Quotation from Arthur Ruppin “In respect of intellectual gifts the Jews can scarcely be surpassed ” — 1913

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[T]his very likeness to the Asiatic peoples, from whom they have been separated for 2,000 years, shows that the Jews have remained unchanged, and that in the Jews of to-day we may say we have the same people who fought victoriously under King David, who repented their misdeeds under Ezra and Nehemiah, died fighting for fieedom under Bar-Kochba, were the great carriers of trade between Europe and the Orient in the early Middle Ages ... Thus the Jews have not only preserved their great natural racial gifts, but through a long process of selection these gifts have become strengthened. The terrible conditions under which the Jews lived during the last 500 years necessitated a bitter stmggle for life in which only the cleverest and strongest survived. The result is that in the Jew of to-day, we have what is in some respects a particularly valuable human type. Other nations may have other points of superiority, but in respect of intellectual gifts the Jews can scarcely be surpassed by any nation.

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