A People that Shall Dwell Alone: Judaism as a Group Evolutionary Strategy

Review by H.J. Eysenck
Personality and Individual Differences, Vol. 19, No. 1p. 121., July, 1995.

Readers put off by the inane title of this book may take reassurance from the sub-title. This is in fact a potentially very important contribution to the literature on eugenics, and on reproductive strategy. Taking the Jews as his example, MacDonald carefully traces their history in relation to the explicit theory that they have always followed certain practices that amounted to a definite eugenic policy as far as intelligence (mainly verbal intelligence) is concerned. He uses this development to explain the undoubted high intelligence to be found in modern Ashkenazi Jews, and the truly remarkable successes they have scored --Nobel prizes, chess world championships, and much, much more. Why Ashkenazi and not Sephardic Jews? And only verbal and not non-verbal IQ? MacDonald attempts to answer these questions in one of the most interesting chapters of his book.

The enormity of Jewish and non-Jewish differences in IQ is not always appreciated; there are certainly far fewer studies devoted to it than to the black-white differences of about I SD so often obtained in so many different samples all over the world. The average IQ of Ashkenazi Jewish children is about I SD above that of white controls. Thus there is a 2 SD difference between black and Ashkenazi children, truly difficult to explain on environmental grounds alone! Equally interesting is the disproportion of verbal and performance tests, with verbal IQ much higher than performance IQ which goes in the same direction as in the black population, and is in an opposite direction to that found in Chinese and Japanese children. The differences observed between the two types of intelligence among the Jews are clearly significantly greater than those found in other groups. The correlation between verbal and performance tests is about 0.77 in the general population, hut only 0.31 among Jewish children. Differences of 10-20 points have been found in samples of Jewish children; there is no other group that shows anything like this size difference.

MacDonald argues that the cognitive eminence of the Jews is due to the historical development of an inbreeding group divided on religious grounds from the surrounding majority, following in the footsteps of N. Weyl but extending Weyl's argument very significantly. He also tries to account for the much lower IQ of Sephardic Jews along similar lines. using their rather different history to explain their failure to follow these eugenic practices, but this explanation is rather weaker--admittedly they were subjected to a great deal of suppression and discrimination by fanatical Muslims. but was that treatment really any worse than that received from equally fanatical Christians?

The marked Jewish superiority of Ashkenazi Jews with respect to verbal intelligence especially is explained historically. again along eugenic lines. Verbal ability being particularly useful in obtaining status in the few professions allowed the Jews. they concentrated on verbal learning and disputations and religious arguments in the upbringing of their children, thus enabling those most successful in these behaviours to have greater access to females. The argument is persuasive. but it seems likely that a tendency towards verbal preference was obvious in the Jewish DNA, seeing that their religious writings were outstanding long before the Diaspora. But here as always the actual text must be consulted.

Racial purity has always been a high desideratum among Jews, and leads to the question of whether Jews are in fact a race, a religious group, or a nation. There was little intermarriage between Ashkenazi and Sephardic Jews, and we should remember the strange story of the Khazars, a large tribe in the north-eastern side of the Mediterranean, situated between a Christian and a Muslim empire, either of which could have incorporated this tribe had its leaders adopted either religion. They rather cleverlv turned towards the Talmud, and became Jewish-at least as far as their religion is concerned. Pushed westward by the advancing Huns, they spread into Russia and adjoining territories, so that many Ashkenazi Jews may not be (racially) Jewish at all. Koestler has told the story in his book, The Thirteenth Tribe, but MacDonald fails to deal with this odd episode. He does, however, discuss in detail DNA evidence to strengthen the belief in Jews as an ethnic subgroup, not just a religious national one.

MacDonald lays much stress on the r/K reproductive strategies of the Jews, insisting that they pursued a K-type strategy (few offspring, long parental investment), and attempts to explain the Jewish personality alone these lines. This, too. is a fascinating endeavour, particularly as this Jewish personality seems to have changed considerably over time-the Masada warriors giving way to the Talmudic scribes. MacDonald, here as elsewhere, fleshes out his account with quotations from Jewish writings which graphically paint a picture of (modern) Jewish personality. Unfortunately there is less objective evidence here than in the fields of intelligence, and the achievements of the Bar Kochba sporting associations must make one doubt the rather introverted, purely cognitive ectomorphs MacDonald describes.

On the whole this is an entertaining and intriguing account of a thousand-year-old experience involving millions of people, lacking of course the methodological refinements that would be expected in a small-scale experiment in modern times, but contributing nevertheless a possible test of eugenic principles and r/K strategy. I hope it will be widely read and pondered; it is a creative effort to write history along biological lines, the sort of thing C. D. Darlington pioneered in his Evolution of Man and Society. Psychology could do with more such serious attempts to look at the development of psychological differences between groups in an original and creative manner.