Category Archives: Judaism & Jews

Ashkenazi Jews’ IQ: Judaism Itself, The Study Of Talmud, In Particular, Is a High-IQ Activity

History, Intellectualism, Intelligence, Judaism & Jews, Logic, Reason

This article reduces the reason for Ashkenazi Jews’ aggregate, genetically based, high IQ to Jewish exclusion and suffering: “selection events”:

… the frequent pogroms to which Jews were subject in Eastern Europe would have been “selection events” which would have selected for correlates of IQ such as future-orientation, social skill, planning and simply the wealth needed to escape. Thus, Lynn argued that, even though Jewish IQ was high before the Holocaust, it was probably even higher afterwards.

There are other reasons for the high IQ in Ashkenazi Jews predating the pogroms and the Holocaust. These have to do with the substantive nature of Judaism itself, not least the premium put on the study and analysis of scripture and certainly the study of Talmud. (I would argue that even the study of our Tanach, which Rabbi Ben Shapiro has mistakenly called Torah, does the brain good.)

At the secular, Israeli secondary school I attended, not enough Talmud was taught, unfortunately. Still, the process of reasoning, called pilpul, captivated me; it’s marvelous—magic, really.

There is the Socratic Method and there is pilpul—“a dialectical method of Talmudic study, consisting of examining all the arguments pro and con in order to find a logical argument for the application of the Law and at the same time to sharpen the wits of the student.”

The Talmud is calisthenics for the mind, for sure, but also sagacious.

Whittling down Jewish thinking and achievement over thousands of years to oppression-generated genetic mutations during the Middle Ages has its flaws. The article, “Are Jews Smarter?”, in the New York Magazine, puts paid to such reductionism:

“To say that the Jews have a history of emphasizing scholarship is not just the fantasy of ethnic chauvinists and Woody Allen fans. To look at a single page of the Talmud is to understand this, with its main text at the center, its generations of rabbis arguing around the rim. The dialectic and critical reasoning are at its core.”

Remember, too, that the young scholar who did mental gymnastics the best got the prettiest girl …

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UPDATED (1/9/019): Muslim Power In US

Barack Obama, IMMIGRATION, Islam, Judaism & Jews, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Multiculturalism, Religion

If you can believe it, “the Census Bureau has not asked questions about religion since the 1950s, so it is hard to know for sure” how many Muslims have made the US their home.

“America has 3.5m Muslims, around 1% of the population. Some say the number is closer to 5m and rising,” surmises The Economist.

Only about 100 Muslims filed papers this year to run for office. These few attract a disproportionate amount of attention, largely because of America’s views of their faith. Polling by the Pew Research Centre in April 2017 found that 44% of eligible voters think there is a “natural conflict” between Islam and democracy. …

… Muslim-Americans overwhelmingly backed Barack Obama. This was a big change for a religious minority that tended to have conservative views: traditionalist Muslims and LBGT advocates are strange bedfellows. Donald Trump’s election, though, has brought a clutch of progressive Muslims into politics. Some are now heading to Congress.

Rashida Tlaib, a Palestinian-American lawyer, narrowly emerged from a crowded field in the Democratic primary in Michigan’s 13th congressional district, which covers Detroit

She ran unopposed “in the mid-term elections for the seat John Conyers occupied for more than half a century (until he resigned, following allegations of sexual harassment), … to become the first Muslim woman to sit in Congress.”

She was “joined there by Ilhan Omar, a Somali immigrant who won a primary in Minnesota to fill the congressional seat of Keith Ellison, one of two Muslim men in Congress (the other is Indiana’s André Carson).”

Predictably, the women are progressive.

MORE: “Muslim Politicians”.

UPDATE (1/9/019):

NEW COLUMN: Slate’s Resident Idiot Slanders Jewish Woman — Me

Argument, Judaism & Jews, Justice, Propaganda, Race, Racism, South-Africa

NEW COLUMN IS “Slate’s Resident Idiot Slanders Jewish Woman — Me.” It’s currently on WND.com and the Unz Review.

An excerpt:

When Slate magazine went after President Trump’s former speech writer, Darren Beattie, it chose to libel this writer, as well.

That’s a bully’s calculus: If you can, why not ruin the reputation of another individual, just for good measure?

Ruining reputations by labeling and libeling unpopular others is all in a day’s work for the bully, who has nothing in his authorial quiver but ad hominem attack.

The individual who penned an unsourced hit piece on me is Slate magazine’s designated “chief news blogger.”

A hit piece is “a published article or post aiming to sway public opinion by presenting false or biased information in a way that appears objective and truthful.”

Our intrepid journalist does not even feign objectivity.

Indeed, nothing screams Fake News like a “newsman” engaging in sloppy slander.

Incidentally, double-barreled surnames are largely a feminist affection. “Mathis-Lilley” happens to be male. Or, rather, an excuse for a man. Real men don’t bully, berate and bitch baselessly.

That’s what my many dogged, anti-Semitic, unmanly readers do. (Yes, I’m a Jewish, independent writer, the daughter of a scholarly, penniless rabbi. Bullies invariably target the weakest.)

The Mathis-Lilley article was published on August 20, this year, in the section called “The Slatest.” (Slate does cutesy and corny quite well.)

Mathis-Lilley lies throughout the piece, starting with the title:

“White House Speechwriter Appeared on Panel With Author Who Compared Black South Africans to Cannibals.”

It didn’t happen. No such comparisons were made. Cannibalism serves merely as metaphor in my book, “Into the Cannibal’s Pot: Lessons for America from Post-Apartheid South Africa.”

The origin of the title is expressly and unambiguously explained in the Introduction. “It is inspired by Ayn Rand’s wise counsel against prostrating civilization to savagery.” (p. 8)

The exact Rand quote is citation No. 15 in “Into the cannibal’s Pot.” It comes courtesy of “Robert Mayhew (ed.), Ayn Rand Answers: The Best of Her Q&A (New York, 2005).”

Unlike Mathis-Lilley’s unsourced material in Slate, “Into the Cannibal’s Pot” is topped and tailed with hard evidence, and sports over 800 endnotes.

Based on the evidence presented, readers come to see “that South Africans had been tossed into the metaphorical cannibal’s pot.” (p. 9)

These are facts, not slander. Slander is Slate’s purview. …

… READ THE REST. NEW COLUMN, “Slate’s Resident Idiot Slanders Jewish Woman — Me,” is currently on WND.com and the Unz Review.

American Rabbis Practice Pop Judaism, For The Most

Christianity, Etiquette, Judaism & Jews, Pop-Culture, Religion

America’s rabbis are mostly dumb, eschatologically and generally. I wouldn’t take seriously anything they say about President Donald Trump.

Not unlike their Christian compatriots in the ministry and the priesthood—rabbis are generally an unscholarly lot, more inclined to pop-religion and social justice.

Like their Christian friends, rabbis aim to bring religion in line with self-help literature and common leftist spiritual and political hobbyhorses and quests.

Thus, you have this silly “‘Rabbi,” who, “At a Mike Pence Rally, Thinks Jews Who Deny Christ Go To Hell.”

It’s simply untrue, from the perspective of Judaism. Judaism considers Yehoshua, aka Yeshu, aka Jesus Christ, a prophet, not part of a Godhead (which we don’t have). Thus, there is no punishment of hell for giving the cold shoulder to a prophet.

On the other hand, other Jewish leaders acted ungraciously, even disgracefully, in snubbing President Trump, on his visit to grieving Pittsburgh on Tuesday afternoon:

Shameful. You don’t reject a show of mercy and compassion.

A mourning family doesn’t want to meet him. Leaders of his own party declined to join him. The mayor has explicitly asked him not to come. Protesters have mobilized. And yet President Trump visited this grief-stricken city Tuesday, amid accusations that he and his administration continue to fuel the anti-Semitism that inspired Saturday’s massacre inside a synagogue. …


SEE: “Shooting victim’s family shuns President Trump in Pittsburgh as top officials decline to join him.”