The notion that Asians and Jews are two shoots from the same cultural rootstock is an old but evergreen meme.

You see it in fringe theories about the Lost Tribes of Israel -- there's an entire body of cryptoarchaeological canon that uses similarities between customs, language and naming convention to "prove" that the ancient vanished Jewish clans ended up in China, India or Japan. (Japan's 50,000-member Makuya sect, which has as its central dogma that the Japanese are descendants of a lost Jewish tribe, keep kosher, speak Hebrew and use the seven-armed menorah as their symbol.)

You see it in more personal contexts as well, both casual and intimate: In tongue-in-cheek stand-up and sitcom references to the Jewish love of Chinese food, especially when eaten on Christmas. In wedding toasts at cross-cultural "Judasian" weddings, where the acknowledgment of Asian/Jewish similarity has become almost a traditional element.

And yes, you see it in the comparable circumstances our communities have faced as we've woven ourselves into the social fabric of this nation: We both know what it means to be alternately held up as examples of the American dream, scaling the generational ladder from poverty to professional success, and as major players in the American nightmare -- labeled as "parasites," libeled as insular and self-serving, dismissed or demonized as exotic aliens and permanent outsiders.

But nowhere is the shared arc of the Asian and Jewish American journey so clear as in the area of education, that paramount priority of both communities. The story of parents toiling to create academic opportunity for their offspring (and using guilt, bribery and punishment to ensure that those kids take advantage of it) is the same whether its narrator is named Josh Li or Joshua Leibowitz.

It's no wonder, then, that the phrase "Asians are the new Jews" is most commonly used in an educational context -- most prominently in Dan Golden's scathing investigation into the admissions practices of elite colleges, "The Price of Admission," which dedicates an entire chapter to the challenges Asian American candidates face in getting into top schools. The chapter's name, naturally: "The New Jews."

Admission impossible

In the book, Golden notes that Asian Americans are disproportionately harmed by current admissions standards, to the point where an effective quota system exists, capping the number of Asians admitted at a virtually fixed level Ð for private colleges, generally well south of 20 percent of the student body -- and forcing Asian applicants to compete for slots against other Asians. In short, the environment Asian American candidates face is remarkably similar to that of Jewish applicants in the Fifties and Sixties, when Ivy League colleges had a policy of preventing an "excess" of Jews in their student body.

(As documented by Jerome Karabel in his equally stunning book, "The Chosen," much of the effort was unspoken; he cites a 1959 report by B'nai Brith's Rabbi Richard Israel in which an anonymous, guilt-ridden Yale admissions officer admits that while there is "no quota as such ... they simply have a policy of 'conscious self-restraint.' That is to say, they automatically turn down a 'suitable number' of Jews.'")

Golden points his finger at donor and legacy preferences as the primary reason why Asian Americans, and other minorities as well, face limited opportunity; he notes case after case of children of privilege with low scores and poor grades who nevertheless find their way into the hallowed halls of Harvard, Yale and Princeton, schools where legacy students, predominantly white and affluent, make up one out of five admissions.

The legacy preference is a recipe for demographic inertia: By admitting the children of alumni, primarily to encourage giving to school endowments, it creates a system that's self-replicating. Barring the relatively small number of multiracial and adopted candidates, legacies applying to a school that's 80 percent white are more likely than not white themselves. And newer Americans, whose roots in the U.S. are just a generation deep, are almost guaranteed not to have the benefit of legacy status.

Legacy is one of a number of ways that colleges can continue the policy of 'conscious self-restraint' to prevent a surplus of a particular population -- at one time Jews, and now Asians. But as unfair as legacy preferences might seem, they pale before the more insidious filters applied to Asian Americans competing in the open applicant pool.

"Asian applicants have to overcome a particular stereotypical profile that amounts to overt discrimination," says Jennifer Rubin, contributing editor for the conservative Jewish journal Commentary. "The Department of Education did an investigation and uncovered the notes that admissions committee members put on the applications of Asian candidates. And time after time, they found repeated references to them being 'grinds,' 'shy,' 'not well-rounded.' These clearly reflected some kind of predisposition on the part of admissions officers. And I'm not sure that Jewish candidates were affected by a similar stereotype, even 50 or 60 years ago."

The caricature of the one-dimensional, passive, hard-working but personality-free Asian American is indeed hard to reconcile with Jewish stereotypes; as one Jewish friend commented, "Even the most anti-Semitic depictions of Jews never make us seem boring."

But that's the perceptual bias that Asian Americans do face, and in the hotly competitive world of elite college admissions, where committees are tasked with filling out their freshman classes with a vivid, dynamic mix of skills and personalities, that's a dramatic handicap for Asians.

In a feature she wrote on Asian American college admissions for "The Weekly Standard" -- called, naturally, "The New Jews?" -- Rubin offers up the following choice quote from Golden's "Price of Admission":

Asians are typecast in college admissions offices as quasi-robots programmed by their parents to ace math and science tests. Asked why Vanderbilt poured resources into recruiting Jews instead of Asians, a former administrator told me "Asians are very good students, but they don't provide the kind of intellectual environment that Jewish students provide."

Turning the tide

The fact that some private liberal arts colleges now recruit Jewish students, seeking them out to enrich their student cultures, is startling, given the stark anti-Semitism seen in secondary education just a half-century ago. And yet, there's no question that the narrative arc for Jews -- in education and in society -- has turned. While Jews are still typified as smart, successful, hard-working, and yes, academically brilliant, they're also seen as a creative, diverse and colorful community, excelling not just in the STEM fields -- the wonkalicious worlds of science, technology, engineering and mathematics -- but in arts, literature, media and entertainment.

This altered perception comes from a shift in priorities. As Nicholas Lemann wrote in a feature for Slate, "Jews in Second Place" (subtitled "When Asian-Americans become the 'new Jews,' what happens to the Jews?"), Jewish youth who were once upon a time pushed to spend all their spare time are now being encouraged by their parents to play ... hockey:

"Jewish kids and their parents have decided to devote endless hours of childhood to an activity with no career payoff. Do you think they're going to 6 a.m. practices for a shot at the National Hockey League? Of course not. They're doing it -- mastering hockey, and every conceivable other sport -- to promote 'growth,' 'teamwork,' 'physical fitness,' 'well-roundedness,' 'character,' and other qualities that may be desirable in a doctor but don't, as a practical matter, help you get into medical school."

Lemann's point is that Jews, comfortably ensconced in the mainstream, have lost the striver's all-out hunger for achievement. While Asian Americans are sending their kids to cram school and demanding the best, Jewish Americans are, more and more, letting their kids slide into the world of academic good-enough, distracted by athletics and other "unproductive activities."

And yet, Jewish representation at elite colleges has hardly dwindled, with some estimates placing it at about 30 percent of all Ivy League students, nearly double the equivalent percentage of Asian Americans.

Gaming the system

According to James Chen, founder and principal of the Alameda-based college guidance firm Asian Advantage College Consulting, the success of Jewish applicants is due to the very phenomenon that provokes Lemann's anxiety.

Like many other college consultants, Asian Advantage helps their clients with selecting the right college, writing applications, and even -- if a client comes on board early enough in his or her high school career -- designing their curricula and activities to optimize their chances of getting in.

What makes Asian Advantage unique is that it focuses exclusively on Asian Americans, seeking to promote a "level playing field in the college applications process," while raising awareness of the "unique challenges" faced by Asian college candidates.

"Our whole focus is on helping Asian American high school students get into great colleges," says Chen. "And the biggest thing we have to address is that most of our clients come to us having been steered toward math and science, playing piano and violin, and hoping to become doctors or engineers. That's what their parents have pushed them towards."

That only fuels the "quasi-robotic" perception that admissions officers have of Asian applicants, notes Chen. "We struggle with 'Asian Robot Syndrome' all the time. It's bad enough that the stereotype is there. If you reinforce it with what you put on your application, you have no chance. None."

Which is why, he says, the first thing they tell their Asian American clients is to do the opposite of what most college counselors tell their charges. "We always say: DON'T BE YOURSELF. And by that we mean, break the Asian Robot mold. If they're young enough, we push them to get away from math clubs and science contests. Choose things that are out of the box for Asian students. Drama. School musicals. Go to Shakespeare Camp. Join the newspaper. And absolutely play a sport!" -- even, says Chen, if you don't excel. "Playing a sport has a big impact at schools. It's a big nudge for your chances if you participate in athletics, no matter how good you are."

And while "rounding out" a student is one rationale for Asian Advantage's recommendations, it's just part of a bigger objective: "At a very high level, what we tell clients is to create an application such that the reader upon looking at it, without knowing your name, would not imagine you as being an Asian person."

Chen's point is that, while it is impossible to hide ethnicity -- "Your name's on the paper, your parents' birthplaces" -- reinforcing it is a mistake. "The way the admissions process works is, you as person end up boiled down into a few talking points. They'll use a catchphrase to describe you. They'll say, 'The next applicant is the Korean Piano Prodigy from Los Angeles -- what do we think?' And the first thing the rest of the committee is going to say is, 'Which one?'"

Far better to be the Korean rock climber, or the Chinese standup comedian, or yes, for all of Nicholas Lemann's concerns, the Pakistani hockey player.

Chen's business has grown to the point where he's added two partners, and now manages 15 clients per cycle. And while his focus is on teaching clients to play the game using the rules that admissions committees have already set, his larger agenda is to break them.

A staunch opponent of preferences of any kind, he believes that Asian Americans sell themselves short by embracing the tenets of affirmative action. "I believe in equal opportunity for all -- based on merit," he says. "I'm not interested in pseudo-feel-good, we-are-the-world racial harmony arguments. Asian students are getting screwed by the process. In the short run, we try to help clients individually. But the only real fix is to change the system."

Affirmative Reaction

But what does "changing the system" entail? What would the landscape at top colleges look like if all preferences were eliminated, if college admissions replaced "holistic" evaluation processes (which look at many factors, including race) with stricter grade, score and achievement-based ranking?

One outcome is almost certainly a continued reduction in the percentage of already underrepresented groups -- blacks and Latinos in particular. But another might well be a continued rise in the percentage of Asian Americans on elite college campuses. And that sometimes places Asian American progressives in the awkward position of advocating for a larger social good that might have short-term negative implications for their own community.

"It's obviously a challenge to steer a nuanced course," says Vincent Pan, executive director of Chinese for Affirmative Action. "Sometimes you end up looking like you're for Asians and against blacks and Latinos, or for affirmative action and against Asian Americans. And I think that that's misleading. Yes, at some point there are zero-sum decisions, but when you get there, what you need is a thoughtful discussion at all the levels of impact."

CAA fought against Proposition 209, which eliminated affirmative action from the University of California system; the net result of the bill has been a jump in Asian American freshman enrollment at UC-Berkeley from 37 percent in 1995 to 45 percent today. UCLA and UC-San Diego have seen similar boosts, to 41 percent and 49 percent respectively.

On the other hand, CAA has taken the lead in fighting to roll back last year's decision to eliminate SAT Subject Tests -- tests that cover specific academic topics that can be studied for, like language -- as a requirement for enrollment in the UC system, pointing to the fact that this change could end up reducing Asian American enrollment by as much as 12 percent, since Asian Americans score significantly higher on those tests than the more general SAT Reasoning Test.

Pan asserts that there isn't necessarily a discrepancy between the two agendas. "We're fixed on the long-term principle, that society works best if it works for everyone," he says. "In the long run, Asian Americans will not do as well in a society where other people do not have equal access. We can't move forward at other groups' expense, because it will come back to haunt us. That kind of social injustice hurts America, just as it does if Asian Americans are limited from access."

We might look to Jewish Americans as an example. Adhering to the principle that all suffer when any suffer, Jews were among the earliest and most passionate supporters of equal rights for black Americans. The NAACP was cofounded by Henry Moscowitz, alongside W.E.B. DuBois and other civil rights leaders; Kivie Kaplan served as its national president from 1966 to 1975. Jewish philanthropist Julius Rosenwald's generosity funded the creation of more than 2,000 primary and secondary schools in black neighborhoods and 20 black universities, including Howard, Dillard and Fisk, which collectively provided education for nearly four out of 10 blacks living in the South.

And the generation of Jewish Americans who came out of college in the Fifties and Sixties, facing and overcoming discrimination in admissions, went on to stand and march side by side with African Americans: Over half of the young people who participated in the Mississippi Freedom Summer in 1964 were Jews.

But Pan ultimately cautions against the constant invocation of the Asian/Jewish connection, even in an inspirational context.

"It's inappropriate to suggest Asians are the new Jews, just like it's inappropriate to suggest that gays are the new blacks," he says. "Asians are Asians. We deserve to have our own meme, not simply recycling someone else's. But we won't get there without recognizing that we don't just inherit the benefits of rights fought for by those who went before us -- we also inherit the responsibility to fight for those who come after us."

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As a child growing up in Shanghai in the late Forties, Pan Guang lived next door to one of the city's rare handful of Jewish households, a family of Russian Jews who had fled to China to escape the rampant anti-Semitism of the early 1900s, and the close friendship he struck with his neighbors inspired in him a lifelong fascination with Jewish history and culture.

"That initial interest became academic interest," says Pan, who is dean of Shanghai's Center of Jewish Studies. "It's had a huge impact in my life. I've been to Israel many times. I read a lot of Jewish books, Jewish history. It's almost my life."

Pan will be in San Francisco next week for the formal opening of the landmark exhibition at the Presidio, "Jews in Modern China," which features hundreds of photographs, documents and memorabilia he's collected from China's three waves of Jewish settlement -- the Sephardic Jews driven out by the Spanish Inquisition in the 15th century, the Russian Jews who sought refuge from the pogroms, and the European Jews who turned to Shanghai as a haven from Nazi terror.

The artifacts are from the collection Pan and the Center of Jewish Studies has amassed since its founding in 1988. The center has documented the history of China's Jewish community, which at its peak numbered more than 40,000.

China's welcoming attitude toward Jews was, in Pan's mind, the result of natural affinity between the two cultures; he notes that on a stone monument erected in 1489, the Jews of the city of Kaifeng, one of China's ancient capitals, wrote the following inscription: "Our religion and Confucianism differ only in minor details. In mind and deed both respect Heaven's Way, venerate ancestors, are loyal to sovereigns and ministers, and filial to parents. Both call for harmony with wives and children, respect for rank, and for making friends."

The "Jews in Modern China" exhibition at the Presidio Officers' Club (50 Moraga Avenue, 11 a.m.-5 p.m., free admission) opened for previews yesterday, and runs through May 16. The formal opening event, however, takes place on March 2, at 5:30 p.m., featuring a one-on-one conversation between Pan and Professor Thomas Gold of UC-Berkeley.