Ernest Van den Haag "Jewish Mystique."

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 have 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.

Paperback, 1983.

New book. A few very light creases on top of pages. Very minor shelf wear from rubbing. Otherwise, very good, nice and clean.

See also: Norman F. Cantor "The Jewish Experience" Israel Shahak, Norton Mezvinsky "Jewish Fundamentalism in Israel."