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Last update - 07:16 17/10/2008 Jerusalem and Babylon / Global financial crisis raises fears of rising anti-Semitic backlash By Anshel Pfeffer Tags: Jewish World, Israel News  Thank God for Paul Krugman! I bet this thought ran through the minds of at least some of you this week. After being disappointed not to hear the names of any recognizable Jewish laureates in the round of 2008 Nobel Prize announcements, finally the economics prize (though technically not one of the five original Nobel prizes, rather a later addition) went to a member of the tribe. I know it's rather pathetic, but so many of us indulge in this ridiculously parochial annual ritual of "spot the Jew" at the Nobels. Rarely are we disappointed, and in an especially good year there are three or four, including even an Israeli. This year we have Krugman and another "possible" in neurobiologist Martin Chalfie, who shared the Chemistry Nobel with two others. Why is Chalfie only a possible? Well, from trawling the Internet it seems that no-one is really sure as to his Jewishness. There are at least three Web sites devoted to lists of Jewish Nobel laureates. Only on one of them does Chalfie's name appear, with the footnote that he is "son of Eli and Vivian (nee Friedlen) Chalfie, who were both children of Russian-Jewish immigrants." So is he Jewish or not? Advertisement Another discrepancy between the Web sites is the total number of Jewish prizewinners, ranging from 163 to 178. This can be explained, of course, by the different definitions of Who Is a Jew: One of the Web sites only counts those who are strictly halakhically Jewish, another includes also "persons of half-Jewish ancestry." Next there are the statistics. All these Web sites contain a wealth of figures on the percentage of Jewish Nobel laureates among total recipients, among American recipients, relative to the number of Jews in the world and so on. And of course there are the blogs that publish comparisons to the number of Muslim laureates. The numbers all boil down to the basic fact that one in five winners of the highest accolade in the world are members of our tiny sect. Yes, I know this Jew-spotting is a silly chauvinistic pastime, but it's essentially harmless. And let's face it, haven't the Jews suffered enough? Don't we deserve just a little satisfaction at this international recognition of our brethren's genius and contribution to mankind? There is, though, a much more sinister side to Jew-spotting. There probably wasn't a Jewish home from Ashkelon to Auckland this Rosh Hashanah, Erev Yom Kippur and Sukkot where the specter of an anti-Semitic backlash following the global financial crisis didn't loom over the dinner table. Personally, I don't believe that, asides the usual rantings of hatemongers, there is going to be much of a backlash, but the fears are real. People see all the Jewish names coming up in the latest reports of stock markets crashing and banks going bankrupt, not to mention names of venerable Jewish-founded financial institutions like Lehman Brothers, and a shiver goes down the collective spine. And once again people are asking who and how many of them are Jews. For example, what about disgraced Lehman CEO Richard Fuld - is he one of us? Well, his name could be Jewish but there are no other evident signs. The obvious thing is to look him up on wikipedia. Someone once told me that there all kinds of devious signs there that flag someone as Jewish, but I haven't found any any of these, except sometimes something like "the son of Russian immigrants." But Fuld has no origin according to wikipedia, and none of the charities he is connected to are ostensibly Jewish. Of course, various anti-Semitic Web sites have no doubt that Fuld is Semitic, but you can hardly trust them, can you. The old Encyclopedia Judaica used to usefully put a little circle next to the names of people who are not Jewish, but no respectable work of reference would nowadays denote such a thing. The Jewish Chronicle has a useful column called "How Jewish is," which dissects the Jewishness of various celebrities on the basis of genealogy, but also on their hobbies, favorite food and the car they drive. The only problem is that they only do one a week, and we seem to need a Jew-spotting device of more wholesale proportions. Or do we? Last year there was an unsuccessful campaign to force Google to strike the Web site Jewwatch.com off its search pages (the site comes up second when you search for the word "Jew"). Jewwatch, which lists thousands of murderers and crooks as Jews whether they are or not, boasts that "we Reveal Zionist Banksters, News Falsifiers, PR Liars, Neocons, Subversives, Terrorists & Spies," and that it is "an Oasis of News for Americans Who Presently Endure the Hateful Censorship of Zionist Occupation." Google quite rightly responded that it is a search engine, not a censor, but they could have answered that Jew-watching is just as much a Jewish pastime. Like every other group, we want the success of our members to reflect upon us, but the crime and shame of our brothers is theirs alone. Let's be honest, in this day and age, if a non-Jewish politician or celebrity was to say the Jews are good with money, he would be hounded out of town. But that doesn't mean that we don't like that image, which has encouraged millions of investors and clients over the centuries to entrust Jewish bankers with their money. And by the way, no less than 42 percent of Nobel Economic prize winners have been Jewish. Bookmark to del.icio.us   New anti-Semitism? German economist equates criticism of bankers with 1930s scapegoating of Jews. Playing with fire Hebrew University study shows humans made fire as early as 790,000 years ago.   1.   Do not ignore anti-Semitism. 07:39  |  Jean Van Daem 17/10/08   2.   Jackie Mason is Jewish! 08:28  |  Akiva P 17/10/08   3.   Question for Jean van Daem # 1 09:57  |  Clickfool 17/10/08   4.   Yes Clikfool,your criticism of Israel is rooted in anti-semitism, 10:48  |  Absolute Sweden 17/10/08   5.   to Clickfool #3 11:52  |  Colin Wright 17/10/08   6.   #3 Anti Zionism / obsession is antisemitism 11:55  |  Liliane 17/10/08   7.   Click fool#3 11:58  |  Mickey 17/10/08   8.   Yes. Clickfool, your criticism of Israel stinks like antisemitism 12:23  |  Israeli citizen 17/10/08   9.   Lehman Brothers 13:07  |  Jackie 17/10/08   10.   For Absolute Sweden # 4 13:21  |  Clickfool 17/10/08   11.   For Israeli Citizen # 8 13:25  |  Clickfool 17/10/08   12.   Colin Wright,my hatred of Colombia,including your wife 13:53  |  Absolute Sweden 17/10/08   13.   Conspiracy Theories 14:08  |  Ronnie Wolman 17/10/08   14.   Just a little info here for Anshel Pfeffer...... 14:19  |  Swiss (Dino) 17/10/08   15.   Wolman at large,.. 14:31  |  Akiva P 17/10/08   16.   Answer to Clickfool 14:38  |  Israeli citizen 17/10/08   17.   The Jewish Nobel over-representation Proper pride and humility 14:51  |  Shalom Freedman 17/10/08   18.   Global financial crisis Who`s responsible? 15:13  |  Shalom Freedman 17/10/08   19.   Clickfool re absolute Sweden 16:03  |  H 17/10/08   20.   Crux of the Matter,a Matter of Crux 18:57  |  Ronnie Wolman 17/10/08   21.   Clickfool - a simple question for you. 19:48  |  Jewboy 17/10/08   22.   Anti-Semitism and the World 20:44  |  Angel 17/10/08   23.   Global financial crisis raises fears of rising anti-Semitic backl 21:08  |  Angel 17/10/08   24.   Financial crisis 22:37  |  American 17/10/08   25.   # 17 / # 18 Angel 23:38  |  Swiss (Dino) 17/10/08   26.   That depends 00:05  |  Mark Lincoln 18/10/08   27.   Swiss(Dino) 05:06  |  ami 18/10/08   28.   Who exactly is a Jew? 06:04  |  Hannah 18/10/08   29.   Answer to simple question for Clickfool 07:21  |  Puregoldj 18/10/08   30.   #28 who is a Jew 07:26  |  Rab Burns 18/10/08   31.   For Jewboy # 21 09:31  |  Clickfool 18/10/08   32.   # 27 ami 12:02  |  Swiss (Dino) 18/10/08   33.   A Paradox - to comment on a `Jew` or not? 11:58  |  Manny Goldstein 27/10/08

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