Steven Pease is a Christian. But he can play the did-you-know-so-and-so-is-Jewish game just as well as anyone else.
In fact, the Sonoma resident has written the definitive book on the subject, titled “The Golden Age of Jewish Achievement: The Compendium of a Culture, a People, and Their Stunning Performance.”
Clocking in at 622 pages, the book details the many-splendored accomplishments of Jews in every realm, from business and entertainment to sports, politics, art, medicine and even crime.
It’s a book openly, almost giddily, admiring of Jewish success.
“I do think I have a bit of an advantage,” Pease says. “I don’t have a dog in the fight. An element that is very politically incorrect [says] that cultures may be different, but not all are equal. Here’s a culture that has done remarkable things.”
So remarkable, in Pease’s estimation, that while flipping through the chapters of his book it becomes impossible to imagine modern life without the contributions of the Jews.
Forget those viral e-mails about Jews winning a disproportionate amount of Nobel Prizes (23 percent), or the prepondrance of Jews on the Fortune 500 (22 percent).
Take Hollywood. Jews founded and ran virtually every studio of note — Paramount, Universal, Fox, MGM, United Artists, Warner Bros., Miramax and Dreamworks. Disney is an exception, but in more recent decades, Jews, including Michael Eisner, have captained that ship.
Or take, for a more random example, the apparel industry. As Pease’s book points out, the following companies were all started by Jews: Levi Strauss, Calvin Klein, Ralph Lauren, Donna Karan, Liz Claiborne, Guess, Jordache, Van Heusen, Florsheim Shoes, Reebok, Adidas and Maidenform.
The underlying message is clear: If not for the Jews, everyone would be walking around in potato sacks right now.
Pease’s book fills in plenty of juicy details about all of the players.
“As I looked into it, I became fascinated,” Pease says of his exhaustive, mostly Web-based research. “The rate of achievement is so much greater than I would have expected.”
A venture capitalist and the co-chair of the U.S. Russia Foundation for Economic Advancement and the Rule of Law, Pease took five years to compile and write the book. He says he was inspired by the many Jews he came to know and like over the course of his business career.
That may explain in part the book’s emphasis on business success, since so much else springs from that: philanthropy, high-tech innovation and politics, for example.
Of course, the big question is, what explains the outsized achievement of a people who amount to less than 2 percent of the population? Plenty of theorists before Pease have attempted to explain it. Pease has his own theories, which run the gamut from genes to God.
“Culture is the single most important driving force,” he says. “There are some arguments about genetics, about second-generation impact and about hard work, but when I look at those, they have some truth and some flaws. It’s not just about Judaism; it’s a system of cultural values.”
Those would include an emphasis on education, ethics, moderation, modernism and tolerance. Pease wonders if some of those core values have begun to erode, especially as Jews in the West continue to assimilate and structural anti-Semitism fades away.
In his book, he also cites ominous stats — a 52 percent intermarriage rate, declining birth rates — that point to demographic challenges. All of which suggests the golden age of Jewish achievement might draw to a close someday.
On the other hand, he notes how Jews through the ages have always responded to adversity. Being a true Judeophile, Pease would never bet against the Jewish people.
“They earned it,” he says of the Jews and their success. “And you can, too. Envy is stupid.”
“The Golden Age of Jewish Achievement: The Compendium of a Culture, a People, and Their Stunning Performance” by Steven L. Pease (622 pages, Deucalion Books, $32.95)