“Are Jews Smarter?”

That’s putting the question bluntly, but there’s really no other way of putting it if you’re going to put it at all. Jennifer Senior, who is Jewish, is emboldened to write an article under that title by the fact that the New York Times and the Economist have also reported on a new study that gives a strongly affirmative answer to the above question. Writing in New York magazine, she explains that the study suggests that there is a causal connection between the vulnerabilities of Ashkenazi Jews to certain diseases (Tay-Sachs, for instance) and the apparent compensation of greater brain power. It’s the old question of nature vs. nurture; in this case, whether it’s more important to have Jewish genes or a Jewish mother. As it turns out, most Jews have both.

So is a study such as this good for the Jews? Senior writes, “I talk to Abe Foxman, legendary head of the Anti-Defamation League, whose life’s mission is the pristine upkeep of the Jewish reputation. His answer surprises me. ‘If it’s a genetic condition,’ he says, ‘it’s not for us to embrace or reject. It is what it is, and that’s the way the genetic cookie crumbles.’ I detect a note of pride in his voice.” Senior is somewhat more ambivalent: “Freud and Marx, Einstein and Bohr, Mendelssohn and Mahler. The brothers Gershwin. The brothers Marx. Woody Allen. Bob Dylan. Franz Kafka. Claude Lévi-Strauss. Bobby Fischer. Jews may take tremendous pride in their aristocracy, but we fetishize it at our own peril; to suggest that we’re chosen, rather than that we make our own choices, curdles quickly into a useful argument for anti-Semites who’d love to claim that the objects of their derision are immutable vermin. It can’t be an accident that the most aggressive debunkers of Jewish essentialism, including the participants in this story, are generally Jews themselves.”

To the question of whether Jews are smarter, I expect most people—Jews and non-Jews, philo-Semites and anti-Semites—would likely say it is true as a generalization, although all but the anti-Semites would quickly add that people must be judged on an individual basis. The Senior article, like most writing on this topic, is a bit coy. It’s nice to know you got it, but you shouldn’t flaunt it. At the same time, it’s permitted to write about how you shouldn’t flaunt it, not-so-implicitly flaunting it.

There is a more serious dimension to this discussion. One cannot help but be nervous about the renewed candor in discussing genetic differences. Historically, genetics and eugenics are closely related, and the latter has a very ugly history. The reaction is very different when the same questions are studied in relation to other identifiable groups, such as Americans of African descent, and the answers turn out not to be so complimentary. Ask Charles Murray, co-author of The Bell Curve. Whatever one’s race or ethnicity, a measure of pride and preening about it is understandable and perhaps inevitable, but it is the polite thing to keep it within the family, so to speak.

Comparisons between genetically defined groups are inherently problematic and tend toward the invidious. If one group is generally smarter, the other is generally less smart. What is the point of scientific studies that reinforce prejudices (i.e. pre-judgments) based on life experience? Murray was unhappy when I asked that question in my review of The Bell Curve. Such studies, he contends, can encourage us to rethink educational and other policies that are premised upon the assumption of innate equality. That is not a dumb position, but neither is it wise. It easily leads to what is aptly called the bigotry of low expectations. It is very difficult, to say the least, to incorporate Murray’s position into a polity based on equality.

Every bright eighth-grader congratulates himself on the discovery that the assertion of the Declaration of Independence is not literally true. In ways important and unimportant, it is not the case that all are created equal. Call equality our “founding mythology,” if you like, but it is crucial to the foundation of the American order and our efforts to get along more or less amicably. We need not try to play tricks with our minds, pretending that we do not know what we think we know about certain kinds of people in general—positively and negatively, based on scientific studies or anecdotal experience. Life would be unmanageable without such generalized assumptions.

When it comes to asserting publicly the genetic and ethnic assumptions that are usually muted, some say that Jews, because of their past suffering and minority status, should be given an exemption from observing the protocols of assumed equality. There are and should be exemptions. For instance, for humor that is not intentionally vicious or hurtful. The attempt to ban jokes that may offend the super-sensitive is both wrongheaded and futile. With the effective prohibition of anything that anyone might deem hurtful, a vast silence would fall upon the world.

Part of the observance of the unenforceable that makes life livable, however, is a learned awareness of proprieties. In serious public discourse that impinges upon respect and social opportunity for real people, the protocol of presumed equality is indispensable. The question “Are Jews smarter?” inescapably invites the question, “Smarter than whom?” And that quickly becomes problematic. To the objection that the only reason we’re made so nervous by that further question is because of the history of race and racism in this country, the answer is: That is not the only reason, but it is one very good reason.