“You’re Jewish? But you don’t look Jewish!” (Cringe.)
I can’t even count how many times someone has muttered this to me in my life. For some reason, something about my long, straight blonde hair makes people second guess my Jewish identity. Guess what everyone? Me and my blonde locks are unapologetically Jewish and we’re here to teach you a lesson.
Nowadays everything offends everyone. You can’t even go to the bathroom without pissing someone off (pun intended). And guess what? Opening the door for the person behind you will definitely offend someone too. I get it. People need to chill out.
However, let’s just establish the fact that there is a fine line between someone being overly sensitive about something stupid and someone responding to something that is blatantly racist, homophobic or anti-Semitic.
When you tell someone that they don’t look Jewish, you aren’t complimenting them. You are unintentionally being anti-Semitic. What is a Jew supposed to look like? Further, why is it a compliment to not look like a Jew?
I guess I should probably say that a lot of this sort of sentiment does not stem from a place of hatred, but rather, a place of ignorance. I know that out of all the people who have ever said something like this to me, none of them are anti-Semitic. And, I know that they never wished to be offensive, but instead failed at an attempt to compliment me.
This line, the “you don’t look Jewish” line, usually comes after I mention something about not eating ham or not celebrating Christmas. The person I’m talking to usually looks at me as if I just told them that I was born on planet Mars and tells me, in a “what-no-way” sort of tone, that they would have never guessed that I was Jewish considering the fact that I look nothing like a Jew.
It wasn’t until I started college that I began asking people what a Jew is supposed to look like. The responses I got, confirm that anti-Semitic rhetoric is still very much alive.
Apparently, a Jewish person must have brown or black, curly hair and well duh, they must have a huge shnoz (nose).
Hello? Telling someone that they don’t look Jewish, while thinking that you are complimenting them, is not only offensive, but really, really anti-Semitic.
The caricature of the big-nosed, short, loud, whiny, money-making Jew has been alive for thousands of years. These stereotypes led to horrific massacres against Jews. The fact that the Jewish people have gone through so much oppression and people still don’t recognize anti-Semitism when they see it is outrageous.
My great-grandparents and other family members did not survive the horrors of the Holocaust to be embarrassed of their identity. Certainly, they didn’t survive the Holocaust so that their great-grandchildren would be embarrassed about being Jewish. Why the heck would you think I’d be thankful for you telling me that I don’t look Jewish?
So listen up, before you say something about the way Jews are supposed to look like, perhaps you should reconsider your thoughts. The moral of the story is that Jewish people don’t all come in one shape, color and size; telling someone they don’t look Jewish is anti-Semitic and it is not a compliment; educate yourself because ignorance is not bliss — it's stupidity.
Don’t do this.
