Intelligence Level Within The Jewish People

Nadene Goldfoot 

                                                                     

                              Our smartest Jew, Albert Einstein , 

    noted to have an IQ of 180.  Average IQ is 100.  He was a physicist, educated in Switzerland but born in Ulm, Germany.  Noted for his theory of relativity in 1905  and math skills.   

While our Arab cousins have been hateful of us and  have described us as less than humans, facts are that Jews are very intelligent human beings.  We're not just a religion but a people as well, we find out in this day and age, proven by DNA, making it a different situation from being a Christian or a Muslim besides the fact that of the 3 religions, our Judaism is the smallest group today.

Ashkenazi Jews for one, that is, are Jews who wound up in Germany after Jerusalem was taken by the Romans in 70 CE,   Our Sephardic siblings earned that title by heading for Spain, probably in ships. Ashkenazis created Yiddish as their language from German and Hebrew while Sephardis created Ladino from Spanish and Hebrew.   

"Ashkenazi Jews have been found to have the highest average IQ of any ethnic group, worldwide.  They score 0.75 to 1.0 standard deviations about the general European average, which corresponds to an IQ score around 112-115."

"This fact has social significance, because natural intelligence (as measured by IQ tests) is a good predictor of success in academic subjects and many professions.  Jews are just as successful in the professions that their tested IQ would predict, and are largely overrepresented in those professions and accomplishments with the highest cognitive demands.  During the 20th century, they made up about 2 to 3% of the US population, but won 27% of the US Nobel science prizes.                          

Between 1901 and 2022, the Nobel Prize has been awarded to more than 900 individuals and organizations. At least 211 of them have been Jewish.  Israel has produced a disproportionate number of Nobel Prize winners. In August 2015, Times Higher Education ranked Israel the fifth best performer this century based on the number of Nobel Prizes won as well as the significance and prestige of each one. The publication also ranked global universities based on Nobel Prize winners and the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology placed eighth, higher on the list than Harvard and every British University.

Israeli Dan Schechtman (left) accepts the 2011 Nobel Prize in Chemistry

American Saul Perlmutter poses with the 2011 Nobel Prize in Physics

Adolf Hitler forbade any Germans to accept the Nobel Prize after the 1935 Peace Prize was awarded to one of his political enemies, the German pacifist Carl von Ossietzky.                           

Jews account for more than half of world chess champions."

Jews are known to have been among the 1st in Europe to have cultivated the game of chess.  They learned it from Arabs who learned it from the Persians (Iran).  Sephardics produced best known players being Abraham Ibn Ezra who wrote a poem describing the game.  Also, Rabbi Solomon ben Mazal-Tov, Bonsenior Ibn Yahya, and Jacob Eichenbaum were great chess players. Wilhelm Steinitz introduced a new concept of military strategy into chess.  He won the world championship and retained his title for 28 years.  His pupil, Emmanuel Lasker, won the world title from him and held it for 27 years.                             

                    Bobby Fischer  (March 9, 1943 – January 17, 2008) was an American chess grandmaster and the eleventh World Chess Champion. A chess prodigy, he won his first of a record eight US Championships at the age of 14. In 1964, he won with an 11–0 score, the only perfect score in the history of the tournament. Qualifying for the 1972 World Championship, Fischer swept matches with Mark Taimanov and Bent Larsen by 6–0 scores. After another qualifying match against Tigran Petrosian, Fischer won the title match against Boris Spassky of the USSR, in Reykjavík, Iceland. Publicized as a Cold War confrontation between the US and USSR, the match attracted more worldwide interest than any chess championship before or since.

Michael Botvinnik of the USSR held the world championship in recent years as did Mikhael Tal,  Boris Spassky, Bobby Fischer and Gary Kasparov.  Other prominent Jewish players include David Bronstein, Samuel Reshevsky, Reuben Fine, and M. Neudorff of Argentina.  

I might add that Jews have been conscious of who they marry, what kind of people, their values, since biblical days, and then always into a Jewish family.  Non-Jews have not had this as a criteria, except possibly wealthier families such as royalty.  Our genes have been guarded for several thousand years.  Sexual attraction was at work, especially with Samson and his Delilah, but was expected to be less important.                                      

"Ashkenazi Jews have an unusual cognitive ability profile, as well as higher-than-average IQ.  They have high verbal and mathematical scores, while their visual-spatial abilities are typically somewhat-worse (by about half a standard deviation) than the European average. " (I wonder if this has anything to do with Jacob's wife, Leah having weak eyes, as is written about her.)  She had 6 of Jacob's 12 sons.

What makes Jews an interesting subject for researchers is that very little gene flow happened between Jews and neighboring non-Jewish populations because of Jewish law and because of anti-Semitism.  "The majority of Ashkenazi Y-Chromosomes (from father to son and on down the generations)  are associated with Mideastern groups.  Any connection from surrounding European men averaged less than 0.5% over many generations. "  Jews come from the Middle East by history and by proof of genetics. 

             During Holocaust, Nazi's gassed Jews.  

"During the Holocaust, Nazis referred to Jews as rats. Hutus involved in the Rwanda genocide called Tutsis cockroaches. Slave owners throughout history considered slaves subhuman animals".  2nd class citizens, which Jews were thought of,  have suffered from  the same descriptions.  

 Thus, a person with a higher IQ should naturally be with people of like interests and have more surviving children than average intelligence people.  In pre-modern Europe, wealthy people had quite a few more surviving children than average, so if high IQ increased income, there could have been selection for IQ in some situations. I might add that the level of mid-wives' accomplishments had a lot to do with it, too, as to how many babies made it to life.   

However, Jews were kept in a 2nd class citizen level in Europe and the Middle East, with a few families only becoming wealthy.  Most were poor, especially Ashkenazis in Eastern Europe.  Jews were restricted in their career opportunities.  Many were limited to money-lending as an occupation, the only one left that non-Jews kept out of as a vulgar and disliked occupation.  Jews had to manage complex financial transactions, and those who did well made more money and had more children. To be left in a  society with the only choice of making a living and eating was the most despicable profession of money-lending and making  it successful is a feather in our ancestor's cap to those few it fell upon.  That skill was sharpened by trying to sell things on the Silk Road to the Orient as a means to a living as trading was one of man's earliest social acts.

 I am connected through DNA testing, to Rabbi Samson Wertheimer born in 1658 who was born in Worms, Germany in 1658 or more likely, to his brother. This is quite a surprise to me.  He was a famous man who loaned money with his Uncle Oppenheimer to kings and queens.  Note, to be a rabbi is to be extremely well educated. One doesn't just have a calling for it.  He had to have the prerequisites to earn that title.    

Now I find that there was a Wertheim Dynasty.  The reason we have their genealogy tree is because rabbis thought well of having this genealogy and kept doing it.  They felt it important to keep up the tradition of having rabbis in the family in these days of arranged marriages, and used it for arranged marriages.  They wanted to their children to marry into another rabbinical family.    It stems from history from biblical days of being a part of the 71 decision makers of the Sanhedrin.  To be in the Sanhedrin, one needed proof of their genealogy.  The head was usually a descendent of Hillel.  

 Prosperous Jews, a very small percent of the Jewish population, may have averaged twice as many surviving children than poor Jews, and they made their money with their wits, rather than by inheritance or fighting skills, as in most other European elites.  Those usually were also rabbis who had loaned money to kings and had developed this type of reputation. 

I myself have found a connection to such a wealthy family through DNA and history, and my father was from as poor a family as one can find, but he proved to be very intelligent, even without being able to graduate high school.   Father on right standing.  Brother on left sitting 2 yrs older.  Boys on their porch in Portland, Oregon a few years after 1908, Dad's birthday.  If he had known he had Wertheimer genes in his veins, he would have plotzed!  Having that history isn't insurance of continuing good fortune, however in this changing world.  

The Ashkenazim had low gene flow and a preponderance of occupations with high IQ elasticity for hundreds of years.  This may have been enough to cause the IQ increase that we observe.  The narrow-sense inheritability of IQ is at least 0.3;  which means that if the parents of the next generation average 1 point above the current population average, the next generation (with equal environments) will average another 0.3 points higher.  Continue this process for 40 generations (100 years=4 generations) of 25 X 40=1,000 years and you get an increase of 12 points, just about what we see today. King David lived 3,000 years ago born in 1010 BCE. 

Samson, not so smart as to allow Delilah to cut his hair, source of  his strength, hoodwinked by an enemy Philistine woman spy.   

So by following a selected pattern of marriage, we should be getting smarter and smarter, but society has changed and select marriages are following in Samson's footsteps more than Jacob's. Einstein may be the last really smart Jewish person we've ever experienced.   

Another theory suggests that there was selective breeding for Talmudic scholarship.  The successful and wealthy sought out Talmudic scholars to father their grandchildren.  And it is possible that increased wealthy contributed to increased fertility and survivability, which in turn may have led to selection for intellect. Torah scholars were introduced to selective breeding in the  bible with their sheep.  It was Jacob, our progenitor, who was clever and took all the speckled, black, and diverse-colored ones, and then managed to preferentially breed the remaining sheep and goats to produce predominantly spotted and black offspring, which he kept. 

Abraham was born in 2nd millennium or 1948 BCE and he was the grandfather of Jacob who was born maybe in 1848 BCE. Moses was born in 1391 BCE.  Jacob goes back a long ways.  The first Egyptian pharaoh, Narmer,  was born in about 3273–2987 BCE.) By the time Jacob was born, people were quite  well advanced in their intellect skills.  

Resource:

Book:  DNA Tradition, the genetic link to the ancient Hebrews newly updated by Rabbi Yaakov Kleiman, 2004 

The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia

https://www.npr.org/2011/03/29/134956180/criminals-see-their-victims-as-less-than-human

https://goldfoot_genealogy.blogspot.com/2020/04/dna-connection-to-rabbi-samson.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narmer

https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jewish-nobel-prize-laureates

How Germany's Early Days Made Money Through Anti-Semitism

Nadene Goldfoot                                              

Mainz, Germany today.  In 1012, the Jews were expelled but soon returned.  They received protection then from the arch-bishop when crusaders came in 1096.  Even so, hundreds were murdered.  

The Holy Roman Empire was made up of much territory.  "The largest territory of the empire after 962 was the Kingdom of Germany, though it included the Kingdom of Bohemia, the Kingdom of Burgundy, the Kingdom of Italy, and numerous other territories. The precise term "Holy Roman Empire" was not used until the 13th century."  So it really had nothing to do with the ancient Romans who burned down the Jewish 2nd Temple and Jerusalem, but consisted of the politics that followed them in the disposition  of Rome and their pagan powers.  

                                                                                   

Kingdom of Germany, Carolingian dynasty, Conradine dynasty, Ottonian dynasty, Arnulf, Louis IV,Conrad I, Henry I, Otto I

Jews were not allowed to own land anyplace.  They were labeled as Christ Killers in the Holy Roman Empire.  Jews were not allowed to follow any profession, and about the only thing they were allowed to do was to loan money.  This was because it was considered a despicable business for the Christians, who were kept from it by their church.  Jews had been traders even when living in their holy land of Judah and many had dealt with trading on the Silk Road, taking them to far corners of the earth.  When Jerusalem fell in 70 CE, Jews were not even allowed to continue trying to live in Jerusalem or its suburbs since it was burnt down by the Romans.  They couldn't come back in and refurbish their own city.  Anyway, most were taken as slaves to Rome.  From there, some lucky ones finally made their way next door to France and then of course, Germany by the 1000's.
                                                                           

Jews of Germany and their forced clothing for identification

RASHI 

Take RASHI.  This is the famous abbreviation for Rabbi Solomon Yitzhaki, son of Isaac who was born in 1040 and died in 1105.  He was a French rabbinical scholar and teacher.  He had studied in the Rhineland (Germany) but also lived in Troyes, France where he had established his own school to teach his philosophy and thoughts on Judaism.  His school received a wide reputation.  The center in the Rhineland that he lived in was in the city of Worms.  Many rabbis came to live there and to study.  The Jewish community was well established by the 11th century (1000s), so they must have arrived there in the 10th century.  Emperor Henry IV was loaned money by them.  In return, he gave them privileges most Jews did not get in 1074 and 1090 by granting them freedom in commercial dealings, security of property, and imperial protection.
                                                                           

1st Crusade: 1096-199 Attacked Jews in northern France and especially in the Rhineland in Mainz, Worms, Speyer, cologne, etc.  and then in Prague, later in Salonica causing messianic ferment.  Jerusalem was captured by them in 1099 and Jews and Karaites were massacred.  1147 was the start of the 2nd Crusade happening in France and the Rhineland started by a Monk, Rudolf.  

Along came the 1st Crusade and life changed forever.  Jews were slaughtered in Europe by the knights who were on their way to Palestine to kill the Muslims who had taken the Holy Land.  When they got there, they slaughtered the Jews, too, since they thought them vile along with the Muslims, and they all looked alike to them.  Then both Muslim and Jew fought together against the Crusaders.  Worms was decimated during this First Crusade.                                                                                  

                                                                     

3rd Crusade was in 1189 to 1192 had wide support in England where Jews were attacked.  , especially in York in 1190.  

In Heilbronn, 200 Jews were slaughtered, among them being Johanan ben Eliakim the rabbi and Rabbi Asher, the president of the community.  The city of Ulm used to have a large Jewish community and own cemetery.  The Jews there had once enjoyed certain privileges granted by the municipal law of 1274 which was in force in Ravensburg, too.
                                                                   

In 1320 was the shepherds' Crusade with widespread attacks on the Jews in southern France and northern Spain.  They reestablished it only to see it destroyed again in 1349 during the Black Death outbreaks where they were blamed for it.  

 By the 14th century, Jews were living in Baldern, Geislingen, Goppingen, Schwabisch Hall, Rohrbach, Hohenburg, Horb, Reutlingen, Rottweil, Stuttgart, Sulm, Tubingen, Vaihingen and Wolfegg.  The counts of Wurttemberg owed money to the Jews of Colmar and Schlettstadt.  Louis IV canceled their indebtedness in 1346.  Henry VII in 1311 did the same thing to his Jewish moneylenders and so did Louis the Bavarian in 1316 in the case of the citizens of Esslingen.  In other words, these people stiffed the bank by having the head man cancel all the debts, leaving the Jews without any compensation.
                                                                           

Jewish Moneylenders as depicted in Spain in 1300s. 

Lets look at what Germany was like in those days.  It was made up of separate kingdoms.  Wurttemberg was one of them located in SW Germany.  Jews had come to live there in 6 cities:.  They came to live in Bopfingen in 1241; Ulm in 1243;  Esslingen  and Oehringen in 1253;  Calw in 1284 and Weil in 1289.  Along came the knight, Rindfleisch, a Bavarian noble,  and his followers in 1298 and Jews were not only persecuted but massacred.  Rindfleisch led his men into a series of exterminatory attacks on the Jews throughout Franconia and the surrounding regions in 1298, after a Ritual Murder accusation at Rottingen.  Jews were always accused of such things in the Christian zeal to take revenge for killing Christ, as they kept saying.  Usually they would say that someone who had been murdered had been a Jew who did it needing blood to make matzos.  Knowing nothing of facts, Jews abhor blood and have kashrut laws as to how to eat meat without the blood as blood is forbidden in Judaism.  Because of Rindfleisch, 146 Jewish communities were annihilated.  In Wurttemberg alone, he had killed Jews in Creglingen, Ellwangen, Forchtenberg, Gartach, Goglingen, Ingelfingen, Kunzelsau, Leonberg, Mockmuhl, Mergentheim, Stetten, sindringen, Sontheim, Waldenburg, weinsberg, Widdern and Weikersheim.
                                                                        

How Jews were depicted

Bavaria was another southern German state.  Jews came to live in there during the same period as Wurttemberg. from at least the 10th century.  Major Jewish communities there were in Nuremberg, Augsburg, Regensburg, Furth, Munich, Pasau and Bamberg.  Jews were excluded from Upper Bavaria in 1276 and also suffered severely in the Rindfleisch massacres of 1298..  In the city of Armleder they suffered from persecution from 1336 to 1338 and were almost exterminated at the time of the Black Death in 1348 to 1349.  They were excluded altogether from 1551 to the 18th century.  In the early 19th century under most unfavorable conditions, many Jews left to go to the United States.  After all the horror of the Holocaust from 1939 to 1945, Jews returned and in 1990, 5,600 Jews were living in Bavaria.
                                                             

King Edward I who expelled Jews from England in 1290-1655 for 365 years.  

These kingdoms did not always get along with each other.  On the night of April 19, 1316, the Bavarian party of Ulm brought in their Bavarian troops into the city of Ulm.  Ulm today is a city in the federal German state of Baden-Württemberg, situated on the River Danube. The city, whose population is estimated at almost 120,000 (2015), forms an urban district of its own and is the administrative seat of the Alb-Donau district. Ulm, founded around 850, is rich in history and traditions as a former Free Imperial City.  Free for who?  .Rumor was that a Jew helped them to sneak in.  The Austrian party, the majority, appeared  and drove out the Bavarians.  To remember the event of the Jewish treachery, the church instituted a mass, but this horrible exercise  ended  finally  6 years later.
                                                                       

     

Then the Bavarians gained possession of Ulm.  New persecutions of Jews broke out with the Jews now being charged with being the enemies of the Christians and with stealing and desecrating the host.  The host is the bread and wine used in their mass which is part of their Eucharist, and the bread represents Christ's body.  The knights almost annihilated the community of Esslingen in 1334.  Two years later, more knights persecuted the Jews in Hohenburg, Landenbach, Mergentheim, Weikersheim and Widdern.  The end of 1348 was even worse when the plague and the German ganaticism caused destruction on the Jewish communities of Baldern, bopfingen, ellwangen, Esslingen, Goppingen, Geislingen, Schwabisch Hall, Heilbronn, Hohebach, Horb, Krailsheim, Mengen, Mergentheim, Nagold, Oehringen, Ravensburg, Reutlingen, Rottweil, Stuttgart, Sulgen, Sulm, Ulm Vaihingen, Waldenburg, Weilderstadt, and Widdern.

This is how the kingdoms prospered on the lives of Jews.  The Jews of Ulm, for example, had to pay for protection with large sums to the municipal council, to the citizens, and to the counts of Helfenstein.  The money taken from the Jews became a bone of contention among the German cities, the emperor and the counts.  They all wanted money from Jews.  These inter-Gentile arguments led to renewed plundering of the Jews.

 The Jews by this time had some friends in high places, however, and some counts and rulers united against the plunderers.  Then the big man himself, the emperor, demanded his share in their plunder in 1374 and he was ignored.
                                                                       

Emperor and King of Bohemia Charles IV/Wenceslaus

 That caused the emperor to make war on these cities, and so he confiscated their possessions and compelled them to pay high taxes.  He was Charles IV (Czech: Karel IV., German: Karl IV., Latin: Carolus IV; 14 May 1316 – 29 November 1378), born Wenceslaus, who was the second King of Bohemia from the House of Luxembourg, and the first King of Bohemia to also become Holy Roman Emperor.  The city of Ulm couldn't raise the exorbitant sums demanded by the emperor, so the Jews came forward to help them out.  One of the Jews that helped was Sacklin, son in law of Moses of Ehlingen, who was a citizen of Ulm.  The emperor declared the Jews to be under the ban in order to exact money from the few wealthy ones still living in the city.  They had to pay large sums to have the edict  revoked.

By 1385, the federation of cities declared void all promissory notes held by the Jews within its jurisdiction.  In some cases the city released the Christian debtors from paying interest on their loans while in other cases it annulled part of the debt.  In 1387 the federation issued a decree that no German or Italian merchant could have money transactions with Jews.  Emperor Wenceslaus then canceled in 1390 all debts owing to the Jews, and demanded that the citizens owning money  pay him instead!

Their excuse in treating Jews so horribly was that they said that Jews, both their body and souls,  were the property of the emperor so he could do with them as he pleased.  He therefore said that the usury of the Jews had become intolerable.  The counts of Wurttemberg felt differently.  They permitted the Jews to live in Stuttgart in 1434; Kirchheim in 1435; Tubingen in 1459; Cannstadt and Goppingen in 1462, but on definitely stated conditions and of course, upon payment of large large taxes for protection.  They couldn't let the cash cow slip through their fingers, could they.  Count Ulrich  (1433-1480) was commissioned by the emperor to protect the Jews, but at the same time to rigorously suppress their usury.  The fines imposed were to be sent to the imperial treasury, another way of milking the Jews out of the money.  So, money flowed into the coffers of the count AND of the emperor.

Again in 1498 Jews were expulsed from the land.  Count Eberhard im Bart (1459-1496) was pronounced an enemy of the Jews.  He forced Jews out from Tubingen in 1477; and again in 1495-3 years after the Spanish edict of 1492, he decreed they were to be expelled from his lands.  He followed it up with his decree of June 14, 1498 and the Jews of Ulm who happened to be wealthy and educated, had to leave by August 6th of 1498.  The Jews could not take any property with them, and the emperor demanded that the people of Ulm had to mention him in their prayers because he had delivered them  from the Jews.

The Jews living in Ravensburg was a bad one, also.  A blood accusation was brought against them caused Emperor Sigismund to burn some Jews at the stake and to expel others in 1438.  Then years later in 1448 they were again admitted in and then expelled again in 1490.  Jews living in Heilbronn by 1414 were expelled by 1469.  7 years later the city council insisted on a general expulsion even though there was an imperial order to protect the Jews.  Jews were expelled from cities scattered among the villages and then often they would return to the urban communities.

Jews therefore were living in Gmund and Reutlingen in 1433;  in Brackenheim  and Nersheim in 1434;  in in Giengen in 1486;  and in Lauterburg, Pflaumloch and Uzmemmingen in 1491.

Between the late 1400s to 1806, no Jews lived in Ulm again.  Individual Jews were permitted to enter Ulm on a temporary basis, and the citizens were warned against having any business transactions with them.

When Wurttemberg (part of the German Federal Republic today)  became a dukedom, the treatment of the Jews was the same.  All money transactions with them were forbidden.  These ordinances were renewed and enforced.
                                                                 

Yoseph ben Gershom Loanz aka JOSEL OF ROSHEIM 1480-1554,
German communal leader and writer.
elected in 1510 by the Alsatian communities as their rep for the German Jewry
before the secular authorities, had to intercede in time of danger.  In 1532 he tried to
stem the dangerous activities of Solomon Molcho.  In 1543 he defended the Jews against the attacks of LUTHER.  

 Not even Josel of Rosheim, a great Jewish advocate for his people,  could travel through the country.  Strict ordinances were issued regarding the Jewish commercial and religious status.  In 1536 Jews traveling through the country were under great stresses and attacks, and no attention was paid to the repeated imperial edicts for their protection.  Josel was able to regulate the convoy charges of traveling Jews, but Duke Christoph, who gave him the agreement, was so much of an enemy to the Jews that in the Reichstag of Augsburg in 1559, he advocated their expulsion from Germany.

Frederick I (1593-1608) faced the most violent opposition against establishing a Jewish mercantile association under the direction of Abraham Calorno and Maggino Gabrieli but failed miserably.  It never came about.

Eberhard Ludwig reigned (1677-1733) who had a good attitude towards Jews.  He permitted them to go to the fairs in 1706 and to trade in horses in 1707.  The Countess of Wurben got free trade for the Jews of Freudenthal in 1728 and for those of Gochsheim in 1729.
                                                                   

Joseph ben Issachar Susskind or Joseph Suss Oppenheimer

         Under Carl Alexander (1733-1737) Joseph Suss Oppenheimer (1698-1738) was appointed a privy factor, and so a financial councilor to the duke, and through his influence, several Jews were permitted to live in Stuttgart and Ludwigsburg.  Oppenheimer tried to consolidate the duchy's finances and free its ruler from dependence on grants from the estates.  His modern financial methods aroused much opposition and when the duke died, he was accused of embezzling state finances.

Oppenheimer's subserviency to the duke caused him the enmity of the people.  When the duke died in 1737, he was in trouble.  He was disgraced and executed in 1738 by hanging in Stuttgart, accused instead of having sexual relations with Christian women, something strictly against the law.    He refused to save his own life by accepting baptism to Christianity.  .   The next year, all Jews were mercilessly expelled but soon permitted to return. Jews had been there since 1521 and then expelled by law and came and resettled again at the end of the 1600s.   However, they were severely restricted in their Judaism as well as in their business.  People were warned against from having any dealings with them concerning money.  Court factors were treated more leniently, and important government contracts were given to them in 1759, 1761, 1764 in spite of objections from the masses.  it took until 1864 that Jews of Wurttemberg received equal rights with gentiles.  In 1933, there were 10,023 Jews living in Wurttemberg and then, the Holocaust starting strongly by 1939.  By 1990 there were only a few hundred Jews there.

Karl Eugen, Ludwig (1793-1795) and Friedricfh (1795-1797) treated Jews considerately.  These rulers were the last of the line of Catholic dukes.  Under the succeeding Protestant regime, a new era dawned for the Jews of Wurttemberg, and all of Germany.

Resource: Jewish Encyclopedia on Wurttemberg by Isidore Singer and Theodor Kroner
The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia
 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eucharist_in_the_Catholic_Church
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holy_Roman_Empire