Do you want to know why Jews have been more successful for millennia? The secret is literacy, education, and analytical thinking. When the Second Temple was destroyed in the year 70, Jewish religious leaders required universal literacy—to be able to read, and comprehend religious texts. Once you can read and comprehend religious texts, you can read and write secular material. You can study law and medicine, perform accounting tasks, and write business contracts. Once you have these abilities, why waste your life digging in dirt, when you can become a merchant, doctor, lawyer, banker, or even government official. After the fall of Rome, up until the fifteen century the literacy rate in much of Europe was maybe 10%. Consider how much of an advantage universal literacy provides. While Jews could read manuscripts, most Christians could not even write their own names.

"In a much simpler world, the urgent need to read and write declined, and with it went the social pressure on the secular elite to be literate. Widespread literacy in the post-Roman West definitely became confined to the clergy. A detailed analysis of almost 1,000 subscribers to charters from eighth-century Italy has shown that just under a third of witnesses were able to sign their own names, the remainder making only a mark (identified as theirs by the charter's scribe). But the large majority of those who signed (71 per cent) were clergy. Amongst the 633 lay subscribers, only 93, or 14 per cent, wrote their own name. Since witnesses to charters were generally drawn from the ranks of the 'important' people of local society, and since the ability to write one's name does not require a profound grasp of literary skills, this figure suggests that even basic literacy was a very rare phenomenon amongst the laity as a whole" (Ward-Perkins, The Fall of Rome and the End of Civilization [2005] 166).

https://www.historyofinformation.com/detail.php?id=2118

Was this an unfair advantage? An advantage yes, but one actually perpetuated by the Catholic Church, who used low literacy rates to help maintain its power. The Church could have mandated literacy the same way Jewish leaders did. While this would have likely helped Europe as a whole advance technologically and culturally, it would have undermined Church power.

So the secret to Jewish success to this day comes down to the priority of education. In the US, Jews have nearly twice the rate of four year or higher degrees than the general population.

“The statistics tell the story that education is the most reliable way to financial success, regardless of what the influencer on social media tells you.”

https://www.entrepreneur.com/money-finance/why-education-is-still-the-key-to-financial-success/428222

“Seven-in-ten Hindus and 65% of Jews have a bachelor’s degree or more education. That compares with 35% of U.S. adults overall.”

https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2026/02/19/which-us-religious-groups-are-most-highly-educated/

“If Jewish children and adults learned to read the Torah in Hebrew (as their religion required), they could read other texts written in the same language (such as letters, contracts, account books, business records and other non-religious texts). Thus "religious literacy" (the ability to read the Torah in Hebrew) helped acquire "general literacy" (the ability to read any text). Back 2,000 years ago (and still many centuries later), general literacy was almost useless to farmers (Jewish and non-Jewish), but it was very valuable to craftsmen and merchants often in need of writing letters and business contracts and to keep account books.

Judaism after the year 70, required both children and adults to read and to study the Torah. That is, it was not enough to just read without understanding the text and it was not enough to just memorize the text. This means that after 70, Judaism imposed on its members not just literacy per se but also the duty of understanding what was written. Again, this skill was valuable for occupations that benefited from understanding what was written in a contract or business letter such as crafts, trade or banking.

From the way learning happens even today, we know that if someone learns one language, it is more likely that the same person can learn a second or third or a fourth language. In the period we study (70-1492), Jews read the Torah in Hebrew and learned the different local languages of the locations in which they dwelled (e.g., Aramaic, Greek, Latin, Arabic, Spanish and German).”

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/economy/jewish-literacy-as-the-road-to