The Jewish Mystique

by Ernest Van den Haag

Book Overview

No Synopsis Available.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0812812670
• ISBN13: 9780812812671
• Release Date: January 1977
• Publisher: Stein and Day
• Length: 252 Pages
• Weight: 1.11 lbs.

Customer Reviews

"Gene Stewardship" vs "Sacrifice on Altar-of-the-Pork-Barrel"

Why are Jews smarter than Catholics ? Because Catholicism is a religion of Pork-Barrel-Sacrifice, while among Jews the-best-have-more-babies. Anyway Haag makes this point up-front in the first few pages of the book, and the review-author knows of no more concisely elegant description of this distinction, having stumbled across the book via Google, but not claiming exhaustive literacy on this. The first part of the argument is that in primitive times, religious study was a primary way of expressing intelligence - there being no technology as of yet. Among Catholics, the best students became celibate priests. Among Jews, the best students became rabbis, AND RABBIS WERE ENCOURAGED TO MAKE BABIES. This basic theme of course continues today. A lot of bright folks choose to become doctors, but medical school is a lengthy process - therefore doctors don't seem to have especially many babies themselves. Garrett Hardin's commonism, the doctrine of outcome-equalization, that an indiscriminate nation-or-world-wide-pork-barrel should in particular redistribute the benefits of medicine - this makes medicine or at least the doctrine of a universal-medical-insurance-pork-barrel analogous to Catholicism, hmm ? The review-author belongs to no church, is not Jewish, not a Doctor, parents were Unitarian.

Insightful

This is an insightful work about Jewish history and character by a non- Jewish author. Van den Haag like Paul Johnson and Thomas Cahill later writes from outside the Jewish experience with real appreciation and understanding. Having read the book many years ago I will simply give one small insight of his. According to Van den Haag the intelligence involved in disproprotionate Jewish contribution to scientific and cultural creation came in part because among the Jews the most intelligent the learned were encouraged to have large families, while in the Christian world the most intelligent were priests and encouraged to be celibate. A counter- argument could be made pointing out the relatively small size of the families of the non- Hasidic Jewish leadership. In any case this is one small example of a book rich with insight and certainly worth reading.

A Review of The Jewish Mystique

I enjoyed this book, mostly because of the fascinating subject matter. Especially chillling were the last two chapters where the author tries to prophesize about the state of american judaism in the year 2000. we are left to judge for oursleves whether he was right or wrong. I reccomend it!