I decided to consider this interesting and unusual topic: why are Jews rich? By the way, many researchers and analysts have studied this issue, in particular, one of them, Stephen Silbiger, dedicated an entire book to it, which he called Jewish phenomenon. In today's post I will rely primarily on it, as well as some other publicly available data.
Many people treat representatives of Jewish nationality, let’s say, not very well: Jews are considered greedy, selfish, cunning, etc. I’ll say right away that I do not share such a negative attitude, and in general I don’t think it’s worth somehow dividing your opinion about people based on their nationality. On the contrary, I think that specifically from Jews, in fact, you can learn a lot in terms of achieving financial independence and managing personal finances. Let's look at the facts.
On a global scale, one can now observe a phenomenon called the “Jewish phenomenon.” The essence of this phenomenon is that, despite the rather small number of representatives of this nationality, for many years they have traditionally occupied the so-called. the “highest stratum” of society and are among the richest people in the world.
For example, in Russia the number of Jews is only about 0.1%, and in the USA - no more than 2% of the total population. At the same time, there are almost 200 Jews present, and among the richest people in the United States, their representatives account for almost 50%.
The number of Jews is only about 0.002% of the total population of the Earth, while the number of Jewish billionaires is 25% of the total number of billion-dollar capital owners. Of all Nobel Prize laureates, Jews make up 20%. That is, we can definitely say that Jews are very smart and successful.
Why is this happening? Why are Jews rich? This issue has been studied by many; today we will look at the Jewish phenomenon from the point of view of Stephen Silbegier, who dedicated a book of the same name to it. In his book “The Jewish Phenomenon” Silbegir identified 7 main qualities, which he considers the main secrets of the success of Jews. So, what are these qualities?
1. Constant thirst for knowledge. Jews have a very strong thirst for knowledge and constantly live in the process of learning. Learning something new is in their blood, and they consider knowledge the basis for achieving wealth. Based on this, the process of their learning includes not only the direct acquisition of knowledge, but also its further application in practice in the interests of their own success and well-being.
2. Unity and support from loved ones. The Jewish phenomenon is largely explained by the fact that Jews are a very united people. They are always kind to their loved ones, especially relatives, but not only to them, but in general to all representatives of their nationality. Jews are always ready to help each other, knowing that if they themselves need help, they will also receive it. In fact, every Jew feels the support of the entire people, which helps him.
3. Entrepreneurial spirit, entrepreneurial acumen. Many, answering the question “Why are Jews rich?” they immediately note that they have precisely these qualities. Indeed, one can only envy them for this. Jews always confidently move towards their goal, be it developing their own business or career growth, and reach the top quite quickly. Among them are many executives, top managers and owners of major companies.
4. Ability to negotiate. Surely everyone has heard many anecdotes about how Jews bargain, which, of course, did not arise out of nowhere. The Jewish phenomenon lies partly in the fact that Jews are very good at defending their position, master the art of persuasion, and know how to negotiate deals on terms that are more beneficial to them.
5. Lack of public display of one's wealth. Russian people often dream of being able to throw around money and allow themselves prestigious holidays, pleasures, entertainment, and demonstrate their wealth in every possible way. Jews in this regard are the complete opposite: you can never tell from a Jew whether he is rich or not, he will never demonstrate his wealth in public. Moreover, even a very rich Jew will try hard in small things, which also gave rise to many tales and anecdotes. But it is precisely this quality that largely answers the question “Why are Jews rich?” - because they take care of their personal finances, do not throw them away, but save and invest.
6. Pride in one's origins. Stephen Silbeger explains the Jewish phenomenon by the fact that this people is always very proud of its origin, despite its complex and even tragic fate. Pride in themselves and their people helps them move forward, serves as a source of inspiration, strength and motivation to achieve their goals.
7. Confidence in your rightness. Try to convince a Jew of something, and you will probably fail. Every Jew is confident that he is right, and is ready to endlessly prove it to others. He always has it – and this is the most important quality for achieving success.
That's why Jews are rich. The presence of these 7 qualities, some of which some may consider unacceptable for themselves, helped this people stand out so much, enter the lists of the richest people in the world and constantly update their representatives on them. I think that the Jewish phenomenon can serve as a good example and lesson for anyone who dreams of becoming successful, achieving wealth and. So take note.
See you again on the site, where you can always improve your financial literacy, learn how to properly manage your personal finances, and get interesting ideas for making money and investing.
Let's take a look at the intelligence of the Jews - this “best” of peoples. Are there world-class philosophers among Jews? No, they don't exist. Global philosophical Jewish thought is extremely meager and has given the world nothing but lies, demagoguery and deception. The most “strong” Jewish philosopher, Karl Marx, from a logical point of view demonstrates masterpieces of stupidity, and from the point of view of the true purpose of his philosophy, he is simply a swindler (note that he was a puppet and completely controlled by Jewish rabbis). Who else? Among the world-famous, there are only three left: Bergson A., Buber M. and Spinoza B. The significance of the first two is close to zero.
The Dutch philosopher Spinoza is the most intelligent of them. His most interesting thought, which is worthy of quotation and is consonant with the theme of this work, is the following: “A free man thinks of nothing so little as death, and his wisdom consists in thinking not about death, but about life.” Well done Spinoza, a wise approach to the present and future tense. His approach was not typical of Jewish philosophical thought, and the Amsterdam rabbis hated him for so-called blasphemy, “excommunicated him and alienated him from the people of Israel,” and persecuted him in every possible way for a long time. But Spinoza is also not a philosopher of the first, not the second, or even the third level. There are no other philosophers. Compare with the huge galaxy of brilliant philosophers of Greece, Germany, France, England and Russia.
Among the learned Jews there are many extraordinary people. But only three claim to be great geniuses: Albert Einstein, Sigmund Freud and Norbert Wiener. Were these three really geniuses? Isn't this just another Jewish scam? Let's look at Einstein, from whom the Jews are trying to make a genius of all times and one people.
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He created his special theory of relativity in 1905. But he did not create it from scratch. He took the basic ideas from Poincare, and borrowed the mathematical apparatus from Lorentz. A decent scientist is obliged to provide references to his predecessors; this is scientific ethics. In his work, Einstein did not give a single reference, thereby passing off other people's discoveries as his own. In the scientific world this is called plagiarism, that is, intellectual theft. This is typically brazen Jewish behavior.
After the publication of the special theory of relativity, Poincaré, once meeting Einstein, accused him of plagiarism and scientific dishonesty. The naive Poincaré did not understand that plagiarism does not exist for a Jew. Judaism claims that any property of the goyim (including intellectual property) is the property of the Jew, who will be the first to seize it. Stealing someone else's property and passing it off as one's own is a typical method of Jewish genius.
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The role of Einstein’s Slavic wife, Mileva Maric (Serbian by nationality), in the creation of both the special and general theories of relativity is completely hushed up. However, Mileva Maric was a strong physicist, and her role, to put it mildly, was not small. It is enough to note that all three of Einstein’s “epoch-making” articles were signed by co-authors Einstein-Maric (74, p. 128).
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Einstein “created” the general theory of relativity in 1915 on the basis of the fundamental theory of the Pole Minkowski about four-dimensional space-time. And Minkowski just developed the idea of four-dimensional Poincaré space. The fundamental formula E = MC2 was not invented by Einstein, but by his first Slavic wife Mileva Maric. So, even the largest Jewish “geniuses” are based on stolen other people’s ideas, passed off as their own.
The Nobel Committee awarded Einstein the Ig Nobel Prize. Now try asking any university graduate: “Why was Einstein awarded the Nobel Prize?” The answer will be almost unanimous: “For the creation of the theory of relativity.” What is it really like? In fact, with all the Jewish pressure, the Nobel Committee could not give such a falsified version and gave the following wording: “For the discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect and for work in the field of theoretical physics.” The wording is interesting. How did it compare with reality? Here's how.
The photoelectric effect itself was discovered in 1887 by G. Hertz. In 1888, the photoelectric effect was experimentally tested by the Russian scientist A.G. Stoletov, and he also established the “first law of the photoelectric effect,” called Stoletov’s law. The first law of the photoelectric effect is formulated as follows: “The maximum photoelectric current is directly proportional to the incident radiant flux.” Naturally, no one awarded Stoletov the Nobel Prize. Einstein established the “second law of the photoelectric effect” - “Einstein’s law”: “The maximum energy of photoelectrons depends linearly on the frequency of the incident light and does not depend on its intensity.” That’s all the “epochal” content of the “great Jewish genius.” Einstein is also credited with explaining the mechanism of the photoelectric effect on the basis of quantum ideas about the nature of light. But the quantum theory of radiation was actually created by M. Planck in 1900.
Despite the many strong Jewish scientists, fundamental thinkers of the same level as the Russian giants of thought never appear among them: Lomonosov, Tsiolkovsky, Mendeleev, Lobachevsky, Vavilov, Vernadsky, Chizhevsky, Losev and others. Each of these giants is a revolution in science. The thinking of these people is not indisputable, one can criticize them in some ways, but the scale of the thinking of such people is in principle inaccessible to Jews.
Let us note that those Jewish scientists whose names are well known were primarily the organizers and leaders of scientific teams. And in a scientific community, it is very easy to pass off the collective achievements of a group of scientists as the discoveries of the leader himself. “This is the scientific school of Abram Ivanovich” is a favorite formula of Jewish propaganda. What did this Jewish leader personally do at this school? He was the boss.
There are a great many talented and outstanding musicians among Jews; perhaps, there is no such thing in any nation. What about great composers? There are only a few Jewish composers (strange, right?), and among the notable ones at the world level we can only single out: Mendelssohn, Gershwin and Offenbach. What are they? Good composers - that's all that can be said about them. No more. None of them can be compared with such, for example, brilliant Russian composers as Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninov, Mussorgsky, Scriabin, Rimsky-Korsakov, not to mention such German giants as Bach, Mozart, Beethoven.
The great German composer Richard Wagner, in his book “Jewishness in Music” (64), analyzed Jewish musical creativity, including the work of Mendelssohn. The conclusion is very interesting - in Jewish creativity there is a complete absence of: sincerity, sincerity, excitement, passion, tenderness, and refinement of taste. Jewish creativity is always imitative and entertaining. And that's all. The castrated art of circumcised people.
Are there any brilliant poets among Jews? Not a single one. There are only four Jewish poets: Pasternak, Heine, Mandelstam and Brodsky. There are dozens of poets of this level in every run-down Russian town. Only Jews and their lackeys, who, for lack of anything better, strive to praise any Jewish mediocrity, can call these mediocre poets great. The most interesting was Pasternak. But again, why is it interesting? With his poetic translations. The translations are not bad. Pasternak translated the best Western European poets from English, German and French and tried to borrow poetic images from them and pass them off as his own. Brodsky was also involved in similar translations and borrowings. Stealing someone else's property and passing it off as one's own is a typical method of Jewish genius. But, despite all the borrowings, both Pasternak’s poetry and Brodsky’s poetry leave a pitiful impression. The Jews do not have the spark of God. It is not surprising that the Jewish Nobel Prize Committee awarded Ig Nobel Prizes to both Pasternak and Brodsky.
Of course, “God’s chosen” Jews never had anything like such Russian geniuses as A.S. Pushkin, M.Yu. Lermontov, S.A. Yesenin, A.A. Fet, F.I. Tyutchev there won't be.
At one time, the following epigram was invented for the famous Soviet Jewish poet S. Ya. Marshak, who almost one-to-one copied the style of the English poet Robert Burns:
With all this, with all this,
With all this, despite this.
Marshak remained Marshak,
And Robert Burns is a poet.
Why don't Jews have brilliant or simply powerful philosophers? It's all about Jewish upbringing. Jews are taught from childhood to love reading, and this develops the intellect very well. But it is very important where a child begins to read. Jews almost always start reading from the Talmud, the Torah, the Bible and similar Judaic rubbish. From this, on the one hand, the general chauvinistic idea of God's chosenness of Jews, Jewish superiority, opposition to other peoples, contempt, hatred of them, the desire for dominance and the desire to make other people their slaves is driven into Jewish heads with a stake. Strong-willed and fighting qualities are cultivated together with the introduction of the psychology of swindlers, thieves, liars and tyrants.
On the other hand, reading Jewish books distorts the brain, especially in the field of general philosophical thinking, as it accustoms one to absurdities and nonsense and creates a kaleidoscopic loosely connected knowledge base. After such training, Jews go crazy, become intellectually disabled, or, more precisely, biorobots, that is, creatures incapable of independent rational thinking. The general formula for programming the consciousness of Jewish biorobots is simple: “If you study the Talmud, you lose your brains; if you fall in love with the Bible, you completely lose your mind.”
Why are Jews so smart?
“Jewish head,” they say all over the world when they want to celebrate someone’s intelligence. “And Yiddishe is a cop,” the Jews themselves nod with some complacency in such cases. Even anti-Semites do not deny the mental superiority of the nation they hate; Moreover, it is in this superiority that they see the most sinister component of the “Jewish threat.”
The common truth about the intellectual power of Jews of European origin - Ashkenazim - is easily confirmed empirically. Everyone knows the predominance, if not dominance, of Jews in areas requiring high mental potential (science, medicine, law, art, business, finance). Jews make up only 2% of the US population, but they account for 27% of the Nobel Prizes awarded to Americans (in other years, the list of Nobel laureates generally looks like “naked IDN,” as they say in Odessa).
It is also known that Ashkenazi Jews, on average, give the highest scores of all ethnic groups and nationalities in IQ tests - 12-15 points above the average of 100. And the number of owners of very high IQs (140 points and above ) among Jews is 6 times higher than the corresponding figure for Northern Europeans.
How to explain this indisputable fact? The acquisition of knowledge has long been considered by Jews as the surest way to achieve success in life. Learning has always and everywhere been surrounded by reverent reverence among Jews. A distinctive feature of any Jewish community, even the poorest, was universal literacy. Jewish parents saw their primary duty as educating their children; on the social scale, a poor Torah scholar stood immeasurably higher than a rich merchant, who considered it a blessing to marry his daughter to the son of a poor rabbi or cantor.
Over the centuries, these traditions of intellectualism took firm root in the Jewish consciousness, giving rise to an irresistible thirst for knowledge almost at the level of instinct. But - despite the seriousness of this argument - does it exhaust the question? Does the “Yiddish cop” phenomenon fully explain? And in general, is it possible to talk about this seriously?
It is possible, said 3 scientists from the University of Utah. In an article published in the Journal of Biosocial Science, Greg Cochran and two co-authors concluded that the high level of mental abilities of Ashkenazi Jews is an indisputable fact, and proposed a physiological explanation for it.
In a condensed form, it is formulated as follows: Jewish intellectualism was the result of Darwinian natural selection, fixed at the genetic level.
In the Middle Ages, Jews scattered throughout Europe found themselves under severe pressure. The law prohibited them from owning land, carrying weapons, and they were not accepted into craft guilds. In fact, the only occupations open to Jews were trade and banking. Special circumstances contributed to this. Christians and Muslims were forbidden by religion to deal with each other, but both were allowed to communicate with Jews. Because of this, Jews became natural intermediaries in commercial relations between 2 giant religious and geographical blocks.
Christians and Muslims were prohibited from engaging in usury. Lending money to no one was forbidden, but giving it at interest - God forbid! However, there was a tricky loophole: the debtor was obliged to cover the losses incurred by the lender due to a lack of loaned money, and the amount of losses was determined by eye by the creditor himself. Needless to say, everyone who needed borrowed capital bypassed their co-religionists a mile away and flocked to the Jewish moneylenders! No matter how disgusting it may be to deal with “the enemies of Christ and humanity,” it is much easier to live when you know the exact amount of your debt.
And since credit is the mother’s milk of any economic activity, periodic pogroms and expulsions of Jews invariably led to economic chaos, and after a short absence one had to inevitably invite the “bloodsuckers” back. It should be noted that for all their religious fervor, the pogromists did not at all forget about their more earthly interests. The participants in the pogroms first of all rushed to burn the debt notes of the Jewish moneylenders, and only then did their blood boil at the thought that “these bastards crucified Christ.”
Be that as it may, Jews, willy-nilly, had to specialize in areas where success depended primarily on mental alertness and business acumen. This is confirmed, in particular, by modern scientific research, which shows that in areas such as banking, mental ability (in the form of IQ) gives a high degree of correlation with earnings.
This fact, as well as the absolute genetic isolation of Jews (among them there is still a strong prejudice against mixed marriages, and in the Middle Ages there was simply no question of mixing with the surrounding population) served as the starting point for Cochrane’s research. Historical documents indicate that the most successful Jews in business had the largest offspring. This is understandable: children of rich parents grew up in more favorable conditions, ate better, and had access to more qualified medical care.
The correlation of mental development with business success, on the one hand, and business success with fertility, on the other, gave especially savvy people additional chances in the struggle for survival. But is it not possible to assume that there are genes responsible for mental abilities that the most successful people in life pass on to their descendants? Cochran and his co-authors argue that this is the case, and that they have been able to identify genes for intellectual giftedness. It turned out that these are precisely the same genes that cause a number of hereditary diseases that affect only Ashkenazi Jews and no one else.
It has long been known that small genetically isolated populations are susceptible to hereditary diseases. Constant interbreeding with relatives, even distant ones, reduces genetic diversity, resulting in the random spread of genes for a number of diseases. However, precisely because of its random nature, this process is devoid of any patterns.
But not in the case of Ashkenazis. Of the one and a half dozen genes responsible for the spread of hereditary diseases specific to Ashkenazis, the majority belong to 1 of 2 types: they are either involved in the accumulation of special fats in neurons - sphingolipids, which stimulate brain activity, or are involved in DNA repair. Genes of the first type are responsible for neurological diseases such as Tay-Sachs disease, Gaucher syndrome or Niemann-Pick disease. Genes of the second type determine vulnerability to cancer, primarily breast cancer, to which Ashkenazi Jewish women are statistically more susceptible.
It really doesn't seem like an accident. Especially because in some cases the genes responsible for certain hereditary diseases are found in several varieties, each of which was the result of an independent mutation. In other words, mutated genes were preserved in the population through the mechanism of natural selection. But doesn't this contradict the very principle of evolution, which protects the body by eliminating defective genes through natural selection? Why did evolution suddenly come up with genetic diseases? It turns out there could be very good reasons for this.
West Africans and their descendants are susceptible to a unique genetic disease called sickle cell anemia, which is no longer found in any other ethnic group. (Of course, this is not an ethnic group, but it doesn’t matter. - R.) This disease occurs in individuals whose red blood cells contain a special type of hemoglobin, but only when they inherit copies of the gene responsible for producing harmful hemoglobin from both parents.
In carriers of only a single copy of the defective gene, the disease does not manifest itself. But it gives them immunity against malaria - a terrible scourge of the population of tropical Africa. Thus, according to the theory, the selection pressure favoring the persistence of the sickle cell gene in a population because of its antimalarial properties balances the selection pressure favoring displacement of the gene from the population to protect it from anemia. Thanks to this balance of power, the gene is preserved in the gene pool, but does not dominate it.
Cochran and his colleagues believe that something similar happened among the Ashkenazis. Genes that, in a single copy, are responsible for the development of mental abilities, when present in a double copy, cause pathology. This is indicated by their specific mechanism. All genetic diseases associated with the accumulation of sphingolipids are accompanied by their overproduction.
If this process is excessive, as in carriers of a double copy of the gene, the result is disease. But it may well be that the presence of a single copy also contributes to the overproduction of sphingolipids - not so strong as to have dire consequences, but noticeable enough to give an impetus to brain activity, that is, to enhance mental abilities.
Empirical data confirms that this possibility is quite real. For example, individuals affected by Gaucher syndrome, which is the only disease that appears in adulthood, have well above average intelligence. Among the patients of an Israeli clinic specializing in this disease, the number of people with higher education (engineers, scientists, lawyers, accountants) far exceeds the statistical average.
The work is only in its early stages, but Cochran and his colleagues are confident that over time they will be able to prove that a single copy of 3 diseases increases the IQ of their carriers by approximately 5 points. In other words, Jews do have stronger intellects, but they have to pay for their mental superiority at a high price - genetic diseases.
misha_makferson
How many times have they told the world? IQ tests do not measure intelligence, but the degree of socialization in the dominant culture whose representatives developed the test. Unadapted IQ tests show the level of clinical cretin (cretin in the medical sense) for Africans, which is clearly absurd and is refuted by direct observations. Adapting tests is a very difficult task.
We all know thatJews are the smartest people in the world. In any forum they are ready to enlighten us about this and endlessly give examples, convince and convince us. One has only to doubt the great truth aboutSmart Jew- and you should instantly respond like this:
A people who consider themselves the smartest, and this has always been the case, where have you seen a Jew occupying penultimate places in mathematical Olympiads, and Jews have always been the smartest, the best doctors, the best teachers, the most successful and richest people in the world are Jews.
Yes, yes, everything is so, we believe.
For example, let's open a websiteInternational Mathematical Olympiad(International Mathematical Olympiad is the oldest international scientific Olympiad for schoolchildren, held annually) and let’s see the results. But first I will describe what the competition is all about.
Each country is represented by a team consisting of no more than six participants, a leader and a scientific supervisor. Officially, MMO is an individual championship, each participant speaks for himself and scores personal points. The total points of a country (team) are unofficial, but are calculated. Participants must beno older than 20 yearsand not study at university.
Participants are asked to solve 6 problems (three problems per day, for two days in a row), each of which is worth 7 points, so the possible maximum is 42 points. Problems are selected from various areas of school mathematics, mainly geometry, number theory, algebra and combinatorics. They do not require knowledge of advanced mathematics and often have a nice and short solution. For example, problem 6 for 2007 is solved almost in one move by the combinatorial zero theorem.
In general, there is nothing super complicated there, but participants must have some brains in their heads and some knowledge of the school curriculum.
The last (50th) IMO was held in Bremen, Germany, July 10-22, 2009. Let's see the results:
First place - China, 6 gold medals.
Second place - Japan, 5 gold and 1 bronze
Third place - Russia, 5 gold and 1 silver
It’s paradoxical - the stupid Ivans scored more medals than Japan, but lost to the Japanese in terms of total team points.
4th place - South Korea
5th place - North Korea
6th place - USA
7th place - Thailand
8th place - Türkiye
9th place - Germany
By the way, the US team is very funny - there is not a single real American or even a white person on it. Entirely visiting Asians, Indians and Pakistanis.
15th place - Iran
16th place - Brazil
Where are the smart Jews? And here they are -46th place. Even the Turkmens, Uzbeks and Tajiks were ahead of them. That is, Rafshan and Dzhamshut are smarter than Izya and Abram.
We must understand that the top ten are the world elite, nations with the brightest future, and the fact that Turkey is included there is symptomatic. The second ten are extremely worthy places, intellectually developed countries, and the presence of Iran there is also no coincidence.
Well, places below 40 are a global cesspool. Tupari idiotovich brakeovers. Countries with low populations and ineffective education even at the elite level.
But, of course, we know that this is all the machinations of anti-Semites. Moreover, the Olympics were in Germany. Well, let's look at the previous results, 49 IMO - Madrid, Spain, July 10-22, 2008:
1st place - China, 5 gold and 1 silver medals
2nd place - Russia, 6 gold medals
3rd place - USA, 4 gold 2 silver
The same paradox - the stupid Ivans are all in gold, they scored more medals than China, but were inferior to them in terms of total team points.
4th place - South Korea
5th place - Iran
6th place - Thailand
7th place - North Korea
8th place - Türkiye
9th place - Taiwan (same China, profile view)
As we can see, Japan was unlucky this time, it is in 11th place. But Iran was lucky. But overall, all the same familiar faces.
16th place - Brazil. Stable result.
Where is Israel? And here he is -27th place, one step above the homeland of the great mathematicians of Mongolia.
And the Jews were very lucky because at the previous 48th MMOtheir place was the 50s.
So they hang out - either they will fall into the cesspool of the fifth decade, or they will jump up and cling to the third, but never in recent history have thesesmartest people on the planetdid not rise above 25th place.
Like this one anti-Semitic conspiracy. This is obvious, because never in the 50-year history of the International Mathematical Olympiad has it been held in the country of the smartest people - Israel.
But maybe the smartest people on the planet are doing better in the field of physics?
Unfortunately, anti-Semites have entrenched themselves there too. Never in historyInternational Physics Olympiadparticipants from Israel did not receive even the most meager prize there. The Chinese - as much as they wanted, Korea - yes, even the Mexicans, Romanians and Puerto Ricans received - but not the Jews. You can check it yourself on Wikipedia and on the official website of the Olympiad.
I'll tell you more - the anti-Semitic conspiracy also covered the field of computer science, biology, and in general all areas of applied knowledge. Nowhere, well, absolutely nowhere, do graduates of Israeli schools shine.
Now, if there were an Olympics on the Torah, or on shooting from an American M-16 rifle at Palestinian teenagers throwing stones, and even on Israeli territory, then the damned goyim would definitely be put to shame by the brilliant Jewish intellect.
The reason why the Jews achieved such impressive success in the fields of trade, finance, various sciences and arts has been the subject of debate among many thinkers since the Middle Ages. American researchers Zvi Eckstein and Maristella Botticini also have their own point of view on this issue, devoting a monograph to this topic under the intriguing title “The Chosen Few”. Recently, a Hebrew translation of the book was published by Tel Aviv University Press, reports Haaretz.
Eckstein and Botticini adhere to the hypothesis that the main reason for the success of Jews is universal literacy and the desire to receive an education. After the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 AD. main conditionThe survival of Judaism was that every Jew learned to read and write - in order to be able to read the Torah. Those Jews who, due to unwillingness or inability, remained illiterate, in most cases assimilated among the non-Jewish environment. A side effect of the mass literacy of the Jews was that they excelled in trade, financial transactions, and other activities requiring the ability to read, write, and do math.
If before the destruction of the Temple Judaism was based primarily on temple rituals, then in the subsequent era spiritual leadership passed from priests (kohanim) to rabbis and interpreters of the Law. As the authors write, the Beit HaMidrash (house of learning) replaced the Beit HaMikdash (Holy Temple). From then on, reading and studying the Torah by every Jewish man became the basis of the existence of Judaism. Every Jew was charged with teaching his children to read and write - and this was truly a revolutionary step forward in a world where the vast majority of the population remained illiterate.
These facts themselves have long been well known to everyone, and it would seem that the authors did not discover America here. However, the further course of thought of Eckstein and Botticini is much less trivial.
A family that wanted to teach a child to read and write had to incur enormous (by the standards of ancient and medieval) expenses. In the first centuries after the destruction of the Second Temple, most Jews were still engaged in peasant labor, their lives were full of hardships. The main dilemma facing the Jews of those times is formulated as follows: to make significant financial sacrifices in order to maintain their commitment to Judaism, or to “save money” by paying for it by abandoning the religion of their ancestors. Obviously, those Jews whose connection with religion was weak, and also not very capable of learning, were primarily ready to take the path of least resistance. Common sense tells us that a significant part of the Jews had to assimilate, which should have resulted in a general reduction in the number of people. And indeed, in the Talmudic era (III-VI centuries) two trends clearly emerged: on the one hand, an increase in the literacy of the Jewish population; on the other hand, a sharp drop in its numbers as a result of the transition to other religions (mainly Christianity). If in 65 AD. the total number of Jews in the world was 5.5 million, then by 650 it had decreased to 1.2 million. Of course, the number of Jews was influenced by wars of persecution, pogroms, epidemics and other disasters, but in that era these factors were inferior in importance to apostasy.
The emergence of Islam played an important role in Jewish history. The unity of the huge Muslim empire (caliphate), which occupied the territory from Spain to China in the years after the death of Muhammad, was cemented not only by a common religion, but also by a common language (Arabic), as well as common legislation. The rise of the caliphate gave impetus to the development of crafts and trade, and to an increase in the urban population.
This wave of globalization and urbanization led to a need for literate specialists, which the Jews rushed to fill first. Between 750 and 900, nearly all the Jews of Mesopotamia and Persia (who then constituted 75 percent of the world's Jewish population) abandoned agriculture and moved to the large cities of the caliphate, where they took up professions that required literacy and were much more profitable than farming. It should be noted that this dramatic change in the social structure of the Jewish population occurred even before Jews were prohibited from owning land and farming in many countries.
In their book, Eckstein and Botticini came up with an original and bold answer to the question of why the Jews became a people of merchants, bankers, scientists and doctors. Not because of legal prohibitions or discrimination, but due to its relative advantage (mass literacy). It was literacy that became the prerequisite for the fact that Jews played a key role in the economy of early Muslim states, and then in Western Europe and other regions. The social mobility, cohesion and solidarity of the Jews, even if they lived on different continents, also contributed to their success. This may explain the dizzying success of Jews in areas related to finance and credit. In XII-XIII centuries usury became the main occupation of Jews in England, France and Germany and one of the most widespread in the states of the Iberian Peninsula.
Another historical event that had a very significant impact on the history of the Jews was the invasion of Genghis Khan in the Middle East and Europe. The Mongols invaded Persia and Mesopotamia in 1219, and in 1258 they conquered Baghdad, the capital of the caliphate. The urban economy of this once powerful state immediately fell into decline. The result was that the majority of the Jews of Persia, Mesopotamia, Egypt and Syria, having become sharply impoverished, were forced to abandon Judaism and convert to Islam.
As a result of all these processes, the world's Jewish population continued to decline, reaching a minimum at the end of the 15th century. century. Eckstein and Botticini, using the example of the Mongol conquest, showed that the process they described could develop in the direction of both progress and regression.
The monograph of Eckstein and Botticini, believes the reviewer, the famous Israeli economist Manuel Trachtenberg, is a combination of innovative economic thought with painstaking historical research.
