“Boubileh, isn’t it amazing that Naftali Bennett, the prime minister of Israel, is mediating the war between Ukraine and Russian.”
“Yup.”
Did you know that he flew to Moscow to meet with Putin. And after he has talked to Putin, he called Zelensky?State of Jerusalem: The MaqdasyinKeep Watching
“Yup.”
“Bennett is making Israelis kvell. Now they feel like they have become important actors on the world stage. Real big pishers. Who would ever have thought that would happen?”
“Not me.”
“Boubileh, Bennett has got a pair of big ones. He knows he’s walking into a mine field.”
“Yup.”
But little old Israel with 9.5 million people is trying any way to mediate a war with Russia and its 146 million citizens and Ukraine with its 41 million inhabitants. That’s chutzpah.ADVERTISEMENT
“Yup.”
“I bet Bennett is already seeing that Nobel peace prize in his trophy case.
“Yup.”
“Do you know how much money Bennett would win?”ADVERTISEMENT
Boychick, I think the laureate receives over a million bucks, a diploma, a fabulous banquet in their honor, a fully paid trip to Oslo plus the gold medal. The laureate meets the King of Sweden in Oslo, who will present him with the Nobel. I bet you didn’t know that the peace prize is awarded in Norway and all the other prizes are received in Sweden. They’ll shake hands. He’ll smile for the cameras as he is handed the gold medal and the laureate’s claim to immortality has been secured.”
“Do you think Bennett has already started to write his acceptance speech?”
“Nope. It’s way to early for that but I bet Bennett is already feeling the champagne bubbles running up his nose. And his taste buds are already craving those caviar blinis.”
“Boychick, you’re right. But I wonder if Bennett ever took any courses in mediation?”
“I doubt it, but I bet he’s a quick learner.”
“Well, no matter whether he has a degree or he doesn’t, Bennett better be careful.
Let me tell you a story about when I was on the force. Yup, NYPD. We handled lots of domestic violence cases. We’d try to be mediators between these fighting husbands and wives. We’d get into their apartment. Ya know, all those apartments smelled alike? Beer, cigarettes, old pizza and a touch of vomit. The wife or girlfriend seemed to always have a bloody nose and a black eye. She’s screaming and calling her husband every dirty word you can imagine. Of course, he’s drunk or stoned or both. I order them to, ‘Separate! Move to different corners of the room!’ The husband doesn’t respond, so I yell, ‘Move your ass to the other corner of the room or you’re going to jail.’
The next thing I know the wife jumps on my back and starts choking me. The bitch yells, ‘Leave him alone! Don’t touch him or I’ll kill you!’
I body slam her to the floor, step on her neck and pull out my pistol.
My partner cuffs them and hauls them down to the squad car.
I think, ‘I’m so damn lucky. Here I am trying to be a good cop and mediate a family dispute. I could have ended up in the hospital or a funeral parlor.’
You don’t know how many cops have died trying to mediate those ‘family disputes.’
Bennett better be real careful or he and Israel will end up getting two black eyes and a bloody nose. If Putin and/or Zelensky need a scapegoat to blame their failures on. Bennett will be their guy.
I’ve seen it a hundred of times, the mediator gets the crap kicked out of him and the husband and wife get back together. They move on with their lives until their next brawl. Bennett has got to be real smart and careful or he is going to get two klops on his keppie—one from Putin and the other from Zelensky.
Boychick, that’s a real life lesson for you. Don’t get caught in the middle and attempt to be a mediator. It’s way too risky and the pain ain’t worth it.”
“Yeah, but I bet Bennett knows another life lesson entitled, ‘No guts, no glory.’”
“Boychick, you know you’re right.”ABOUT THE AUTHORFlorida’s Jewish short-story writer, speaker, film producer and retired attorney. He has authored, “A Hebraic Obsession”, “The Hanukkah Bunny” and “The Greatest Gift.” He produced an award-winning short film entitled, “The Stairs”. Movie can be viewed on my TOI blog. Mort is a correspondent for the Fort Lauderdale Sun Sentinel Jewish Journal.RELATED TOPICS
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The Myth of Jewish Nose
MAR 22, 2022, 6:15 AM
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Report this post.Promotional photo of Barbra Streisand—Date 1965—Unknown author (public domain)
“Hey boychick, ya know what movie I rented On Demand last night?”
I nodded my head in exasperation. “No Mort, what movie did ya watch?”
“Licorice Pizza. The movie and it’s director, Paul Thomas Anderson, have been nominated for Academy Awards. There’s this really hot Jewish chick, Alina Haim, who stars in the film. She’s a real looker, a great actor and I bet we’ll see her in a lot more movies. She plays a sexy, Jewish, 25-year-old, who is looking for love and ends up finding a 15-year-old who’s nuts about her.”
“Mort, the movie doesn’t sound too realistic.
And that film’s title, who ever hear of licorice pizza? Even thinking about the taste kills me.”
“Well boychick, it’s a good comedy and it does manage to confront one of the world’s oldest myths.”
“Mort, I’m afraid to ask, which myth?”
“The myth of the Jewish nose.”
“That’s a myth!” I exclaimed.ADVERTISEMENT
“Yup and let me tell ya about the movie first; then I’ll discuss the myth. Ya see Alina goes to see a casting director (CD).. The CD eyes Alina’s physical attributes. By that I mean her breasts and her ass and says, ‘You have a number of admirable qualities and that beautiful Jewish nose. Of course, the CD meant that her nose was a bissel too big or a bissel too curved for Hollywood movies. It’s like the CD was hinting that Alina should use her bat mitzvah money to pay for a nose job.”
As I listened, I squeezed my nose between my thumb and index finger and wondered, “Did I have one of those protruding Jewish proboscises?”
“Well boychick, if you remove your hand from your nose, I’ll relieve your anxiety about the size of your schnoz. Ya see, I read Maurice Fishberg’s 1911 study on this subject. Fishberg measured 4,000 New York City Jewish noses and found no size difference with that of the goyim in the general population. He also found that only 20% to 30% of Jews have hooked noses with the vast majority having straight ones.”
“Don’t ya think, with a name like Fishberg, he could have rigged the results?” I asked.ADVERTISEMENT
“Ya, but I doubt it. He was a physical anthropologist who specialized and wrote the book on the ethnology of the Jews. This was his life work.”
So Mort, how did I, a self-respecting member of the tribe, fall prey to the big lie?”
‘Well, in junior-high we all heard the ‘Because-air-is-free joke.’ We saw hostile caricatures of Hebrews from way back in the mid-13th century. Shakespeare gave us Shylock and Dickens gave us Fagan. Nazis in art and in film featured Jews with large hooked beaks. Even now during the Corona pandemic the “Happy Merchant” meme was widely spread by far-right groups. Those neo-Nazis blamed the Jews for the spread of the virus.
Even the medical community in 1914, played into the myth, here is an example. There was a young woman who was self-conscious about her nose. So she went to her physician, Jerome Webster, who made the following diagnosis: Nose is fairly long, has a very slight hump, is somewhat broad near the tip and the tip bends down, giving somewhat the appearance of a Jewish nose. Dr. Webster then concluded, I think that there is sufficient deformity to warrant changing the nose.”
Mort pulled his iPhone out of his pocket and said, “Now let me read you some facts about the history of the ‘Jewish nose’ from wiki:The Jewish nose has been used in Western scientific literature to describe a set of physical features thought to constitute a distinct, race-based deformity. As early as 1850, Robert Knox, a prominent anthropologist, described the physical features of the Jew as including “a large, massive, club-shaped, hooked nose, three or four times larger than suits the face. . . . Thus it is that the Jewish face never will be, and never is, perfectly beautiful.In the 1900s, the “Jew nose” became the subject of purportedly scientific studies of hereditary transmission; a 1928 text described a “Jew nose” that emerged in the offspring of mixed Jewish and non-Jewish marriages.”
“Mort, I even remember in my junior year in college, when one of my so-called Gentile friends, who just happened to have an aquiline Roman nose, told me, ‘You don’t look Jewish.’
I don’t remember how I replied or if I replied. But I wondered, ‘Was that a compliment or was he insulting to my race.’”
“Boychick, It was both.”
“But Mort, didn’t surgeons invent rhinoplasty so that Jews could pass as Gentiles?”
“That’s another myth, but as with all myths there’s a kernel of truth in your question. Let me teach you a little history. I bet ya didn’t know that a pioneer in the field of nose jobs was a German Jew. Dr. Jacques Joseph, Nose Joseph, as he was known, was the son of a rabbi.”
Mort paused as if he was in deep thought.
“Isn’t it interesting how rabbis seem to produce some pretty smart kids?”
I failed to react. So Mort continued.
“Joseph in his book described how he refined surgical techniques for performing nose jobs. His innovations in nose reconstructive surgery lead to rhinoplasty becoming popular in Berlin.”
As I stood, I glanced at Mort’s nose and said, “Thanks for the education but before I go, I gotta tell you that you’ve convinced me of three things and that I still got two more questions for you.”
“I’m all ears.”
“I now know that the Jewish nose and licorice pizza are both myths and I, too, am going to rent that movie starring that hot Jewish chick.
Finally, where can I find a job measuring Jewish noses? And how much does it pay?”ABOUT THE AUTHORFlorida’s Jewish short-story writer, speaker, film producer and retired attorney. He has authored, “A Hebraic Obsession”, “The Hanukkah Bunny” and “The Greatest Gift.” He produced an award-winning short film entitled, “The Stairs”. Movie can be viewed on my TOI blog. Mort is a correspondent for the Fort Lauderdale Sun Sentinel Jewish Journal.RELATED TOPICS
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