Peoplehood and Genealogy

This piece in the New Republic offers a fascinating take on the real and perceived issues of genealogy. In a nutshell, it addresses one of the major questions I find on college campuses these days: How can you explain the idea of Jewish Peoplehood in anything but tribal terms? (The unspoken question behind this one is: "Isn't tribalism a bad thing?")

The author, Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker, summarizes the facts about how geneaology works: After you get past the great-great-grandparent stage, the level of diluation (remember, you have 16 g-g-ps) is enormous, and leads to the inevitable conclusion that we're all related. So hooray for humanism, and boo to tribalsim.

And yet: Pinker reminds us that in most traditional societies, people generally married their cousins. While there is a slight increase in the risk of genetic disease in this, the social effects are enormous. In fact, Pinker says that the modern concept of society is built on the creation of a trans-family, anti-tribal, national (or even international) identity:

"In the struggle between society and family, the exponential mathematics of kinship ordinarily works to the advantage of society. As time passes or groups get larger, family trees intertwine, dynasties dissipate, and nepotistic emotions get diluted. But families can defend themselves with a potent tactic: they can graft the twig tips of the family tree together by cousin marriage... Not only does cousin marriage amplify the average degree of relatedness among members of the clan, but it enmeshes them in a network of triangular relationships, with kinsmen valuing each other because of their many mutual kin as well as their own relatedness. As a result, the extended family, clan, or tribe can emerge as a powerfully cohesive bloc--and one with little common cause with other families, clans, or tribes in the larger polity that comprises them. The anthropologist Nancy Thornhill has shown that the prohibitions against incestuous marriages in most societies are not public-health measures aimed at reducing birth defects but the society's way of fighting back against extended families. "

Now take this and read the story of the assimilation of American Jews (or any ethnic group in America). Tribal=Arranged-Marriage=Bad, American=Love-Conquers-All=Good, at least in the narrative of American values. And we wonder why base appeals against interfaith marriages from traditional Jews sound, well... racist? (Yet we can't argue with Pinker's logic. In fact he's not making an argument about genes, but about family: common history, language, and values. This is in fact the basis on which I talk to people about marriage choices. If you're interested in building a home in which Jewish life, holidays, and values play a central part, you probably want to choose a partner who does as well.)

Because it's too good to pass up, here's Pinker's conclusion:

"In January 2003, during the buildup to the war in Iraq, the journalist and blogger Steven Sailer published an article in The American Conservative in which he warned readers about a feature of that country that had been ignored in the ongoing debate. As in many traditional Middle Eastern societies, Iraqis tend to marry their cousins. About half of all marriages are consanguineous (including that of Saddam Hussein, who filled many government positions with his relatives from Tikrit). The connection between Iraqis' strong family ties and their tribalism, corruption, and lack of commitment to an overarching nation had long been noted by those familiar with the country. In 1931, King Faisal described his subjects as "devoid of any patriotic idea ... connected by no common tie, giving ear to evil; prone to anarchy, and perpetually ready to rise against any government whatsoever." Sailer presciently suggested that Iraqi family structure and its mismatch with the sensibilities of civil society would frustrate any attempt at democratic nation-building."

Dude.