Jewish Exceptionalism?

In Commentary in April 2007, Charles Murray, the coauthor of The Bell Curve (1994), again claimed that "Jews are smarter" than everyone else (Murray, 2007). In The Bell Curve, he and his late (and Jewish) coauthor, Richard Herrnstein, presented the argument "Ashkenazic Jews of European origins," test higher than any other ethnic group (Murray and Herrnstein, 1994). Jews in America and Britain have an overall IQ mean somewhere between a half and a full standard deviation above the mean, with the source of the difference concentrated in the verbal component. Murray again makes the argument of an unmistakable "Jewish Genius," in Commentary, but now with an explanation. The book analyzes reason for such a favorable attribute: the genetic, the environmental, and the divine. The weights apportioned to each remain indeterminate.