AN ENJOYABLE, IF A BIT FACILE, TRIP THROUGH THIS "GOLDEN AGE OF JEWISH ACHIEVEMENT"

Something rather surprising happened when I taught in a Freedom School in Mississippi in 1964, which I've never forgotten: in one evening class for adults, at one point an elderly woman cried out "IT'S ALMOST ON!" and within seconds, everyone vanished from under our favourite tree/classroom. I was stunned to soon discover that they all "just had to see" the Nat King Cole Show: the only national TV program which starred an African-American at that time. To this day, as I rejoice in seeing how second-nature it is to view blacks (and Hispanics and Asians) on TV, I ponder on what pleasure it brings every ethnic group to beam pridefully at "their own" being honoured: the Irish love acknowledging their Yeats, Joyce, Beckett, Shaw and dozens of other literary giants; the Spanish, their Cervantes and Lorca; and every person of African heritage, their Michael Jordan, Stevie Wonder, Colin Powell, and now, their Obama.

A California-based, middle-aged entrepreneur--of Presbyterian background, please note--named Steven L. Pease, just authored an intriguing, often shocking, occasionally petty 622-page book with the unwieldy title, The Golden Age of Jewish Achievement: The Compendium of a Culture, a People, and Their Stunning Performance. There are dozens of surprises, of course (alas, Lenin did have a Jewish grandfather, but I shepped nachas (gained pleasure) from discovering that Shell Oil was founded by a Marcus Samuel in 1897, Ex-Lax was founded by Israel Matz a few years earlier (a Jew brought so many such relief!), and my heart beat faster to learn that, while my people were behind Haagen-Dazs, Ben & Jerry and Sara Lee, we were still there to create Slim-Fast, Weight Watchers, NutriSystem, and yes, even Jenny Craig! (Some antisemites are probably screaming "Jewish hypocrites!" already--which is one of the risks of a book of this type, of course: that too-often-heard-of people seem to rule the world). (A personal highlight for me was a 6-person panel on CNN last year, in which every one of them was a Jew. I must note that this panel was not about Israel or the Holocaust or anything related to the Jews themselves, but about the American legal system and the Supreme Court. Wow.)

The author's purpose is warm, awe-filled and benign, of course, and not unlike those equal-opportunity-lovers, like myself, who are in awe of the African-American greatness in sports, jazz, rhythm and blues and rock--and haven't that people also been long abused, hated, enslaved, kept down? Pease can be embarrassing at times, as he recalls his many Jewish friends throughout his life, or when he hand-slaps his fellow Christians for their vicious Jew-hatred through the years: "I thought it illogical that a loving God would use a people who failed to accept Christ as an eternally impoverished example of the price his 'chosen' people would pay for disbelieving. It made no more sense than the charge that Jews killed infants for their blood or that they brought on the Black Plague."

Where this book becomes incredibly valuable is when it lists the many astonishing achievements of modern Jewry. (Its attempt to understand "WHY?"--the title of one chapter--the Jews have reached the top of so many fields since the Enlightenment and the related collapse of the ghetto walls across Europe, include their being "Second-Generation Immigrants," and having good "Genes"--well, it cannot be denied that the most literate Christians through the centuries were their celibate priests, who did not have 4, 7, or a dozen children as most Talmud-studying Jews usually did. But many other arguments attempting to explain "why" are far less successful.

But those numbers of Greats! (And no, Pease does not just list the usual unholy trinity of Marx, Freud and Einstein, the first two no real lovers of their people, and the father of Socialism, baptised at birth, wrote an essay on the Jews which would have won contests for "Why the Hebrews Must Die" in Nazi Germany): Jews have won 36% of all the Nobel Prizes for Economics, 31% of those for Physiology & Medicine, 27% of those for Physics, 26% for Science, 25% for Math--this, from an ethnic group which now numbers .002% of the world's present population (2 in every thousand souls!), and only 2% of the present U.S. population. Other sources of legitimate pride: that Jews made up 38% of Business Week's 50 Leading Philanthropists, 24% of Fortune Magazine's 25 Most Powerful People in Business, 37% of all Academy Award Winning Directors, 26% of the Greatest Photographers, 30% of the Best Stand Up Comedians, 33% of the conductors of Major U.S. Symphony Orchestras, and perhaps the most stunning of all (although all those Nobel Prizes aren't chopped liver): 51% of all Pulitzer Prizes presented for Non Fiction! (One can see the antisemites whispering, "well, Pulitzer himself was a Jew, ya know!")

The Golden Age of Jewish Achievement is no great work of scholarship nor of literary note, but it a lot of fun, and is probably the ideal Bar/Bat Mitzvah gift for a kid who takes no pride in his co-religionists' achievements. There is nothing wrong with the Jews admiring what our people have accomplished, if we don't go around bragging about it endlessly. But in the great tradition of my often amazing fellow Jews, I also respond with deep sadness: imagine what was lost when the world either murdered or ignored the murdering of millions of Jews between 1939 and 1945. Which one of them, or their never-to-be-born children or grandchildren could have cured cancer by now, or heart disease, or turned into another Heschel or Gershwin or Bellow or Sondheim. . . .