I’m still pondering the possible implications of a report from a group of researchers from the University of Utah (see here and here) that suggests that the high intelligence of Ashkenazi Jews may be connected to their history of persecution.Crudely stated, the premise goes something like this: European Jews’ exclusion from the ranks of the nobility and many sections of society drove them into banking, moneylending, and tax-farming–occupations that required an unusual degree of mental acumen. This incentive to intelligence, combined with genetic isolation caused by very high levels of intermarriage, created the circumstances that favoured the spread of genes that enhance intelligence. Unfortunately, according to the Utah team, the very factors that promote the growth and interconnection of brain cells are also the very symptoms that characterize the diseases to which this ethnic group are prone. (The price of intelligence, if the researchers are right, is very high. For example, Tay-Sachs disease, particularly associated with Jews from Eastern Europe affects the nerve cells of children, often rendering them blind, deaf, and unable to swallow. Source: Wikipedia)The jury is still out on the findings. The case for the Ashkenazim being exceptional seems persuasive. As an ethnic group, their contribution to civilization is undeniable. The Economist’s article is headed by a montage of Freud, Einstein, and Mahler. And according to the NYT report, “Ashkenazi Jews make up 3 percent of the American population but won 27 percent of its Nobel prizes, and account for more than half of world chess champions.”But such achievements might better be explained by social circumstances than inherited intelligence, a case of nurture rather than nature. One can’t help thinking about the novels of Philip Roth, in which Jewish nebbishes compensate for their lack of sporting prowess with academic overachievement (and bedding Amazonian shikses–but maybe that’s just Roth). The anomaly of “the Swede,” the sporting demi-god from the narrator’s childhood in Roth’s American Pastoral, is an emblematic exception that half-proves the rule.The suggestion that certain diseases might be genetic markers for intelligence is even more disputed. And what if such claims become accepted in the scientific mainstream? From the NYT article: “It would be hard to overstate how politically incorrect this paper is,” said Steven Pinker, a cognitive scientist at Harvard, noting that it argues for an inherited difference in intelligence between groups.”So, if we come to believe that a group involved in cerebral, sedentary work over the centuries is genetically predisposed to intelligence, what does it say about peoples involved in backbreaking, mind-numbing labour throughout the ages? Those of us from Ireland, whose efforts to trace their lineage would probably peter out in the obscurity of the peasantry, would really like to know….