Back in September I noted that Jewish children in Israel average Raven IQs of about 92 (U.K. norms) but by age 14.5 these increase to 95. Since it’s thought that Jewish IQ increases post-puberty, I take 95 as a good estimate for Israel’s adult Jewish IQ.

Unfortunately the data was not disaggregated by type of Jewish ancestry. An analysis by Hanna David and Richard Lynn found that in Israel, European Jews score about 14 IQ points higher than Oriental Jews though the gap is bigger on verbal tests. For example on the Israeli WISC, the gap was 1.1 standard deviations (SD) (17 IQ points) on verbal IQ but only 0.93 SD on Performance IQ (14 IQ points). It’s unclear what the Raven IQ gap would be more like verbal, performance or full-scale, but let’s split the difference and say 15 points.

Assuming 31.8% of Israeli Jews are Ashkenazi and they score 15 points higher than the non-Ashkenazi, then what would they need to score for the average IQ of all Israeli Jews to be 95? The answer is 105.

[Update 2022-02-06: Commenter Mug of Pee found a different source claiming 44.2% of Israeli Jews are Ashkenazi. Applying the same math to this figure put’s the Ashkenazi IQ at 103.]

So it seems at least in Israel and probably Serbia, Ashkenazi Jews have Raven IQs identical to those of East Asians. I can’t find any data on Ashkenazi Raven data in the United States, except for a small group of Ashkenazi prisoners who scored about 19 IQ points higher than the Gentile prisoners.

Just as Ashkenazim score 10 points higher than the average Israeli Jew, there is another group that scores 11 points lower. In his analysis of the Israeli military IQ data, James Flynn noted:

Recall that those not usually tested are predominantly from Orthodox homes of Eastern European origin, and they are known to have a lower IQ profile than the rest of the Jewish population (Judy Goldenberg,
personal communication, 25 April 1993). Should there not be a large IQ gap between the usually tested and the usually not tested? In reply, that is exactly what the projection shows…The IQ gap between the usually tested and the usually not tested is a robust 10·7 points

Not usually tested by the military is what Flynn means. He’s referring to those who escape service through pregnancy or religious devotion. However they likely would be included in the age 14 Israeli Jewish average of IQ 95, I assume.

So to summarize there are three types of Jews in Israel: Ashkenazi IQ 103- 105, Middle eastern IQ 88 -90, and ultra-Orthodox IQ 84 (11 points below the military sample, which since it’s 98% Jewish, presumably scored 95). Of course these groups are not mutually exclusive because Orthodox can be either Ashkenazi or Middle easter though the group Flynn describes is of Eastern European ancestry.

[Update 2022-02-06: I crossed out my estimate for Orthodox IQ because I simply don’t believe they score that low. I may have made a logical error: Just because the people who are usually not tested are primarily Orthodox Jews, doesn’t mean the Orthodox Jews are primarily usually not tested, so I can’t necessarily infer the IQ of one from the other]

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