Posted on February 18, 2008 by Steve Pollak
There’s a lot going on in Jon Entine’s book, “Abraham’s Children: Race, Identity, and the DNA of the Chosen People.”
Entine, an adjunct fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and author of “Taboo: Why Black Athletes Dominate Sports and Why We're Afraid to Talk About It,” discusses the impact of modern genetics on Jews, Jewish identity, the notion of chosenness and the idea of a Jewish ‘race.’
Entine explores two subject areas in particular: First, he examines what genetic testing has to say about Jewish history. He looks at how DNA has been used to help determine whether or not all Cohanim have a common ancestor, presumably Aaron. He also looks at how genetic testing has been enlisted in the quest to discover the true identity of the lost tribes of Israel. In addition, he follows the trail of Jewish genes to some unlikely spots: synagogues in India and China as well as some Catholic churches in the southwestern United States where Jewish DNA has turned up and some congregants include crypto-Jewish rituals in their religious practice.
Secondly, Entine examines some of the thornier questions revolving around modern genetics. He looks at the connection between Jewish intelligence and genetics. He also discusses the idea of Jews being a race based on our genes. For obvious reasons, it’s not politically correct to discuss Jews as a race. But, it is convenient and helpful to look at Jews as a common people when looking at genetic diseases, such as Tay-Sachs Disease. Entine talks about the effect genetic screening has had in lowering the frequency of the Tay-Sachs Disease in Ashkenazi Jews.
In between these explorations, Entine veers into the murky territory of Jewish identity. It’s here that the book gets bogged down and loses focus. Entine apparently wants to talk about some things that are bigger than genetics. He touches on the larger questions of how Jews relate to non-Jews in society and how the notion of chosenness affects both sides of that relationship. He also visits the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and discusses a few studies that talk about how Israelis and Palestinians are not all that different from one another, genetically speaking. That would have been fine except that he includes a description of a Palestinian scientist’s difficulties in traveling to Israel to help with a genetic research project. Entine also recounts a visit to a West Bank outpost near Kiryat Arba where residents live in California-style homes surrounded by barbed wire and concrete walls.
It’s not that I’m not interested in Kiryat Arba or the Palestinian scientist’s problems. I am. But, I found myself struggling to figure out how these things related back to genetics. In this particular chapter, he wanted to see if genetics might tell us anything about whether Jews or Arabs have an ancestral claim to ancient Palestine. It’s a legitimate question, I suppose. And, to be fair, he never allows politics to affect his book overtly. The side trips and the descriptions appear to be more superfluous than anything else. And for that reason alone, they should have been cut out.
I’d say the same thing for some of the extended historical sketches purporting to tell the story of the Jews from the time of Abraham on up through to modern Israel. Entine also swerves into longer-than-needed descriptions of Christian and Islamic history.
One question he delves into towards the end of the book is this: are Jews genetically pre-disposed to be smarter, more intelligent people? And if so, should we be afraid to talk about it? I’d like to say that one reason might be that we don’t have anything but conjecture to offer for explaining how genes influence intelligence. Intelligence is the result of several different ingredients, genes being just one of those ingredients. Perhaps there’s something to be gained from exploring the genetics of intelligence. But, I don’t understand why science would want to explore ‘Jewish’ intelligence specifically. Jewishness is beside the point if we’re undertaking an effort to understand the genetics of intelligence. More problematic, such an undertaking might provide fodder to scientific racists hoping to “prove” the stereotypes of Jews being a clever, intelligent group seeking domination over the rest of the world. If my Jewish intelligence tells me anything, it’s that this sort of scientific study seems to be working off a conclusion and then going backwards to find a hypothesis.
Entine certainly did a lot of reporting and research but it’s difficult to find a common narrative thread that runs through the length of the book because he tried to cover so many topics. As far as I can tell, the central theme might go something like this: while it is possible for the study of genetics to be co-opted for unseemly political and racist purposes and it may lead to uncomfortable identity questions, the medical benefits of DNA research far outweigh those dangers.
I think he proved that theme correct. I just think he took way too long with too many side trips into murky areas in order to get there. Like I said, there’s a lot going on in this book.