'Jews are Geniuses, Claims Social Radical

Jews are an exceptionally accomplished group with an IQ between seven and 15 points above average and a startling record of achievement in the arts and sciences, according to social theorist Charles Murray.

"Jewish genius", Murray says, is a topic so sensitive that Jews rarely address it.

Writing in Commentary, a neoconservative journal, he argues that anti-semitism makes it easy to understand the reasons for that reluctance, but Jewish accomplishment is an important story.

Murray showed his flair for generating heat as the theorist of the "underclass", and created outrage with his 1994 book The Bell Curve, which addressed black under-achievement. As a "Scots-Irish gentile from Iowa", he feels no inhibitions about tackling such a politically incorrect subject as high Jewish IQs.

From the birth of monotheism to the medieval philosopher Maimonides, the 17th-century rationalist Spinoza, and the scientists, artists and intellectuals of the modern world, Jews have shown a rare affinity with scholarship, Murray argues.

Centuries of discrimination masked the extent of the Jews' success, he says. But in the second half of the 20th century, Jews received 29 Nobel prizes. Recipients included physicist Albert Einstein, writer Boris Pasternak and economist Milton Friedman.

"Jews constitute about two-tenths of 1 per cent of the world's population," Murray says. "You do the maths."

IQ test scores show Jews have a mean of between 107 and 115, compared with the mean for the population as a whole of 100.

Analysis indicates Jewish people have extremely high verbal and reasoning skills.

Critics complain Murray is once again "racialising" intelligence by claiming some groups are genetically more intelligent than others -- the charge levelled against him when The Bell Curve was published.

"This issue is much simpler than the issue of blacks versus whites," he says.

"There are all kinds of environmental reasons, such as oppression and slavery, that explain lower IQ scores for blacks. In the case of the Jews ... this has got to be genetic because they've also experienced oppression."

Some ascribe the intellectual accomplishment of Jews to winnowing by persecution and the tradition of marrying socially desirable scholars and their children, but Murray believes there are more compelling explanations at work for the trend.

In 64 AD, Jewish high priest Joshua ben Gamla issued an edict mandating universal schooling, at the same time as the Jewish religion became more centred on prayer and scholarship.

A substantial majority of the Jewish population were farmers then, but by 1000 AD only a small minority were still tilling the land.

Murray believes increased literacy encouraged Jews to drop out of farming. Those who did not may have dropped out of Judaism, which requires study.

And Nebuchadnezzar, the Babylonian ruler who conquered Jerusalem and drove the Jews into exile in 586BC, may have had a hand in creating Jewish scholarship. According to the Bible, he carried away "all the officers and fighting men and all the craftsmen and artisans", leaving only the "poorest people" behind -- people who were absorbed into other religions.

Tony Judt, a British historian based at New York University, is scathing about Murray's theory.

"My own statistically naive impression these days is that intelligence ... is distributed among Jews in proportions comparable to their presence in society as a whole," he says.'