Why Evolution is True is a blog written by Jerry Coyne, centered on evolution and biology but also dealing with diverse topics like politics, culture, and cats.
People who wish me a “Happy Hanukkah” don’t realize that I never celebrated the Jewish holidays, the one exception being my mother lighting one candle per night on a menorah. Otherwise, we celebrated Christmas like the goys: we had a Christmas tree, which my father called “The Hanukkah bush”, exchanged presents on Christmas morning, and had a big Christmas lunch, often featuring ham.
I don’t remember going to synagogue at all, though I did go to Hebrew school to learn the language for a bar mitzvah I never had. I flunked out of Hebrew school, and as a result was put into the all-girl class, whose instruction was less rigorous because you don’t need much Hebrew for a bat mitzvah. I was, at 12, ashamed to be in a class with all the girls, and simply left Hebrew school. That was my last connection with the faith, which I lost completely in 1967 (see here for the story, or go below the fold).
This is all a prelude to showing you two photos that my sister sent me yesterday. Apparently she and her family visited my parents’ graves (they’re in Arlington National Cemetery since my dad was a veteran), and found them decorated them for the holidays.
Her caption: “The Jews who loved Christmas!!” (She is also a heathen.):
This isn’t a huge kerfuffle, because the morons espousing the thesis in the title aren’t numerous. And the kerfuffle was popularized by the “scandal site” TMZ. Nevertheless, it shows how crazily woke some people are. Here’s the TMZ tweet which directs you to a clickbait-y article based entirely on tweets. (What would journalism do without Twitter? It would have to be more serious and do investigative reporting beyond scanning Twitter for faux controversies.)
The hellscape of Twitter is at it again … this time arguing over whether Anne Frank, a girl killed in the Holocaust for being Jewish, actually had 'white privilege.' https://t.co/wgGWcyYHO2
— Emily Schrader – אמילי שריידר (@emilykschrader) July 10, 2022
Another tweet and refutation. I don’t think Anne Frank hid behind her “whiteness”; she hid from the Jew-hating Nazis in the annex of an Amsterdam pectin factory.
It’s time for our bi-annual garbage Holocaust take featuring Anne Frank and Jews as ‘white people’. pic.twitter.com/3vbyZDysud
Here’s someone observing a wider discussion in the UK:
The Jews have ‘white privilege’ debate is still running by Novarra/Corbyn crowd. My entire life in UK,my child’s life in UK – I’ve never been to a single Jewish school arts centre place of worship without barbed wire, security guards, search .Constant death threats. Priviledge?
Here’s a rabbi—a rabbi!—who pays lip service to “visible” Jews, but at the same time has to show her virtue, asserting that Jews “grabbed white privilege” (allowed to do so only because of anti-black racism) and thus are “conditionally white.” Grabbed white privilege? How do you do that?
Us dead? Yep, that’s why we talk about conditional whiteness.
But white Jews were still nonetheless able to start grabbing white privilege a few generations ago and the only reason we could was because of antiblackness. We can only be allies in the fight against racism +
As you see below, even Hannah Nikole Jones of the 1619 Project can see the fallacy of this claim! And that fallacy is simple: in Nazified Europe, Jews were not seen as white–as “Aryans”, the “master race”. Rather, they were an inferior “race”, more or less the equivalent of blacks in the post-bellum South before civil rights came around. (I would disagree with Jones’s claim, though, that “race is a fiction”, as that needs severe qualification.)
I think you made to do a bit more reading in Nazism.
But as I’ve said before, there is no object, no concept, no organization, and no activity that cannot be demonized by some crazied Wokesters. Anne Frank, for crying out loud!
OY VEY! DOUBLE OY VEY! Helen Mirren has been cast as Golda Meir in an upcoming film on the late Israeli Prime Minister, and people are beefing about it. About ten years ago this wouldn’t have raised an eyebrow, but now the Pecksniffs are tut-tutting about the choice because Mirren isn’t Jewish. I vehemently disagree.
Now sometimes there is a need for authenticity—and authenticity without insult. While Mirren required extensive makeup to look like Golda, I would not sanction a white man playing, for example, Martin Luther King, Jr. The history of blackface is too pernicious and racist to allow that.
But can a black woman play Golda Meir? I don’t think so, for it would affect the “suspension of disbelief” essential in watching any such movie. There has to be a degree of versimilitude to make the reader immerse himself in the movie’s reality. Could the Robert Redford of old play Truman Capote in the movie “Capote”? I don’t think so, for we know what Capote looked and acted like. Those images are burned too deeply into our neurons to make a Redford performance credible. Could a black man play Richard III? I’m not opposed to that simply because, although we know the King wasn’t black, we wouldn’t be preoccupied with the trope of “blacface” during the movie.
Can Helen Mirren play Golda Meir, even if she’s not Jewish? OF COURSE! So long as she looks sort of like Meir, and tries to adopt a sort-of Israeli accent, why should we beef? She is, after all, a wonderful actress. Does knowing that Helen Mirren isn’t Jewish (she may be an atheist, for all I know) really detract from the movie? Only to the Pecksniffs. Yet they are here infesting the Guardian: click the screenshot to read:
Here they go:
Maureen Lipman has criticised the casting of Helen Mirren as Golda Meir in a forthcoming film about the former Israeli prime minister, saying that the character’s Jewishness is “integral”.
In comments reported by the Jewish Chronicle, Lipman said she “disagreed” with Mirren’s casting. She added: “I’m sure [Mirren] will be marvellous, but it would never be allowed for Ben Kingsley to play Nelson Mandela. You just couldn’t even go there.”
But there are good reasons not to go there, and it involves external appearance, not internal religious beliefs. Richard Burton, after all, played Thomas Becket in the eponymous 1964 movie, and Burton wasn’t a Catholic or an Anglican, but an atheist. So what? It was a good movie.
Here’s why the Pecksniffs object, but with the inervention of sanity:
In contrast, the playwright and director Patrick Marber was quoted in the Jewish Chronicle article as objecting to the primacy of “lived experienced” in casting decisions, saying: “I fucking hate that expression. Because ‘lived experience’ is sort of a denial of what creativity is and denies the actor the fundamental challenge and right to become someone else to impersonate another human being from another time, from another culture from another religion and another sexuality and other gender.”
Marber added: “I think a Gentile can play a Jew and a Jew can play a Gentile. I don’t like it when someone plays a Jew and gets it wrong. [But] I don’t like quotas.”
How can you “get it wrong” when you play a Jew? There are so many Jews on the world, many of them atheists, that I don’t see how someone can “get it wrong.” But kudos for Marber. His statement about “lived experience” is precisely right.
And Sarah Silverman objects! Seriously? It’s not as if Jews have been underrepresented in the movie industry! And remember, Dame Sarah, both Paul Newman and Sal Mineo, neither of them Jews, both played Jews in the 1960 movie Exodus I remember this scene well:
I’m a secular Jew, and I don’t think that “lived experience” is necessarily for great actors like Mirren. All that’s important is that they convince us they were the character. Here’s Mirren made up as Meir, unrecognizable as the actress.
The famous Latke-Hamantash Debate of the University of Chicago, now copied by a lot of wannabee schools, takes place tonight. (It started here in 1946.) I’ve been to it a couple of times, and it’s always a hoot. The premise is that local scholars, using only data and analyses from their own academic fields, debate the merits of the two Jewish foods latkes (potato pancakes) and hamantashen (triangular cookies filled with prune or apricot paste, usually eaten during Purim). The debate continues the classical disputations of Judaism, and, like those, cannot be settled.
The debaters, nearly always Jewish, are required to wear academic gowns.
Here’s the entire debate from 2016—the 70th debate. As usual, it begins with a musical piece, and then an introduction. Then the real fun begins: the arguments. They were good that year. Shadi Bartsch, a classical scholar, is also married to our University’s President.
This year, sadly, it’s a virtual debate, but the show goes on, as it has yearly since 1946, but I’m sure it’ll be as funny as ever. You can read about this year’s debate here, which begins tonight at 7 p.m. Central (Chicago) time, and you can register here for a free webcast link, and learn who the three speakers will be. Usually there are at least six speakers, and the debate always ends in a tie. Afterwards, the audience and speakers repair to the nearby refectory, where the two items at issue are served to all.
Latkes (with applesauce, though sour cream is a popular topping as well:
The estimable hamantash, here in the classic prune-filled version:
The post-debate nosh in years past:
Images from the 65th Latke Hamantash Debate at Mandel Hall at the University of Chicago on November 22, 2011. (Photo by Jason Smith)
Happy Hanukkah! It’s the third day of the holiday and the second full day. It ends at sundown on Friday, and it’s a time to eat latkes.
I adore latkes, but they’re too laborious to make, so I almost never get them. (Trader Joe’s has frozen ones, but they’re dire.) Here we have two gangstas showing us how to make them properly.
This is pretty damn funny, though there’s one mistake. You never put both sour cream and applesauce on a latke. You’d have to be a meshugana to do that! The proper way is to put sour cream on one latke and applesauce on another, alternating to your taste, and until you’re sated.
(This duo has several other videos, too, including one for Passover.)
