The sweet and less sweet in Angrist's Nobel Prize - analysis

• Author: HERB KEINON
• Published date: 12 October 2021
• Publication title: Jerusalem Post, The: Web Edition Articles (Israel)

And so was born the first oleh (immigrant) to Israel.

A mere 10 verses later, economic reality intervened: "There was a famine in the land, and Abram went down to Egypt to sojourn there, for the famine was severe in the land."

And so was born the first yored (emigrant) from Israel.

Fast forward a few thousand years to 1982, and Joshua Angrist, from Columbus, Ohio, follows in the footsteps of Abram, whose name was later changed to Abraham, and makes aliyah to Israel. But like Abram, he, too, leaves shortly thereafter. Not because of a famine, but because of economic realities.

In 2006, Angrist, who on Monday won the Nobel Prize in economics, told The Jerusalem Post he left the country after spending a few years teaching at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem because "I was tired of the situation here. The Israeli system does not reflect the reality of pay differential by field. It's the public system, and it's not very flexible."

Using university professors as an example of these problems, he said professors in high-demand fields such as computer science and economics earned the same amount of money as those in fields where there was less demand, such as literature. In other countries, he said, market forces determine professors' salaries.

"Talented people who might like to work in Israel have to pay a high price for that financially," he said. "It's hard to retain people with that kind of system."

The good news for those who scrutinize the Nobel Prize winner announcements every year looking for Jewish names – and who kvell when a Jew, especially an Israeli, wins one – is that Angrist didn't leave the country amid a cacophony of calling it a racist, apartheid colonialist state. He left because of economic reasons and greener pastures abroad.

The bad news is that he left.

The various reactions to Angrist's achievement – and the fact that it was significant news here – says much about both the Jewish and the Israeli psyche.

First, the Jewish psyche, in which paying close attention to whether Jews win any awards each year, and the percentage they have won in total as compared to their percentage of the overall world population, is something deeply ingrained.

It is difficult to imagine Lutherans sitting around in Minnesota searching Google to see if a recent Nobel recipient is one of their co-religionists. One can imagine a number of Jews in Minneapolis doing just that.

Why? Because as a result of the Jews' often tragic history, there is a part of the collective...