How Do You Get Jews To Give?

Robert Weissberg comments: “A result of years listening to fund raising appeals. Take my word for it–if you want Jews to give, scare them to death and after a point, they confuse fund raising with reality. Been there many times and it always works.”

* A lot of Jewish people are genuinely afraid Trump is going to exterminate them, which I think is about as likely as my bedding Scarlet Johansson, but I can see why they’re worried.

* So, do they think that Trump will start by exterminating his grandchildren? You know, start small, then go big?

* If Jews are so afraid of American gentiles then I wish they would move to Israel to get away from us. It must be some kind of mental illness that makes Jews want to live in countries whose majority populations terrify them.

* Trump has never said anything negative about the Jews. Meanwhile Hitler pretty much telegraphed that the Jews were in trouble. And Weimar Germany wasn’t a golden era for Jewry either. The stab in the back myth pretty much kicked off with Germany’s defeat in WWI. Then it didn’t help that the Bolsheviks were Jew heavy.

So no, it is ridiculous for Jews to be in a panic over Trump. The Israeli press has been fairly aghast at the stupidity of Jews in the US with regards to Trump. Jews are picking the side, the Democrats, that is growing more anti-semitic. They even encourage the immigration that will destroy them. If they get what they want, it won’t be some diverse utopia of Jewry on top. It will be mobs of Muslims and other minorities hunting them in the streets. A few will flee and then write about how poorly they were treated.

* An “American Holocaust” is pretty much impossible. Americans are the most pro-Hebrew people in history. Virtually everyone in the US thinks either that Israel is Our Greatest Ally (if not the Holy Land of God’s Chosen People) or that Hitler was unquestionably Teh Most Ebil Dude Evar. Many people people, of course, think both of these things. Jewish paranoia about anti-Semitism in the US is one of the most irrational phenemona in human history.

* Trump doesn’t seem to have any particular animus against blacks (excuse me, against “the blacks”) or homosexuals. No animus against them at all, as far as I can tell. And yet many of them have convinced themselves that he is the second coming of Theodore Bilbo or Anita Bryant, or something.

* Jewish paranoia about anti-Semitism in the US is one of the most irrational phenemona in human history.

* True. And unlike Europeans, modern Americans generally tend to assume being Jewish is just a choice, like being Baptist or Mormon or liberal. A pogrom doesn’t make intuitive sense to Americans.

* Years ago when I lived in Nashville the city (maybe the state) had some referendum or other about whether to actually enforce the law regarding illegal aliens. It may have been to do with wasting money on governmental services in fifteen foreign languages, the way California does.

In the event, the managing partner of the law firm I was working for sent an obnoxious e-mail to the entire firm exhorting us to support the illegal aliens, going on about how difficult life was for the aliens, and so on. I took the opportunity to post ro the firm’s list-serv a detailed piece (not my own) explaining the reasons to oppose such nonsense. Surprisingly, I caught no flak.

Contrast that to an earlier still event: I objected to a poster on a list-serv who had gone full Jew-Jewity-Jew about Israel for months; I explained the list-serv was an apolitical forum for sharing professional knowledge. I was promptly frog-marched into a meeting with my boss and some hag from HR to be lectured about my sins. Needless to say, that firm was run by a Jew. (Also needless to say, I promptly resigned from their employ.)

It’s absolutely the case that one must think only approved thoughts and advocate only approved causes in Big Law. It’s one reason I went in-house and focused on patents – it is all much less politicised, but then everything is politicised these days, even children’s skating parties. It’s the impossibility of civic life when the other fellow doesn’t favour more money for roads than schools, but rather the destruction of your entire race and culture, that I once mentioned before.

* For the most part the Upper Classes don’t give the lower classes much thought at all. And if you live in a city like New York, LA, or D.C., you just won’t see many poor white people. The only poor white people you experience in most big cities are young people on their way up, slumming artists, or crazy homeless people. It becomes second nature to think that all poor people are latino or black, and assume that white people complaining about the economy must be whining.

* What makes the Holocaust press release freakout even more ridiculous is that it was worded that way to be inclusive. Lots of gays, Roma, and political undesirables were murdered as well. Literally anything he said in the statement would cause tears in some quarter for being insufficiently woke to some demographic’s death toll.

The latest media absurdity is the sneering about Trump’s remarks on Sweden:

“You look at what’s happening in Germany, you look at what’s happening last night in Sweden. Sweden, who would believe this. Sweden. They took in large numbers. They’re having problems like they never thought possible. You look at what’s happening in Brussels. You look at what’s happening all over the world. Take a look at Nice. Take a look at Paris. We’ve allowed thousands and thousands of people into our country and there was no way to vet those people. There was no documentation. There was no nothing. So we’re going to keep our country safe.”

The press misinterpreted this as a claim that there was a terrorist attack that night in Sweden, rather than the obvious meaning: Sweden has imported criminal, jihadist, rape-prone welfare cases, and as a result several Swedish cities have been turned into no-go zones.

* Lots of things that millions of people believe are completely retarded. In this case, a lot of Jews are being deliberately bombarded with deceptive information designed to make them believe Trump is the next Hitler in waiting. If you’re not paying attention and you trust the media sources in question, then that’s what you believe.

A few years ago when the Tea Party was in full swing, there was this weird trend in which whenever there was a mass shooting CNN etc. would tryn and find some way to link it to the Tea Party. In the most absurd example, when the police released the name of a shooter, someone stuck it into google and found that it was a the same name as a Tea Party rally organizer in the state [!!!]. I used to wonder why they did this. Didn’t it just make them look stupid? Why didn’t they wait to see whether there was actually a link? Then I realised: the point wasn’t too link a specific shooting to the Tea Party (for that they could afford to wait until the details came out, after all, eventually there would be one), the point was a to create a link in their viewer’s minds between the Tea Party and violence. No-one really remembers each specific incident and how the media reported it (except aspies on blogs), but they recall at the back of their mind that the Tea Party was linked to an awful lot of mass shootings. It’s the same with Trump anti-antisemitism thing. Each individual piece of evidence just looks like a joke, but that’s only relevant if you’re paying attention. For the typical media-consumer all that matters is that Trump has all these “links” to anti-antisemitism. You can see a lot of examples of this phenomenon if you’re attune to it.

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Garuda Airlines Horror Stories

Garuda is an Indonesian national airline with a horrible safety record (though much improved in the past decade).

A friend of mine flew it in the 1990s and saw the Garuda steward steal money out of the wallet of a sleeping passenger. My friend reported the theft to Garuda who had no interest in hearing about it, not even when she reported it to the Garuda head office in Australia.

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Mishpatim (Exodus 21:1–24:18)

This week’s Torah portion follows the giving of the Ten Commandments.

* Growing up as a Protestant, I heard all the time from clergy about the Bible teaches this and that, and almost none of these clergy were fluent in Hebrew. If you take the Bible as your guide book, you might want to make sure your guides to the Bible are fluent in the languages of the Bible.

* God is still talking to Moses as the portion begins, “And if you buy a Hebrew slave.”

When the Torah says, “If…”, it is usually not happy with your choice. As in, “If you lust for meat.”

The Torah is not outraged by slavery. It is outraged by Jews being slaves to goyim.

A Jew can become a slave if he is a pauper, a debtor or a criminal. This strikes me as a more moral system than allowing people to take welfare or declare bankruptcy or commit crimes without repayment.

A slave can always run away and he can’t be forcefully returned to his master, so you better treat your slaves well.

“Slave” is a problematic translation because the Hebrew word “eved” also means “servant” or “bondsman.” Moshe is described as an “eved” of God. Was Moshe God’s slave?

A lot of Jews are shocked when I point out that Judaism is a system of dual morality — there’s one morality for how you treat your fellow Jew and another morality for how you treat everyone else. WASPs, on the other hand, have a universal morality. There’s one moral standard for how you treat everyone. The first verse of this week’s Torah portion outlines the differences in how you treat a Hebrew slave vs a gentile slave.

* There is no separate realm of religion in Torah. Torah covers everything. So how do Orthodox Jews deal with falling short of the Torah’s commands? They have much less guilt about it than Christians. Living in an Orthodox community, they will try to keep their sins quiet. They accept that they fall short of the mark.

If Torah covers all of life, including business dealings, then you might expect Orthodox Jews to be more honest and upright than most people. If they are not, whose fault is it? Torah’s or their’s?

Artscroll says that “justice in monetary affairs is a prerequisite to Israel’s national security.” Isaiah 1:27: “Zion will be redeemed through justice, and its captives through righteousness.”

* Ex. 21:16. You can’t kidnap people and sell them into slavery.

* Ex. 21:18. If you fight with a guy and hurt him, you have to pay his medical bills and lost wages.

* If you kill your own slave, you are put to death for murder. If you maim your slave or knock out a tooth, your slave is set free.

* Ex. 21:23. Abortion is not murder.

* I’m not sure how I think about the morality of slavery. The Torah accepts it, so why should I get haughty about it? So long as the slave is free to run away and cannot be forcibly returned to his master, then I don’t think I have a problem with it.

* A Jewish woman (as opposed to a child) can’t become a slave for reasons of sexual morality.

* Did you watch the Super Bowl?

* Exodus 23:25: God says, “I will remove illness from your midst.” Has this ever happened?

Leanne:

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Is There A Way To Find Out Your Pilots’ Names Before Your Flight?

Just in case you don’t want to fly Allahu Air.

I would not be thrilled if my pilot were named Mohammed. Frankly, I’d rather not have a woman pilot experiencing PMS.

When I can’t sleep, I watch Mayday: Air Crash Investigations. In episode 8 of season 15, we learned about the crash of Garuda Indonesia Flight 200 because of the recklessness of its captain.

I was struck in this episode by how an Australian security officer who survived the crash was pulling people out of the burning plane while the Indonesian rescue workers stood off to the side confused and incompetent.

The safety of a country’s airlines are a good indicator of its competence. Unsurprisingly, Africa’s airlines are the worst.

Wikipedia:

The oldest airline in Indonesia (founded in 1949),[6] Garuda Indonesia had received a number of criticisms in the months surrounding the crash. According to Australian aviation experts, Garuda Indonesia had one of the worst safety records among the world’s national carriers.[7] Since 1950, Garuda Indonesia has had 13 major accidents. The most recent was in 2002, when Garuda Indonesia Flight 421 ditched in the Bengawan Solo River due to engine flameout caused by excessive hail ingestion, killing a flight attendant.[7] The worst accident was in 1997, when Garuda Indonesia Flight 152 flew into a wooded mountain on approach to Medan, killing 234 people. The managing director of the Centre for Asia Pacific Aviation, Peter Harbison, stated that the major accidents in Indonesian aviation history were all caused by the combinations of airports’ and fleets’ low safety standards and the poor weather conditions in the area, including severe thunderstorms and other forms of inclement weather.[7]

Following the crash of Flight 200, the European Union banned Garuda and all Indonesian airlines from flying into the EU…

At 6:58am local time (UTC+7),[12] the captain attempted to land at Adisucipto International Airport in Yogyakarta, despite a faulty approach with excess speed and steep descent, and the resulting warnings of copilot and flight system.[13] The aircraft touched down 860m beyond the runway threshold[14] at a speed of 221kt, 87kt faster than the normal landing speed.[15] According to passengers, the aircraft shook violently before it crashed.[16] The aircraft overran the end of the runway, went through the perimeter fence, was heavily damaged when it crossed a road, and stopped in a nearby rice field. A fuel-fed fire raged, which could not be reached by airport fire-suppression vehicles. While most passengers were able to escape, a number of passengers perished inside the burning fuselage.[17]

The pilot, Captain Muhammad Marwoto Komar, initially claimed that there was a sudden downdraft immediately before the flight landed, and that the flaps on the aircraft may have malfunctioned.

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Trump’s News Conference Was Epic

Because I feel that Trump is on my side, I don’t mind his character flaws so long as they are part and parcel of a package that acts in my group’s (white Americans) best interests.

If I felt that Trump was not on my side, I would hate his character flaws and use them to demean him. But I like Trump’s agenda, so when he is nasty and economical with the truth, I don’t mind much because he’s on my side.

Of course Trump gets annoyed at the antisemitism question. Because we won’t accept the answer, so he can’t give it: That there is rising antisemitism, in part, due to our behavior. But we won’t listen to the answer. Not a chance. And he’s not going to humor us with usual blame it on the goy nonsense.

Comments at Steve Sailer:

* Yeah, on some level it seems not even to have occurred to the media that if it goes quite deliberately into a relentless attack on Trump, and even announces to the entire world that that is what it’s going to do (because they “must not normalize Trump!”), then they will be helpless before an equally relentless and direct counterattack by the most visible person in the world, in which they are accused of ginning up Fake News and phony controversies and acting as if they are the opposition party.

It’s actually almost funny to see the media now taking terrible offense at the idea that their attacks are contrived, that they don’t deserve to be treated like a genuine press with standards of objectivity, that they aren’t serving the American people but only their own fanatic partisanship.

You have to believe that many in the media know in their hearts that they’ve completely forfeited the right to be regarded as an honest broker of the Truth for the American people. Anybody taking even the most cursory glance at recent front pages of the NYT sees any claim to balance or objectivity as ludicrous on its face.

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When A Neighbor Moves, Do You Miss Him?

I think it depends on how much he contributed to your life. We tend to miss people who have enhanced our life and we tend to not miss those who did not contribute.

If you are on a floor at work, and somebody obnoxious leaves, you don’t miss him. If somebody leaves who would clog up the frig with smelly food, you don’t miss him. If somebody leaves who helps out other people and usually maintains a cheerful demeanor, you miss that person. The more they contribute, the more you miss them.

I think this same thinking should apply to groups. Those groups that contribute the most to America would be the most missed if they left. Those groups whose contributions are outweighed by their harms are not missed. In fact, they are in danger of the majority eventually acting in their self-interest and forcefully expelling or killing them.

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Does America Benefit From The Presence Of Millions Of Foreign Students?

Comments at Steve Sailer:

* Far more Americans are against the influx of foreign students than you give credit for.

Even the Young Turks argue that US colleges should obviously give preferences to American citizens ahead of foreigners. The bottom line is that money talks. It doesn’t really have that much to do with PC, so I would argue not a case like HBD where a minority viewpoint is getting shut down due to political correctness. Most people realize that as exemplified by institutions such as college athletics, where there’s money there’s bound to be corruption in our college system.

Chinese birth tourism, while it obviously sucks on principle, doesn’t seem to be as overwhelming a problem as people sometimes make it out to be. IIRC the most recent numbers I read were that there were ~60,000 or so such births in 2014. (Now one could argue whether or not that in fact is overwhelming.)

* Universities in the UK and especially Australia also admit large numbers of overseas students, lots and lots of them Chinese, and charge them pretty much full fare in most cases.

This story at UCSD is really interesting. If Chinese students (and their money-hemorrhaging parents) start to wake up to 1) how much they’re being discriminated against in terms of college entrance requirements; and 2) how much they’re expected to pay in comparison to other students, there could be some fireworks down the road.

* For all of Mao’s and Stalin’s many many flaws neither of were in the slightest PC or pro-diversity. Celebration of ethnic diversity is a complete heresy in the eyes of a committed Marxist because it distracts from the class struggle, which is supposedly the only struggle that counts. Both Mao and Stalin considered that Mankind’s goal was to create a technologically advanced, educated society based around a canon of great works and noble historic figures, with no tolerance for deviant sexual behavior, superstition, “feudal traditions” or any sort of 3rd world romanticism.

* The expression “politically correct” originated in Soviet Russia in the 1920s, and meant any opinion approved by the bolshevik party. In the USSR it fell into disuse later on, but was adopted by the Chinese communists, who used it extensively in the 1960s during the cultural revolution. This is whence 1960s counter-culture types took it, but it only became widespread in the 1980s. Its meaning is essentially still unchanged: it still means anything approved by the official far-left propaganda outlets.

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Tom Friedman: “President Trump, Will You Save the Jews?”

Comments at Steve Sailer:

* When some future Gibbon writes the Rise and Fall of the American Empire, I have little doubt that the death of freedom of association will figure prominently. I think you can really boil virtually any of the PC nonsense (i.e. conventional wisdom of the Current Year) down to the i-th iteration of the attack on freedom of association. Jews didn’t care for Obama’s policy toward the Jewish homeland so they don’t care to associate with him. Oh the horror.

* It’s hilarious. If Stalin had been an open-borders, politically correct, SJW fanatic bent on world revolution in the name of overthrowing the decadent micro-aggression masters, he could not have engineered the 3 acts of self-defilement Trump has oh-so-masterfully, yet at the same time so off-handedly, provoked in less than a month in office.

Let’s see – he’s gotten “Christian” leaders to declare that rescuing Christian refugees from the Middle East facing genuine religious persecution is decidedly NOT what their mission is. He’s gotten a Jew to declare that intra-ethnic solidarity and standing up for Israel is just not worth it if it requires using the most inhumane methods of the enemy (country club membership vendettas- oh the humanity!). And, oh yeah, the (anti-)Pope just chimed in this week about the Dakota pipeline, saying the preservation of native ancestral lands is very important to the Catholic Church, because heathens and their local spirits have been part of who we Roman Catholics are as a people from the very beginning.

* The suffering and oppression of the Palestinians is a consequence of ingrates such as yourself egging them on to fight conflicts they cannot possibly win. The historical record is very clear.

* Most Jews support a two state solution, because that means there is still an Israel.
I have yet to talk to a single, solitary Palestinian who would accept a permanent two state solution under any terms.
Only a tiny fraction of Muslims in general would accept a two state solution, and then only as an interim step to a single state.
Palestinians regard Israel as utterly illegitimate, and a toxic foreign body lodged in the Arab world. They intend to struggle until it is all Palestine from the Mediterranean to the Jordan. The more moderate and Westernized ones indulge in the self-delusion that the new Palestine would be a secular state with a place for everyone, except whatever happens to the Zionists will be a bed they made for themselves.
How anyone solves this historical dilemma; I have no more idea than anyone else.

* I think it’s obvious that generally speaking, neither the Palestinians or the Israelis want a 2 state solution – they each one a single state with most of the population of their antagonist gone or subjugated.

Conflicts persist until one of the belligerents loses the will or ability to keep fighting, not by imposing a ‘peace’ that neither side wants.

* There cannot be a 2 state (or binational single state) solution now, because there isn’t enough land in the West Bank, and hard line Russian immigrants have altered Israeli politics. There is going to be an Apartheid system unless the Arabs are removed. VDARE

* I want to see a movie about a vulgar Mexican construction magnate named Eddie Guerrero joining a stuffy Germanic Jewish country club. Eddie brings in a Mariachi band during the Holocaust remembrance ceremony. He blows out the minora during Hanukah with a fart. He hosts a pig roast for the local Rabbi’s birthday. Another time Eddie gives tequila to the Stuffy Rachel Goldberg daughter’s Bat Mitvah because he thinks it’s a Quinceañera and all the kids are vashnigyered!

What’s a rich Jew to do?

* Trump just made the Israel-Palestine conflict real interesting for the rest of us. He fielded the one-state solution.

Liberal Zionists claim that this is an act of dangerous, ill informed buffoonery by Trump and that the Arabs would never accept this anyway. Why wouldn’t they? If they are smart, they would accept second class citizenship for Palestinians and play the long game of demographics and liberation. That’s already their strategy for Europe.

Radical Zionists are more interested in sacred land than in demographics. They believe their own propaganda. They are somewhat similar to cuckservatives who wanted amnesty with second class citizenship for illegals in the US. Zionists, unlike cuckservatives, are prepared to enforce Apartheid though.

The real losers are the liberal Zionist diaspora. They get diversity and inclusion of Muslims … in Israel. Most importantly for us, their “ethno-nationalism for us, but not for you” narrative faces collapse.

Trump is playing 3d chess after all.

Richard Spencer should seize this trolling opportunity and endorse the two-state solution as the only peaceful, demographically sound, ethno-nationalist option. That would be hilarious.

* Isn’t this the exact opposite reason why country clubs were created in the first place? Wealthy people created them to socialize with like minded people with whom they shared a common background and beliefs. It is no wonder why they are struggling to maintain their historic membership levels with this mentality. I can’t wait until someone proposes scholarship memberships for underrepresented minorities in the name of diversity.

* Friedman is wrong (no surprise) about the two-state solution. It is far from the only option that would preserve Israel as a Jewish majority and democratic state. Other, possibly better, alternatives include:

1) Israel annexes Area C of the West Bank which contains almost all of the Jews (“settlers” in the biased language of the MSM) but only a handful of Arabs. The rest of the West Bank unites with Gaza or forms its own state. This is ‘two state lite’ and solves the supposedly awful, awful problem of Palestinian Arabs having Jews living in their territory.

2) Israel annexes Area C of the West Bank. The rest of the West Bank reunites with Jordan (it was part of Jordan from 1948-1967) and Gaza reunites with Egypt (same). This makes the Arabs in the West Bank and Gaza citizens of large, relatively stable Arab states that are all at peace with Israel. Three state solution.

3) The Emirates plan. Scholars have noted that Arab countries do not do well when combining different tribal and familial groups. On the other hand, emirates based on one local dominant clan such as Qatar and the UAE countries are stable and prosperous (oil helps, of course). The West Bank should be divided into seven emirates, to be ruled by the dominant family of each region. Gaza would be an eighth emirate, ruled by Hamas for the time being.

The main obstacle to the media and individuals understanding that there are good alternatives out there is that people have been propagandized by the fiction that Palestinian Arabs are a distinct, coherent people and therefore absolutely need one state. That is simply not the case. The Palestinian identity was invented in the 1970s. Before that, no Arab considered themselves to be a “Palestinian,” other than a political status.

* The Right caving in to the ’64 Civil Rights Act was the introduction of an insidious but lethal disease.
The Act’s continuing attack on freedom of association has been devastating.
Integration was proceeding at its natural pace, and would have found its natural equilibrium point desired by society, both black and white.
Instead it has been rammed down our throats de jure (though we are still quite segregated de facto).
Freedom of association absolutism would solve may of the ills we face.
Down deep, ignoring the hypocrisy, it is what we all want for ourselves.

* One of two sides is going to occupy that land. My money’s on the Jews–they’re smarter, wealthier, and better fighters.

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Race & Nation

Yoram Hazony writes:

It is important to notice that the Israelites’ conception of the nation has nothing to do with biology, or what we call race. For biblical nations, everything depends on a shared understanding of history, language, and religion that is passed from parents to children, but which outsiders can join as well. Thus the book of Exodus teaches that there were many Egyptians who attached themselves to the Hebrew slaves in fleeing Egypt, and that they received the Ten Commandments (more accurately translated as the “Ten Precepts”) at Sinai with the rest of Israel. Similarly, Moses invites the Midianite sheikh Jethro to join the Jewish people. And Ruth the Moabite becomes part of Israel by declaring “your people will be my people and your God will be my God”—her son being the forefather of King David himself.

But the ability of Israel to bring foreign-born individuals into its ranks always depends on these individuals’ willingness to accept Israel’s God, its view of history, and its laws. Without embracing these elements of the national identity, foreigners will not be able to contribute to Israel’s cohesion and strength in times of hardship. They will not be part of the Israelite nation.

And yet Jews form a distinct gene pool aka a race. Jon Entine writes for the Forward, May 4, 2012:

Legacy: A Genetic History of the Jewish People
By Harry Ostrer
Oxford University Press, 288 Pages, $24.95

In his new book, “Legacy: A Genetic History of the Jewish People,” Harry Ostrer, a medical geneticist and professor at Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York, claims that Jews are different, and the differences are not just skin deep. Jews exhibit, he writes, a distinctive genetic signature. Considering that the Nazis tried to exterminate Jews based on their supposed racial distinctiveness, such a conclusion might be a cause for concern. But Ostrer sees it as central to Jewish identity.

“Who is a Jew?” has been a poignant question for Jews throughout our history. It evokes a complex tapestry of Jewish identity made up of different strains of religious beliefs, cultural practices and blood ties to ancient Palestine and modern Israel. But the question, with its echoes of genetic determinism, also has a dark side.

Geneticists have long been aware that certain diseases, from breast cancer to Tay-Sachs, disproportionately affect Jews. Ostrer, who is also director of genetic and genomic testing at Montefiore Medical Center, goes further, maintaining that Jews are a homogeneous group with all the scientific trappings of what we used to call a “race.”

For most of the 3,000-year history of the Jewish people, the notion of what came to be known as “Jewish exceptionalism” was hardly controversial. Because of our history of inmarriage and cultural isolation, imposed or self-selected, Jews were considered by gentiles (and usually referred to themselves) as a “race.” Scholars from Josephus to Disraeli proudly proclaimed their membership in “the tribe.”

Ostrer explains how this concept took on special meaning in the 20th century, as genetics emerged as a viable scientific enterprise. Jewish distinctiveness might actually be measurable empirically. In “Legacy,” he first introduces us to Maurice Fishberg, an upwardly mobile Russian-Jewish immigrant to New York at the fin de siècle. Fishberg fervently embraced the anthropological fashion of the era, measuring skull sizes to explain why Jews seemed to be afflicted with more diseases than other groups — what he called the “peculiarities of the comparative pathology of the Jews.” It turns out that Fishberg and his contemporary phrenologists were wrong: Skull shape provides limited information about human differences. But his studies ushered in a century of research linking Jews to genetics.

“Legacy” may cause its readers discomfort. To some Jews, the notion of a genetically related people is an embarrassing remnant of early Zionism that came into vogue at the height of the Western obsession with race, in the late 19th century. Celebrating blood ancestry is divisive, they claim: The authors of “The Bell Curve” were vilified 15 years ago for suggesting that genes play a major role in IQ differences among racial groups.

Furthermore, sociologists and cultural anthropologists, a disproportionate number of whom are Jewish, ridicule the term “race,” claiming there are no meaningful differences between ethnic groups. For Jews, the word still carries the especially odious historical association with Nazism and the Nuremberg Laws. They argue that Judaism has morphed from a tribal cult into a worldwide religion enhanced by thousands of years of cultural traditions.

Is Judaism a people or a religion? Or both? The belief that Jews may be psychologically or physically distinct remains a controversial fixture in the gentile and Jewish consciousness, and Ostrer places himself directly in the line of fire. Yes, he writes, the term “race” carries nefarious associations of inferiority and ranking of people. Anything that marks Jews as essentially different runs the risk of stirring either anti- or philo-Semitism. But that doesn’t mean we can ignore the factual reality of what he calls the “biological basis of Jewishness” and “Jewish genetics.” Acknowledging the distinctiveness of Jews is “fraught with peril,” but we must grapple with the hard evidence of “human differences” if we seek to understand the new age of genetics.

Although he readily acknowledges the formative role of culture and environment, Ostrer believes that Jewish identity has multiple threads, including DNA. He offers a cogent, scientifically based review of the evidence, which serves as a model of scientific restraint.

“On the one hand, the study of Jewish genetics might be viewed as an elitist effort, promoting a certain genetic view of Jewish superiority,” he writes. “On the other, it might provide fodder for anti-Semitism by providing evidence of a genetic basis for undesirable traits that are present among some Jews. These issues will newly challenge the liberal view that humans are created equal but with genetic liabilities.”

…Both the human genome project and disease research rest on the premise of finding distinguishable differences between individuals and often among populations. Scientists have ditched the term “race,” with all its normative baggage, and adopted more neutral terms, such as “population” and “clime,” which have much of the same meaning. Boiled down to its essence, race equates to “region of ancestral origin.”

Ostrer has devoted his career to investigating these extended family trees, which help explain the genetic basis of common and rare disorders. Today, Jews remain identifiable in large measure by the 40 or so diseases we disproportionately carry, the inescapable consequence of inbreeding. He traces the fascinating history of numerous “Jewish diseases,” such as Tay-Sachs, Gaucher, Niemann-Pick, Mucolipidosis IV, as well as breast and ovarian cancer. Indeed, 10 years ago I was diagnosed as carrying one of the three genetic mutations for breast and ovarian cancer that mark my family and me as indelibly Jewish, prompting me to write “Abraham’s Children.”

Like East Asians, the Amish, Icelanders, Aboriginals, the Basque people, African tribes and other groups, Jews have remained isolated for centuries because of geography, religion or cultural practices. It’s stamped on our DNA. As Ostrer explains in fascinating detail, threads of Jewish ancestry link the sizable Jewish communities of North America and Europe to Yemenite and other Middle Eastern Jews who have relocated to Israel, as well as to the black Lemba of southern Africa and to India’s Cochin Jews. But, in a twist, the links include neither the Bene Israel of India nor Ethiopian Jews. Genetic tests show that both groups are converts, contradicting their founding myths…
Although Jews make up less than 3% of the population, they have won more than 25% of the Nobel Prizes awarded to American scientists since 1950. Jews also account for 20% of this country’s chief executives and make up 22% of Ivy League students. Psychologists and educational researchers have pegged their average IQ at 107.5 to 115, with their verbal IQ at more than 120, a stunning standard deviation above the average of 100 found in those of European ancestry. Like it or not, the IQ debate will become an increasingly important issue going forward, as medical geneticists focus on unlocking the mysteries of the brain.

Posted in Jews, Nationalism | Comments Off on Race & Nation

Can Trump Get It Done?

Chaim Amalek writes: If his critics are right, Trump may simply not have the intellectual toolkit to be an effective president, even though he was and is right on two very critical issues (immigration and trade). What’s that you say, “The Establishment does not like me, and they oppose me”? Cry me a river. Competent leaders, once they assume the reins of power, move beyond that. If they are any good. So is Trump any good? Well, just because you are in the right on some issues does not mean you have the necessary competence to move forward on any of them. His reliance on his kids for advice is strictly 3rd World stuff. Ball remains in his court, let’s see what he does with it. Too bad he did not hire AMALEK to guide him.

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