I can often tell the married ins (like me) from the others in my local Jewish community organization. Accent is sometimes a tip-off. Sometimes physical traits are too, although most of these are pretty subtle. Really curly hair is often a clue. Accuracy here is not going to be great. My mother’s family is often picked out as Jewish-looking when it, so far as we know, lacks any Jewish progenitors. I’d likely do better at, say, “pick out the person of Irish decent.”
One of my cousins, who spent her career among musicians, was quite often thought to be Jewish, because she looked Jewish, even, or maybe especially, to Jewish people. I never saw it, but then, I’m sort of deficient in facial recognition, and also, I grew up with her. (I thought she looked like Mary Travers, of Peter Paul & Mary.) So many people assumed she was Jewish that she finally converted. (From Methodist.) Not to marry, just to fit in, and I guess she fits in well.
My super-patriotic Mexican Jewish uncle would be pretty offended if you tried to tell him he’s “non-Mexican”, dude.
Where do you live, btw? My aunt and uncle live in Los Bosques. I’m not at all sure of the general demographics of the area (other than well-off), though.
BTW, I’m half Ashkenazi and half of Irish descent and look very Western European. I have heard multiple times from non-Jews that I don’t look Jewish, but never from a Jew. I guess I set of the Jew-dar? Not sure.
A reading from the Gospel of Matthew, Chapter 2, Verse 9:
And as Joseph and Mary did travel with the infant, they came unto the house of Ezekiel the Purveyor of Goods. And lo, his wife Sarah did make them a coffee cake. Nothing too fancy was the coffee cake, but very nutritious, and all did remark on its flavor. And Ezekiel the Purveyor of Goods did place his elbow in the ribs of Joseph and say, “She doesn’t look Jewish.”
And all were silent, save Sarah: “Hey, watch how you talk about that nice Catholic girl.”
Here ends the reading.
I’ve been trying to figure that out myself. Wikipedia has kind of let me down. I’m guessing that because this is a “new” neighborhood, maybe there’s some self-selection going on? I forgot to mention that not only is the area very Jewish, it’s quite rich by my standards.
Yeah, exactly. There’s nothing at all non-Mexican about them, i.e., they’re just like every other Mexican I’ve met in the social class.
Interlomas. Everything from here to Chapultapec is “Lomas this” or “Bosques that,” and it’s all pretty well off, except for some enclaves that got surrounded by the growth.
Oh, final note:
And, thank G-d that I can get Kosher hot dogs. Mexican hot dogs are pieces of crap, and if you can’t find the Kosher or imported ones, there are literally none that aren’t made from chicken or – according to the ingredient labels – generic bird (“ave”).
Saffron & salmon for Hindu. RC? Anything you want, but my first thought was…black.
I don’t look Jewish, & I’m not.[sup]*[/sup] But I think my grandfather (who wasn’t of Jewish descent) looked more Jewish than my father (who was, albeit very attenuated).
[sup]*[/sup] Although there are Jews who look like me. I think I look like a Hamburger, actually.
Often people with a mediterranean background are mistaken for Jewish. So I think an initial assessment is often made based on characteristics like dark, curly hair, dark eyes, olivine complexion, etc.
But since in Jewish tradition, I believe you are considered Jewish based on maternal lineage, one could have a long line of non-Jewish paternal ancestors and still technically be a Jew. As a result, genetically, such people would be virtually indistinguishable.
On the other side, interfaith marriages would serve to disperse any uniquely Jewish genetic traits throughout the population.
I think the only reason that some people still “look Jewish” is due to the fact that the traits used to make that determination are probably dominant. That together with the fact that historically Jews have been segregated, either by force or choice, has served to preserve certain traits.
In college I participated in seminars offered by rabbis at the off-campus Jewish center and got the ‘you don’t look Jewish’ comment quite often. I’m not, but since I’m half Italian one would think I should have been able to pass. It seem that the WASPy part of my background dominates.
Nope, it’s not a mediteranian thing.
I know tons of Greeks, italians, Spanish, etc. And very few of them look Jewish to me.
As for ‘traditional’ jewish, yeah. It’s passed down from the mother, but it’s also a religion, and some people don’t say mother, they say mom/dad/grandma/grandpa all the way up a few generations sometimes – it’s complicated. Defining who is or isn’t jewish is actually harder to define than who does or doesn’t look Jewish.
I imagine part of it comes from the same influence that causes a long married couple to come to look like one another. Generally such couples are obviously not genetically related (closer than 2nd cousins, anyway, nowadays) but living in a household with a given mindset and attitude might show up in the face somehow, in addition to simply living in close proximity to someone and unconsciously mimicking their gait and facial expression.
I can tell you about that particular area, but one of my Miami coworkers was Jewish, from the Colombian Highlands. I found it peculiar that his accent sounded “normal” to me (i.e., similar to my own when I aim to speak “newscaster Spanish”), but hadn’t bothered to ask about it until this one time he took a phone call and followed the “Hello?” with a ceiling-raising “¡Qui-ó!”. Now, that is very much NOT standard. I can pinpoint the exact village, 10km from mine, where they pronounce quió like that. Other villages in the area use quio, quío, eu, euuu, eeeu… but that quió is from Valtierra and that’s it, so how did a Colombian come by an accent from a specific small village in Spain? The rest of his conversation was also a lot closer to my own accent and dialect than to “newscaster”; some of those words don’t even appear in the dictionary.
Turns out that his family was from Navarra and went to America after the expulsions (Navarra was the last of the three Spanish Kingdoms from which Fernando I expelled the Jews); the highlands of Colombia have lots of lastnames from my (our) area, and some of those settlers from the Basque Lands and the Ebro Valley happened to be Jewish. I’ve met other Colombians from the Highlands and again they sound “newscaster” to me when they’re speaking “to the general public” and “local” when they’re speaking with their family on the phone; people from other areas have different accents. I’ve also discovered that there are records of Jews living in Valtierra.
Oh, and he looked “white” to me, as in “he could perfectly well have been from my home town”, but of course that’s a Spanish white, not glow-in-the-dark. Light brown hair, brown eyes, tanned easily, a nose which would have been big by Swedish standards but average going on small for Mediterranean ones, no discernible indigenous or black ancestry.
That’s funny because I was going to post about how my dad’s family often gets confused for being Jewish. But they’re all Italian. Dark, curly hair, brown eyes, heavy eyebrows, Roman noses and a bit on the paunchy side. Sounds like a propaganda cartoon from the Nazis, doesn’t it?
(When my dad was younger and had a lot less gray, people would think he was Mexican when he grew his mustache out).
My best friend, on the other hand, is Jewish. I wouldn’t have known it unless he told me. He does have dark hair and brown eyes, but that’s not all that unique here in America.
His wife is Catholic. Their kids are always apologizing… 
Don’t you mean “Passover European”? :happyorthodoxsmiley:
Same here. I’m half Italian and have the dark eyes and hair (but it’s straight and not curly) and big nose, and I can usually pass for Jewish. Especially if I grow a beard.
The typical 'Jewish Look" is: black, white, Jewish, and has two eyes.
Wait a minute-that’s Sammy Davis Jr. and Moshe Dayan. Never mind.
My mom worked in the Jewish Hospital, whatever it was called, in London right after WW2. She could tell a Jewish person at a glance. She’s always telling me which actor was Jewish, and I’d think "Sure, Mom.’ Next time I heard reference to that star’s religion, it was Jewish.
Best wishes,
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Coincidentally I just read an article about Cabaret and it mentions this point. The line was in the original 1966 Broadway show but some people complained about it and it was dropped. It was as you noted later restored for the movie.
The Nazis generally caricatured Jews as having hooked noses, receding foreheads, thick droopy lips, and sometimes horns. (Caricatures from "Der Stuermer": 1928-1932)
The Arabs are still doing it (http://www.adl.org/main_arab_world/arab_media_portrayal_jews.htm) although typical Arabs seem to look more like the caricatures than any of the Jews I know do. Look at bin Laden for a good example.
My best friend growing up was Jewish and I’ve known a reasonable number of Jews for living in a not particularly Jewish area of the country. I certainly can’t always distinguish Jews from Gentiles, but I will say that many Jews (both Sephardic and Ashkenazi) resemble each other enough that I can make an educated guess.
If you don’t limit yourself to appearance you can make even more accurate guesses. Names and accents among other things can help. None of these things are foolproof, but they certainly help you make accurate guesses.
I think that this is getting close to the actual answer to the OP. (It leaves a lot unanswered, of course, like actual origin and first use.)
The statement, “Funny, you don’t look Jewish.” has a very Ashkenazi feel to it and it frequently appears in humor derived from burlesque theatre, (as with Mel Brooks), that was heavily influenced by that community in the U.S.
My guess would accord with other speculations in the thread that it was a self-deprecating reference to claims that Jews all looked alike.
And another joke has a young man on the train being badgered by an elderly woman who wants to know if he is Jewish, and when his repeated denials meet with her insistence that surely he must be Jewish, he eventually folds in order to get her to shut up and (untruthfully) says that he is.
Whereupon she clucks her tongue and says “That’s funny, you don’t look Jewish!”.
Being as the joke has definitely been traced back to Cabaret and that show was based on a genuine story, I’m wondering if the line was used in actual Berlin cabaret acts in the twenties and thirties.