Sunday, November 2, 2014

The Jewish Brain of Einstein

Nadene Goldfoot                                                                 

  Young Albert Einstein b: March 14, 1879 Ulm, Germany; d: April 18, 1955 Princeton, New Jersey

History 2 had a program on October 31st about Einstein's brain.  His brain was definitely different from most of the people on earth.
                                                                           
 He had a thickness of corpus callosum where nerves cross from one side to the other.  He had a unique prefrontal cortex.  Einstein had an IQ figured at 180, the highest ever recorded.  He was able to think in terms far better than most people in math concepts.  When he died at age 76 in 1955, Thomas Harvey, pathologist, did the autopsy (something not really desired by the Jewish laws- but being who he was, it happened. His parents were not observant Jews. Many  German  Jews had become very reformed, and his family had gone even a step farther away.   Harvey cut Einstein's brain into pieces and preserved it in formaldehyde.  His brain size was normal.  It weighed less than the average adult male brain by 1/3 of a pound.  However, his "muscles" were in his brain, "which were that he had greater than normal numbers of glial cells, which are needed to nourish high-performance neurons and are believed to help the hippocampus and cerebellum work more efficiently."

The middle portion of his brain, known as the inferior parietal lobes, which influence mathematical and music ability and help process visual images were 15% wider and the neurons here were packed tighter than in other people.  The sulcus groove that we have early in life  didn't extend all the way and so didn't shrink because he used his brain a lot.
                                                                               
                     Albert Einstein and friend David Ben Gurion, 1st President of Israel

The program thought that perhaps he had outside space alien help in this somehow.  At no time did they ever mention that Albert Einstein was Jewish, from Jewish parents that go back to the time of the Exodus.  They never gave it a thought that he came from people who had developed a lot of intelligent people somehow, which was very disappointing to me.  They couldn't give any credit to the Jewish people and his family tree..To understand how Einstein had such a high IQ of 180, one must look at his inherited DNA as well as the physical characteristics of his brain.  .
                                                                             
                   Theoretical Physicist and Philosopher of Science of 20th Century, known of his Theory of Relativity 

Albert Einstein came from a people whose priority was knowledge and thinking skills.  His father, Hermann,  was an engineer. His mother was Pauline Koch before marrying Hermann.   Physical prowess was not the guiding light in selecting a mate.  Intelligence has been the mark of achieving the right mates and from the right families for many generations.  "Genes circumscribe human possibility."  The question has always been debated as to which factor decides intelligence, genes or environment.  The evidence shows that genes make these decisions.  You must remember though, that our parents carry many genes to be passed on from all their ancestors, and each child grabs a handful and his handful may be different ones than his siblings.   Einstein had one younger sister.   He still may have been the only genious in his family, but chances are that the other siblings he might have had would be very bright, too, though not as bright as he was.  He lucked out.  In this case, environment and DNA affected Maja, his sister, in reaching 180 IQ.  Females have not reached the heights of IQ's found in men as yet.  We are more stable, though in having a good high IQ without having the extremes at both ends of the curve.  Scientists have also discovered that it is the female who passes on the DNA of intelligence, so you inherit this IQ from your mother's genes, though I'm sure, that you get it from your father, too.

Also, Jews  have been found to be distantly related to their spouses and many can go back 5 generations to see their two families were connected.  DNA testing is proving this fact.  In fact, the latest test result is that all of the Jews are at least 30th cousins to each other.  We Jews have been marrying Jews, and we're only 0.02% of the world population.

For a small group, we've won an amazing % of Nobel prizes.  Science seems to be our forte, but we do well in other fields, too.  For the people who Hitler said was sub-human and killed off 6 million of us, we are people who rise to the occasion and have become leaders of men.

Moses was our 1st prophet. He had the ability to hear G-d speaking to him.  Today, when someone says something like this, he is put in a mental institution, or at the least, sent to a psychiatrist.  Moses, the former prince of Egypt,  was extra-ordinary.  He was carrying around a lot of guilt for running out on his people, and so his brain was under a strain.  Something then happened and he knew what he had to do.  He was hearing messages and visualizing what to do.  He had tapped into the lines to G-d.  He wasn't crazy;  he was special.

 Following him in this ability was Joshua, our Judges, Samuel, Isaiah, Jeremiah and Ezekiel.  Moses, born in 1391 BCE, discovered his ability to hear from G-d at age 80, so  by 1311 he discovered this power.  Isaiah prophecized in Jerusalem (a part of Judah) from the death of King Uzziah/Azariah (780-740 BCE)  until the middle of King Hezekiah's reign (720-692 BCE).   Therefore, his prophecy came from (740 to 701 BCE).   Assyria had attacked Israel and Judah  in 722 BCE and they had led away the best of the population as slaves.The attacking went on till 721 BCE.  

Our ancestors have produced 12 men of extraordinary gifts of prophecy; Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi,  over a period of 350 years beginning in 700 BCE from the middle of the 1st Temple period to the early years of the 2nd Temple.  Each prophecized for brief periods to get something important across.  Rashi, our great biblical commentator explained that the era of prophecy was ending then,  so they would be the last prophets.  Haggai, Zechariah and Malachi had to write down their own prophecies.  He saw Hosea, a contemporary of Isaiah, was according to the sages, the greatest prophet of his time.  Since then, we have had a few more make prophecies that have come true.  Hosea, born in the 8th century BCE lived and prophesied in the kingdom of Israel from the reign of Jeroboam II in 744 BCE but mainly in the last years of the kingdom up to 722 BCE.  His prophecies were about the relationship between G-d and Israel and in 4-14, rebuking Israel, followed by promises of consolation and salvation.  He saw the bond between G-d and Israel as an almost physical love with Israel compared to a wife in a marriage.  He forecasted Israel's exile, but also saw visions of restoration after the people's repentance.  Much later, Judah the Pious of the 13th century CE from Germany made prophecies that area coming true.  .

To think that at one time, most likely at the fall of Jerusalem to the Romans in 70 BCE, we were so depleted of a population that DNA scientists have found our Ashkenazi ancestors  600 to 800 years ago, from 1214 to 1614, happened to be only 350 Jews, caused by a bottleneck.  (1)When you think of the men who managed to get out of a burning Jerusalem and escape to France and then to Germany, they had to take their wives and children. Over 1 million Jews were killed in Jerusalem's fall.  100,000 were taken as slaves to Rome.   Many were to old to bear children anymore out of the group.  Our 350 would have been the children of those survivors who fled.  They would have had many of their men slain fighting off attackers, and there would have been hunger, thirst, the elements to deal it in nature that would have cut down the population.

As far as that goes, an earlier DNA report was that we Jews had only 4 women as our ancestors.  That means that each generation was from that population only.  People from other women had died out.  So here we are today, from one of 4 women and 350 survivors who managed to procreate and rebuild our nation.

Long before in our midst we had other anomalies of the brain; men who had the ability to prophesize the future.  Surely they also had brains that had mutated to have special abilities, most likely in similar areas that Einstein's brain had been affected.
                                                               
Peter Hurkos b: May 21, 1911-d: June 1, 1988 from Dordrect, Netherlands

I remember reading long ago about a man that had something happen to his brain.  Peter Hurkos had a brain injury after falling off a ladder while working and hit his head at age 30 and was in a coma from the fall for 3 days.   The end result was that he had the gift of ESP.  He had become psychic. Previous to this accident, during World War II, he was a member of the Dutch Resistance and was imprisoned in Buchenwald   He would have been 30 in 1941. "Hurkos was said to have been born with a caul, the milky veil over his head that old wives considered the mark of a mystical child. As a boy, he was a poor student, dropping out of school when he entered his teens. He was a loner who spent much time in the woods or in solitude, dreaming and exploring, prone to fantasies and visions."

After the accident he became religious.  He proves that you don't have to be born with a brain that had mutated, but that a brain can be jiggled into having extra sensory capabilities if done in just the right way.

 My brain just showed a capability we all have, and that was that I was able to remember his name after reading about him over 60 years ago.  When I thought about the man who fell off the ladder, I could not remember his name, but after a half hour or so it just popped up into my head, like retrieving a stubborn file from my computer program and I had even retained the correct spelling of his full name.  .  It was there. He had made a huge impression on me long ago.

 He said he saw pictures.  He wasn't 100% correct all the time, but did far better than us with average abilities. He claimed to be 87% right on his ESP.    "He discovered he had developed an ability to pierce the barriers that separate the past, present and future. With stunning accuracy, he was able to see into the unknown."  Now he sounds a little like Einstein who had some amazing theories about the past, present and future all being one in time.  

So, you don't have to have had ancestors that were in UFO's.  Our brains have the ability to somehow do miraculous feats given the right circumstances of life.  We just have to get ourselves to use it or we lose it.  

Resource:  http://io9.com/this-is-why-einsteins-brain-was-better-than-yours-1441971724
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Hurkos
http://www.peterhurkos.com/peter_biography.htm
Abraham's Children, race, identity, and the DNA of the Chosen People by Jon Entine p 303 Brains andd IQ
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Einstein
http://www.biography.com/people/albert-einstein-9285408#synopsis
update: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_Jewish_population_comparisons
http://www.timesofisrael.com/ashkenazi-jews-descend-from-350-people-study-finds/ (1)
http://jewishbubba.blogspot.com/2014/03/bible-predictions-from-judah-pious-of.html
http://jewishfactsfromportland.blogspot.com/2014/10/ashkenazi-jews-of-today-are-30th-cousins.html
http://israel-nadene.blogspot.com/2014/08/jews-living-in-judea-samaria-and-other.html / TIMELINE
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3199788,00.html  (4 Jewish women-DNA)
http://jewishfactsfromportland.blogspot.com/2012/10/east-of-euphrates-river-came-hebrews.html, timeline from beginning of Jews with Abraham's people
http://jewishbubba.blogspot.com/2014/04/census-time-of-12-tribes-of-israel.html
http://www.religioustolerance.org/jud_pers1.htm  numbers killed
http://goldfoot_genealogy.blogspot.com/2011/06/high-iqs-coming-from-mothers-or-fathers.html

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