by VorJack
I’d thought I heard them all, until I ran across this parenthetical comment in Amy-Jill Levine’s The Misunderstood Jew:
I have twice been asked, each time by nice, silver-haired Protestant women, where I had my horns removed. The women, neither of whom had ever met a Jew before but both of whom had read John’s Gospel and seen pictures of Michelangelo’s horned Moses, asked in all innocence. They were both surprised and relieved to know that Jews don’t have horns. I also mentioned that we don’t have tails and cloven feet, just in case they thought that as well but were too embarrassed to ask. (p. 102-103)
Do you laugh or cry? I have no reason to doubt Levine, but the notion that there are people who are so sheltered and ignorant that they think Jews are hiding horns underneath the yarmulke just blows my mind. Can anyone confirm this from their own experience?
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79 Comments
Absolutely. Went to high school in the deep south and encountered this half a dozen times or so. For reference, I graduated from HS in 1974.
Damn. I had kinda hoped that she was exaggerating.
Just when you think you’ve seen the depths of human ignorance…
While we’re at it…
I was working my summer job in a working-class neighborhood in Richmond, VA, running a register at a supermarket. Since at the time my Jewish heritage was visible (I wore some of the garb) one man came through the line with his son and asked me if I had had my “bah mitzvah”. Yes, I have. He turned to his son and declared (loud enough for half the store to hear), “That’s when they cut your winkie off.”
Somehow I managed to finish ringing his order and see him out the door before collapsing with laughter.
I’ve heard of this belief, though I am pretty sure I read a Jewish biographical sketch about it as opposed to actually hearing someone spout something so incredibly ridiculous.
Haha, love the bat mitzvah story! :)
“Bar” mitzvah — it came out “Bah” sue to the heavy southern accent.
due*
It’s happened to me twice. Much more common belief than it has any right to be.
Why on Earth would someone portray a Jew with horns? That’s just… bizarre.
Well the Catholics did spend hundreds of years demonizing them across all of Europe. A proud tradition that the protestants were all to happy to carry on. As someone said “you throw enough dirt some of it is bound to stick”.
Is this really any worse than the whole using christian babies blood to make passover bread? Or Jews poisoning wells? Anything and everything that could make the Jews seem as though they weren’t people was used, a yarmulke hiding horns isn’t too far fetched once you start down that path.
This may be hearsay, but my understanding is that this is a mistranslation of the Hebrew – when Moses came down from the mountain after his pow-wow with God, the early translators didn’t know what to make of the bit regarding of Moses’ face “shining with glory” – they thought it meant he had horns. Not knowing what that meant, exactly, all anyone could do was shrug their shoulders and move on…
Due to later scholarship, “horns” became more-accurately translated as “shining with glory”. Again, I won’t vouch for 100% authenticity, but that is my understanding. Still pretty damn funny, no matter how you slice it.
That’s about right. That’s how it appeared in the Latin Vulgate, which was the official Bible for about 1100 years before Michaelangelo’s sculpture. There are some good points made a PaleoJudaica here:
http://paleojudaica.blogspot.com/2004_02_22_paleojudaica_archive.html#107770036380948409
Hard as it may be for moderns to understand, this wasn’t part of a campaign of anti-Semitic demonization (which certainly did happen.) The great figures of the Old Testament were greatly revered by the Christians of that era as heroes of faith, predecessors of Jesus. It was ignorant, yes, for folks not to know that Moses didn’t really have horns, but a millennium of Bible reading and religious art had reinforced that notion, and people who had never met a Jew had no reason to doubt it.
People believe Jesus looks like he is normally depicted, the white hippy with the long pretty shiny brown hair and the groomed beard for the same reason.
That’s accurate (or else a really widespread fallacy). Supposably it was St. Jerome who was responsible for the mistranslation in his Vulgate. That’s what led Michelangelo to produce the horned Moses figure I linked to.
The word for horn and for a ray of light is the same in Hebrew. The original can be read as his face glowing (either literally or just with happiness). While horn come from the same root the way it used in the sentence is never used to describe someone who actually have physical horns so I could never understand how the people who translated the bible got that wrong.
So Madonna’s “Ray of Light” album could simply be called Madonna “Horn”? ;)
They aren’t poisoning the wells!
Eep! sorry, html fail!
Should have read:
They aren’t poisoning the wells! They’re putting in a water purification system!
link: http://morethings.com/fan/drawn_together/foxxy_love_vs_board_of_education/09gay_married15.jpg
Because the churches are restoring jewish horns. Blow and sinners repent!
Can we resurrect the stupidity debate from last thread please?
Stupid (via the free dictionary):
1. Slow to learn or understand; obtuse.
2. Tending to make poor decisions or careless mistakes.
3. Marked by a lack of intelligence or care; foolish or careless: a stupid mistake.
4. Dazed, stunned, or stupefied.
5. Pointless; worthless
The people who think Jews have horns are ignorant:
1. Lacking education or knowledge.
2. Showing or arising from a lack of education or knowledge: an ignorant mistake.
3. Unaware or uninformed.
There is a very obvious difference, and from what we know here, the people in the story were ignorant, not stupid.
You don’t think that this degree of ignorance in our modern information age requires a degree of stupidity?
While the two things ARE different concepts, as you point out, that does not mean they are never linked.
Some people are ignorant because they lack access to information through no fault of their own. Some people are ignorant because they are too stupid to realize it and make the necessary corrections.
I always think that anyone can be ignorant but it takes knowledge to be stupid. This seems to how crossed the line into to stupidity as I find it difficult to understand how anyone can go for that long without realising that Jews don’t in fact have horns.
Once you accept things on no evidence, and are afraid to think critically (because it might make you doubt your faith, and then you go to the “H” place), there is no limit to the ignorance that can abound. Like Sherri Shepard on The View not knowing whether the earth was flat or round. You would think we wouldn’t be shocked anymore, but I still am.
(jumping up and down and waving) I do!
T’was a joke. Relax.
@brgulker There is a very obvious difference, and from what we know here, the people in the story were ignorant, not stupid.
They are not completely separate or different. Don’t be so damn quick to blur and fuzz the difference between unawareness of a fact, vs. people who muleheadedly stay extremely unaware of many facts. Don’t be so damn quick to excuse muleheaded idiocy. So what if “Ignorance can be cured; stupidity is permanent”. Stupid people stay ignorant. Permanently. They won’t ever be cured. Stupid people don’t educate themselves or seek facts. Stupid people defend what they believe instead of examining the beliefs in question. Stupid people are the ones easily led, easily whipped by emotion into accepting beliefs including entire religions, stupid people are the ones who unquestioningly swallow and spread the stereotypes like this one.
Stupid people excuse their ignorance or laziness by spouting anti-intellectual bias (”eggheads”, “snobs”), excuses (”you don’t have to learn to spell that well, as long as you communicate” – which they don’t do very well), name-calling (”I don’t want to be a professional student”), confirmation bias (”I know of no atheists in NASA”), dismissing the pursuit of competence (”perfectionists”, “kiss-up”, “anorexic”, “fanatic”, “you don’t have to be fast here” – even if you *want* to work on your speed, “everybody’s special”, “all the children are above average” [couldn't resist that one] “I should get respect” but *not* have to earn it).
Continued willful ignorance *is stupidity.
This happened to a friend of mine in college in Ohio in the 1990s. So, yes, it is still out there.
The first time I heard the “Jews have horns” allegation was in the movie Borat. I thought it was invented.
I thought it was invented.
It was, but not by him.
Yes I couldn’t find the right word :) I meant made up by the character.
I am relieved that I’m not the only one who immediately thought of Borat.
I’ll third that one. The running of the Jews with the children attacking the Jew egg scence came to mind.
This goes back a long way, and is hearsay besides, but I have no reason to question it.
My grandmother, who spent most of her life in New Jersey, lived for a time in Laramie, Wyoming, in a rooming house. This was some time around 1940. She told me that she caught the owners of the establishment, two older women, looking quizzically at her head from time to time. She finally asked what they were looking for, and they told her. Yes, horns.
If I had horns I would think it was awesome. I would cut my hair to show them off.
I might have them gilded.
Horns are a somewhat common body modification.
Horns as body mod are lame. I want ones that grow naturally.
Of course, I also dislike fake breasts, so that just might be my particular kink.
Yeah, it’s totally kinky to like natural breasts!
I was thinking about the horns, I just want one like a unicorn, but like you, I want it to grow naturally. I suppose if I naturally grew two horns, I might have one removed. Aside from that, it would be totally cool to have antlers. Antlers > Horns.
Get coral implants. Your bone grows around it and it becomes horns growing naturally out of your head.
Or wear them Hellboy style maybe?
My helmet wouldn’t fit.
Although if you’ve ever seen the Two Ronnies sketch where Ronnie Barker removes his viking helmet but leaves the horns, you might think it a good idea.
I remember reading this in a book. I think it might have been a Judy Blume book, not sure. It might have also come up on The Waltons and/or Little House on the Prairie as an illustration both how it’s not true and of “silly things people used to think.” For some reason, I have an easier time thinking this was more popular in the past because people were stupider or something, there was no tv and a lot of people lived in places where they never saw another Jew.
At least now, I think most people are familiar with the idea of Jews even if they’ve never met one. Since I don’t have personal experience with this, I have a hard time believing even if you are in the KKK, that even if you might hate Jews, there’s no way you think they’re born with horns. The more I expose myself (here and elsewhere) to the stupid filthy things people really think, the more I guess I believe any random Jew would have such an encounter even now. But like it said in the article, the women were old. I used to think it was actually rare for anyone to believe in creationism either. I thought most Christians were progressive little cherry-pickers who didn’t actually take those as anything but fables and traditional explanations that had been cleared up by science. I mean rare.
You have to be a real dolt to believe, contrary to basic biology – most people are exposed to births and babies by siblings, nieces and nephews, their own children, etc., – that there’s a religion and/or ethnicity whose children are born with specific deformities like horns or that they are actually a different species than human. Hating them and thinking they are sub-class is one thing entirely, but born with horns…. how many among us were tricked when young by an older brother or sister telling us that we were born with a tail? My brother told me this and he told me not to believe my mother when she denied it. Then you don’t think about it for a while (unless he tells you every day) and then you learn people don’t have tails.
Yeah, I think it’s totally strange and a little scary that an entire set of people over the age of 6 get their information from a painting of Moses on the physical deformities of Jews to ask where they got them removed. And I don’t think that’s even a smart question – do they suppose there are professions like cobblers and manicurists who specialize in removing Jew horns? Have they considered doctor’s offices? What a very stupid question.
Humans are infrequently born with tails.
I looked at some images online… had the idea that maybe some people might have some short stub but what I saw was kind of gross. I didn’t know! My brother had told me it was long like a kangaroo and had it removed. I think for the most part anyone whose older brother or sister tells them they were born with a tail is lying, a la the similar one where you were adopted. Just because some people are adopted, and even sometimes they are adopted and the oldest sibling was not, doesn’t mean I was adopted. I was very close to having been raised as if I were the daughter of my aunt and uncle, so yeah, that sort of thing creeps me out, the dysfunctional family secrets you only find out once you’re an adult. I’m still a little suspicious, but the family resemblance is pretty much all I can go on. And now maybe it’s true, I might have been born with a tail and had it removed, and had this fact hidden and denied by my parents. Great.
I’d totally rather have had horns than a tail.
People complain all the time about how bad television is, how it floods people with inaccurate information, how content gets dumbed down so much to make sure even the last person off the stage at Jerry Springer understands it.
Well, this post is pretty compelling to make the case that people should be forced to watch mainline afternoon television. I think every single US-made sitcom has at least one main or recurring supporting character who is Jewish. In that case, the sad observation that an embarrassingly large number of people are incapable of recognizing that what they see on screen is a fictional story, played by people who are not really the character they are playing, could be a good thing. They’ll believe that many people are very silly, that academics are easily confused by daily life, that plumbers are muscular and sexy, that people who never work have beautifully and expensively decorated houses, that you can get any job by walking into an office and choosing one and many more wrong things.
But at least they will not believe that JEWS HAVE FUCKING HORNS!
You’re saying…that all plumbers are not muscular and sexy????? Wha….? This certainly is an educational site.
I had my horns removed (and my nose shortened) by Dr. Moishe Silverbernsteinberg on the lower east side (and I didn’t pay retail!). I did it just before my admission to the Elders of Zion. I qualified for that esteemed organization by successfully blocking distribution of a new Mel Gibson movie through the clever insertion of a control provision I negotiated into the contract of a major movie studio. Now I get priority access to the Elders’ supply of baby Christian blood. My next assignment is to bribe my way through Western intelligence services to compromise their governments and coordinate their continued suppression of Mohammed’s followers.
Do you guys need henchmen?
I’ve always wanted to get into henching.
1-800-henchmen
I really should complete my application soon. I’m getting too old to catch those damn babies myself so I can pierce them with my horns and drink their blood so free supply will be great.
I’ve got a great new recipe for baby if anyone is interested. But it involves mother’s milk, so I guess the Jews on this thread wouldn’t find it Kosher…
Too bad, I really need a good baby recipe for my next dinner party.
Can I substitute blood of the innocent for the milk?
You could try, but the sauce may not set up correctly… seeing as how blood coagulates and all…
David– I lived in the LES of Manhattan when I first lived in New York. And I lived in an old converted Temple. My floor still had the Ten Commandments in Hebrew on a huge marble slab hanging on the wall. We put a couch under it. It was our smoking couch. You know, cuz the TC don’t say “Thou shalt not smoke.” In fact, it seemed a fitting tribute to the burning bush! lol! :)
Still pretty low in the pecking order, I see. Everyone knows the Elders are just a front for the Five Jew Bankers.
OK, makes sense to me.
Ah yes, Dr. Moishe Silverbernsteinberg is indeed very good. I’m half Jewish myself, but he excised that half out of me at a very reasonable price! Thank goodness my unihorn is gone (being only half a Jew gave me only one horn) and my nose is just as gentile as it can possibly be. Praise Jebus!
I wander, if I decide to take Jesus into my hart and accept him as my personal BLAH BLAH BLAH. Will the horns fall of or will I still need the services of Dr Moishe.
I think the horns will fall off… kinda like the way the scales fell from Paul’s eyes…
As I understand it, they can safely and painlessly remove their horns with a saw, followed by the judicious use of a hand grinder. As their horns have no nerves running through them.
Really. I read it in a science journal… or was it an old National Lampoon magazine?… I forget.
When I first read the title of the post “Jews with Horns” I thought, hey, a new klezmer band. sadly mistaken.
If this is what some christians actually think (????), why don’t pictures of jewish jesus have horns? And if he had horns, wouldn’t it have been inconvenient to use a crown of thorns? Like, wouldn’t the crown of thorns be hard to get over his head? Just sayin’.
LOL
A guy I worked with in high school who used to live in rural Minnesota once told me:
“Before I moved to Michigan, I never even knew Jews really existed. I mean, I knew they existed in the Bible, but I thought they were like Edomites or the Nation of Chaldea or something like that – gone for the last couple thousand years. And then I move here and there are tons of Jews all over the place. And then I found out there are tons of Chaldeans in Detroit, too, go figure.”
Viewed as a kind of mythical creature out of the Bible, I can kind of see how you might grow up thinking Jews have horns.
Please tell us that was eighty years ago. As in, before Europe got raped in all directions from the general area where Germany is in today, with the Jews sort of right at the center of it all, and the Nations of the World sort of involved in ways that left millions dead and Japan sort of nuked and Europe in ruins. Which then sort of led to (fast forward) a war in which most nations of the Middle East were involved who…
ah, what the heck. He probably believed Egypt and all the other lot were legendary also and had long gone extinct.
I’ll just go out on a limb and presume he was homeschooled. (Yes I know that thirty percent of you hs lot are doing a fine job). About the seventy percent who think their child does not have a right to be educated about world history or science or religions properly – why again are they allowed to ruin their children’s lives?
‘We the People heretofore hold that all men are created equal, and that their offspring nameth children male and female shall remain as their lawfully recognized property as is their chattel, their livestock and their cactus’.
Something like that?
Home-schooling seems creepy to me. Who knows what parents who have no education themselves are teaching their kids? Horrifying.
Pretty sure he wasn’t homeschooled, but not sure. He was actually a really good guy, smart too. Just had been ignorant of the world growing up wherever he did.
My mother tells me that my great-grandmother was jewish. Now, I’m sure I feel a lump on top of my head. Does anyone think this could be a partial horn, or worse, a budding horn that could get bigger?
As an orthodox Jewish kid, I wore not just a kippah, but also tzitzit (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tzitzit). I never encountered anyone who actually believed I had horns under my yarmulke, but I did have people jokingly mention it a few times.
The best example I encountered of ignorance about Judaism was when I was about 20 years old, and got a job at a small software company. Paula worked in sales; she was a prototypical cliche of the New Jersey Italian-American ditz. Also in sales was Jack, a prototypical fresh-out-of-college dumb jock. I was fixing Jack’s computer one day, when my kippah fell off, and he handed it to me….
Jack: So…you…uh…wear that thing all the time?
Me: Yup. No big deal, you get used to it.
Jack: That’s…uh…pretty wierd.
Me: You think that’s wierd?! Check this out!
(I reach into my pants to un-tuck my tzitzit)
Jack: Stop! No, don’t take it out! I don’t want to see it!
Me: No, not that! ….jeez, I was showing you this…
( I pull out some tzitzit strings and show Jack, and Paula who by now had wandered over)
Jack: (relieved) oh. oh. Yeah. Um….what are those?
Me: [much too long explanation the Jewish law and symbolism]
Paula: Oh! I thought it had to do with selling diamonds!
Me: Huh?
Paula: Yeah, I used to work in Manhattan and all those Hassids in the diamond district had those strings hanging out….
To date, that is easily my favorite two examples of Jewish ignorance. Lucky me, they happened at the same time.
That’s pretty cool; I didn’t know about the tzitzit (and lol’ed at the “no! not that!”). I don’t know many jews and the few I do are not all that hot on tradition. Those are actually pretty cool, though. Wonder if it’d be heresy/sacrilege/whatever if i started wearing them…?
Learn something new every day.
I didn’t know what those were. I either hadn’t seen them or noticed them until a few months ago – the bus I take some evenings goes by some teenage Jewish boys playing basketball and some of them have those and some I guess keep them tucked in (some are tucked or untucked their plain white shirts also). I don’t know if this is outside a school or temple in that area, but all the boys are dressed alike in what I would consider “school clothes” (white shirt, black pants, and shoes that aren’t sneakers), not play clothes that would be more likely for sports, and wear yarmulkes, or I guess they are kippahs (another word that is new to me). The fringe they have looks like they are plain muslin fabric (maybe nicer than muslin up close) in what look to be more ribbon-like and not fringe, though. Some time later, I noticed it on the formal dress of Jewish men on their way to temple, this time more silky looking and fringe. I don’t know if you have practical everyday tzitzit and formal temple tzitzit, or why they would look different. They had it the whole time, but I never noticed this article of dress until I had seen the boys playing basketball.
I don’t know what search terms I tried, but I couldn’t find out what that was about. If this sounds too ignorant, my first thought since some boys had them and some didn’t, since they were dressed alike that it was maybe to distinguish teams. Now that I think about it, they probably did have one team tuck and the other one untuck their tzitzit. Is that a possibility?
Thanks for solving the mystery!
Tzitzit are the fringes at the end of the cloth. The prayer shawl itself is called a talit. As for a talit made of silky material, I tend to associate that with the public-use shawls they have in the front of a synagogue or the smaller ones that younger kids more often have. The larger, nicer ones adults tend to own are just some normal muslin-like material.
As far as I know, there’s no practical difference between the different styles, as far as what you’re supposed to wear when. The only rules I can remember is that there have to be fringes on the four corners and there should be some coloration of “t’chelet”. It’s not exactly known what color that might be in ancient Hebrew, but it’s thought to be some shade of blue. The color one probably isn’t a strict requirement, though, since plenty don’t have any kind of coloring on them.
As for the tuck vs. non-tuck to identify teams, that’s possible. I don’t think there’s a lot of significance to that either way as far as the religious rules are concerned. I do remember that there were some kids who would untuck their tzitzit and part of the undershirt cloth itself to be cooler (that they were more showy about their piety maybe?). They’d also wear their kippah a little off center and walk with a kind of arrogant strut.
I was only ever peripherally in contact with the orthodox guys growing up, though, so I may be misremembering some of the more technical rule stuff.
I forgot to include a link to a site that I found that explains a lot of the rules:
http://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/110306/jewish/Tallit-and-Tzitzit.htm
The silky looking fringe as opposed to what looks more “casual” on the boys* playing basketball – I have not seen usually a whole shawl or tallitt worn over the garment, but noticed the fringe from the waist or below a jacket is silkier maybe up close. I would actually liken it to a graduation tassel or something from fine drapery, the same kind of appearance or texture.
http://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/530127/jewish/Techelet-Blue-Thread.htm
This explains the appearance some may have with a blue tassel or techelet. The dye comes from a rare fish that was unavailable to Jews after they were exiled, so some may use other dyes while some do without.
I think that site is rather interesting with respect to the tradition. As someone who isn’t or wasn’t Jewish and knows few Jews, if any who are orthodox – you know, the internet is great for finding out stuff you wonder about but don’t have anybody to ask when you are curious. I had been curious about this garment but didn’t have correct search terms so I was limited in what I could find – I guess it depends on how curious you are to find pages where that information is diagrammed so thoroughly.
Strangely, when I look up Jewish clothing on google now, it comes up with some information. Last time I looked, I happened across a number of vague things and a parody of J. Crew for Jews that sold hats and novelty t-shirts and buttons.
*These boys look to be about borderline Bar Mitzvah age, somewhere from 11-14 or 15, so some may be men where Judaism is concerned. I don’t actually see distinct tassels that they wear, it looks more like a flat piece or two pieces. Since I ride by on the bus, I don’t have a chance to examine whether there is still tassel, or what I would call tassels on the ends.
I once had a Jewish friend who asked me many years ago (during my fundie childhood), how much money did my parents sent to Jimmy & Tammy Faye Bakker. My parents only gave money to their church.
Even his father, a college professor believed the majority of born again christians were sending money to tv envangelists.
If all Jews have horns then Jesus had horns too.
I was in Peru recently, and found out about a similar mistranslation that led to an unfortunate statue in the Plaza San Martin (Lima). Apparently the word for “flames” in Ketchua is similar to the word “llama,” so the statue of a female god has a llama on her head. It’s cute! Here is a pic: http://www.trekearth.com/gallery/South_America/Peru/South/Lima/Lima_Centro/photo836900.htm
Speaking of statues. Michelangelo’s “Moses” has horns.
“Michelangelo uses the other meaning of the Hebrew word karan – grew horns (’cornuto’ in Italian), and placed the rays of light on Moses’ head as if they were two small horns. He may have based his action on Jerom’s translation that actually used the Latin term ‘cornutam’ as a translation of the Hebrew word karan.”
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