Amy Schumer panned for ‘Jew with horns’ joke
Jewish comedienne poses between clarinetist and saxophonist for Twitter ruse, raising ire over ancient stereotype
Jewish comic Amy Schumer tweeted a Jewish joke criticized as “offensive and wrong” by the Gossip Cop website.
In a Twitter post Wednesday, the comedienne and actress made public a photo of herself standing between a clarinetist and a saxophonist, each holding his instrument. Her caption read, “A Jew with horns.” She later amended the phrase to “I meant to say a Jew with 2 horns.”
Gossip Cop, which says it polices Hollywood and celebrity news to separate what’s real from rumor, slammed the tweet.
“While comedy can provoke discussion, it’s [sic] purpose is not to perpetuate hateful and inaccurate stereotypes. And Schumer’s Twitter message, which plays off the misconception that Jews are horned creatures, accomplishes less comically than it does to reignite misguided prejudice,” the site’s ungrammatical but apparently heartfelt commentary read.
https://twitter.com/amyschumer/status/705038221210750976
https://twitter.com/amyschumer/status/705143689232912384
“Undoubtedly, Schumer will justify her mildly amusing ‘joke’ by noting that she herself was raised Jewish and can poke fun at herself, as she often does with her comedy. But does that make it okay for her to spread untrue and hurtful stereotypes about Jews? Would jokes by a popular black or Latino comedian be considered funny if he or she tweeted to their millions of followers a wholly and historically painful stereotype about their people for non-minorities to laugh at?”
Gossip Cop staff called on Schumer to “grab her tweet by the horns and apologize for perpetuating this slanderous depiction of Jews for a mere half-laugh.”
An ancient mistranslation of a Biblical verse from Exodus 34, in which a “beaming” Moses, karan, is read as a “horn,” keren. The error led the 16th-century Italian artist Michelangelo to depict Moses in his 1516 statue of the Biblical leader with two horns protruding from his scalp. The image of Jews with horns was part of an anti-Semitic medieval European discourse that depicted Jews as linked to demonic or inhuman elements of the natural world and Christian theology.
Times of Israel staff contributed to this report.
