Of the few titles that he mentioned, the one that always remained with me was, ``The Jewish Way to Dominate the World.” I don’t know how we got to talking about this topic, but he once told me that any book with ``Jewish Way of …” in its title was almost always a best seller.
We did have a Japanese transfer student with whom I became friendly. I went to more Bar Mitzvah’s than regular birthday parties and was even given a honorary Jewish surname by my best friend’s dad: since my last name was a ``Lim,” it was only right that my Jewish surname would be ``Limowitz.” Hmm, now that I think about it, perhaps that’s why my parents sent me to a private high school whose student population was overwhelmingly Jewish. After all, the future begins with your children’s education. It exhorted the Koreans, whom it likened to the Jews in terms of historical oppression, to do what the Jews do, especially when it came to raising children.
I don’t recall what it said with perfect clarity, but I do remember how it praised the Jews for having an almost supernatural ability to induce unworldly self-discipline and instill ingenuity in their children, which has led them to be such a dominant force in world affairs despite having a very small geographical and population footprint. It was a thick tome called, ``The Jewish Way to Raise a Genius.”Ĭurious that my mother seemed to treasure it so much, I actually leafed through it as a kid, although I must have been less than nine years old at the time. Growing up in Korea, I remember a book that my mother used to read religiously.