I work at a Jewish preschool, but amusingly neither I nor any of the other teachers are actually Jewish by descent or faith. It’s become a common thing that when I meet one of the parents, or a substitute, they’ll take one look at me and say, “You’re not Jewish, are you?”
HOW DO THEY KNOW? I don’t have any obvious markings like a gigantic crucifix tattoo or a pentagram necklace. I can recite the Shabbat prayer in Hebrew. I’ll eat challah like it’s going out of style. And yet it’s like they have a sixth sense, a “Jewdar” if you will, that clues them in immediately to my shiksa status. This has happened at least ten times. I asked Agent Foxtrot and he tells me that I don’t look Jewish – granted, I’m tall and blonde, but there’s several Jewish people who work with me who are tall and/or blond, so that can’t be it. So what is it that clues people? Is there a special handshake or something?
I met you once. You’re not Jewish. You’re blonde, you have a little bit of a southern drawl. You’re just not Jewish. (looking)
I guess I’m borderline Jewish. (looking) People have sometimes assumed I was Jewish.
I went to Tulane that was roughly 1/3 Jewish so I got pretty good at telling. I have figured out that there are several different Jewish looks. There is the Jewish nose, olive skin, and wiry hair look and that one is easy. I know several blond Jewish women so I certainly wouldn’t rule someone out based on that alone. I think it is a combination of facial features, linguistic expressions, cultural indicators like foods, and ambition. Most of the Jewish females I know are pretty driven in some way and have a subtle (or not so subtle) distinctive speaking style.
I am sure there are people out there that I couldn’t tell but you usually can. What they are probably doing is seeing that you don’t have any Jewish indicators and assuming you would if you were Jewish.
Careful, please about stepping too close to the stereotype line.
The problem is that there may be people who don’t fit your “Jewish looks” rubric, so you assume they are not Jewish, but they may in fact be Jewish. But because you don’t find out one way or another, you never challenge your assumption that you are right about your ability to identify Jews on their looks. Also careful about the amibition stereotype as well. Even “positive” stereotypes are damaging, IMHO.
I think the linguistic expressions and other cultural indicators may be more on point for the OP’s question, than looks are.
well, I can’t tell, always. When we went to England on the QE2 25 years ago, our table consisted of my wife and me, an accountant for the IRS and his wife, a guy who sang opera at times, a guy from Eastern Europe, and a nice Irish couple. It turned out everyone at the table except my wife was Jewish - and I would have guessed only 3, 4 tops.
Do the other teachers have Yiddish inspired sentence structure sometimes? I don’t speak Yiddish at all, but I got enough feel from my grandmother that I do the little language things sometimes. It might be coming from New York also, nu?
I tend to have people out here in CA think I’m Jewish. I’ve come to the conclusion that by speech pattern/attitude/expressions, I read as “New Yorker” and that translates to Jewish for some people. If you read as “southern” that may automatically translate to Christian in people’s minds.
(Though I actually once inadvertantly confused a coworker who is actually Jewish. I mentioned having dietary restrictions and he asked me if I kept kosher. When I explained, he said’d he’d been sure I was Jewish because now and then I peppered yiddish into my speech-- just my Dad’s Brooklyn slang I’d never asked the origin of)
I get random people confirming to me that I’m Jewish, which really freaks me out. Most often people who have only chatted with me on a creepy-stranger level for 10 min or less. I never thought I looked particularly Jewish.
Which is all to say - no Jewdar here, but I apparently set everyone’s off.
You know, I’ve never really thought about it, but I only know one Jewish girl with blonde AND straight hair. (I’m not assuming you have straight hair, but if you do, well, that’s all the more reason.) My school has such a high Jewish population that I assume someone is Jewish, atheist, or both, until proven otherwise by speech or hints, so I think I have a fairly good sampling of the Jewish population.
Also, I’ve noticed the whole New York = Jewish thing too. I wasn’t even aware schmuck was a Yiddish word until an Adam Sandler movie brought it to my attention. Bubalah is a common family nickname for one’s children, and my aunt recently told us her Jewish husband corrected her on the Yiddish pronunciation. Her response was, “It’s a family nickname, and that’s how we say it, our child is ‘Boo ba luh’ and that’s the end of it,” simply because it wasn’t Yiddish to us, it was just what we called each other. I’m not completely dense though, I know kvetching is or Yiddish origin. So I suppose Yiddish words aren’t a good indicator of Jewishness (is that a word? I think not).
