JERUSALEM POST – At an event run by Harvard’s Program on Negotiation last Thursday, current Zionist Union MK and former foreign minister Tzipi Livni was confronted with an unusual, but nonetheless noxious question from a Harvard Law School student in attendance.
In a panel section of the event, co-sponsored by the Jewish Law Students Association and Harvard Hillel, the student asked Livni: “How is it that you are so smelly?”
When his pungent question only elicited curious looks, he clarified: “Oh, it’s a question about the odor of Ms. Tzipi Livni, very smelly, and I was just wondering.”
Harking back to the old anti-Semitic trope of the “smelly Jew” was roundly condemned in the Harvard Law Record on Tuesday.
“Anti-Semitism is still very real today, and it just showed itself in our community at HarvardLaw School,” read the editorial. “The idea that Jews can be identified by a malodor is patently offensive and stereotypes Jews as an ‘other’ which incites further acts of discrimination.”
The video coverage for the Q&A section of the event has not been released, but the unnamed student is thought to be the president of a student organization on campus.
the old anti-Semitic trope of the “smelly Jew” ; no she just wasn’t wearing deodorant!
Perfectly legitimate question.
Tzipi in the news again??? Well, here goes. I always post this, as there are many that do not know that Tzipi did a movie once……
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TrjLNpfDTi0
Rabbis often stink, as did eastern euro jews, who rarely bathed.
Neurotic people tend to produce an unpleasant body odour, according to researchers. So people in any racial group may smell unpleasant due to specific chemicals produced when they are being neurotic. But which people might have the higher proportion of members who smell nasty?
People of different races also produce specific pheromones which are differently scented in each race, which are most pleasing mainly to others of their own racial group.
Not just genetics and the food we eat affects how we smell, a variety of other factors may also cause malodour, such as fungal infections and bacteria, and even cancer and diabetes sufferers are known to exhibit certain smells, and some doctors and even specially trained dogs are able to smell those.
Even how much sunshine people expose their skin to strongly affects how they smell, as sunshine sterilizes all bacteria. So people who expose most of their skin to sunshine, like indigenous South American Indians do, have a naturally very cleanly body scent, even without using Western-style scented soaps.
http://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-12-people-personality-body-odor.html
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3719001/
https://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/200801/scents-and-sensibility
http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/beautiful-minds/can-you-smell-personality/
People have the ability to actually sniff out which people are most compatible with them biologically.
“Far more often than chance would predict, the women preferred the smell of T-shirts worn by men who were immunologically dissimilar to them. The difference lay in the sequence of more than 100 immune system genes known as the MHC, or major histocompatibility complex. These genes code for proteins that help the immune system recognize pathogens. The smell of their favorite shirts also reminded the women of their past and current boyfriends, suggesting that MHC does indeed influence women’s dating decisions in real life.”Women’s preference for MHC-distinct mates makes perfect sense from a biological point of view. Ever since ancestral times, partners whose immune systems are different have produced offspring who are more disease-resistant. With more immune genes expressed, kids are buffered against a wider variety of pathogens and toxins.
“But that doesn’t mean women prefer men whose MHC genes are most different from theirs, as University of Chicago evolutionary biologist Martha McClintock found when she performed a T-shirt study similar to Wedekind’s. Women are not attracted to the smell of men with whom they had no MHC genes in common. “This might be a case where you’re protecting yourself against a mate who’s too similar or too dissimilar, but there’s a middle range where you’re OK,” McClintock says.
“Women consistently outperform men in smell sensitivity tests, and they also make greater time and energy sacrifices on their children’s behalf than men do—in addition to bearing offspring, they look after them most of the time. These factors may explain why women are more discriminating in sniffing out MHC compatibility.”
The bottom line is that anyone may smell unpleasant even temporarily, for a variety of reasons, as someone might pass an infection on to them, like they may pick up an unpleasant fungal or bacterial infection from draping their towel in a gym changing room.
Some may deliberately, or semi-unconsciously use an obnoxious dirty unwashed body scent as a weapon against others.
Some may have a lack of sense of smell and do not know how they smell, and everyone loses more of their senses of taste and smell the older they get, with older people sometimes having lost 80% of their taste buds on their tongue for instance.
Denture breath is a real killer, instant coffee breath (not real coffee) is also particularly vile, and some people have butt breath for a variety of strange reasons. People who eat a lot of meat and refined foods that do not pass through their digestive systems properly exhibit a particularly vile breath smell. Fat people express toxins from their bowel out through their skin, which smells like the nauseating smelling black silt found in sewage pipes leading from bathrooms. There is no cure for that except slimming and total detox, and a change in eating habits. Fairly common vaginal infections can exhibit a smell like chemical warfare, enough to cause projectile vomiting. Possibly, Tzipi Livni exhibits some or all of these conditions.
But we all know we need to bathe regularly, and wash our clothes regularly.
Regardless, a law student should act like that. I wouldn’t want that person as my lawyer!
Tropical area that, vulnerable to a broad range of organisms, however introduced, or as a result of imbalance induced in the natural resident flora due to prescription drugs or change in diet.
That’s the problem with too many men, they seem to objectify women as if they are supposed to be alabaster, in which case they may as well get for themselves full size blow up anatomically correct sex dolls.
“patently offensive and stereotypes Jews as an ‘other’ which incites further acts of discrimination.”
First ‘smelly’ is offensive because it might mean it’s about all of them. Then it ‘stereotypes,’ that is, it’s really about all of them. Then the sky falls.
Where do these domino games come from?
Hey Emily, here is a thought. Don’t hire him. Problem solved.
“a law student should act like that.” is dat a yiddishe accent?
Hey Michael @6
“problem with too many men, they seem to objectify women” ; how did his question “objectify women”?
Personally I think it is a good question, see how famous people react when confronted outside their comfort zone. It is an alternative to “Have you stopped abusing your husband?”
It is in fact a real “Lawyer’s” question.