Israeli leader Baruch Marzel urged supermodel Bar Refaeli not to marry her actor boyfriend, Leonardo DiCaprio:
"It is not by chance that you were born Jewish. Your grandmother and her grandmother did not dream that one of their descendants would one day remove the family's future generations from the Jewish people. Assimilation has forever been one of the enemies of the Jewish people."
Marzel told Refaeli that he "has nothing against Mr. DiCaprio, who is a talented actor." Still, he urged Refaeli: "Come to your senses, look forward and back too - and not only the present. Don't marry Leonardo DiCaprio, don't harm the future generations."
25 comments:
I'd say this is none of Marzel's business, even though I share his sentiments. But he should tell this to his own children, not someone else's.
By the way, according to Jewish law, won't Refaeli's children be Jewish regardless?
K
Yes, her children will be counted as Jews by the halacha. But Baruch Marzel is not talking about a legal definition. He tries to set this kosher but naive maydele in the right path.
Heh, women can't, men can, girls bad but boy's good in same situation!
I looked up Marzel - he is a certified meshuganeh. He may be more correct that the typical leftist trash, but still he's not the kind of guy I would be comfortable taking advice from. Somehow I don't think Baruch is bikini babe Bar's kind of guy either, so Baruch' statement was probably more to get publicity for himself than any serious attempt at communicating with Refaeli.
K
Of course. Baruch Marzel is an Israeli politician who has positioned himself in the extreme right wing and is interested to be shown as a defender of the tribe. The things he says sabotage our natural desire to be presented as a liberal, diverse, politically correct people. Yet he has a strong impact, because by asuming the "crazy right wing" position, he defines the limits of our public debate.
But what advice is DiCaprio's grandmother giving him?
Anon.
I think Ms DiCaprio is jumping of joy that her pretty actor grandson is not homosexual and is planning to marry a nice decent girl from a "good" family.
I agree w. J - in my experience Jews object more to their children marrying goyim than vice versa. Jewish men especially have a reputation as being good providers who don't get drunk and beat their wives, etc. What's not to like?
K
I hate to break this to Marzel, but it really looks like Refaeli's ancestors had already married outside the tribe.
And, one deeply suspects, to people not entirely unrelated to Di Caprio.
She looks stunning, and with a healthy body, quite unlike the usual anorectic modelettes.
Good luck to them both.
Anon.
This sounds like an attention-grabbing ploy based on old news. I had never heard of this Marzel lunatic, but I have now and I'm not impressed. Whatever you think of intermarriage, that kind of tone-deaf public pronouncement can be used to make all Jews look like retrogressive morons (already has been on the anthroscape forum).
Anyway, I'm still unconvinced by K's arguments a few posts ago. Personal autonomy should trump irritating communitarianism. She should marry who she wants. There will always be others for whom being ethnically Jewish or Ashkenazi is more important.
"There will always be others" are the words that will be chiseled on the tombstone of Western civilization. I don't want to have children, there will always be others to have them. I want to retire with a government pension when I'm 50, there will always be others who will work to fund my lifestyle. I don't want to serve in my country's military - there will always be others who are willing to serve. Etc.
K
K,
I think part of our disconnect here is the relative value we place on the Ashkenazi Jewish label. It's interesting that you write that viewpoints like mine will be the end of Western civilizaion. Part of my dissatisfaction with that label arises from the fact that I see us as not Western enough, and getting less so.
When I think about the future of Ashkenazi Judaism, I see two undesirable poles: insular religious fanaticism (haredi and hasid) and lunatic secular leftism. My personal orientation is secular and conservative. I think that Ashkenazi Jewry arguably reached its cultural apex in Germany and Austria-Hungary between 1870 and 1930 when we were more pro-Western civ, and that we have been backsliding ever since. So I have little in common with either of the current or future opinion leading groups. However, these undesirable factions are getting more numerous and have the ability to exert social pressure (kiruv for the ultra-orthodox, anti-European culture for crazy lefties) on people like me. Why would I want to belong (or encourage any similar person to belong) to such a group?
Throw in the danger that faces all Jews from our detractors, and it's an even worse deal. Maybe Bar Refaeli has similar thoughts? Probably not, but I'm sure she has her own reasons.
Anon, I find it interesting that you think of Askenazi Jewry as an ideological group, when in fact they are a racial/ethnic group. Anyone can join or believe an ideology (and change which ideology they believe in, even on a daily basis), but your ethnicity is much deeper than that. If someone is born say Japanese they do not concern themselves with what the opinion leaders of Japan believe this week before they decide whether they like being Japanese or not.
K
In our modern world, isn't everyone's sex life, personal life, and privacy up for grabs?
K, you say that Ashkenazi Jews form "a racial/ethnic group." But aren't Ashkenazi Jews and every other cohesive group partially examples of ideological groups? An ideological group might say: eat this, do this, don't eat this, don't do that — just like an ethnic group. We might ask Anon what Anon means by "My personal orientation is secular and conservative." Does Anon mean "conservative" in the sense of Max Born, Isaac Bashevis Singer, and/or Erwin Chargaff? Can Anon give us examples of Jewish secular "conservative" books? Do we all agree that it is not "conservative" to gossip about or publicize someone's sex life or private life?
So would you say that being Japanese is a matter of ideology? If, for example, you were born as an Australian aborigine, you could convert to the Jewish religion, observe kashrut, join Jewish political and social groups, etc. but still I think this would not make you an Ashkenazi Jew. And conversely, if you were born and raised as an Ashkenazi Jew you could become an Episcopalian like Hyman Rickover did and still you would be an Ashkenazi Jew with a Yiddische kopf and recognizable Jewish traits.
K
I think a modest amount of inter-racial breeding is not a bad thing, has not obviously harmed the Ashkenazim, and might in fact have diluted out some of the more dangerous genes like BRCA1.
Anon.
The key word is modest. The estimated interbreeding rate of the Ashkenazi Jews in the past was on the order of 1% per generation (still over the course of 2,000 years in exile this lead to considerable gene shift). Men have a strong impulse to screw anything that moves but there were strong social taboos on all sides in pre-modern Europe where the Jews lived. But now in the US the intermarriage rates are on the order of 50%+. One does not have to be as smart as an Ashkenazi Jew to see that, at that rate, in a few generations the Ashkenazim will be so interbred as to no longer be a distinct population.
K
K
In the absence of some inter-breeding, the Ashkenazim would speciate; but I agree 50% is too much, and the high IQ gift will disappear from humanity, or at least become much rarer.
I have seen this happen; I think you should encourage study of the IQ's of miscegeneous marriages' offspring.
I suspect that high IQ genes in goyim and in Jews may not actually be the same, even in people who, say, both have an IQ of 120. And it is possible (note: a hypothesis) that one plus one might here equal less than two.
I don't know; just a hunch.
Sadly, your highest IQ people are probably the most likely to stray outside the tribe, since they will be least vulnerable to authority and the powers of what they perceive to be magical thinking, and also be highly attractive to prospective inteligent goyim partners who realise how fickle the gift might be in their own family trees.
Anon.
I agree with you that the mischlings are somewhat uneven in quality. I have two mischlinge nieces and nephews (the children of my wife's brother and a woman of German descent who is herself quite accomplished). The daughter is very talented musically and does very well in school. The son is a bit slow and not quite all there, unfortunately. As you say, the sum is not always greater than the parts.
K
There have been some very intelligent and/or talented mischlings (half-Jewish in this list unless stated otherwise):
Heinrich Hertz, Adolf von Baeyer, Hans Bethe, Marcel Proust, Niels Bohr (1/4), Wolfgang Pauli (3/4), Ludwig Wittgenstein (3/4) Otto Warburg, Elie Metchnikoff, Harold Kroto, Fritz Kreisler
The list is not exhaustive, and let's not forget that intermarriage rate was relatively uncommon until 1970.
Your list is interesting because I would say these are people who are very accomplished in their field but not world changers of the rank of say Einstein or Freud.
K
Freud was very influential in his time, but his ideas no longer hold much currency. But you're right, no one of the caliber of Einstein on that list. On the other hand, the Jews have only produced a very few of their caliber (not counting semi-historical figures like Abraham or Moses), and not all (e.g. Freud or Marx) have been as creditable as they were/are influential. And their influence has arguably been less than the greatest gentiles such as Galileo, Newton, Gauss, J.S. Bach, etc.
You are badly underestimating Otto Warburg; 2 Nobel Prizes, maybe even a third but for the war.
Protected by cancerophobic Hitler for the duration, ran his Berlin Institute as if WWII was a minor distraction.
Fundamental observation about how cancer cells organize their metabolism differently from normal cells, led to the whole PET scan industry, and in the near future, to a slew of targeted anti-cancer drugs.
Reviled by everyone for not being anti-Nazi enough, his scientific reputation will take some time to emerge from rehab but no question a man of genius, as well as a meticulous workaholic.
Anon.
And you are overestimating him. I'm not clear what your agenda is. In my experience in the German context, usually "not anti-Nazi enough" is a euphemism for "wildly enthusiastic collaborator". Somehow, after the war was over, not a single person in Germany was willing to admit that he was one of the cheering millions. Victor Klemperer (who somehow survived deportation because his wife was not Jewish) kept a diary that was later published as a book. The day the war was over, Germans who had once crossed the street to avoid being seen with him were greeting him as an old friend and confiding "I never really like those guys [the Nazis]."
Otto H. Warburg (the mischling one, not the Zionist) won 1 Nobel in '31, not 2 or 3. His insight into cancer cell metabolism was valid but he confused cause and effect. Certainly an important scientist but not of Einstein's rank. But then again, few are.
K
Post a Comment