Jews - A unique group of gifted people

In my opinion, the Jewish people are the leading group of people in terms of accomplishments. For a relatively small number of followers of this faith, the Jews have produced some remarkable talents - Albert Einstein, John von Neumann, Gary Kasparov, Steven Spielberg, to name a few. It is astonishing to note the percentage of Jewish Nobel Prize winners - in the scientific research fields of Physics, Chemistry, Medicine and Economics, about 26% of all the winners are Jewish. It is even more astonishing to note that the Jews make-up only 0.25% of the world's population!!

But life has not been all rosy for the Jews - far from it. For centuries, they have suffered hardships and discrimination, due to a host of reasons. The purpose of this article is to present a condensed form of the evolution of Jews into what we see today. In addition, it is also intended to present a chronology of events in the Jewish history; upon reading this article, the reader, if not already aware, will have quite a clear picture of the turbulent past of the Jews. There is a popular opinion especially in the west that the Jews are money-minded and that hoarding money is one of their prime aims. A probable explanation for that is furnished here.

The origin of the Jews is traditionally dated around 1800 BC, when a monotheistic religion developed in the land of Israel. As a result of foreign conquests and expulsions starting in 8th century BC, especially due to the Romans, a Jewish diaspora was formed, which, unfortunately for the Jews, continued to haunt them as late as 20th century AD. Most of the Jewish population were expelled from the land of Israel and sold as slaves/settled in Europe and various parts of the Middle East. Did you know that Jesus Christ was Jewish by birth?

The violence and other activities of hatred, termed as Anti-Semitism, followed the Jews whereever they went. Since Judaism was generally the largest minority religion in Christian Europe and much of the Islamic world, Jews were often the primary targets of religiously-motivated violence and persecution from Christian and, to a lesser degree, Islamic rulers. Though the beginning of anti-semitic sentiments and acts of hatred pre-dated the life of Jesus Christ, they magnified and multiplied after his crucifiction. The reason is the alleged role of the Jews in the crucifiction.

During the middle ages, the Jews settled in Europe during the time of the Roman Empire, but the rise of the Catholic Church resulted in frequent expulsions and persecutions. The Crusades routinely attacked Jewish communities, and increasingly harsh laws restricted them from most economic activities and land ownership, leaving open only money-lending and a few other trades. This is the main reason why the Jewish traditionally have a very stronghold on issues pertaining to finance and pawnbrokerage. This stronghold has lead to the conclusion that they are money-minded. (In my opinion, when a person is deprived of opportunities, he/she will desperately cling on to the available chances; that is precisely what the Jews have been doing for centuries. So, it is rather shallow to heap accusations on them). This is also a probable reason why the Jews figure prominently in the academia, as their fields of activities were restricted for centuries, enabling them to channalise their energy into scientific research fields.

Going back to the continuation of the Jewish diaspora, during the Middle Ages, Jews in Islamic lands generally had more rights than under Christian rule, with a golden age of coexistence in Islamic Spain from about 900 to 1200 AD, when Spain became the center of the richest, most populous, and most influential Jewish community of the time. However, by the thirteenth century, Jews were soon expelled from Spain after the Christian re-conquest. Many of these Jews found refuge in the Ottoman empire (centered around modern-day Turkey), which remained tolerant of its Jewish population for much of its history.

In the late middle ages, a devastating pandemic "Black death" struck Europe, killing upto a third of the Europe's population. In many parts of Europe, rumours circulated that Jews caused the plague by deliberately poisoning wells. Comparatively fewer Jews died from the Black Death, in part due to Rabbinical laws, that called for a lifestyle that was, in general, cleaner than that of a typical medieval villager, and because of their isolation in Jewish ghettos; this raised the suspicion of people unable to attribute the difference in death rates to any natural cause (The original reason was the Bubonic Plague). As a result, the Jewish were subjected to massacres, further depleting their population.

Their struggle for existence continued, until the traumatic Holocaust, a systematic and (German) state-sponsored persecution and massacre of Jews by the Nazis during the World War - II. This changed their destiny completely, leading to them being massacred and driven-out of Germany, Poland and other European countries. About six million Jews were massacred. The aftermath of World War - II left millions of Jews to look for a place to live. That they settled in their ancient native land of Israel, much to the dislike of the Islamic people who were living there till the arrival of the Jewish people, and the subsequent tensions between the Jewish state of Israel and the neighbouring Islamic countries are very well known and need no recitation. (I am not in a position to state whether their act of settling down in Israel, thereby displacing the then inhabitants is right or wrong. I have my own views concerning this, but I would rather not list them here). In addition to Israel, a large Jewish population found refuge in the U.S.A.

To conclude this article on a philosophical note, the history of the Jews is a lesson by itself. Their continued existence and excellence in the face of so many obstacles is admirable indeed, and in the Darwin's game of "survival of the fittest", the Jews, though not the fittest (in terms of numbers, wealth etc), have managed to survive and have made (and still making) their mark.

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