An Educated Jew
The author’s son is called to the Torah for his Bar Mitzvah alongside his proud parents, 2016.
“In the first half of the 20th century, despite pervasive and continuing social discrimination against Jews throughout the Western world, despite the retraction of legal rights, and despite the Holocaust, Jews won 14 percent of Nobel Prizes in literature, chemistry, physics, and medicine/physiology. In the second half of the 20th century, when Nobel Prizes began to be awarded to people from all over the world, that figure rose to 29 percent. So far, in the 21st century, it has been 32 percent. Jews constitute about two-tenths of one percent of the world’s population. You do the math”. - Charles Murray
Throughout modern history, Educated Jews have exerted a pervasive, positive influence on our civilization. Wherever we are, our economic and cultural success elevates the societies we live in. Jews are a litmus test for democracy. In contrast and in every case, places that murder and drive away their Jews are neither free nor successful.
The underlying cause of Jewish exceptionalism is our culture of learning – all Jews are obsessed with the education of their children, especially Ashkenazim. At my oldest son’s Bar Mitzvah, here was my benediction to him:
Our God, the God of Abraham and Sarah, did not give us a Cross, or a Sword, or a Statue to worship.
God gave us a book.
Both of your parents went to college and to graduate school – we are Educated Jews.
Your Mother’s Father went to Medical School and became a renowned heart surgeon.
My Father went to Law School and ran his own law firm for more than forty years.
My Mother got her Doctorate in Political Science and has helped whole nations heal their conflicts.
Your Mother’s Mother got her master’s degree in special education, and my Stepmother went to college and worked for Planned Parenthood in Atlanta– they are ALL Educated Jews.
This gift from God, the Torah, has been given to generations before you so that they too can be Educated Jews. And now this gift has been given to you.
There’s a raging debate among academic geneticists over whether the exceptional intelligence of Ashkenazi Jews is primarily inherited or a result of the Jewish culture of learning. I find this debate tedious: my children enjoy both. They benefit from the genetic legacy of generations of Educated Jews marrying each other, and from the intellectual challenge of growing up in a household where learning is the focus.
My sons are privileged, but that privilege doesn’t come from the money I’ve made in business or our social status in Boulder. It comes from having two loving Jewish parents who read to them every night of their lives until they could read to us. It comes from an unrelenting focus on their intellectual development. It comes from growing up in a house and in a community filled with Educated Jews.
I grew up in Atlanta in the 60’s and 70’s surrounded by antisemitism – it was the background noise of my childhood. My father was a corporate lawyer by trade, but he and his law partners had a penchant for social justice in the racist South and devoted their pro bono efforts to the cause of civil rights for Black people. Joe Lefkoff bailed Rev. Martin Luther King out of Fulton County Jail on one occasion, and on another, argued Grey v. Sanders before the US Supreme Court, ending the County Unit System in Georgia and insuring that one man, one vote was the law. Our redneck Atlanta neighbors hated him for this activism, hated us for being Jews, and let us know it every chance they could.
When I came to climb at age 16, Boulder was the first place I’d ever been where no one gave a shit about any of this. The only thing people here cared about was whether you could get a rope to the top of the cliff, make a decent powder turn, or ride your bike down the singletrack. It was an epiphany for me, and I’ve loved Boulder for it ever since. We’ve raised our sons in this bubble, teaching them to climb and ski with all the benefits of Jewish nature and nurture.
Like my wife and me, my boys went East to college for their education, my older son in computer science and engineering and my youngest in biomedical sciences. While both my boys have experienced antisemitism in their lives, it reached a crescendo for them in 2024.
This year, they’ve seen angry mobs of fellow students chanting antisemitic slogans on campus, calling for the death of Jews. My father, who died last summer, would have been appalled to witness the progressive children of his liberal colleagues spewing Jew Hate from the lawns of the elite universities to which they were admitted.
In contrast, I’m happy to watch my sons experience real antisemitism firsthand. Jew Hate is now and always has been a direct consequence of our success, a reminder that the influence Jews wield in a free society can never be taken for granted. In this season of antisemitic campus vitriol, I’m grateful that my sons have connected to their Jewish roots with renewed passion and committed themselves to advance our American society as Educated Jews.
Mazel Tov to Jonah Lefkoff, Northeastern University Class of 2026, and to Asher Lefkoff, Tufts University Class of 2028!