Between-group Variation for Intelligence among Jews: Comparisons between Ashkenazi and Oriental Jews
In addition to studies on Jews in Western societies, several studies are now available that compare Jewish groups within Israel. These studies are important because they call into question the idea that eugenic practices related to intelligence have everywhere been a component of Judaism as an evolutionary strategy. The data will be reviewed, followed by an attempt to place the data within the framework of the present theoretical approach.
Israelis originating from Middle Eastern countries where Muslim was the dominant religion are overrepresented among the lower classes in Israel, with high rates of illiteracy among the parents, low levels of formal education, little verbal interaction with their children, fewer toys and other objects that facilitate play, and authoritarian patterns of child rearing (Patai 1977, 309ff). Oriental Jews have also been found to have poorer performance on measures of intelligence and academic achievement (e.g., Burg & Belmont 1990; Preale, Amir, & Sharan [Singer]; Sharan [Singer] & Weller 1971). They also differ on personality traits related to academic success, such as being lower on attention span and delay of gratification, but higher on impulsivity. The data on fertility reviewed below indicate that Oriental Jews have higher levels of fertility than do Ashkenazi Jews, although there has been a gradual tendency for convergence within Israel (Goldscheider 1986; Shokeid 1986).18
Although Patai (1977) attributes the differences between Oriental- and European-derived children to cultural differences based on the differences in socio-economic status between the groups, Burg and Belmont (1990) found differences in verbal, reasoning, and numerical abilities between these groups within social class. Taken together, the data indicate that in comparison to Western Jews or, indeed, Caucasians generally, the Oriental group can be viewed as exhibiting a relatively low-investment parenting style (i.e., high fertility combined with low parental involvement; see below). The personality traits of impulsivity, short attention span, and low ability to delay gratification are also compatible with this perspective, since these traits tend to be correlated and are associated with low academic achievement (e.g., Shaywitz & Shaywitz 1988; see below). At a theoretical level, such individuals can be viewed as biased toward systems underlying attraction to reward, rather than the ability to inhibit behavior and persevere in unpleasurable tasks (MacDonald 1988a; 1992b; see below).
These results indicate that Judaism has not everywhere been characterized by a similar level of eugenic practices, high-investment parenting, and the development of a highly educated, entrepreneurial elite. However, eugenic practices appear to have been very common in the areas where Judaism underwent its largest demographic expansions and are thus central to understanding mainstream Judaism. The data imply that Oriental Jews failed to continue a policy that was well articulated in the Greco-Roman world and that not only was practiced then, but which has continued among the Ashkenazim and in at least some Sephardic groups into contemporary times.
Patai (1977) attributes these results to acculturation within a Muslim milieu. Certainly, these patterns do reflect the Muslim surroundings, but it should be noted that Jews have often pursued their cultural practices quite independently from the surrounding environment, and, in fact, “being different” is in some sense what Judaism is all about (see Chapter 4). Thus, we have noted that the Jewish emphasis on universal education was unique in the ancient world, so that these developments occurred despite the fact that all around them there was relative illiteracy. One also wonders why the fact that the great majority of peasants in pre-expulsion Spain or Eastern Europe were relatively unlettered and that education was fairly uncommon among all classes did not result in Jews rejecting their emphasis on universal education and the development of a scholarly elite. Moreover, we have seen that the emphases on education, lifelong learning, and the prerogatives of the scholarly elite can be seen quite clearly in the religious texts of Judaism, so that developing and maintaining these institutions was really something of a religious obligation. Their relative absence in the Muslim world is therefore of considerable theoretical interest.
There is in fact evidence that Jewish populations in Muslim lands responded rather quickly to opportunities for education and upward mobility. Stillman (1991) shows that the Oriental Jews at the turn of the 20th century benefited greatly from education provided by the Alliance Israélite Universelle funded by Ashkenazi Jews. This network of schools resulted in the Oriental Jews having “a distinct advantage of opportunity over the largely uneducated Muslim masses . . . they came to have a new and unparalleled mobility and achieved a place in the economic life of the Muslim world that was far out of proportion to their numbers or their social status in the general population” (p. 25). These data indicate that an emphasis on education was highly effective during this period, but they also suggest that there must have been external reasons why this emphasis on education died out in the Muslim world. A hint is provided when Stillman (p. 45) notes that this upward mobility made possible by educational opportunity and sympathetic colonial governments was intensely resisted by the native Muslims. The Jews’ new status brought about by their European co-religionists often resulted in an exacerbation of anti-Semitism by the native Muslims (see also Lewis 1984, 184–185).
As described by Lewis (1984), there was a general decline in Jewish fortunes in Muslim lands from the late Middle Ages to the 20th century. While at the beginning of the 16th century there is evidence for a highly literate Jewish culture in the Ottoman Empire, this culture gradually disappeared after the 16th century, so that from the mid-18th century until the intervention of the European powers in the 20th century, there was “an unmistakable picture of grinding poverty, ignorance, and insecurity” (Lewis 1984, 164) among Jews in the Muslim world. In the earlier period, Jews were prominent as physicians and in trade, commerce, and manufacturing. As in Western Europe, Jews were also deeply involved in finance and tax farming. Interestingly, this flourishing Jewish culture came at a time when Jews formed the ideal intermediary between the alien Ottoman elite and the subject populations (a theme of Chapter 5): Jews were favored as intermediaries over Christians because there was no possibility of collusion with the Christian enemies of the Ottoman state (Lewis 1984, 139).
After this period, there was degeneration of Jewish culture, accompanied by early marriage and a high birth rate (Lewis 1984, 141)—clearly indicative of a shift to a low-investment style of parenting. Jews became increasingly degraded in the Ottoman Empire, and their decline was far more extreme than can be explained solely by the economic fortunes of the Ottoman Empire, since it affected them far more than their Muslim and Christian co-residents.
There is some evidence that other minorities simply out-competed Jews in this area, but this was ultimately the result not of deficits in the capabilities of Jews, but of exclusionary practices analogous to Jewish kinship preferences in business ventures that effectively excluded other groups (see Chapter 6). Thus, the Ottoman Christians were able to take advantage of European education and the preference of European Christians for Ottoman Christian business contacts, thereby overturning the Jewish economic domination over Christians that had been imposed by the sultan (Shaw 1991, 77). The increased political influence of Christians resulted in a decline in Jewish influence in the government, and, indeed, discriminatory measures were enacted, and there was an increase in official and unofficial violence directed at Jews.
The decline of the Jews was also influenced by increasing Turkish anti-Semitism. As the Turkish regime became more integrated into the society, Jews were less able to play the role of intermediary between the alien rulers and the Muslim and Christian natives, and the result was an increasing strictness of the regulations enforcing degradation and humiliation of Jews.19
As is generally the case in times of economic and political misfortune for Jews, mysticism and Kabbala, rather than the intricacies of the Talmud, came to dominate religious education:
The Zohar of the Kabbalists replaced the Talmud and dominated life automatically and autocratically, without discussion, commentary, or understanding. . . . Kabbalistic symbolism determined all acts of daily life, morality, sexual and hygienic behavior, housing, clothing, food, education, the shape and length of hair and beards, the furniture used in houses, all that had once been influenced by the Talmud. (Shaw 1991, 132)
In the long run, the community became too poor to provide for the education of most children, with the result that the great majority were illiterate, and they pursued occupations requiring only limited intelligence and training. However, with the resurgence of Ottoman Jews in the 19th century as a result of patronage and protection from European Jews, once again there was a flowering of a highly literate culture, including secular schools based on Western models (Shaw 1991, 143ff, 175–176).
In the case of Yemen, the degeneration of Jewish culture was more probably due to anti-Semitic actions by the host society combined with the fragility of the local economy, which did not allow for the flourishing of the typical Jewish economic specialization related to activities calling for verbal intelligence. Nini (1991) shows that in 18th- and 19th-century Yemen there was no large urban economy in which a highly educated elite could prosper. The population of Yemen was predominantly rural, and Jews resided in small groups working as artisans forced to adopt “secondary or marginal occupations” (p. 94). Communities were so small that it was often impossible to obtain a quorum for prayer. The persecution of Jews was often intense, and, indeed, the persecution of Jews in Yemen is generally considered to have been the most extreme in the Muslim world.
Because the vast majority of Jews were artisans, there was no class of wealthy property owners or middle-class entrepreneurs or traders who could support a thriving scholarly community. There was also little need for rabbis because the communities were very small and because Jewish communities were often essentially extended families. The common pattern in other diaspora communities of a wealthy, entrepreneurial elite helping the rest of the community occurred only rarely in Yemenese Jewish history, but when it did, it had the familiar features noted in Chapter 5: Thus, 18th-century Rabbi Shalom ben Aharon ha-Kohen Iraqi helped the Jewish community and generally raised the prestige of the Jews. However, his influence was short-lived, and he fell due to the envy and hostility of the local Muslim officials (Ahroni 1986, 138).
Correspondingly, there were no yeshivot in Yemen of the type described above as typical of Eastern Europe where scholars competed by debating questions of the law. As is typical in areas with intense anti-Semitism, intellectual activity tended toward mysticism, and there were frequent outbreaks of messianism (see Chapter 3). Moreover, because of the subsistence level of the economy, the rabbis did not live off public funds and often performed manual labor, so that religious study did not really pay off in terms of being a route to economic and reproductive success.
I conclude that the pattern of lower verbal intelligence, relatively high fertility, and low-investment parenting among Jews living in the Muslim world is linked ultimately to anti-Semitism and, in the case of Yemen, to the lack of economic development. These findings are consistent with the ecological/evolutionary model of parental investment proposed by Belsky, Steinberg, and Draper (1991). Within this model, adverse, unstable economic situations trigger a low-investment reproductive strategy, while economic prosperity and stability trigger a high investment strategy. Although traits related to parental investment also appear to be heritable (see below), the model of Belsky and colleagues is highly compatible with the shifts in parental investment patterns seen among Jewish populations over historical time.