The world’s Jewish population, notes Josef Joffe, is about the same as that of Kazakhstan, yet while most people would be hard-pressed to name a single Kazakh, they could easily name a number of famous Jews. In his recent book Genius and Anxiety, the music critic and novelist Norman Lebrecht joins the long list of those who have written on this topic. To Joffe, Lebrecht is “a storyteller par excellence” and, when it comes to explaining “how Jews transformed Western ways of thinking and doing,” the book “is intellectual history at its best.” But when it comes to trying to answer the question at the book’s heart—why the Jews?—Joffe finds Lebrecht’s frequent invocations of the Talmud unsatisfying:

The Talmud, a commentary on the law spanning some 2,700 pages, amounts to a closed system. . . . Its scholars demonstrated their brilliance by construing ever finer distinctions, skewering the arguments of their colleagues, or invoking the authority of the masters. Cracking paradigms was not their business. Subversive thought—say, placing sex at the center of the human condition, as did Sigmund Freud, or confronting the ear, as Arnold Schönberg’s painful atonality did—was not the talmudic way. Both Freud and Schönberg play starring roles in Genius and Anxiety, along with Einstein, because they overturned ancient dispensations rather than delving into Mishnah and Gemara.

[Moreover], if the Talmud is the ur-cause, Jewish worldly success and attainment should have been the story of the Hebrews throughout the ages. Yet Lebrecht situates his account in the hundred years between 1847 and 1947, and rightly so. Apart from rare titans such as Moses Maimonides, Jews did not excel in world-historical terms in [most of] the centuries before, nor did they break the mold. The question “why the Jews?” should therefore be amended to “Why the Jews in those hundred years, in the midst of modernity?”

Sheer smarts is not enough; the conditions had to be right as well. In the 19th century, the Jews were released from the ghetto, gaining full civic rights throughout Europe. Add to that circumstance historical serendipity in the forms of urbanization, industrialization, and globalization. With their literacy, occupational flexibility, and lust for learning, the Jews were perfectly prepared for this new world. An age-old order based on working the land and plying the trades, from which Jews were excluded, began to give way to a knowledge-based economy.

It was tailor-made for eternal outsiders with their pent-up ambitions and energies. Lebrecht quotes Gustav Mahler: “A Jew is like a swimmer with a short arm. He has to swim twice as hard to reach the shore.” But now, the water was a lot warmer.

Established in 2012 and maintaining branches in Europe, North America, and Iran, the Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Network claims its goal is merely to show “solidarity” for imprisoned Palestinians. The organization’s leader, however, has admitted to being a representative of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), a notorious terrorist group whose most recent accomplishments include murdering a seventeen-year-old girl. As Arsen Ostrovsky and Patricia Teitelbaum point out, Samidoun is just one example of how the European Union allows Iran-backed terrorists to operate in its midst:

The PFLP is a proxy of the Iranian regime, which provides the terror group with money, training, and weapons. Samidoun . . . has a branch in Tehran. It has even held events there, under the pretext of “cultural activity,” to elicit support for operations in Europe. Its leader, Khaled Barakat, is a regular on Iran’s state [channel] PressTV, calling for violence and lauding Iran’s involvement in the region. It is utterly incomprehensible, therefore, that the EU has not yet designated Samidoun a terror group.

According to the Council of the European Union, groups and/or individuals can be added to the EU terror list on the basis of “proposals submitted by member states based on a decision by a competent authority of a member state or a third country.” In this regard, there is already a standing designation by Israel of Samidoun as a terror group and a decision of a German court finding Barakat to be a senior PFLP operative.

Given the irrefutable axis-of-terror between Samidoun, PFLP, and the Iranian regime, the EU has a duty to put Samidoun and senior Samidoun leaders on the EU terror list. It should do this not as some favor to Israel, but because otherwise it continues to turn a blind eye to a group that presents a clear and present security threat to the European Union and EU citizens.