Doonesbury by Garry Trudeau for November 12, 2015

Marcia, your parents will love him; I think he’s Jewish.

Fortunately, he had enough sense and good fortune to get out of there.

Einstein once said that if his theory turned out to be right, he’d be a great German scientist. If it turned out wrong, he’d be a Swiss Jew.

c. davies – the napkin and olive are relativistic effects.

Trudeau always deliberately altered the drawing in one panel. It became a game for readers to spot the differences.

No cleavage in third panel.

“Schmeckel” is Yiddish for a little penis.

Schmeckel looks a lot like a young Woody Allen.

He won’t be good enough for her.

Her knight in shining armor.

Bobarion,

That Hitler thing, about some of his family tree being Jewish is a myth. His family did not have Jewish members.

The myth got conflated with true facts about Hitler:

1) The doctor who delivered him WAS Jewish; a fact that irked him his whole life.

2) Some members of his family – primarily cousins – were mentally ill. Hitler had them liquidated just before he came to power. He did not want the knowledge to get out that his “line” was not pure Aryan stock, and that HE may be vulnerable to having a mental illness.

He felt that knowledge of his cousins would give his political and military enemies fodder for attacking his “pure blood” views and making him look like a hypocrite.

Hitler was very likely a paranoid schizophrenic (seeing enemies everywhere, lashing out with angry tantrums at minor errors by subordinates, feeling betrayed by friends and commanders, etc.); thus, confirming what he feared the most!

It may come from a story that his grandmother worked as a maid for a Jewish family and was impregnated there; again, no proof.

Hitler was the one the family should have kept in the room under the stairs, on a chain.Hopefully never to get a letter from an owl.Maybe he would have turned out better if he were raised differently. This was addressed in the Babylon 5 episode “Voices in the Dark: Over There”.

Schmeckel is a yiddish word, not a Hebrew word. Yiddish is a language created from mixing German and Hebrew (and Polish and Russian, depending on where your ancestors lived). There were people who used that language because they lived around, or did business with, others who used the language; it was a way of creating a language bridge among people who typically did not spend time with each other. But it is still not an indication of religious belief.

There is an African American woman working for my employer who has the last name of ‘Cohen’. She is not married, either, this is her family name. But she is not Jewish, and knows so little about the religion that she scheduled what is called our ‘Diversity Dine-in Day’ (a day when different ethnic foods are brought to a central meeting hall for the employees to eat during lunch hour) on Yom Kippur, which is a day on which observant Jewish people fast.

The name ‘Cohen’ is most associated with the Kohanim, who were the original priestly tribe of the ancient Israelites. Presumably, a ‘Cohen’ who knows anything about the religion wouldn’t schedule a feast day when Jews are fasting.

So. Schmeckel might very well predict his abilities (or lack thereof, although we are told that ‘size doesn’t matter’). BUT the name doesn’t inevitably predict religion…

Because it’s a conspiracy! Just like everything else.

again, comments not from vexman, but me, i need to open my own account.