A little over a year ago I posted one of those irritating “Wow! Look Who’s Jewish” pride pieces sent to me by some well-meaning relative along with my own suspicions that this particular one was weirdly long and full of questionable claims of Jewish ancestry. At the time I was too lazy busy to delve into the roots of some of these “facts,” though the idea that Winston Churchill had a secret Jewish mother is patently ridiculous. Next thing you know people will be saying Moammar Qaddafi’s mother was Jewish, *haw haw haw*… oh, oops.
Reader Scott Sherris, a man much smarter and more industrious than I, has uncovered the disturbing information that many of these “obscure Jewish ties” are exclusively the products of the toxic minds that run anti-Semitic hate sites. He writes that while we all “love to be proud of people who are Jewish,” the conspiracy-makers cooked up the Hebrew links of world leaders during WWII to “prove” that a Jewish cabal ruled the world. “How delicious for them if Jewish president Roosevelt sent Jewish general Eisenhower to fight along with Jewish dictator Stalin against the poor, misunderstood Germans?” Sherris writes.
This insidious email continues to circulate among us, and it’s up to you and me to break the chain. The next time some misguided Jewish friend sends you a list of “Famous Jews,” set ’em straight. If you don’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings, just send them to the Yenta.
I think one of the most used “famous Jews” to promote anti-Semitism is Karl Marx, whose family converted to Christianity. Making the connection between Jews and Marx, anti-Semites make the claim that Jews are communists. Jews can’t really be blamed if someone of Jewish lineage was raised under different beliefs, regardless of your feelings about communism.
Another thing that kind of annoys me is people blindly accepting the truth of Adam Sandler’s Chanukah song. There are several people in the list that are not Jews. I’ve also got a friend who claims every entertainer he likes is a Jew, which isn’t blatant anti-Semitism but still reinforces the stereotype that everyone in entertainment is a Jew. He also assumes everyone with the last name Diamond is related. Apparently, Mike D from the Beastie Boys is Dustin DiamondÂ’s brother and they are nephews of Neil Diamond. I wonder where Lou Diamond Phillips fits into the equation.
Was Wolfenstein jewish? You did get to shoot up the nazis and kill hitler, if I remember correctly. Let me consult the wikipedia for that one…
I think sometimes people assume that a German name is automatically Jewish. Even my own mother thought her mother’s maiden name Semler was Jewish, yet all research I have done show it to be an Austrian surname originally.
I remember someone saying that Dr. Carl Weiss, the man who assassinated Huey Long (possibly saving America from the totalitarian fever of the 1930s), was Jewish because of his last name, only Weiss was a German Catholic and his mother was a cajun.