Mendele: Yiddish literature and language ______________________________________________________ Contents of Vol. 3.233 February 13, 1994 1) Certain diseases among Jews (Dan Leeson) 2) Schindler's list (Ellen Prince) 1)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri Feb 11 16:37:39 1994 From: leeson@cedar.fhda.edu Subject: Certain diseases among Jews I am an active participant in jewishgen which is a genealogic board that specializes in people who search for Jewish ancestors. I mention this as a brief introduction to the fact that I have been doing genealogic research of both my wife and my family for at least 25 years. There are certain areas of Europe where the intermarriage rate was so high (and for generations) that the presence of diseases transmitted genetically with a higher incidence in the Jewish population is not surprising. Certain families would marry first cousins to each other for more than 3 or 4 consecutive generations. Thus, a disease such as Tay Sachs would have a much higher incidence in such families than those who did not so intermarry. I am not offering a criticism of the laws associated with intermarriage, simply commenting on what appears to the average genealogist specializing in Jewish ancestors as a likely cause. In Alsace, for example, there were slightly more than 20,000 Jews at the time that a census of Jews was taken in 1784. It is almost impossible to find a single descendent of that area who is not related to any other descendent of that area at least 3 or more ways. The Guggenheim family of Lengnau, Switzerland intermarried with cousins so frequently (and uncles married their nieces, though Jewish law forbad an aunt to marry her nephew) that I am astonished that a greater degree of medical defectiveness is NOT found in their descendents. In the Shtelts of eastern Europe, intermarriage was an inevitable consequence of the social rules. Marriage was by yichus as much as anything else. And the prestigiousness of one's genealogy was as important to getting an appropriate match as anything else. I know of no culture that so arranged marital affairs in this way. Thus, one scholar would marry on the basis of his genelogy, have children, and they often married only those who could match such genealogies. And who were these people? Relatives, of course. So the fact that certain diseases are more common among Jews is not, to the genealogist, a surprising turn of events. It would be more remarkable if it were the other way round. One final point, if one starts with two parents, 4 grandparents, 8 great-grandparents, etc., within a short period of time, one gets to a number that is greater than the number of Jews in the world at a particular moment of history. Thus, Jews, whose numbers have always been small in contrast with other European cultures, are all related to each other more recently than, say, the Christian culture. It is an interesting and fascinating problem that is only now getting untangled, but very slowly. Dan Leeson 2)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Sat Feb 12 12:27:01 1994 From: "Ellen F. Prince" Subject: schindler's list to: daniella harpaz i for one have no problem imagining that all sorts of survival tactics took place in the holocaust. however, when a moviemaker chooses to show a particular one, it often means something. and when he shows the same one two or three times in the same movie, the audience must infer that this was a particularly common occurrence, right? the particular tactic that upset me in schindler's list was not allowing other jews to hide in one's own hiding place. add to that the fact that the well-documented eastern european camp guards were entirely missing from the film, their roles being largely filled by the very salient jewish kapos, and you wonder. and add to that the absence of any sense of the (to my mind) amazing social structure that existed in the ghettos and even death camps, with classes for children and theatre groups and whatnot, and you wonder some more. add to that the fact that 1/2 (1) of all the adults shown trying to escape (2) is a woman who refuses to get into a sewer, and... i believe it was spielberg's intention to show jews entirely helpless without schindler, except of course for one shrewd accountant acting apparently entirely on his own and in fact vastly outnumbered by the jews who played right into the nazis' hands and even did some of their dirty work. one of the reasons that all this bothers me so is that he is clearly aiming this movie at a public that knows nothing about the holocaust, or else why would he have included the little lesson on showers in auschwitz, where a camp inmate is telling other inmates about poison gas showers? (and they say, oh no, can't be--and then we see them trooping into the showers...and wow! it's great! what a shower! apparent moral: don't believe rumors, it's not THAT bad... grr...) anyway, it bothered me a lot. sorry for raving. ellen prince ______________________________________________________ End of Mendele Vol. 3.233 To subscribe, send SUB MENDELE FIRSTNAME LASTNAME to: LISTSERV@YALEVM.YCC.YALE.EDU Mendele has 2 rules: 1. Provide a Subject: line. 2. Sign your article. Send submissions/responses to: mendele@yalevm.ycc.yale.edu Other business: nmiller@starbase.trincoll.edu Anonymous ftp archives available on: ftp.mendele.trincoll.edu in the directory pub/mendele/files