Dustin’s dead-ringer: How I learned to love looking like a Jew

Not long ago, at a soirée in Berkeley, I was introduced to a friend of a friend, and got the same-old, same-old:

"Gee, Dan, you look a lot like Dustin Hoffman."

This isn't news to me. Even when I was a teenager, to my great annoyance, people would note the resemblance.

Thanks a lot. The last person I wanted to look like was Dustin "Mrs. Robinson, you're trying to seduce me, I'm walkin' here" Hoffman. He was so much older than me and he looked so ... Jewish. What could be less cool?

Better I should resemble Mick Jagger, Jerry Garcia or any of my other working-class heroes. And not that I didn't try. Back then I turned scruffiness into art: kneeless jeans, long beautiful hair, streamin', flaxen, waxin'. Nothing helped. I still looked like Dustin Hoffman. I still looked Jewish.

But what exactly does it mean to look "Jewish?"

Of course there are the stereotypes: frizzy-haired sorority princess from the West Side (either L.A.'s or New York's). There's the "Jewfro"-topped math nerd. Then there's the zaftig Lanie Kazan mamaleh endlessly querying "Did you eat, darling?"

Palo Alto Chabad Rabbi Yosef Levin dismisses the stereotypes out of hand. "There's something [Jewish] beyond the physical features," he told me. "There's definitely a spiritual component. I meet with people, and 99 percent of the time I can tell who is Jewish. Every human being has a soul, but there's something about the Jewish neshama (soul)."

As for me, I bear no distinguishing marks, nor wear any accessories or garments that would peg me as a Jew. So what makes me look Jewish?

Surely not my fetching brown eyes, chiseled features or lean muscular frame (full disclosure: the preceding was 100 percent rubbish).

It can't be the hair. My hair is straight, stringy and disappearing. Nor can it be the nose. My nose isn't all that big. And besides, prominent honkers are not the exclusive domain of any one ethnic group (I'm talking to you, Owen Wilson).

Despite the best efforts of Nazis, eugenicists and other nut jobs, there probably is no truth to the concept of "looking Jewish." Shed the kippah, tallit and payes, lose the leisure suit and harlequin-frame eyeglasses, and you're just another human being with 10 fingers, 10 toes, a heart and a soul.

Still, the notion of "looking Jewish" was something I ran away from. Like many secular Jews, I wanted to be seen as 100 percent American, and not paint myself into an ethnic corner with my appearance.

Even into my 30s, when I became active in the Jewish community, I never wore a kippah outside shul or away from the Shabbat table. I would have felt self-conscious announcing so graphically to the world who and what I am.

But now I wonder: Why be so resistant to telegraphing my Jewishness to the world? After all, when I was in Israel, I felt such intense Jewish pride I wished I could stick out more.

I remember one morning, I rose before dawn to take a walk along Tel Aviv's seaside boardwalk. As the sun rose, the feral cats and gray-breasted crows were out in force, but so were the people: a woman in a skimpy swimsuit practicing juggling, a homeless man urinating in a parking lot, an elderly couple dipping their toes in the Mediterranean.

Their faces could easily have blended in at Stinson Beach or Santa Monica. There was nothing screamingly Jewish about any of them. But they were Jewish, no doubt, and I felt kinship with them. In fact, I felt kinship with every Israeli, many of whom resembled either my grandmother or the kids in my mostly Jewish high school.

Time has passed. I don't relate much to Mick Jagger these days, miracle of modern geriatrics that he is. The suburban tribe of my youth has scattered to the four winds, our jeans, Indian beads and leather fringe jackets long since vanished.

I don't look like an escapee from the cast of "Hair" anymore. But I guess I still look like Dustin Hoffman (more "Kramer Vs. Kramer" than "Midnight Cowboy," I hope). And if the punim my grandma used to cup so lovingly in her hands looks to the rest of the world like a Jewish punim, I believe I can face it.




Dan Pine.(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).