- It's a common meme among anti-Semitic trolls
A balding bearded man sporting a yarmulke
and greedily rubbing his hands together.
Dominating his face is a bumpy, sloping,
almost comically oversized nose.
This is the Happy Merchant,
an innocuous name for the latest iteration
of an ancient anti-Semitic trope, the big Jewish nose.
So where does this hateful depiction
of the hooked-nose Jew come from?
And why is this meme persistent
for the better part of a millennium?
(upbeat music) (pages turning)
Let's get one thing straight.
Do some Jews have big noses?
Sure, some do.
I'm about to be a little controversial, so bear with me.
But Jews are people,
and since people come in all shapes, sizes, and colors,
yeah, some Jews have big noses
but do Jews have unusually big noses,
noses that are significantly bigger
than those of other people?
That's exactly the question that this guy tried
to answer back in 1911.
In an effort to prove once and for all
whether Jews have big noses,
this New York-based anthropologist found 4,000 Jews
willing to have their features measured.
You know, for science.
His research found
that Jews didn't have significantly larger noses
than any other group within the broader American population.
More recent studies in nose science, not a real field,
suggest that like many other physical features, the shape
and appearance of our noses are a product
of geographic origin and adaptation,
meaning the way your nose looks might depend
on where you come from.
Jews do have Middle Eastern origins, which means
that many of us have noses that look similar
to other Middle Eastern peoples
but the Middle East is wildly diverse,
which means that Middle Easterners, like Jews, have noses
of all shapes and sizes, and yet the myth
of the huge Jewish schnozz endures,
particularly among anti-Semites.
Why, and why characterize Jewish noses of all things?
It started, like many Jewish problems,
with Christian anti-Semitism.
I'm not throwing shade on all Christians, but historically,
many of Jesus' followers, not always so great to us.
Case in point, 1,000 years after the crucifixion,
devout Christian artists were looking
for the best way to represent Jesus' life and death.
So far, so good, right?
Except that one of their favorite scenes
to represent was his death,
which they happened to blame on the Jews.
Inconveniently, Jesus just happened to be a Jew himself.
So how to differentiate between the one good Jew
in the story from the rest of us bad Jews?
You gotta make em as ugly as possible.
You know, absurdly oversized noses, beady little eyes,
and generally, demonic vibes.
In fact, lots of other undesirables, like say witches,
get a similar treatment.
You know, pointy hats, warty noses, eating kids,
all rooted in anti-Semitic stereotypes,
courtesy of medieval Christian artists.
Thanks, guys.
This ugly caricature caught on
and soon spread throughout Europe.
It shows up in the 13th century picture Bible
commissioned by Blanche of Castile.
Like lots of medieval illuminated manuscripts,
this one is a work of art, except for the illustration
of a handsome Jesus being whipped by his enemies,
one sporting a recognizably prominent nose
but it gets worse.
This Hieronymus Bosch painting from the early 1500s
shows Jesus carrying the cross surrounded
by a bunch of goblins, orcs?
That was his depiction of Jews.
Worse of all, these kinds of illustrations
often accompanied blood libels, the old canard
that Jews kill Christian children and use their blood
in all sorts of dark rituals.
Thing is, these trumped up charges often led
to the torture and death for a town's Jews.
Behold the power of propaganda.
And here's the thing about propaganda and stereotypes.
Repeat them enough times
and even people who should know better start
to believe that they are true.
- Doesn't make much sense to me either
but what the hell, if he says it.
- By the late 1800s, nose consciousness had seeped
into European Jewish communities.
A doctor in Berlin responded to the moment
by picking up a scalpel
and pioneering the field of rhinoplasty.
Most of his clientele were Jewish men
and women hoping to blend in
or pass as non-Jewish, internalizing
and succumbing to these ugly stereotypes.
The rise of Nazism gave the stereotype
of the Jewish nose its most pernicious update.
Among other atrocities,
Nazi pseudo doctors developed a fake science of the study
of Jewish skull sizes, skeletons, and especially noses.
This coincided with the release of a staggering amount
of Nazi propaganda depicting swarthy, big-nosed threats,
including the Jew as a snake, maggot, vulture
and whatever other nasty thing you could think of.
The Jewish nose even made it
into Nazi children's literature.
"One can most easily tell a Jew by his nose,"
wrote Nazi propagandist Julius Streicher
in a kid's story called "The Poisonous Mushroom."
"The Jewish nose is bent at its point.
It looks like the number six.
We call it the Jewish six."
I wish I could say that this trope died with the Third Reich
but unfortunately, it's been updated
for the modern day and not just by internet trolls
who live in their mom's basements.
In 2020, Italian painter Giovanni Gasparro
unveiled his take on the blood libel.
It's just as nuanced and charming as you might imagine:
demonic-looking Jews cackling in glee
as they torture an innocent cherub to death.
Even the 2023 Oscar winner for Best Picture,
"Everything Everywhere All at Once,"
has a Jewish character
and it's simply called Big Nose.
Jenny Slate, a Jewish actress, plays the role.
The film's directors have acknowledged
this apparent oversight and apologized.
But I mean, would it really have been that difficult
to do 30 seconds of googling?
It's not like this is an unknown stereotype,
which brings us full circle
to the hideous so-called Happy Merchant.
It's no surprise
that online trolls have adapted anti-Semitic visuals
for the meme era.
Sure, Jews have survived two millennia
of exile and persecution,
but like the Jewish people,
anti-Semitism is uniquely enduring.
Over the centuries,
its visuals have evolved to stay relevant
with the changes in media dissemination and consumption.
This is why it's paramount to talk about those visuals,
explain their origins and reveal them
for what they are: hateful depictions that promote lies
and cause pain.