Jewish people, where they are from?

[Pax Augusta]

Of course Luccera is in Apulia. But it's not that far from Abruzzi either. Since Behar did not cover Apulians in his study, he might actually have captured some "Apulian" element in his Abruzzi sample. For the Jewish presence in Lucera, look at the following extract taken from your Wikipedia link:

If my rudimentary Italian does not deceive me, the Italian version of the article also lists a contemporary massacre on the Jews in Naples.
Where would survivors go? One place is known from the Wikipedia article, namely (San Paolo di) Civitate. Still in Apulia, but directly at the Molise border (I guess Molise already counts as Abruzzi). Where else? Sicilian lands were obviously no option after the massacres, and the Vatican territories also wouldn't have seemed to be a particular good idea. Since Frederick II had installed a trade fair in Lucera, there must have been a sizeable merchant community. An intelligent ruler (which Frederick II undoubtedly was) would have tried to link up that community with other regions under his rule, including the Staufen homeland in Alsace, Baden and Würtemberg. There isn't any documentary evidence of respective migrations, but the early 14th century saw the emergence of many new Jewish communities, including Freiburg, Offenburg and Reutlingen, as well as quick recovery of already existing communities (Heilbronn) from the 1298 pogroms.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rintfleisch_massacres

Probably here you can find more about Jews in Italy. I'm sorry, but it's all in Italian.

Italia Judaica.
Gli ebrei in Sicilia
sino all'espulsione del 1492
Atti del V convegno internazionale
Palermo, 15-19 giugno 1992

http://www.archivi.beniculturali.it/dga/uploads/documents/Saggi/Saggi_32.pdf

Italia Judaica.
Gli ebrei in Italia tra Rinascimento ed età barocca
atti del 2. Convegno internazionale : Genova, 10-15 giugno 1984.
Roma : Ministero per i beni culturali e ambientali, Ufficio centrale per i beni archivistici, 1986. – (Pubblicazioni degli archivi di Stato. Saggi; 6).

http://www.archivi.beniculturali.it/dga/uploads/documents/Saggi/Saggi_6.pdf


Italia Judaica
"Gli ebrei in Italia dalla segregazione alla prima emancipazione"
Atti del III Convegno internazionale
Tel Aviv 15-20 giugno 1986

http://www.archivi.beniculturali.it/dga/uploads/documents/Saggi/Saggi_11_A.pdf

 

[Pax Augusta]

[h=2]Studies:[/h] [h=3]A Documentary History of the Jews in Italy

Historical Lexicon of the Jews in Italy

Classified Bibliography of the History of the Jews in Italy[/h]

http://www.tau.ac.il/humanities/ggcenter/pitaly.html

 

[kamani]

The whole smartening-up scenario does not make sense to me.Regardless of the environmental factors,intelligence is determined by multiple sets of genes interacting with each other(memory,learning abilities,spacial reasoning,creativity,openness to experience and intellectual curiosity).
People tend to forget that genes aren't SNPs,a single mutation in any given SNP is less likely to alter the main function of a gene.


Bottom line;it would require a tremendous amount of mutations to alter a gene's fuction let alone multiple sets of genes.

agree, they have always been smarter on average, since the neolithic farmers. It is not just learning and tradition. There is a lot of smart people in other groups ofcourse, but not that kind of high concentration of them. I think we're too used to being politically correct and saying we're all the same, when in fact we're not.

 

[AgnusDei]

agree, they have always been smarter on average, since the neolithic farmers. It is not just learning and tradition. There is a lot of smart people in other groups ofcourse, but not that kind of high concentration of them. I think we're too used to being politically correct and saying we're all the same, when in fact we're not.

I can't agree more,we're different on so many levels,as a species and also as individuals but we're essentially not that different !
I personally think that Ashkenazim ended up with relatively more intelligent people mainly due to two important factors !
Endogamy and polygamy!

The Rabbis had played a very important socioeconomical role in the Jewish life,they were wealthier and had more power .
I think that the Rabbis chose the brightest/smarter students as grooms to their daughters and because polygamy was allowed for religious and political reasons(oppression) the brightest students could marry more than one (Rabbi) girl/daughter and have more kids/progeny.
The wealthier Rabbis would then financially help their sons-in-law.
The relatively less intelligent Jews weren't financially successful and couldn't afford to marry more women .

This is how the Askhenazim ended up with more intelligent people in their community,IMO.




It would be interesting to hear what others have to say about my reasoning!

 

[LeBrok]

The whole smartening-up scenario does not make sense to me.Regardless of the environmental factors,intelligence is determined by multiple sets of genes interacting with each other(memory,learning abilities,spacial reasoning,creativity,openness to experience and intellectual curiosity).
People tend to forget that genes aren't SNPs,a single mutation in any given SNP is less likely to alter the main function of a gene.

Mind you that we are not starting from scratch. These types of intelligences you mentioned already exists. We are talking about kicking it up a notch or two.

Bottom line;it would require a tremendous amount of mutations to alter a gene's fuction let alone multiple sets of genes.

We don't need new mutations. People have already all verities of genes needed to be very intelligent. It is more about combination of them and number of copies. If someone is not lucky (wrong parents) you can be "blessed" with bad memory and less than good logic, and no amount of education will make a doctor out of you. If you have right DNA you can excel in education, finance and sciences. All from combination of existing mutations.
Under environmental conditions the "right" genes can be emphasised generation after generation till it will show in statistic of certain populations.

 

[LeBrok]

I can't agree more,we're different on so many levels,as a species and also as individuals but we're essentially not that different !
I personally think that Ashkenazim ended up with relatively more intelligent people mainly due to two important factors !
Endogamy and polygamy!

The Rabbis had played a very important socioeconomical role in the Jewish life,they were wealthier and had more power .
I think that the Rabbis chose the brightest/smarter students as grooms to their daughters and because polygamy was allowed for religious and political reasons(oppression) the brightest students could marry more than one (Rabbi) girl/daughter and have more kids/progeny.
The wealthier Rabbis would then financially help their sons-in-law.
The relatively less intelligent Jews weren't financially successful and couldn't afford to marry more women .

This is how the Askhenazim ended up with more intelligent people in their community,IMO.




It would be interesting to hear what others have to say about my reasoning!

This might be one part of the whole puzzle.

 

[AgnusDei]

Mind you that we are not starting from scratch. These types of intelligences you mentioned already exists. We are talking about kicking it up a notch or two.

I have to disagree with you,those aren't types of intelligence,those are factors that determine a person's intelligence and they tend to have a very strong correlation with each other only in humans !
Elephants have an exceptional memory yet they are nowhere near intelligent as humans .

I think it is politically correct to state that there is a verbal intelligence among other types of intelligence,but the truth is you would rarely find an exceptionally gifted person that scores low in the so called verbal intelligence tests since it would require them to have a very strong memory in order to be able learn in general .
Anyways,intelligence is a very controversial topic to discuss there are so many factors that determine a person's intelligence and most of them are genetic .

What I really wanted to say in my previous post is that it would be nearly impossible for any human group to evolve into a more intelligent group in just a matter of tens of thousands of years .
In fact, I think that the first hunter-gather to ever paint onto a cave in Europe was more intelligent that Leonardo Da vinci !

 

[John Doe]

Thanks for the context, FrankN; very informative.

However, it seems that you, like I, have found no documentary evidence either in Jewish chronicles or government or church documents which indicate any conversion of locals to Judaism. Saying that "It is not unlikely that a relevant part of locals converted to Judaism" is not the same thing.

That's not to say it didn't happen, but intermarriage between Jews and Christians would have been no easy matter. It was forbidden by Jewish law and Christian law, and also by government decree from the days of the late Empire. (I would have to check for the precise date) That's why in Italy in the late 500's, early 600's, a Jewish girl who wished to marry a Christian had to convert to Christianity. Jewish law would demand the same thing in any case of intermarriage.

I have managed to find one documented case of such a situation, which would, in fact, have brought "Jewish" genes into the gentile gene pool. I also found one situation of Jewish landowners still converting gentile slaves to Judaism in the late 500's, but it was in contravention of Church law and civil law, and a significant enough such infraction that it merited a rebuke from the Pope. Frankly, I saw the fact that the Bishop of Luni allowed it to happen as just another example of the Italian predilection for ignoring laws when they conflict with local reality and relationships. In any event, as I said, the fact that it resulted in such a rebuke indicates to me that it certainly wasn't a widespread phenomenon at that late date. Earlier, it would have been a different matter, but I don't think there's much documentation for a Jewish presence in Germany for the period before the adoption of Christianity as the Roman religion and the subsequent issuance of the decrees against conversion from Christianity to Judaism.

Regardless, the genetic data clearly shows that European Jews still plot with Cypriots. Whatever admixture with Europeans moved them from the Levantine coast to Cyprus genetically, if indeed there was that much difference between those peoples at the time, had to be with a very low WHG population, which the Germans most assuredly were not.

So, in this case, I think the lack of historical documentation for any sizable gene flow even in early medieval Germany from gentiles into the Jewish population is in agreement with the available genetic data.

If anything, I think there is more evidence later on for gene flow from Jews into the gentile community through the forced conversions, although as I said, it's not clear how many took the opportunity to "pass" into the gentile community, and how many merely left and resumed Jewish practice. Certainly, the Pope and the Bishops of that time and place decreed that the Jews were not bound by those conversions. It was far different in Spain with the conversos, where the choice was sincere conversion or exile, and where insincere converts were hunted out and executed by the Spanish Inquisition.

That's not entirely accurate, according to the study you gave me, AJs, together with Sicilians and Maltese, plot in the gap between Europe and the Near East, between Cypriots and Greeks, so AJs don't plot with Cypriots, they plot between Cypriots and Greeks, suggesting perhaps Ancient Greek admixture, perhaps this is the same case for Sicilians, the Greeks colonised and Hellenised both the Levant and Sicily, as for the Maltese, well, the Greeks didn't colonise Malta, the Phoenicians did, but the Byzantines did control the island until the 7th century C.E, perhaps the Greek admixture came from there?

 

[Pax Augusta]

That's not entirely accurate, according to the study you gave me, AJs, together with Sicilians and Maltese, plot in the gap between Europe and the Near East, between Cypriots and Greeks, so AJs don't plot with Cypriots, they plot between Cypriots and Greeks, suggesting perhaps Ancient Greek admixture, perhaps this is the same case for Sicilians, the Greeks colonised and Hellenised both the Levant and Sicily, as for the Maltese, well, the Greeks didn't colonise Malta, the Phoenicians did, but the Byzantines did control the island until the 7th century C.E, perhaps the Greek admixture came from there?

You're right, no proof of a Greek colonisation despite a "folk tradition" of an ancient Greek colony in Malta (Anthony Bonanno, "The tradition of an ancient Greek colony in Malta", Hyphen IV, 1 (Malta 1983): 1-17).

http://melitensiawth.com/incoming/Index/Hyphen/Hyphen. 4(1983)1/01.pdf

Greek admixture in Malta could have more explanations. One, as you said, due to the Byzantine dominion. Another due to little but constant migrations and human exchanges between Malta and Sicily (and former Magna Grecia territories in Southern Italy) from early ages. The linguistic origin of a surname isn't automatically related to an ethnic origin but Malta still today shares many surnames with modern-day Sicily (and viceversa), even if not all the Maltese surnames are spread in Sicily. Many of common surnames between Malta and Sicily are just typically Sicilian.

Dr Cassar explained that Maltese surnames may easily be divided into three surname groups: Semitic (Arabic and Hebrew), Romance (mainly Italian, Sicilian, Spanish and French), and English (as well as Scottish, Irish and Welsh). Today one also has to factor in other European and international family names which accumulated through recent ethnic intermarriages.

http://www.timesofmalta.com/article...st-Maltese-share-the-same-100-surnames.506018

 

[kamani]

The Rabbis had played a very important socioeconomical role in the Jewish life,they were wealthier and had more power .
I think that the Rabbis chose the brightest/smarter students as grooms to their daughters and because polygamy was allowed for religious and political reasons(oppression) the brightest students could marry more than one (Rabbi) girl/daughter and have more kids/progeny.

That sounds plausible. There might be more to it thou since Judaism is relatively "young" in the area; the Phoenicians (1000 BC) and other Levantines believed in Baal and other forms of Bull worship. And we still have some of the advanced centers of neolithic civilization in the Levant/Anatolia area.

 

[Angela]

I don't think it has anything to do with evolution in the sense of new mutations undergoing positive selection. It's about whether a group composed of people of above average intelligence, the founding population, can produce, through the practice of endogamy, descendents that are also above average intelligence.

Let's assume for the moment that the geneticists are correct who claim that the majority of the Ashkenazim alive today are descended in large part from a bottle-necked population of about 1,000 Jews from western Europe. Those Jews would be the survivors of the various pogroms of the Middle Ages. I think it's pretty clear that the ones who survived would have been the most intelligent members of their community, the ones who had the wit to figure out a way to survive, or the money to buy their freedom, like the merchants, and bankers, and physicians, or the rabbis who would have been guarded by their community. Those people then intermarried only with each other.

The selection for intelligence would also have been ongoing, as the persecution followed them to eastern Europe. In addition, I think that the AJ community practiced its own selection. To be a real member of the community, even at that time, you had to be intelligent enough to be able to read from the Torah at your Bar Mitzvah. (This was at a time when the vast majority of Europeans were illiterate.) The high esteem in which the erudite and highly intelligent rabbis were held, and their high reproductive levels is another factor, as has been pointed out by another poster.

(And yes, a group of that size can swell into the millions in 1,000 years. You just need to look at the size of the French Canadian community in relationship to the number of original settlers, or the size of the modern Amish and related communities, and this is after only a few hundred years.)


I personally find it all highly plausible.

There are even general genetic studies (previously discussed on this site) for the proposition that some degree of endogamy does seem to result in higher IQ scores in some groups. As I said, it all depends on the characteristics of the founding population. It can work in the inverse as well.

The endogamy comes with a cost in some cases, however. The AJ community is beset with unusual levels of certain genetic diseases. (as are the French Canadians and the Amish, for that matter.)

 

[LeBrok]

I have to disagree with you,those aren't types of intelligence,those are factors that determine a person's intelligence and they tend to have a very strong correlation with each other only in humans !... I think it is politically correct to state that there is a verbal intelligence among other types of intelligence,but the truth is you would rarely find an exceptionally gifted person that scores low in the so called verbal intelligence tests since it would require them to have a very strong memory in order to be able learn in general .

We could open a separate thread and still argue after thousands of posts what real intelligence is. One can argue that intelligence is making smart decisions in life and inventing new things, others that it is everything which take computational power of the brain with speech and even smell included. Let's leave it till then.

Elephants have an exceptional memory yet they are nowhere near intelligent as humans .

and yet, good memory adds to their intelligence. It is much easier to compute when data is readily available.

Anyways,intelligence is a very controversial topic to discuss there are so many factors that determine a person's intelligence and most of them are genetic .

my exact view on the subject.

What I really wanted to say in my previous post is that it would be nearly impossible for any human group to evolve into a more intelligent group in just a matter of tens of thousands of years .

I don't see how you can conclude this. As I mentioned before we don't need new mutations. We just need the right once to accumulate more in certain populations to make them statistically more intelligent as a group. This is not that difficult to achieve by continues environmental forcings.

Extreme examples which happened in last few thousands of years, or even hundreds:
from this:

to this:

Not only look but also behaviour changed. From reserved, timid hunter to friendly, engaged and playful toy.

In fact, I think that the first hunter-gather to ever paint onto a cave in Europe was more intelligent that Leonardo Da vinci !

In many aspects of intelligence yes, like hunting and environmental awareness to perhaps even hand eye coordination and art (they were painting real art in dark caves with fingers). However I don't think they would be doing well in our civilization in general. Just look at modern hunter gatherers, the Prairie Indians or Australian Aborigines and how they do in today's world in general, and the picture is not that rosy.

 

[Angela]

That's not entirely accurate, according to the study you gave me, AJs, together with Sicilians and Maltese, plot in the gap between Europe and the Near East, between Cypriots and Greeks, so AJs don't plot with Cypriots, they plot between Cypriots and Greeks, suggesting perhaps Ancient Greek admixture, perhaps this is the same case for Sicilians, the Greeks colonised and Hellenised both the Levant and Sicily, as for the Maltese, well, the Greeks didn't colonise Malta, the Phoenicians did, but the Byzantines did control the island until the 7th century C.E, perhaps the Greek admixture came from there?

O.K., in the Lazaridis study, which I believe is the most up to date and accurate, they plot near the Cypriots.

There is a lot we still don't know. We don't know, for instance, how similar the Levantines of pre-Islamic, pre-African slavery were to the Cypriots of the same time or modern Cypriots. We don't know how similar the Hellenized Jews of the Classical Era were to the Jews of the pre-or post-Babylonian captivity period. We don't how close genetically the ancient Greeks of the mainland or the islands were to any of these people. We won't know until we get ancient DNA from those peoples, as Semitic Duwa pointed out up thread.

I think you are searching for a certainty that cannot be attained with the level of information we now possess. Given how quickly the discoveries are coming, however, it may not be that long before there is some more clarity.

The point I was making about the plotting of AJ's near the Cypriots, to be more precise, is that if there had been substantial admixture in AJ genetic history with populations with WHG numbers on the order of, say, .36 to .46, like the Germans or the Slavs or the Lithuanians, then I don't see how they would be plotting in that gap or coming out as 0 WHG.

That isn't to say that some admixture didn't take place with more northerly Europeans than Greek islanders. Historically, there are the examples for conversion of locals in the pre-high Medieval period that were provided by FrankN and myself. There's also genetic evidence in some yDNA sub-clades that are completely Ashkenazi but that are likely to be of "gentile" origin. I'm thinking here of a far downstream R1b clade. (I'd have to look up the precise name.) I don't think the mtDNA data is dispositive because unfortunately, in order to make reasonable conclusions about mtDNA you need full genome sequences and we just don't have them from enough populations. Again, ancient DNA can provide a lot more clarity.

In fact, the pull away from the Levant and even away from the Cypriots could be, in part, the result of these smaller amounts of admixture with more northerly Europeans.

 

[Angela]

Studies:

A Documentary History of the Jews in Italy

Historical Lexicon of the Jews in Italy

Classified Bibliography of the History of the Jews in Italy



http://www.tau.ac.il/humanities/ggcenter/pitaly.html

The problem as far as these texts are concerned is getting access to them. Believe me, I've tried; I'm particularly interested in the ones that cover Lucca, Livorno and Genova, in the hope that they would also cover the Jewish communities of Pontremoli and Bagnone, but each volume is about three hundred dollars if you purchase it, and there are numerous volumes. Unfortunately, I don't have institutional access to them presently.

The Italian language beni culturali sites you posted are accessible and make for fascinating reading, but reading them all is beyond what I can devote to the topic in terms of time, as its not my major area of interest. I have dipped into them and skimmed the contents a bit, but that's about all. That is where I did find, however, documentation that some Jews remained in Sicily and converted after the imposition of the Spanish style Inquisition and the subsequent exile of most of the Jews.

 

[John Doe]

O.K., in the Lazaridis study, which I believe is the most up to date and accurate, they plot near the Cypriots.

There is a lot we still don't know. We don't know, for instance, how similar the Levantines of pre-Islamic, pre-African slavery were to the Cypriots of the same time or modern Cypriots. We don't know how similar the Hellenized Jews of the Classical Era were to the Jews of the pre-or post-Babylonian captivity period. We don't how close genetically the ancient Greeks of the mainland or the islands were to any of these people. We won't know until we get ancient DNA from those peoples, as Semitic Duwa pointed out up thread.

I think you are searching for a certainty that cannot be attained with the level of information we now possess. Given how quickly the discoveries are coming, however, it may not be that long before there is some more clarity.

The point I was making about the plotting of AJ's near the Cypriots, to be more precise, is that if there had been substantial admixture in AJ genetic history with populations with WHG numbers on the order of, say, .36 to .46, like the Germans or the Slavs or the Lithuanians, then I don't see how they would be plotting in that gap or coming out as 0 WHG.

That isn't to say that some admixture didn't take place with more northerly Europeans than Greek islanders. Historically, there are the examples for conversion of locals in the pre-high Medieval period that were provided by FrankN and myself. There's also genetic evidence in some yDNA sub-clades that are completely Ashkenazi but that are likely to be of "gentile" origin. I'm thinking here of a far downstream R1b clade. (I'd have to look up the precise name.) I don't think the mtDNA data is dispositive because unfortunately, in order to make reasonable conclusions about mtDNA you need full genome sequences and we just don't have them from enough populations. Again, ancient DNA can provide a lot more clarity.

In fact, the pull away from the Levant and even away from the Cypriots could be, in part, the result of these smaller amounts of admixture with more northerly Europeans.

According to the many plots on this study http://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/1312/1312.6639.pdf AJs, Sicilians and Maltese plot between Cypriots and Greeks, I'm pretty sure this is the Lazaridis study.

It's true that we don't know a lot of things and that I'm basically speculating here, hopefully this uncertainty will be clarified soon.

 

[Maleth]

That's not entirely accurate, according to the study you gave me, AJs, together with Sicilians and Maltese, plot in the gap between Europe and the Near East, between Cypriots and Greeks, so AJs don't plot with Cypriots, they plot between Cypriots and Greeks, suggesting perhaps Ancient Greek admixture, perhaps this is the same case for Sicilians, the Greeks colonised and Hellenised both the Levant and Sicily, as for the Maltese, well, the Greeks didn't colonise Malta, the Phoenicians did, but the Byzantines did control the island until the 7th century C.E, perhaps the Greek admixture came from there?

Present day Maltese Gene pool would know its origins from 1048/49 - In 870 The Aglibaids (coming from Tunisia) left Byzantine Malta an uninhabited 'hirba' (ruin) and was only repopulated from Sicily in 1048/49. This is according the Maghrebi scholar Al-Imyari. Al-Imyari also explains that the uninhabited Island was visited for fishing, honey harvest and wood. We also know in dna age that the haplogroups percentages are closest to those of Sicily. So this means that any present day gene pool does not represent any population prior to this time (including Neolithic Temple builders, Phoenicians/Carthaginians, Byzantines). Todays Gene pool after this time would have to include Thousands af Rodians that moved in with the Knights of St. John, some other thousand that came from Celano in Italy that were expelled to Malta, besides the numerous intermarriages (documented mostly in the churches around the harbour area) Between locals and some continental and other southern Europeans during the rule of the Knights of St John.

Please excuse my ignorance as I find the numbers and terminologies slightly overwhelming at times. Is there for example a Jewish marker!? - If there is what is it? example can one make a distinction between a J2a found in Greece which belongs and mutated in Greece and a J2a found in Lebanon which definably belongs to Lebanon?

 

[Maleth]

The linguistic origin of a surname isn't automatically related to an ethnic origin but Malta still today shares many surnames with modern-day Sicily (and viceversa), even if not all the Maltese surnames are spread in Sicily. Many of common surnames between Malta and Sicily are just typically Sicilian.

That is very correct

 

[Angela]

According to the many plots on this study http://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/1312/1312.6639.pdf AJs, Sicilians and Maltese plot between Cypriots and Greeks, I'm pretty sure this is the Lazaridis study.

It's true that we don't know a lot of things and that I'm basically speculating here, hopefully this uncertainty will be clarified soon.

I think a decent argument could be made that the northern mainland Greeks who were tested in Lazaridis et al plot "north" of the Sicilians, and AJ's, and Cypriots, for that matter, and probably the Islanders, although they weren't tested in Lazaridis, because they (the northern mainlanders) were somewhat impacted by the Slavic migrations of the early medieval period, and these other groups most definitely were not. There could also have been some impact from Celtic groups passing through the Balkans, or a differential impact of the Indo-European migrations.

There are many factors that affect where different groups plot genetically other than admixture with each other.

 

[John Doe]

I think a decent argument could be made that the northern mainland Greeks who were tested in Lazaridis et al plot "north" of the Sicilians, and AJ's, and Cypriots, for that matter, and probably the Islanders, although they weren't tested in Lazaridis, because they (the northern mainlanders) were somewhat impacted by the Slavic migrations of the early medieval period, and these other groups most definitely were not. There could also have been some impact from Celtic groups passing through the Balkans, or a differential impact of the Indo-European migrations.

There are many factors that affect where different groups plot genetically other than admixture with each other.

Of course, it's possible that Pre Islamic Pre Arab slave trade Levantines were by default Sicilian/Maltese/Cypriot/East Mediterranean like which means that the AJs didn't have to admix to be in this position, they were there already for being Phoenician/Cypriot/Sicilian/Maltese like Canaanites in origin. That would make a lot of sense in fact, considering the fact that the Phoenicians colonised both Sicily and Malta, and later on when the Maltese population was wiped out, it was repopulated by Sicilians who were probably heavily influenced by the Phoenicians.

 

[FrankN]

As a German, I am allergic to any attempts to assign specific traits to (ethnic) groups for presumed genetic reasons - that line of argument has caused too much disaster in history, especially in recent German history. I don't have problems, however, to state that a specific social situation tends to culturally emphasize certain talents within the group concerned - a process that already starts in early childhood education, with parents encouraging certain behaviour, while discouraging or ignoring some other activities. In Germany, e.g., there are multiple studies, which demonstrate that even today, educational success is closely linked to the parents' educational and professional background (but much less to their income).

In that sense, we may look at the AJ cultural package as follows:

1. High appreciation of formal education (school, religious studies, academics, etc.);
2. Strong focus on literacy, including the ability to read several scripts (Latin and Hebrew);
3. Multi-lingualsm (Yiddish at home, Hebrew in the Synagogue, other languages on the local market or when engaging in longer-distance trade) - note in this respect that linguistic ability / training is typically also linked to musical abilities;
4. Systematic and relatively early training in text comprehension and interpretation (Thora);
5. Strong community spirit, orientation on values and ethical norms (including the ability to question such norms);
6. Attention to financial management, including related algebraic and mathematical skills;
7. Trained in psychological and social diagnostics (the kids on the street are somehow different, eat other kind of foods, celebrate other holidays, etc.). Note that this is a passive trait. There would typically be little encouragement to "learn to behave like other kids", i.e. actively acquire social and leadership skills that are applicable outside the Jewish community.
   

All in all a cultural package that should score extremely well in most IQ tests. However, while there is certainly no lack of AJ among distinguished 19th and 20th century scientists, doctors, musicians, authors and bankers, they don't seem to be that well represented in painting, sculpture, engineering, design or architecture. Apparently, manual skills weren't held in particular high esteem within the Jewish community, which of course relates to the fact that from the High Medieval onwards, Ashkenazi Jews were hardly allowed to practice crafts except for jewellery. [This, in turn, related to their specific status outside traditional tribal and city laws, which implied that they could not enter the trade guilds that were established under such laws in the high middle ages.]