How many Jews do you see in this photograph of Democratic leaders who lean heavily to the left?
You should have spotted three right off the bat: Chuck Schumer, Bernie Sanders and Adam Schiff. Here's one you might have missed:
AOC has also publicly acknowledged distant Sephardic Jewish ancestry. Speaking at a December 2018 Hanukkah celebration hosted by Jews for Racial and Economic Justice in Queens, she described a family history of Sephardic Jews who fled persecution during the Spanish Inquisition. Some families preserved Jewish traditions privately while outwardly practicing Catholicism.
Ocasio-Cortez has personally identified as Catholic and clarified that she is not claiming a Jewish religious identity, but rather acknowledging a multi-layered ancestral heritage that includes Spanish, African, Indigenous Taino, and Jewish roots.
Interestingly, millions of practicing Catholics throughout Latin America, Spain, Portugal, and the Southwestern United States claim or have recently discovered 15th-century Sephardic Jewish ancestry.
A 2018 study published in Nature Communications examined 6,589 people from five Latin American countries. Approximately 23% had more than 5% inferred Sephardic, East Mediterranean, or South Mediterranean ancestry, with the largest contribution attributed to Sephardic ancestry. The findings support a substantial converso legacy in Latin America, although the sample does not represent the entire region.
Counting AOC’s reported Jewish ancestry, four of the eight prominent political figures in this photograph have Jewish roots—fifty percent. That is a striking concentration in this particular group, given that Jews constitute approximately 2% of the American population.
And politics is hardly the only arena in which Jews bat above our weight. The same pattern appears in science, medicine, mathematics, economics, literature, music, and entertainment. Consider the Nobel Prizes. Jews constitute approximately 0.2% of the world’s population. I wanna make sure you get your head around that number—.2% is .002. That about one person in five hundred. Yet JINFO’s documented compilation identifies Jews and people of partial Jewish ancestry as approximately 22% of individual Nobel laureates worldwide, and 36% of American laureates. Those figures include ancestry as well as religious identity; they do not mean that every recipient practiced Judaism. The breakdown is striking:
- Economics: approximately 40% of laureates worldwide.
- Physiology or Medicine: approximately 26%.
- Physics: approximately 25%.
- Chemistry: approximately 19%.
- Literature: approximately 14%.
- Peace: approximately 8% of individual recipients, excluding organizations.
These are rounded figures from the same compilation, which documents the individuals included and their backgrounds.
Mathematics and computing show a similar pattern. JINFO’s lists place Jews and people of partial Jewish ancestry at approximately 24% of Fields Medal recipients and 30% of Turing Award recipients. These are among the highest distinctions in mathematics and computer science.
The names behind the numbers make the contributions tangible. Albert Einstein transformed our understanding of space, time, and light. Richard Feynman helped develop quantum electrodynamics. Emmy Noether made foundational contributions to abstract algebra and theoretical physics. John von Neumann helped shape mathematics, game theory, and modern computing. These were advances that changed how humanity understands and uses the world.
In medicine, the benefits reached families everywhere. Jonas Salk and Albert Sabin developed the injectable and oral polio vaccines, respectively. Both were children of Jewish immigrants. Their work helped protect generations of children from a devastating disease.
In economics, Jewish Nobel laureates include Paul Samuelson, Milton Friedman, Kenneth Arrow, Daniel Kahneman, Joseph Stiglitz, Paul Krugman, and Claudia Goldin. Their different approaches also illustrate that Jewish achievement does not imply agreement about politics or economics.
In literature, the Nobel roster includes Shmuel Agnon, Nelly Sachs, Saul Bellow, Isaac Bashevis Singer, Harold Pinter, Bob Dylan, and Louise Glück. Their work spans languages, countries, genres, and very different experiences of Jewish life.
In music, consider Irving Berlin, George and Ira Gershwin, Richard Rodgers, Oscar Hammerstein II, Leonard Bernstein, and Stephen Sondheim. Their work helped define the American musical and the American songbook. Jewish songwriters even gave America such familiar standards as “White Christmas” and “God Bless America.”
In comedy and television, consider the Marx Brothers, Mel Brooks, Carl Reiner, Joan Rivers, Jerry Seinfeld, and Larry David. Their influence runs through generations of American entertainment.
And yes, there are the Nobel Peace Prizes. Jewish recipients include Tobias Asser, Alfred Fried, René Cassin, Henry Kissinger, Menachem Begin, Elie Wiesel, Shimon Peres, Yitzhak Rabin, and Joseph Rotblat. Wiesel was recognized for his message of peace and human dignity; Rotblat for efforts to reduce the role of nuclear weapons.
These examples only scratch the surface of Jewish achievement. Even within the fields mentioned, the names and contributions extend far beyond those included here.
And then there is the contribution the world never received. Across centuries, Jews were murdered, forcibly converted, or pressured to abandon their identity. Others converted by choice, and their descendants’ contributions may no longer be recognized as part of Jewish history. These are different experiences, but together they make the full story impossible to measure.
What discoveries were never made because a potential scientist was killed as a child? What medicines, music, businesses, and works of literature never came into being? What prosperity might their children and grandchildren have created? How different might the political world look if those communities had survived and flourished?
We cannot know. But looking at what so small a surviving people has contributed, I cannot help wondering: How much more of a blessing might we have been—and how much did humanity lose along with us?
Perhaps there is a biblical thread connecting the achievements described here with the desire to help those who have less. Abraham was called to become a blessing to the families of the earth (GeFnesis 12:2–3). The Torah commands us to open our hands to the poor (Deuteronomy 15:7–11), leave part of our harvest for the poor and the stranger (Leviticus 19:9–10), and remember that the ability to create wealth comes from God (Deuteronomy 8:18). Prosperity carries responsibility.
That inheritance may help explain why socialism’s promise of taking from those with more to provide for those with less appeals to some Jews. The concern for the poor has deep roots in our Scriptures. Whether a particular political system fulfills that responsibility is a separate question—and one on which Jews profoundly disagree.
I am still trying to understand. How does such a small people make such a large mark? And how do we best fulfill the responsibility that comes with our blessings?
P.S. A word about Jewish ancestry. Judaism is in the DNA—It is in the BLOOD. That is why Hilter did NOT care if a Jew practiced their religion. If just one or two of person's grandparents was Jewish, according the Germany's Nuremberg Laws, that person was classified as "Mischling." It was a derogatory Nazi classification meaning “mixed race” or “mixed ancestry.”