Jews are a famously accomplished group. They make up 0.2 percent of the world population but 54 percent of the world chess champions, 27 percent of the Nobel physics laureates and 31 percent of the medicine laureates.
Jews make up 2 percent of the U.S. population, but 21 percent of the Ivy League student bodies, 26 percent of the Kennedy Center honorees, 37 percent of the Academy Award-winning directors, 38 percent of those on a recent Business Week list of leading philanthropists, 51 percent of the Pulitzer Prize winners for nonfiction.
In his book, “The Golden Age of Jewish Achievement,” Steven L. Pease lists some of the explanations people have given for this record of achievement. The Jewish faith encourages a belief in progress and personal accountability. It is learning-based, not rite-based.
I readily acknowledge the accomplishments of persons of Jewish ancestry, but you ought to take a look at the accomplisments of Scots, in Scotland and around the world, over the past five hundred years.
Keep in mind that the population of Scots of Scottish derivation in Scotland never exceeded more than around 4 to 5 million people. This is less than a tenth of the indigenous, German or English populations.
Start with a few early Scots such as those that wrote The Declaration of Arbroath or Adam Smith the Father of modern economics or Napier the inventor of logarithms or James Watt the inventor of the steam engine or the inventor of penicillin or James Clerke Maxwell the developer of modern electromagnetic theory and the list goes on and on including famous statesmen, military leaders and explorers.
So, along with the contibutions of Jews, a very small population of people, go the contributuions of Scots, an another small people of people.
Another similarity of Jews and Scots is that Scots have dispersed all over the world and not always at their own choosing.
In comment #1.,
“So, along with the contibutions of Jews, a very small population of people, go the contributuions of Scots, an another small people of people.” should read,
“So, along with the contibutions of Jews, a very small population of people, go the contributuions of Scots, an another small population of people.”
Long ago, I took a class in university on the place of the violin in culture and history. My final paper was on Yehudi Menuhin, the famous violinist descending from East European Jewish stock. One of the books I read about his life discussed the sheer amount of intellectual/musical talent (Menuhin, Isaac Stern, etc.) that came out of Eastern Europe and the Russian Pale from the insular Jewish gene pools that have since been utterly eradicated or dispersed.
I would be interested in seeing some kind of line graph that represents aggregate Jewish intellectual achievement now that the Jewish people have settled again in places like Israel and the US.
“37 percent of the Academy Award-winning directors, … 51 percent of the Pulitzer Prize winners for nonfiction.”
Hmmm. So it’s not all gain. Oh vey.
[blockquote]The Jewish faith encourages a belief in progress and personal accountability. It is learning-based, not rite-based.[/blockquote] It seems to me that Christianity, which is rooted in Jesus’ Jewish faith is also learning-based and that the growth of Christianity had a lot to do with Christian Missionaries who taught people to read so that they could read the Bible. I would hope that those who are in charge of TEC Missionary Services (The Presiding Bishop?) will honor this tradition and send Missionaries to other countries, like Haiti, who will teach illiterate people to read the Bible before they teach them to doubt it.