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PAOLO TONATO
board, Aharon asked him: What is that thing Why? Why was there almost no migration Stella. Three I bumped almost by chance
with the two lines? (It was an x!). Aharon of Jews from the Mideast and North Africa into Jews and Jewish history at graduate
said he realized he had to understand math to the US, Canada and South America? school. One day, I met Zvika [Eckstein]
the way he understood Talmud. And he did. Why did Jewish migration from central and at Boston University. We started talking
He supported his family by working for a Eastern Europe greatly accelerate at the end about research and the rest is history. He is a
hevra kadisha (burial society). He is now of the 19th century and not earlier? Why were fantastic scholar and a wonderful co-author.
considering doing graduate studies. Jews key players in commercial and financial Our families are also bonded by personal
The Haredim are right. We Jews are sectors during the 17th-19th centuries but friendship.
who we are, as The Chosen Few shows contributed very little during the Scientific Botticini and Eckstein raise a worrisome
convincingly, because we studied Torah and Revolution or the Industrial Revolution? We issue. About 80 percent of Jews in the United
Talmud. This is a core value that must never hope The Chosen Many will shed light on States are college educated. In Israel, less than
be discarded or demeaned. Let us cherish these fascinating questions. 40 percent have a college education. Can this
and strengthen it. gap persist? Is [our] theory consistent with the
At the same time, secular Israelis are I mustered up my courage and asked exceptional success of the recent Israeli high-
right, too. At no time in Jewish history did Maristella, Are you Jewish? tech boom?
all observant Jews sit and study Torah for I am not Jewish. But three things made I have now rethought my own familys
their entire lives. A tiny select handful did. me deeply attached to Judaism, the Jewish history. True, my grandparents and parents
Lets choose that handful carefully, just people and Israel. One When I was six, my fled pogroms and grinding poverty. But
as we selectively choose our professors parents (both with primary school educations they were pulled to Canada, in part because
of philosophy and literature. Let the rest and blue-collar jobs) bought me an illustrated Canada needed them, their energy, honesty,
study Torah and Talmud and also work kids encyclopedia. I learned that many hard work, and high aspirations. And I was
productively and defend their families and things existed beyond my village, histories pulled to Israel, in part because Israel in 1967
their country. of people who lived centuries earlier. This is needed economists to teach at the newly
Your next book, a sequel, will be called one of the many reasons I deeply admire the founded Tel Aviv University. I had in fact
The Chosen Many. What will it be about? Jews. They cherished learning and study for chosen to study economics partly for that
What explains the divergent trajectory of everyone, two millennia ago. reason, after a chat with the founding father
Ashkenazi vs. Sephardi Jews in the 450 years Two My name Maristella is the Italian of Israeli economics, Don Patinkin. Am I
after the 1492-7 Iberian expulsion? Around equivalent of the Latin Stella Maris (Star of and my ancestors, too evidence for The
1492, there were about 500,000 Ashkenazim the Sea), a widespread first name of Jewish Chosen Few?
and 500,000 Sephardim in the world. Some women in Italy in the Middle Ages. Who
450 years later, there were about 14.3 million knows? Maybe I have among my ancestors The writer is senior research fellow at
Ashkenazim and 2.2 million Sephardim. a great-great-great-great grandmother called the S. Neaman Institute, Technion