RSS
Golden Age of American Jewry May Be Ending, But Jews Thrive in Meritocracy
Reading from a Torah scroll in accordance with Sephardi tradition. Photo: Sagie Maoz via Wikimedia Commons.
The headlines seem bleak for Jews: “The Golden Age of American Jews is Ending”; “Jewish Erasure From American Life”; “The Vanishing.” The articles tell a consistent story: “Suddenly, everywhere you look, the Jews are disappearing”; “Antisemitism on the right and left threatens to bring to a close an unprecedented period of safety and prosperity for Jewish Americans …”
The data seem to support this assessment. Universities are rejecting Jewish applicants in numbers reminiscent of the days of quotas. Jewish representation in public offices is decreasing. Jobs in many areas seem to be closed to Jews in favor of other, more favored, minorities.
Honorific positions in elite cultural institutions — such as museums and orchestras — are being offered to leaders of other groups; university presidencies and deanships, which had been closed to Jews until the 1960s and then opened up to them in the 1990s, once again seem closed.
Academic prizes, such as MacArther and Guggenheim awards, have far fewer Jewish winners than in the past. Book publishers are rejecting Jewish authors. Even Hollywood, which was largely invented by Jews, is imposing quotas on Jewish filmmakers and other artists.
This trend, supported by precise numbers, is documented in an article by Jacob Savage in Tablet, and confirmed by several others, including a cover story in The Atlantic by Franklin Foer.
The facts, though, tell only part of a more complex phenomenon. They tell the part in which success is judged by how others — institutions and individuals — select the winners. They don’t, though, tell the equally remarkable story of persistent Jewish accomplishments in areas where success is not dependent on being picked by others — where success is self-determined and self-proving, in an open and free-market economy, without barriers to entry.
Jews are thriving in areas in which success is based entirely on meritocratic criteria, such as creativity, innovation, talent, and hard work. There has been no discernible reduction in Jewish inventors, musicians, investors, entrepreneurs, groundbreaking scientists, or chess champions.
Jewish doctors are still saving lives. Jewish lawyers are winning cases. Jewish comedians are making people laugh. Jewish podcasters are attracting large audiences. As long as the criteria is objective and identity-blind, Jews thrive.
The same is generally true of Asian Americans. Jews are a tiny percentage of the American population — between 2 percent and 3 percent, depending on the criteria — and so when their numbers exceed that percentage, Jews are accused of being “overrepresented“ and taking the rightful places of larger minority groups.
This was the same argument made in czarist Russia and other nations that imposed the notorious “numerus clausus.”
There are course limits to the kind of success that can be achieved in the face of discrimination by others who get to pick applicants for routes to success. Reduced Jewish admission to universities, reduced publication opportunities for Jewish authors, reduced scientific honors will eventually have an impact even on self-determined Jewish success. This was certainly true in past eras of anti-Jewish quotas.
As long as the United States has a free-market economic system with few barriers to entry, Jews — and others — denied admission to restricted organizations will be able to achieve a modicum of success. That success will enable them to fight against other discriminatory measures, as wealthy, self-made Jewish contributors are now doing with regard to universities.
So the water in the Jewish glass is lower than it has been during our “golden age.” It is, though, half full. Not half empty. It will remain at least half full as long as our free-market economy allows discriminated-against individuals to thrive in areas where meritocracy is rewarded with success.
Today’s culture, though, is determined to destroy what is left of meritocracy, because it is seen as undercutting the identity-oriented diversity, equity, and inclusion criteria for selection and success.
Alan M. Dershowitz is the Felix Frankfurter Professor of Law Emeritus at Harvard Law School, and is the author of “Guilt by Accusation” and host of the “The Dershow” podcast. Follow Alan Dershowitz on Twitter (@AlanDersh) and on Facebook (@AlanMDershowitz). A version of this article was originally published by The New York Sun.
The post Golden Age of American Jewry May Be Ending, But Jews Thrive in Meritocracy first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
RSS
Iran Says Eight Arrested for Suspected Links to Israel’s Mossad Spy Agency
The Mossad recruitment ad. Photo: Screenshot.
Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said on Saturday they had arrested eight people suspected of trying to transmit the coordinates of sensitive sites and details about senior military figures to Israel’s Mossad, Iranian state media reported.
They are accused of having provided the information to the Mossad spy agency during Israel’s air war on Iran in June, when it attacked Iranian nuclear facilities and killed top military commanders as well as civilians in the worst blow to the Islamic Republic since the 1980s war with Iraq.
Iran retaliated with barrages of missiles on Israeli military sites, infrastructure and cities. The United States entered the war on June 22 with strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities.
A Guards statement alleged that the suspects had received specialized training from Mossad via online platforms. It said they were apprehended in northeastern Iran before carrying out their plans, and that materials for making launchers, bombs, explosives and booby traps had been seized.
State media reported earlier this month that Iranian police had arrested as many as 21,000 “suspects” during the 12-day war with Israel, though they did not say what these people had been suspected of doing.
Security forces conducted a campaign of widespread arrests and also stepped up their street presence during the brief war that ended in a US-brokered ceasefire.
Iran has executed at least eight people in recent months, including nuclear scientist Rouzbeh Vadi, hanged on August 9 for passing information to Israel about another scientist killed in Israeli airstrikes.
Human rights groups say Iran uses espionage charges and fast-tracked executions as tools for broader political repression.
RSS
Body of Idan Shtivi, Murdered on Oct. 7, Retrieved from Gaza in Special IDF Operation
Idan Shtivi. Photo: Courtesy of the family
i24 News – The body of Idan Shtivi, a 28-year-old murdered by Palestinian jihadists at the Nova music festival on October 7, 2023, was recovered in a joint operation by the IDF and Shin Bet in central Gaza, it was cleared for publication on Saturday.
Shtivi’s remains were returned to Israel alongside the body of Ilan Weiss, another hostage killed during the October 7 massacre.
“Idan Shtivi was abducted from the Tel Gama area and brutally murdered by Hamas terrorists after acting to rescue and evacuate others from the Nova music festival on October 7th, 2023. He was 28 years old at the time of his death,” read an IDF press release.
“Following an identification process conducted at the National Center for Forensic Medicine, along with the Israel Police and the Military Rabbinate, the Hostages and Missing Persons Headquarters notified his family.”
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Shviti “was a gifted student of sustainability and governance, and a courageous individual” who acted heroically on October 7, helping others flee.
“He was killed in the process and his body was abducted to Gaza by Hamas. My wife and I send our heartfelt condolences to the Shtivi family. So far, 207 hostages have been returned, 148 of them alive. We will continue to act tirelessly and decisively to bring back all our hostages—living and deceased.”
RSS
Woman Stabbed at Ottawa Grocery Store in Latest Antisemitic Attack
A social media post by the alleged attacker, Joseph Rooke of Cornwall, Ontario. Photo: Screenshot via i24
i24 News – The stabbing of a Jewish woman at an Ottawa grocery by a man with a long history of antisemitic posts on social media, the latest antisemitic hate crime in Canada, sparked outrage and prompted condemnation from officials including the prime minister.
Both the victim and the attacker are in their 70s. The woman is reportedly in serious condition.
The suspect was identified as Joseph Rooke, who has authored a series of lengthy rambling screeds on social media, ranting against Israel and Jews.
“Judaism is the world’s oldest cult,” he writes in one post, going on to say “over time jews have become insidious in governments, businesses, media conglomerates, and educational institutions in order to do what they do better than anyone else. Jews are the world’s masters of propaganda, gaslighting, demonization, demagoguery, and outright lying. Using their collective wealth they have become masters of reprisal.”
“I am under no obligation whatsoever, legal, moral, or otherwise, to like jews and I do not. If that means I meet the jewish definition of an anti-semite, so be it.”
Canada has seen a steep spike in antisemitic attacks over the past two years, including a recent incident in Montreal where a Hasidic Jew was beaten in front on his children.
After Prime Minister Mark Carney condemned the incident, many, including former Israel’s ambassador the US Michael Oren, pointed out that Carney’s rhetoric and policies contribute to the increasing insecurity of Canada’s Jewish community through uncritical embrace of outrageous and easily disprovable allegations that Israel and its supporters were guilty of the worst crimes against humanity.