"Now American Jewish culture basically comes down to 'anything produced by a Jew is Jewish,'" complains Leon Wieseltier," This is an insult to the intelligence. It is also not far from the Nazi idea." [BERSHTEL, p. 118] In Russia, in the late 1970s, a Jew from Odessa told the American Jewish Congress that "it was kind of a hobby [among Jews] to collect the names of famous Jews who hide their identity [in the Soviet Union]." [ROTHCHILD, 1985, p. 38]

      Albert Einstein, for instance (whose virtuous image was sourly damaged with the revelation of some particularly degrading and dictatorial letters to his non-Jewish wife) is always trotted out as the quintessential genius Jew. No doubt such people are talented, among a world of talent. Such parading of Jewish brain scions, however, avoids the behind-the-scenes fact that the formal recognition of Nobel, Pulitzer, and other "prized" individuals as the current "best" in any given field inevitably has at least as much to do with competitive networking, connections, hustling, power, self-promotion, visibility, class, status, and/or academic cliques as they do with talent.

     The Nobel Prize system  -- whatever else it is -- is an elitist enterprise: a network, a self-referential club that favors those with particular socio-economic advantages. It parallels in structure the incestuous traditional self-promotive Jewish model.  In a 1977 study of American Nobel Prize winners (laureates) in science, Harriet Zuckerman determined that:

     * 82% of Nobel winners had fathers who were professionals, managers,

        or proprietors. [p. 65]

     * Nobel winners were twice as likely as losers to have come from a

        "professional" families, and a bit more likely than others to "have

        fathers in business." [p. 65]

     * Only 15% of the winners came from "blue-collar or white collar"

        families. [p. 65]

     * More than half of the 92 Nobel laureates surveyed "had worked as

        students, post doctorates, or junior collaborators under older laureates.

        [p. 116]

     * There was a "fair amount of intermarriage between laureates and the kin

        of laureates." [p. 97]

     * Six laureates shared the prize with their mentors. [p. 116]

     * Laureates tend to come from elite universities. [p. 116]

     * "Elite masters [Nobel laureates] can mobilize resources for their

        apprentices [future laureates]," including fellowships, grants, jobs,

        and publication possibilities in influential journals. [p. 132]

     * The prestige of the Nobel Prize has been used to "confer legitimacy"

        upon "ideological, political, commercial, and military" ventures. [p. 23]

      Zuckerman even devotes sections of her book to "Self-confidence" and "Upward Mobility in Academe" to help explain Nobel victories. For Albert Einstein's part, notes Robert Schulman (Director of the Einstein Papers Project, some 43,000 letters, notes, papers, and other documents the scientist left behind): "In these pages we can closely observe Einstein and his solitary path to the [theory of] general relativity, and which personal relations are sometimes callously sacrificed in the name of scientific ambition." [OVERBYE, p. 11]  Einstein also left Germany during World War I "to dodge military service," had an illegitimate daughter, and "considered breaking off his engagement to his cousin Elisa Einstein and marrying her 20-year old daughter, Ilse, instead." Einstein's executor, Otto Nathan, "protective on Einstein's public image," delayed for years the public release of the papers by filing a lawsuit to control their handling. [OVERBYE, p. 11]

      An embittered African critic dismisses entirely the Nobel prize system, and its "peace prize," as nothing but a status and political game for the powerful:

             "One does not win the Nobel; it is bestowed upon one. All we

              hear is an announcement that some Scandinavian cabal, in its

              mysterious wisdom, has decided thus and thus. All that the

              public is admitted to is the ceremony held for the alleged

              winners in a contest whose rules and venues and officials

              are shadowy." [BLACK WORLD, p. 8]

     Edward Epstein's 1996 expose of the fraudulent life of Armand Hammer, in an entire chapter notes the Jewish billionaire's heavy lobbying in the last year of his life to win the top Nobel award, finally getting Israel's prime minister, Menachem Begin, "to be Hammer's sponsor for the peace prize." [EPSTEIN, 1996, p. 332-343] That year's try was unsuccessful, and he died before he could attempt it again.

     The traditional Jewish fixation upon intellectual activities as the foremost expression of superiority (as distinct from the "earthy" and "physical") is reflected in this description of East European Jewry by Zborowski and Herzog:

     "Because the head is the container of brains, it is treated with tender

      care ... The symbolism is pervasive. The head of the table, the head

      of the bed, the head of the fish which the approving husband presents

      to his wife, each carries its honorific connotations ... One part of the

      body that comes close to disgust is the feet, especially the toes. They

      are furthest from the head, lowest, and nearest to the ground."

      [ZBOROWSKI, p. 359]

    Traditional Yiddish folklore often reflects on the Jewish self-conception of marked intelligence:

     "Jews never have enough of anything except brains." [KUMOVE, S.,

     1985, p. 140]

      "God protect us from Jewish chutspeh [pushiness], Jewish mouths,

      and Jewish brains." [KUMOVE, S., 1985, p. 44]

      "Better the little Jewish brain than the big Goyish head." [KUMOVE, S.,

      1985, p. 104]

     Two Jewish co-authors created a term to describe Jewry through the ages: "intellectual gladiators." "We [Americans]," write Stephen Slavin and Mary Pradt, "define any job demanding considerable intelligence as 'Jewish work.'" [SLAVIN, p. 60]  With so many brilliant Jews in Europe before the Holocaust, Joshua Halberstam thinks that "it is likely that were it not for Auschwitz we would now have a cure for cancer." [HALBERSTAM, p. 48]  Myths of Jewish superiority are also noted by Susan Schneider from a feminist perspective:

      "Jewish women have always assured themselves that they were different;

      yet even with the tenderness and emotional expression many Jewish men

      permit themselves there is another kind of male feeling of superiority at

      work -- this time a superiority based on precisely the spiritual and

      intellectual capacity that Jewish men declared as their specialty ...

      Intellectual rather than physical prowess is the determinant value of the

      Jewish male's value on his place in the pecking order." [SCHNEIDER, p.

      294]

      In a search for charitable aid from the Federation of Jewish Philanthropies to help Jewish mentally handicapped children at an institution called Willowbrook that was being phased out, two researchers were perturbed by the Jewish organization's formal response. David and Sheila Rothman wrote that

      "Troubled by the plight of Willowbrook's Jewish residents, the

       Federation did appoint a committee to explore why Jews who were

       generally in the foreground in providing services [were].... in this

       area .... behind other faiths. (The answer came back that 'the emphasis

       in Judaism on intellectual achievement tends to set off Jewish retardates

       more sharply from other Jews.'") [original author's parenthesis:

       ROTHMAN, p. 159]

     "It is extraordinarily difficult for American Jews," says American Jewish scholar Charles Silberman, "to expunge [their] sense of superiority ... however much they may try to suppress it." [SILBERMAN, p. 80] "Jews still possess a feeling of superiority," wrote Marshall Sklare, "although more in the moral and intellectual realms now than in the area of spiritual affairs ... Leaving the (Jewish identity) group becomes a psychological threat: such a move is viewed not as an advancement but as cutting oneself off from a claim of superiority." [SILBERMAN, p. 81]

     "The Jew who has cut off his traditional religion," wrote J. O. Hertzler, "... and has become an agnostic or atheist, is still considered to be a Jew and probably still, unconsciously, holds to the tribal spirit of superiority even though he no longer observes the ceremonial minutiae." [HERTZLER, p. 68] In a study of native-born Jews in modern Israel, Herbert Russcol and Margarit Banai note traditional Jewish self-identity in the widespread haughty arrogance among those of the Jewish state:

     "But there is a deeper reason, perhaps for his chauvinism: the inbred, self-congratulatory
     Jewish sense of superiority. Real or imagined, this superiority always infuriates
     the gentile. Denied a homeland, vilified, the Jew turned his vision inward and fed
     on his spiritual arrogance. He huddled in ghettos and rejoiced in his four
     thousand years of apartness, of uniqueness." [RUSSCOL/BANAI, 1970, p. 173]

      In 1984, Mordechai Nisan, a lecturer at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, published an article in Kivvunim, the journal of the World Zionist Congress. Nisan proclaimed that

       "While it is true that the Jews are a particular people, they nonetheless

       are designated as a 'light unto the nations.' This function is imposed

       on the Jews who strive to be a living aristocracy among the nations,

       a nation that has deeper historical roots, greater spiritual obligation,

       higher moral standards, and more powerful intellectual capacities than

       others. This vision which diverges from the widely accepted

       egalitarianism approach, is not at all based on an arbitrary hostility

       towards non-Jews, but rather on a fundamental existential understanding

       of the quality of Jewish peoplehood." [HARKABI, p. 153]

     "Thus," says Yehoshafat Harkabi, "the concept of the 'Chosen People' as an aristocracy provides sanction for the unequal and discriminatory treatment of non-Jews." [HARKABI, p. 153]

      Alan Dershowitz notes his feelings about his Jewish identity when he was a Yale law student:

       "When I went home for the Jewish holidays, I told my parents about the

       brilliant teachers at Yale: Goldstein, Pollack, Bickel, Skolnick, Schwartz.

       Then I told them about the most brilliant of my teachers: Calabresi.

       Without missing a beat, my mother asked, 'Is he an Italian Jew?' Angrily

        I said, 'Don't be so parochial. He's an Italian Catholic. Not all smart

        people have to have Jewish blood.' Several months later, I learned that

        Guido Calabresi was in fact descended from Italian Jews."

        [DERSHOWTIZ, p. 50]

      Ronald Brauner, also Jewish, notes his feelings after reading a book by Dr. Oliver Sacks: "Truth be told, as I read, my chauvinism also kicked in, as it always does. This guy is terrific! His book is one of the best I have ever read! The insights and sensitivities are remarkable! How could any one person be so brilliant, so on-target, so profound? ... he must be Jewish! (that happens to you, too, sometimes, doesn't it?)  ... [But] ultimately, sublime talent, insight and ability notwithstanding, a person doesn't 'have it all together' until his Jewish component is also integrated into his work. Somehow, some way, each of us is bound to reflect our Jewishness in what we do." [BRAUNER, R., p. 35]

      Virginia Dominguez, an American visiting professor in Israel, wrote in 1989 that

        "Who is Jewish matters. I doubt very much that I am the only non-Jew

        who discovered only while visiting or living in Israel that many

        internationally known figures like movie stars, artists, writers, scientists,

        and athletes whose religious and ethnic identity I had never thought

        about are Jewish. The Israeli media points to their Jewish identity with

        few exceptions, in interviews with them or stories about them. This

        tendency to point out the Jewishness of such figures jars with the

        sense outside Israel that a similar reference in a non-Jewish newspaper

        invites the charge of anti-Semitism." [DOMINGUEZ, p. 127]

      Norman Cantor, a New York University professor, claims -- with breathtaking arrogance -- on his dedication page for The Jewish Experience (1996) that a "world without Jews is a world devoid of humanity." This insult to anyone not Jewish -- ascribing to all non-Jews a lack of "humanity" -- is reiterated in his later insistence in the same book that Jews are "a uniquely superior group with an indomitable drive for creativity and accomplishment," (CANTOR, p. 311) and that "the time may be coming when the genetic superiority of Jews can be calmly discussed ... " (p. 312)

      In his other recent volume, The Sacred Chain (1994), a history of Jews, Cantor continually reiterates his narcissistic thesis for understanding his own people, and certainly himself:  their genetic superiority over others.

          "Once the Jews were emancipated, too many younger Jews of

          superior capability could not find places in society and the

          economy that were adequate for the exercise of their talents." [p. 277]

          "The Jews, once emancipated and given opportunity for mobility,

          were genetically so superior that market capitalism could not

          accommodate some of this superior species ... " [p. 277]

          "The Jews are a superior people intellectually and as long as Jewish

          genes exist, the extraordinary impact Jews have had in the twentieth

          century will continue indefinitely." [p. 423]

          "Although millions of Jews had carried their Eastern European

           impoverishment with them to the West, their literary, native

           intelligence, religion-controlled moral disciples and super genetic

           quality made them excellent prospects for upward mobility in

           Western society." [p. 232]

           "The genetic superiority of the Jews will be extended and as long

           as its carriers are individually free and privileged to pursue their

           interests in science, philosophy, literature and the arts, highly

           advantageous consequences for humanity will follow."

        These are not the self-obsessed ravings of a lunatic fringe element a hundred years ago, but those of a prominent Jewish professor today who gives current voice to an old strand of Jewish ideology in a book by a major publisher, HarperCollins.

       Other old Jewish racist narcissists Cantor drags out in The Jewish Experience include, again, the ancient Talmudic scholar, Maimonides, who says that "God has distinguished us from the rest of mankind" (p. 314), and another, Judah Halevi, who, according to Cantor, "was a kind of Jewish nationalist [who] believed not only in the superiority of Judaism but in the intrinsic superior quality of Jews over other people." (p. 316) (Halevi believed, adds Arnold Eisen, in "a hereditary capacity inhering in the Jewish people which uniquely prepared it for the reception of divine revelation.") [EISEN, p. 18]

     Yet Cantor seems ambiguously torn between the polar values of human universalism and Jewish racism. While championing racism himself, elsewhere he seemingly condemns it:

       "Racism is itself a central doctrine in traditional Judaism and Jewish

       cultural history. The Hebrew Bible is blatantly racist, with all the talk

       about the seed of Abraham, the chosen people, and Israel as the light

       to other nations. Orthodox Jews in their many prayers still thank God

       daily that he did not make Jews 'like the other people of the earth.'

       If this isn't racism, what is?"

      Yet Cantor states in the same book what he apparently sees as objective science, and not a manifestation of the very racism he decries:

       "Why did Jews as an immigrant group [in America] do better than the

        Irish or Italians? Perhaps it was innately superior genes, better

        selective breeding." [CANTOR, p. 389]

         The contemporary Jewish scholar, Raphael Patai devotes over fifty pages in his The Jewish Mind to claim evidence for "Jewish pre-eminence" and intellectual superiority over non-Jews. Not surprisingly, when Patai suggests that Jews are genetically superior in intelligence to others, he stoops so low as to quote from whom he inevitably must, the race theory of a German Nazi, Hans Gunther, to embellish a Jewish "survival of the fittest" argument. In this Darwinian and Jewish martyrological view, over the centuries natural selection favored only the smartest Jews in a hostile Gentile environment. [PATAI, p. 304-305]

       In one racist "scientific" theory to prove Jewish superiority, Patai lists scholars Norbert Weiner, J.B.S. Haldane, and Lewis S. Feuer as those who suggest that, because the Christian Church offered literate advancement only to those who chose a religious career that included celibacy, the real brains of the Gentile pack died out. As another Jewish author, Nathaniel Weyl, explains this theory:

      "The intellectual eminence of the Jews is the result of a two-thousand-

      year process of selective breeding for intelligence ... If the abolition

      of priestly celibacy gave Protestant countries a genetic advantage over

      Catholic ones in respect to brain power, similar institutional factors gave

      Jews a genetic advantage over Christians." [WEYL, N., 1968, p. 10-12]