"Jewgenics": Jewish genes, Jewish values and Jewish mortality

(cross-posted on Jews By Choice)

I've been reading with some interest about Jon Entine's new book, Abraham's Children: Race, Identity, and the DNA of the Chosen People. The author, a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), explores the connections between genetics, identity and values, and uses this approach to address the question, "Who is a Jew?"

The answer, in one sense, is "Almost everyone." The DNA of the priestly tribe of the Cohanim can be found in India, Zimbabwe and Ethiopia; the other tribes, most of which vanished, subsumed their families into host cultures and spread their DNA so that, according to Entine, "we are all related to King David" (this is convenient for those with a Messianic bent who hold with the prophetic decrees that the Messiah would come from the House of David).

In a wonderful and funny article at Slate, William Saletan reports on a forum at the AEI in which scholars and bioethicists confronted questions raised by Entine's work: "Are Jews a race? And is intelligence genetic?" The questions have urgent implications not only for how culture and religion are shaped and transmitted, nor for the future of Judaism itself, but about how the strengths of communal identity may also create the conditions for endemic genetic weakness. Jewish genetic diseases like Tay-Sachs, Saletan reports, may be transmitted along the same genetic pathways as intelligence. Genes associated with brain growth have also been found to be associated with breast cancer (they are also associated with a lack of visio-spatial coordination, which may help explain why the volume on Jewish Sports Heroes is such a slim one).

Because intelligence has been so highly prized and richly rewarded in Jewish communities throughout history, Jews have bred for intelligence. Those that were not intelligent enough were basically voted off the island. (The result, AEI Scholar Charles Murray said, was that "anyone who was Jewish and stupid 2,000 years ago found it a lot easier to be Christian.") Jewish families and communities developed and lived in relative isolation, assuring that the quality of intelligence was enhanced with each passing generation.

Despite the hand-wringing about Jewish intermarriage in Diaspora, Saletan quotes Entine as saying that the rate of Jewish intermarriage is at one half of one percent -- astonishingly low, by any standards; the lowest of any community in the world. The value of marrying within the faith (or is it a culture?) is impressed upon modern Jews, sometimes to the exclusion of anything else. The value of peoplehood that perpetuates great strengths may also increase the likelihood of disease. Seen in this light, the convert is yet more indispensable: someone who feels called to live within the Jewish tent must have deep (perhaps even genetic) compulsions for doing so; may be highly intelligent; and yet will bring a genetic diversity that will help weaken the strains of disease that travel along ancient and preserved DNA pathways.

Some of the scholars, especially the bioethicist Laurie Zoloth, expressed a revulsion toward the idea of any kind of Jewish genetic superiority, a revulsion shared by most Jews I know. It is beyond ironic to think of Judaism as representative of any kind of "master race," and it flies in the face of Jewish teachings about the equality of all peoples.

And yet, the above-average intellectual acuity of Jews as a whole appears, like any gift, to come at a price. The question, Saletan says, then becomes: do we seek to minimize the spread of genes that predispose our children to both genius and early death?

All this brings me again back to the art of spiritual seeking rather than the science of genetics. But maybe they're two sides of the same coin. Maybe those who feel drawn toward Judaism have a genetic strand that has begun to glow inside them. Those who remove themselves from Judaism's iron embrace may actually be doing more, by their very absence, to perpetuate and diversify Judaism than those who stay glumly and resentfully within the fold.

But, as Saletan notes, we Jews live with the questions. The biggest question Entine raises is whether our very sense of who we are is determined more by our genes than our deeds, more by our ancestry than our autonomous selves.

That's a question I guess we'll just have to live, and live with.

(h/t: Richard Cohen)

--T.A.