Nature or Nurture? Well, Smart Guy?

Live long and prosper. Or should I say "mazel tov"? (Cbs Paramount)

Entine, in his opening remarks, mentioned another source of Jewish pride: the Vulcan gesture made by Spock in "Star Trek." It was, he said, a symbol used by Jewish high priests that Leonard Nimoy learned in synagogue.

Then there was the case of Henry Louis Gates Jr., the prominent African American writer and scholar, who had his DNA tested and, Entine said, "found out he's got a Yiddishe mama."

Entine flashed a slide titled "Smart Jews" and another announcing "Mozart and Einstein IQ>160. What about yours?" The genetically high IQ, he argued, "could be one of the explanations for why Jews overachieve in so many areas among Nobel laureates, winners of chemistry prizes, mathematics prizes, number of professorships in academia."

All this might be traced, Entine said, to diseases that afflict Ashkenazi Jews from Eastern Europe; these genetic mistakes "may promote the growth and interconnection of brain cells." "This is highly debated," the author admitted. "You're suggesting there could be a genetic basis to intelligence and it could be found more in one population than another."

It was not controversial with Murray, however. His only beef was that Sephardic Jews from Spain and Portugal were smart, too. "You had not only Maimonides . . . you had Jews prominent in business, you had Jews who were advisers to the court," he argued. "Many historians attribute in part the subsequent decline of Spain and Portugal to the fact that they got rid of their Jews." He further credited Jews for the rise of the Netherlands and noted that "one of my thesis advisers at MIT was a Sephardic Jew."

Murray suggested that Jews got smarter by urbanization ("the elevated Jewish IQ was making people money"), flight from Babylon ("they took the smart ones into exile") and what he called "the ultimate hypothesis" that Jews are really "God's chosen people."

Zoloth avoided a direct challenge to Entine and Murray, only suggesting that nurture may have as much to do with Jewish nature. She also cautioned that conversations about racial differences have "historically turned to hatred" -- including a hatred of Jews.

Yesterday, however, there was no hatred in the room, only a bit of navel-gazing. "What's interesting about this is why we're so mesmerized," Zoloth said. "Why are we so mesmerized by Jews, by the topic of Jewish chosenness?"

Smart question.