world’s population, have made such an out-sized impact on the world in so many places, over such a long time, and in so many areas of human activity. Even more pertinent, why is it that the breed has survived? That puzzle is even more intriguing as a historical conundrum.

I know it makes many Jews nervous, (and many non-Jews angry, (one acquaintance insists that outperformance is mere happenstance,)) about the invidious comparison. But we have to ask how and why. And these days we are seeing the remarkable developments coming from Jews in Israel, which underlines the point.

It is generally accepted, I think, that actions by others in rejecting and isolating Jews from among the general population, fostered their entry into fields left open. Jews were banned from owning land so they were forced into the cities and ventured into individual enterprises. They were banned from the guilds so they became peddlers, junk dealers, and marketers of cattle for farmers. They founded businesses serving the underserved in the rural areas ( at one time the majority). They pioneered buying on credit, small payments over time, for needed and desired products.

Christians were forbidden by the Church to engage in lending because it was considered usury. So Jews became money-lenders. Jews found it difficult to find jobs with gentile employers, so Jews adopted personal enterprise roles and found new and better ways to do things that benefitted the consumer. Eventually, the Jewish way became the only way. In America, those peddlers became sellers on the installment plan, successful agricultural product intermediaries, then shopkeepers. They evolved into supermarket owners and department store magnates. In America, the borscht-belt entertainers of Jews banned from gentile resorts, graduated, inventing Broadway and Hollywood and the television revolution where they initially dominated.

Two economists* explain the performance of Jews in the diaspora in an entirely different way. They ascribe this phenomenon to events which occurred as a consequence of the destruction by the Romans of the Jewish nation state back in 70 C.E.

In Biblical practice, religion was the province of the Priesthood. Judea’s was an agrarian society, and its people were essentially illiterate. The teachings of Jesus, indeed, protested this centralization and advocated a democratization of religious practice. With the destruction of the state apparatus, and the elimination of the Temple, the rabbis and teachers maintaining Judaism in the Galilee, fostered individual practice by all Jews. Education of all became the rule in religious practice among Jews. This involved the study of the elements of Judaism, including a focus on educating children from a young age. This was the rabbinic movements’ solution to the disappearance of the Temple regime. As the Diaspora drew its Rabbis and teachers from this source, it was this model that became common where Judaism survived. Jewish communities were a literate island in an ocean of illiteracy, one where education was highly valued. Education, and the central responsibility of parents to convey values and knowledge of a trade, (roots and wings,) is recorded in Jewish sacred writings.

The cost of this focus, diverting time and effort from agricultural  labor, to religious practice and study, the authors argue, rather than persecution, was what resulted in many conversions to other religions, primarily Christianity. They calculate that Jewish numbers fell from about 5.5 million to only 1.5 million, in the time period studied. Historically, just dispersing a people, as occurred so often in history, was enough to ensure its eradication. Judaism experienced a double whammy with the destruction of the religious apparatus that defined it occurring at the same time.

It is these “chosen few” who perpetuated Judaism. The wonder  to me, lies in that the change that proved to be so costly in discouraging adhesion, fostering the catastrophic decline in numbers, turned out to be a crucial factor in equipping the survivors to succeed in the very world that sought their extinction. This focus on education, which has continued to be a characteristic of the Jewish culture, is the one to which these scholars ascribe the outperformance of Jews within the general society. The educated were a tiny few. This factor enhanced Jews ability to survive and even prosper in a hostile environment. Every Jew in my generation remembers the primacy of the family focus on education.

One may argue that the above finding by the authors may not explain the continued outperformance where universal education is generally practiced. We know from our own community experience, however, that the values attributed to education in our own homes, were often not evident among many of the non-Jewish schoolmates with whom we shared our school time.

It is a fact that in Israel the proportion of the national budget committed to research and development is among the highest in the world. This tiny country is accruing the benefits of a continuing study of the questions that urgently need answers in our world. How and where we set our priorities has to be a part of the equation speaking to what we value most. This attitude must dictate outcomes.

Outperformance has its costs. It is not easily tolerated by those who resent the invidious distinction, a comparison with their own performance. We have seen it before and we are seeing it now. Now, less than two-tenths of the world’s population, Jewish existence is a statistical irrelevancy except for its continuing impact on world realities. It is fostered by almost two thousand years of teaching survivors to not just survive but to thrive. This formula is open to everyone.

Some are still drinking from the magic potion that explains the outcomes we have seen, and are seeing even today.

*The Chosen Few, Botticini and Eckstein. Princeton University Press, 2012