This is a re-print with permission from the 5 towns Jewish Times I thought it interesting enough to share with everyone.
By Ben Mewluke
Published on Tuesday, January 12, 2010
This week, the New York Times published an Op-Ed piece, that .was, now sit back, pro- Israel. And it was written by, sit back again, one of its regular editors.
David Brooks, the on-again off again political conservative (whom Rush Limbaugh does not like) starts off the piece with a paragraph about Jews. “Jews are a famously accomplished group,” he begins. “They make up 0.2 percent of the world population, but 54 percent of the world chess champions, 27 percent of the Nobel physics laureates and 31 percent of the medicine laureates.”
Brooks continues, “Jews make up 2 percent of the U.S. population, but 21 percent of the Ivy League student bodies, 26 percent of the Kennedy Center honorees, 37 percent of the Academy Award-winning directors, 38 percent of those on a recent Business Week list of leading philanthropists, 51 percent of the Pulitzer Prize winners for nonfiction.
In his book, “The Golden Age of Jewish Achievement,” Steven L. Pease lists some of the explanations people have given for this record of achievement. The Jewish faith encourages a belief in progress and personal accountability. It is learning-based, not rite-based.”
Ah, but all this is about Jews, what about Israel?
“No single explanation can account for the record of Jewish achievement. The odd thing is that Israel has not traditionally been strongest where the Jews in the Diaspora were strongest. Instead of research and commerce, Israelis were forced to devote their energies to fighting and politics.”
At the end of the piece, Brooks points out that between 1980 and 2000, Egyptians registered 77 patents in the U.S. Saudis registered 171. And that Israelis registered an astounding 7,652 patents.
He backhandedly compliments the Tzahal by quoting Milton Friedman joke how Israel disproved every Jewish stereotype. “People used to think Jews were good cooks, good economic managers and bad soldiers; Israel proved them wrong.”
But then Brooks says that the Israeli economy has changed. “Benjamin Netanyahu’s economic reforms, the arrival of a million Russian immigrants and the stagnation of the peace process have produced a historic shift. The most resourceful Israelis are going into technology and commerce, not politics. This has had a desultory effect on the nation’s public life, but an invigorating one on its economy.”
Tel Aviv has become one of the world’s foremost entrepreneurial hot spots. Israel has more high-tech start-ups per capita than any other nation on earth, by far. It leads the world in civilian research-and-development spending per capita. It ranks second behind the U.S. in the number of companies listed on the Nasdaq. Israel, with seven million people, attracts as much venture capital as France and Germany combined.
And then he quotes the remarkably pro-Israel book entitled “Start-Up Nation: The Story of Israel’s Economic Miracle.”
Brooks points out how Israel’s technological success is the fruition of the Zionist dream. The country was not founded so stray settlers could sit among thousands of angry Palestinians in Hebron. It was founded so Jews would have a safe place to come together and create things for the world.
The positive articles on Israel and on orthodox Jews of late, have not been an aberration either. One does not have to be a scholar of the Talmud or a brilliant Rabbi to see that in the past six or seven months the amount of such pieces has been significant.
“The 5 Towns of Nassau County (Inwood, Lawrence, Cedarhurst, Woodmere, and Hewlett) is a suburban enclave bordering on Far Rockaway, Queens, and approximately ten minutes Southeast of Kennedy Airport. The community is largely centered around the Long Island Railroad, which carries a significant percentage of 5 Towns residents to and from New York City on a daily basis. Many 5 Towns residents are Orthodox Jewish professionals, entrepreneurs, esteemed members of academia, and charismatic religious leaders.”
