Word: ashkenazy
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...crossroads. The peace process with the Palestinians is at a stalemate. Israel's conflict in south Lebanon with the Syrian backed, Iranian-funded Hizbullah has reached a pitched crescendo. Internally, the economy is in the midst of a slippery slide, while fault-lines between religious and secular, Ashkenazi and Sephardi (Jews of European origin vs. Jews of mid-Eastern origin), political left and political right, are tremoring towards earthquake. The new prime minister will be charged with arbitrating these complex, seemingly intractable problems...
...site of a tragic military training accident while chief of staff. While he has been exonerated in the courts, the accusations themselves are not forgotten history, and they continue to cloud his reputation. Second, his Labor party has had a difficult time shrugging off the perception that they are Ashkenazi elitists who discriminate against the electorally powerful Sephardic community...
...stocks are doing O.K., but my gene portfolio took a big hit recently. Doctors at Johns Hopkins announced that they have discovered a genetic mutation in Ashkenazi Jews that doubles the risk of colon cancer. Ashkenazi Jews are those with roots in Central and Eastern Europe. That covers most Jewish Americans, including me. Only 6% of Ashkenazi Jews are thought to carry the defective gene, but that's enough to make it, according to the New York Times, "the most common known cancer gene in a particular population." And colon cancer is just one disease for which Ashkenazi Jews seem...
...Times was comically eager to point out that other ethnic groups probably have a lesser genetic tendency to a larger number of diseases, so Ashkenazi Jews shouldn't feel that put upon. Nevertheless, both stories raised the possibility that blood tests for this genetic defect will be used by health insurers and employers to discriminate against people with the defective gene. (Why? Oh, possibly bosses may not want their workplace atmosphere soured by a lot of grumpy people who've just undergone a colonoscopy...
...blood. The folks who believe this are mistaken. But even the politically correct position--that "intelligence" is actually a bundle of different mental capabilities that people have in varying amounts, and that these capabilities can be strongly affected by environmental factors--leaves room for a large genetic component. Few Ashkenazi Jews, I suspect, would trade their genes for a random draw from the gene pool, whatever their fear of colon cancer and whatever they may have felt (and said) about Charles Murray, notorious co-author of The Bell Curve...