Mormon underwear vs. yarmulke

Turambar writes:

What the obsession with other peoples' underwear? I can’t imagine making fun of someone wearing a yarmulke.

I prepared a chart:

Mormon underwear	Yarmulke
Something that Joseph Smith made up in the nineteenth century.	Jews have been covering their heads for thousands of years.
Magic powers that protect the wearer from evil	No magic powers
Only religion with special underwear	Many different religions have funny hats
Hidden	Worn for all to see
Only higher level Mormons are allowed to wear the Mormon underwear	Anyone can wear a Yarmulke.
Only special Mormon underwear sold in the temples work.	A Jew can buy a hat at Macy’s and wear that if he wants.
Only Mormons can buy the Mormon underwear.	A Judaica store would be happy to sell a Yarmulke to a gentile
Comes in contact with the wearer’s private parts.	Does not come in contact with the wearer’s private parts.

Comments

[mike]

Jews: Neurotic and judgmental

Mormons: Happy-go-lucky and tolerant

[Stopped Clock]

Cute. However, Wikipedia claims that there is a type of underwear called http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kachchhera and is similar to the Mormon underwear.

[rob]

No magic powers? You my friend, need a new yarmulke.

[blighter]

"Does not come in contact with the wearer’s private parts."

Obviously HS is unfamiliar with the joke about the young Jewish couple on their honeymoon. The lady decided to use the toilet before they got intimate and, quite unfortunately, got stuck. Her husband was distraught, called the front desk, they sent someone right up.

When the plumber got there, the couple both realized at the same moment that she was, of course, naked. So, thinking quickly, the young Jewish man covered his wife's most private parts with his yarmulke. The plumber came in, analyzed the situation for a bit, then let out a long sigh.

"What is it?" said the young husband, "Can you save her??"

"Oh sure," said the plumber, "but the rabbi's a goner."

[blighter]

On a more serious note, if it's true that the religious impulse can tell you something profound about a culture, the fact that the two religions America has come up with are Mormonism & Scientology is disturbing in the extreme.

Of course, given that each of them is run, in many ways, like a particularly close-knit profit-making corporation would seem somewhat in keeping with the American national character.

[titters]

The story of Joseph Smith and the Golden Plates he translated from "Reformed Egyptian" into illiterate English is even funnier.

Mormons also think the real tribe of Judah sailed across the Atlantic to the United States to flee the Babylonians. It is really creative fiction. I hope Mitt Romney is just a cultural Mormon and doesn't actually believe any of that nonsense.

[Peter A]

Umm, anyone who can't imagine making fun of someone wearing a yarmulke has not spent much time among the goyim. I assure you, many gentiles in New York and Boston do indeed mock "beanie wearers" behind their backs. Sorry to break it to you. Happily for HS this sort of gentile also typically votes Republican (maybe another explanation for the liberal Jewish vote?). But it's true the underwear is on a different plane.

[Peter A]

Oh, and HS, you forgot the best part of the Mormon underwear - it has to touch the skin, so a woman has to wear her bra on the outside of the underwear. Must be a bitch to get a proper fit. In the summertime it's fairly easy to identify devout Mormon women.

[abe]

Momons: Universalists

Jews: Highly tribal. Religion is blood-based.

[HS: Gentiles are allowed to convert (not easily), but proselytizing is not part of the religion.]

[Svigor]

You forgot:

Not Jewish | Jewish

[Mike]

Mormon Underwear: supposed to be left on even while peeing/pooping.

Yarmulke: I suppose you could leave it on while, or take it off while, but it really doesn't make much difference and Judaic custom/law has nothing to say on the matter.

[OneSTDV]

It's all dumb if you ask me.

Both are worthy of all the mocking they get.

[dearieme]

"Our daftness is older than your daftness."

[abe]

"but proselytizing is not part of the religion"

Because the Jewish religion is blood-based and tribal.

Jews are a people, defined by blood, who have a belief system that sustains cultural and genetic cohesion.

A convert to the Jewish religion is like an immigrant to a country with an overwhelming ethnic majority. Sure, this immigrant might become a "citizen" of that country, but truly, that country will never be "his" in the same way that it belongs to the ethnic majority. He'll never feel that he belongs.

Similarly, the cultural practices of Judaism and its unwelcoming nature pretty much guarantees that not many will convert to it. Thus, an official policy of "no converts please!" is unnecessary.

Jews, because of their small numbers, can always fit in with Christian nations, but it's doubtful Christians would be able to fit in with Jews if the situations were reversed.

[The Undiscovered Jew]

"No magic powers"

Judaism has a distinguished and ancient association with magic and casting spells.

According to legend, Solomon, "The Magician King," was so powerful a sorcerer that he was easily able to gain complete control over spirits.

In fact, many spells in books called "grimoires" used by occultists in the Dark Ages, Medieval Ages and probably earlier make *extensive* use of Hebraic (and Hellenic) symbols and invocations that were supposedly taken from the private works of Solomon himself.

In fact, modern occultists still use books and rituals/techniques that were supposed to be handed down from Solomon such as Goetia and the Triangle of Solomon.

"Does not come in contact with the wearer’s private parts."

A tragedy.

Hot religious women should wear NO underwear.

[The Undiscovered Jew]

"Jews are a people, defined by blood, who have a belief system that sustains cultural and genetic cohesion."

Judaism has NOTHING to do with ethnicity.

Jews actively sought converts from Middle Eastern and European people's during the Greco-Roman era. If we sought converts than Judaism was not tribal.

We only became genetically isolated *after* the fall of the Roman Empire because Muslim and Christian religious authorities banned Jewish proslytism.

Judaism initially was a universalizing faith like Christianity and Islam:

http://anepigone.blogspot.com/2009/10/feelings-towards-members-of-various.html

http://dienekes.blogspot.com/2009/08/refinement-of-ancestry-informative.html

Also of interest is the proximity of Ashkenazi Jews to Greeks and Italians which are about twice closer to them than Bedouins, Palestinians, or Druze from the Near East. As I have argued before, a major component in the ancestry of Jews was picked up in Hellenistic-Roman times; most published models of Ashkenazi Jewish origins have only considered admixture between a Near Eastern component with a northern European (German-Slavic) component. Indeed, Ashkenazi Jews are closer to several European populations than they are to Middle Eastern ones

However, as the PCA analysis shows, Ashkenazi Jews are distinct from both Europeans and non-Jewish Middle Eastern populations and cannot be viewed as a simple mix of the two; their distinctiveness must be -in part- due to the specific features of the small founder population of that community after it became effectively reproductively semi-isolated from gentiles after Roman times. It would be interesting to see different Jewish communities studied in the context of a broad variety of European and Middle Eastern populations, to determine whether Ashkenazi distinctiveness is specifically Ashkenazi or more generally Jewish distinctiveness; I would bet on a combination of the two.

http://scienceblogs.com/gnxp/2009/09/ashkenazi_jews_are_more_europe.php

STRUCTURE results show that the Jewish Diaspora groups all demonstrated Middle Eastern ancestry, but varied significantly in the extent of European admixture. There is almost no European ancestry in Iranian and Iraqi Jews, whereas Syrian, Sephardic, and Ashkenazi Jews have European admixture ranging from 30%~60%. Analysis of identity-by-descent provides further insight on recent and distinct history of such populations. These results demonstrate the shared and distinctive genetic heritage of Jewish Diaspora groups.

snip

I'd guess that the European admixture among the Ashkenazi Jews is more Italian than anything else: but we'll see soon.

For Syrian Jews, Greek?

Posted by: gcochran | September 5, 2009 3:39 AM

I would be curious to see if there is a high Jewish genetic profile among Greeks. Historical evidence seems to indicate that when Christianity spread out of the Levant it was mostly to Hellenized Jews and then to Greeks who joined them. Since these Jews were effectively cut off from their ethnic brothers, I would suspect that they passed into the Greek whole.

Posted by: ElamBend | September 7, 2009 8:01 PM

[The Undiscovered Jew]

Our European DNA comes from European converts who converted during Greco-Roman times, not Jewish women having bastard children with European men.

http://scienceblogs.com/gnxp/2009/01/how_ashkenazi_jewish_are_you.php

Joshua Zelinsky points out that the paper contradicts the idea that a bottleneck or several bottlenecks contributed to Ashkenazi genetics. There never was a shred of evidence for any bottleneck at all--the idea gained currency as an explanation for the funny disease picture. This paper, along with several others like the Olshen et al. paper, ought finally to rid us that idea.

My take on the uniqueness of the pure Ashkenazi sample is that admixture with Europeans happened early on, in Roman times or shortly after, and that since then there has been hardly any.

Interesting that they essentially replicated and found the same thing that Greg and I did in our Ashkenazi paper, only with a thousand times as many loci.

Posted by: henry harpending | January 22, 2009 9:48 PM

[Fred]

Actually, the yarmulke is not technically part of the Jewish religion, right? Any super Jews here who can confirm that there are no requirements in the bible for a Jew to wear it?

Maybe a better comparison would be the strings Hasidic Jews have popping out of their pants, which I think are required by the bible.

But previous commenters above are right -- nothing stupider about Mormon underwear than some Jewish get-up. Like a square leather box you strap onto your forehead when you pray while you wear a magic scarf.

And btw, proselytizing WAS part of the Jewish religion. It only stopped because the Romans killed it out of us.

[Stopped Clock]

I dont really think it's fair to say that Mormonism and Scientology are the only two religions that America has created. First of all, Scientology is really not a religion, since there's no prohibition for Scientologists to also be Christians, Jews, Muslims, etc as far as I'm aware. Secondly, I think that I could make a reasonable case that all Protestant churches other than the Lutheran and Anglican denominations owe their existence mostly to America, even though they did not necessarily actually originate there (most of them have their roots in 16-th century Europe, but never really took off in Europe in any century).

[Felix]

"Mormons: Happy-go-lucky and tolerant"?

Nope. They're incredibly intolerant of anyone who wants to stop being a Mormon. The religion involves intense community pressure against apostacy.

My take is that Mormonism is spiritual Amway. G_d is literally just a human who did well, and we should all aim to become g_ds just like him.

(Come to think of it, isn't Amway another US religion?)

[abe]

Good job Undiscovered Jew on linking to threads where your assertions get demolished in the comments section.

[The Undiscovered Jew]

"Good job Undiscovered Jew on linking to threads where your assertions get demolished in the comments section."

How did I get "demolished"?

I asked the Anonymous poster who gave the standard "Judaism is an ingroup strategy" boilerplate how Judaism could *Simultaneously* have been an ethnic strategy if Judaism aggresively sought out non-Jewish Middle Easterners and Europeans as converts for the entirety of the Greco-Roman epoch?

If Judaism were an "Ingroup" strategy then Jews should NEVER have pursued ethnically different converts, right?

"Anonymous" never directly answered my question.

But since you are so knowledgeable about Jews, Abe, maybe you can answer the question "Anonymous" was incapable of directly answering:

Q) How could Judaism always have been an "ingroup" strategy if the original Jews aggresively sought out ethnically non-Jewish converts for over 500 years between the rise of ancient Greece and the Edict of Milan in the 4th which criminalized Jewish proselytism AND if 60% of our DNA is European?

Come on, big boy, answer my question and dazzle me with your brilliance...

;)

http://www.vbs.org/rabbi/hshulw/outrchi.htm

If so, where did the notion arise that Jews do not proselytize, why are there no missions in Judaism to witness to God?" Certainly not in the Bible. Certainly not in the Talmud which is replete with procedures for embracing non-Jews into the fold. Jews did not proselytize non-Jews not because of idealogy but because of threats to their own persecution. From the time of Emperor Constantine's edict of Milan, from the time of 380 CE when Rome declared Christianity to be the official religion of the state, conversion throughout the fourth and fifth centuries were prohibited and considered a criminal offense punishable at first by the confiscation of property and later by the death of the proselytizing Jew. It was not Jewish ideology that arrested Jewish outreach but the Emperors Domitian and Hadrian and the Code of Theodosios.

[Sheila Tone]

Mormons: Houses and children.

Jews: Apartments and cats.

Both groups frown on alcohol, although only Mormons ban it outright.

[Wm Jas]

"Mormons also think the real tribe of Judah sailed across the Atlantic to the United States to flee the Babylonians."

No, they think that members of the tribe of Manasseh sailed across the Indian and Pacific Oceans to some unspecified place in the New World, perhaps Mexico or Peru.

Not that that's any more reasonable than your version.

[trumwill]

--Mormons: Happy-go-lucky and tolerant--

Go live in Utah or some other pocket of Mormonism for a while and get back to me. Mormons are tolerant when they're in the minority. When they have cultural control, it's a whole nuther ballgame.

My ex-boss and friend, a good Mormon but one of the most open-minded of the lot, made the following observation: Mormons are like manure. Spread them out and they cultivate the land. Put too much together and all you've got is a huge, heaping pile of excrement.

[Fred]

"Both groups frown on alcohol, although only Mormons ban it outright."

Sheila, you ignorant shiksa: wine is ubiquitous in Jewish rituals. Every sabbath observant Jews say a prayer over the wine and drink it. You go to a Lubavitcher lunch after services on a Saturday and they'll have some vodka there too. Jews drink four glasses of wine during the Passover seder. They get buzzed on Purim, in celebration of Haman's defeat.

We don't frown on alcohol: we've been drinking it for thousands of years.

[HS: Yet Sheila has a point about a lot of Jews who aren't into drinking. No one in my family ever actually put down all four cups during a seder.]

[abe]

"Q) How could Judaism always have been an "ingroup" strategy "

There's your basic flaw. No is claiming it was ALWAYS that way, but certainly, after a certain point, it BECAME THAT way.

[dearieme]

"I could make a reasonable case that all Protestant churches other than the Lutheran and Anglican denominations owe their existence mostly to America": oh balls. Make the case and watch the bystanders guffaw.

[Genius]

1. Mormonism is the ultimate American religion. The runner up is Pentecostalism. Scientology is not a religion; fortunately, I don't think any Scientologists read this blog, so nobody just got offended.

2. HS, go to an actual Pesach seder with religiously observant Jews and watch them all drink four cups of wine. And also don't forget that firstborn sons have to fast that whole day AND that in a proper seder the food doesn't get served until nearly midnight. I've never been drunk in quite the way I was drunk when I went to a seder like that (I am a firstborn son). Pesach is a month after Purim, so at least we have a while to recover. On the other hand, matzah can be really constipating, so that's never pleasant.

3. A proper comparison is not between the Mormon undergarments and the kippa (yarmulke) because the latter is based entirely on tradition and is in no way considered a mandatory practice in Judaism. Married Jewish women, however, are required to cover their hair (it comes from the Torah) and men wear tzitzit ("the strings Hasidic Jews have popping out of their pants") on their four-cornered garments. In effect this means that religious Jewish men wear a special undershirt with tzitzit tied to it, one strand of which is supposed to be techelet (azure, a unique blue dye from a special snail). There's no requirement that the tzitzit have to be outside the pants. Many people wear them inside, so the whole garment (talit katan or arba kanfot) isn't easily visible. Here in Israel you'll often see religious men in the summer casually wearing the garment outside their shirts. When I first heard about the Mormon garment, I immediately realized it was copied from the talit katan.

[Pamela N Red]

I prefer this underwear.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C3xrCD4rp80

[The Undiscovered Jew]

"No is claiming it was ALWAYS that way,"

Kevin MacDonald is the one who has been claiming for 10 YEARS that Judaism was ALWAYS an ingroup strategy. Don't get mad at me because HIS own dumbass theory makes no sense.

"There's your basic flaw. but certainly, after a certain point, it BECAME THAT way.

Posted by: abe | November 20, 2009 at 02:53 AM"

So, according to your explanation of Jewish behavior (and in contrast to "KMac" who insists Judaism has ALWAYS been an ingroup strategy apparently because he didn't know much about Jewish proselytism in the ancient world)

1) The original Jews in the Greco-Roman world were NOT pursuing an ingroup strategy via the religion of Judaism

2) But the European CONVERTS to Judaism then turned around and used Judaism as an ingroup strategy against, uhh, other Europeans.

Your argument no sense.

It would mean the European converts to Judaism are MORE hostile to Europeans than the original Jews.

EXPLAIN how the European converts to Judaism (ie modern Ashkenazi and Sephardi) could be more hostile to Europeans than the original Jews?

I'm waiting...

[Steve Sailer]

Don't Sikhs have special underwear too?

[Turambar]

So where do you get your information. I only have a cursory knowledge of the subject but this:
http://www.mormon-underwear.com/underwear_faq.html
contradicts most of what you said.

The "magic powers" I guess are people who claim their underwear saved them from some disaster. Thats not so different from people who had a bullet stopped with bible. You could also compare to the devotional scapular.

[J. L.]

I wonder if a typical Mormon pick-up line is: "I'm wearing my magic underwear."

[Eileen]

"I've never been drunk in quite the way I was drunk when I went to a seder like that (I am a firstborn son)."

You've obviously never been to an Irish-Catholic wedding where the whiskey starts flowing before breakfast. ;-)

[Eileen]

The Undiscovered Jew said: "EXPLAIN how the European converts to Judaism (ie modern Ashkenazi and Sephardi) could be more hostile to Europeans than the original Jews?"

Modern Ashkenazi Jews are not simply "European converts to Judaism" as you said yourself (or as you quoted; I couldn't tell because the structure of your comment was unclear):

"However, as the PCA analysis shows, Ashkenazi Jews are distinct from both Europeans and non-Jewish Middle Eastern populations and cannot be viewed as a simple mix of the two...."

http://www.halfsigma.com/2009/11/mormon-underwear-vs-yarmulke.html?cid=6a00d8341bf6ae53ef012875b9d041970c#comment-6a00d8341bf6ae53ef012875b9d041970c

[anon]

Eileen,
The clustering of Jews away from both European and Middle Eastern populations may be a result of genetic drift. The admixture appears to have been with South Europeans and very likely occurred before Christianity became the established religion of the Roman Empire. After that, the Jewish population that eventually became the Ashkenazim was nearly completely endogamous until the very recent past.

[Eileen]

Anon: "The clustering of Jews away from both European and Middle Eastern populations may be a result of genetic drift."

Sure. I was just trying to point out a problem with The Undiscovered Jew's argumentation, i.e. that Ashkenazi Jews are not simply "European converts to Judaism" as he put it.

[The Undiscovered Jew]

"Sure. I was just trying to point out a problem with The Undiscovered Jew's argumentation, i.e. that Ashkenazi Jews are not simply "European converts to Judaism" as he put it."

There is no problem with my argument.

If the ORIGINAL Jews weren't pursuing an "ingroup" strategy via Judaism against Europeans during the Greco-Roman period why would Judaism LATER become an "ingroup" strategy hostile to Europeans AFTER 60% of our DNA became European because of converting many Southern Europeans (I guess Greeks and Italians?) to Judaism?

http://scienceblogs.com/gnxp/2009/09/ashkenazi_jews_are_more_europe.php

STRUCTURE results show that the Jewish Diaspora groups all demonstrated Middle Eastern ancestry, but varied significantly in the extent of European admixture. There is almost no European ancestry in Iranian and Iraqi Jews, whereas Syrian, Sephardic, and Ashkenazi Jews have European admixture ranging from 30%~60%. Analysis of identity-by-descent provides further insight on recent and distinct history of such populations. These results demonstrate the shared and distinctive genetic heritage of Jewish Diaspora groups.

[The Undiscovered Jew]

Eileen,

Abe's theory only makes sense if you believe an ethnic group becomes more hostile to Europeans as they become genetically *more* similar to Europeans.

Abe acknowledged that Judaism didn't start as hostile to Europeans but later became hostile to Europeans after Jews became very similar to Europeans.

That this makes no sense at all was what I was driving at.

[J]

The Undiscovered Jew asked:
"If the ORIGINAL Jews weren't pursuing an "ingroup" strategy via Judaism against Europeans during the Greco-Roman period why would Judaism LATER become an "ingroup" strategy hostile to Europeans AFTER 60% of our DNA became European because of converting many Southern Europeans (I guess Greeks and Italians?) to Judaism?"

Christianity won, and turned against all heretical religions.
So the Jews were forced to find another strategy and it was an ingroup strategy.

And turning against your close genetic cousins is nothing unusual (it is rather usual): Swedes vs. Danes, Jews vs. Palestinians, Polish v. Ukrainians, Serbs vs. Croats.

The proof that Jews chose an ingroup strategy is that they sill exist. They did not amalgamated into French, German, Polish nations like all other tribes, ethnicities, people of different religions.

[Dylan]

Half Sigma is a jew?

[The Undiscovered Jew]

"Christianity won, and turned against all heretical religions.
So the Jews were forced to find another strategy and it was an ingroup strategy.

And turning against your close genetic cousins is nothing unusual (it is rather usual): Swedes vs. Danes, Jews vs. Palestinians, Polish v. Ukrainians, Serbs vs. Croats."

Conflict between groups is not proof of a group evolutionary strategy.

You could use that overly simplistic logic to argue that Xerxes was pursuing a Persian group evolutionary strategy against Ancient Greece when he invaded, or any other military conflict in history.

"The proof that Jews chose an ingroup strategy is that they sill exist."

How does it follow that "still existing" proves a religious minority are puruing group evolutionary strategy, especially one closely genetically related to the surrounding population?

That would mean the Druze, the Brahmins of India, the Orthodox Christian Armenians of Turkey before the genocide, Christians in Iraq, etc, and any other religious minority are/were pursuing a group evolutionary strategy because they remained culturally separate from the surrounding population.

Btw, you are wrong to say Jews didn't get absorbed into the European population. Many Jews have converted to Christianity over the centuries, but there aren't many of them around because the got absorbed into the surrounding European Christian population.