The Civic Platform - A Political Journal of Ideas and Analysis

In 3 studies the IQ gap between the Oriental Jews and the Ashkenazi Jews in Israel was found to be 12 points (100-88 and 103-91). But I think all these tests were Raven tests which give a score of the average of verbal and spatial IQ. I believe that the vocabulary & math average of the Ashkenazim in Israel should be a little bit less than 110 like the Jews in America. The Ashkenazim in Israel constitute 40 % of the population in Israel, the Oriental Jews constitute 40 % and the Arabs constitute 20 percent. Israel has the highest number of scientists and the university graduates per capita. Though the Oriental Jews and the Arabs pull the average down Israel scores top. Israel is also in the top 3 countries in national science citation intensity and far ahead of Sweden in stem cell density (113 to 82).

http://www.nature. com/nature/ journal/v430/ n6997/fig_ tab/430311a_ F2.html

http://www.the- scientist. com/news/ display/23240

It is impossible for the Ashkenazim to do this with 100 or 103 IQ. To me this situation proves that the Raven tests aren’t reliable enough. I think this is the reason why many researchers say that verbal is the best predictor of g and just ignore the spatial score.

But there is also something interesting about the Oriental Jews in Israel.

http://edu.technion .ac.il/Giftednes s/Members/ HannaDavid/ DavidLynn- Israel.pdf

The Oriental Jews in an Israeli university scored 3 points lower in math but 13 points lower in verbal than the Ashkenazi Jews. As the university undergraduates are highly selected this reduces the gap between the 2 groups. But it seems that the Oriental Jews are much better in math than verbal (probably they score above 100). They must have been selected for their high math IQ, not high verbal IQ. The researchers say that the Oriental Jews don’t have an asymmetric profile of IQ (high verbal, low spatial) like the Ashkenazim but I think they do have in verbal vs math.