Sizable Semitic Nose

As if the title wasn't enough to tell you what group these jokes are about.

"She's got a big, beautiful Jewish Nose

And it's there two minutes early, wherever she goes!"

— Frank Sinatra singing "Jewish Nose", Family Guy, "Jerome is the New Black"

When it comes to visually signaling to an audience that a character is Jewish, there are multiple ways of doing it, with varying levels of subtlety. The most on-the-nose way to do it is with their nose: namely, a large nose with a prominent bridge and a tip that points downwards, giving it a hook-like shape.

This style of nose, also called the aquiline nose, is associated in real life with numerous Levantine ethnic groups, including Ashkenazi, Sephardi, and Mizrahi Jews. However, they're far from the only groups where the trait is common, and it's by no means exclusive to them. It's been observed in many other ethnicities, including those from Europe, South Asia, and the Americas. In fact, it's also been referred to as the "Roman nose" due to its prominence in the Mediterranean. These days, however, it's largely associated with Jews and Arabs.

The earliest roots of this stereotype can be traced back to 13th century Europe, where it became the norm for depicting Ashkenazi Jews in artwork — and because All Jews Are Ashkenazi to many Christians, it became associated with Jews in general. It became increasingly linked with various antisemitic tropes over the centuries and gained a veneer of scientific credibility with the rise of physiognomy (the science of Beauty Equals Goodness), and later eugenics. It reached a fever pitch under the propaganda of Nazi Germany, which was exemplified in films like Jud Süss.

Needless to say, the villainous hook-nosed Jew is now a Discredited Trope in much of the civilized world, as negative depictions of Jews in general quickly became far less acceptable after 1945. Jokes about the Jewish noses nowadays are most likely to be done by Jews themselves and are a hallmark of the Borscht Belt comedians and their descendants.

A subtrope of Facial Profiling and Gag Nose. A near-guaranteed feature of an Alter Kocker, Jewish American Princess (assuming she's not a Plastic Bitch who got a nose job), Jewish Mother, or other Jewish stock character. If religion is left unstated, this is often the most obvious hallmark of an Ambiguously Jewish character. If linked with negative tropes like the Greedy Jew, this often becomes a Sinister Schnoz, but many works with this (especially those produced within the last century) carry very Unfortunate Implications. Nonhuman species from fantasy and sci-fi that seemingly have Semitic noses should go under Space Jews.

Although the trope of ethnic groups with large, aquiline noses has also been associated with other nations (mainly Italians and Armenians), it's become primarily associated in recent decades with Arabs. Stock characters like the Arab Oil Sheikh, Middle Eastern Terrorists, and residents of Qurac and Countrystan tend to be depicted with hooked noses. It tends to also encompass Persians as well, mainly because many believe that All Muslims Are Arab. The Arab nose's survival in negative depictions compared to the Jewish nose is largely due to The War on Terror, making Arab villains fair game for caricature and ridicule.

So this doesn't just grow into a list of every large-nosed Semitic character or celebrity, please restrict examples to cases that are invoked, lampshaded, or are otherwise explicitly highlighted in the work.

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Examples:

Anime and Manga

• Surprisingly thin on the ground in Adolf despite being a Holocaust story by Osamu Tezuka, who was known for drawing characters with comedically oversized schnozzes. Most of the Jewish characters are pretty normal looking, though there is a short cameo by his recurring "actor" Duke Red, whose nose resembles the beak of some vast, predatory bird, as a Hungarian Jew who smuggles supplies for the resistance against the Nazis.
• Dr. Isaac Gilmore in Cyborg 009 is said to be of Jewish descent and has an extremely large nose. This may be a consequence of Shotaro Ishinomori's art style at the time strongly aping Tezuka's, as he had gotten his start working as an assistant to him on Astro Boy.
• Speaking of Astro Boy, Pluto's more realistic art style renders Dr. Tenma into a caricature of Leonard Bernstein due to him being one of the few flesh and blood humans who could reasonably pass for a Tezuka character.

Comic Books

• Inverted in the Asterix books with Cleopatra. She has a far smaller (albeit pointier) nose than all the other major characters, but she's the one whose nose is commented on the most and receives plenty of compliments from the others about it (sincere or otherwise).
• Iznogoud: Many of the Arab characters have prominent noses, but the eponymous scheming vizier has an especially long one with a pointed tip.
• Tintin: The Shooting Star: Mr. Bohlwinkel, the New World banker who sponsors the villainous rival expedition to claim the meteor. His appearance (including the "semitic nose") and name (and, perhaps, profession) can be taken to suggest that he is a (caricature of a) Jew—he was originally named "Blumenstein", the album was made when Belgium was occupied by Nazi Germany's forces during World War II and Hergé's boss was one of Les Collaborateurs. Hergé modified the album after the war, trying to pick a name for the character that wouldn't invoke this, basing it on a Belgian slang expression as a sort of in-joke. Averted completely with the other villains, who all have typically Anglo-Saxon names.

Fan Works

• Deconstructed in With This Ring when Overgirl, who travels from Nazi-controlled Earth 10 to Earth 16, displays a mix of heroic desires and ingrained prejudices. Harley Quinn wonders aloud if she should make herself scarce because of her Jewish heritage, but Paul tells her that the Nazis of Earth 10 think that the big-nosed caricatures are what all Jews actually look like, so Overgirl will have no idea Harley's Jewish unless she mentions it.

Films — Animated

• Jafar, the lamp-selling merchant telling the whole story, and many other characters from Disney's Aladdin have hooked or bulbous noses. The notable exceptions are Aladdin and Jasmine, who have smaller, more European-style noses.
• The Last Unicorn: Schmendrick^note "Schmendrick" meaning "fool" or "idiot" in Yiddish the Magician is depicted as having a large, beak-like nose.
• Oliver & Company: While the Disney version of Fagin is never explicitly referred to as Jewish, his big nose is still a relic of his book counterpart's portrayal as a Greedy Jew (together with his red hair and green coat, two archaic means of coding a character as Jewish).
• Pinchcliffe Grand Prix: Sheikh Ben Redic Fy-Fazan the Arab Oil Sheikh has a rather large nose.

Films — Live-Action

• The Abominable Dr. Phibes has a rabbi played by Hugh Griffith, an actor with a large nose.
• In Ben-Hur (1959), the character of Sheik Ilderim is played by a brownfaced Hugh Griffith, who had quite the proboscis.
• Between Two Ferns: The Movie: In the film and web series it is based on, Zach Galifianakis is prone to making antisemitic jokes to Jewish guests, then getting offended when they snark in kind about his Greek descent. Some of the outtakes show said guests making their own jokes, such as Paul Rudd's "What happens when a Jew runs into a wall with a full erection? He breaks his nose."
• In Coming to America, Eddie Murphy plays an Alter Kocker with whiteface and a large prosthetic nose.
• Everything Everywhere All at Once: Evelyn refers to a customer at her laundromat, played by Jewish American actress Jenny Slate, as "Big Nose", and the character was only credited as such in the theatrical release. According to the DVD commentary, this is intended to be insensitive bigotry from Evelyn and to demonstrate how she initially views the people around her shallowly then eventually progresses to sympathizing with their personal life arcs. However, the effect was diminished for Slate's character since her subplot was cut from the film. To reduce the implications of identifying the character solely by an ethnic trait, she was subsequently credited as "Debbie the Dog Mom" in the home releases of the film.
• Similar to the Maestro example below, Golda, a biopic about Israeli prime minister Golda Meir, came under fire when photos surfaced of Gentile actor Helen Mirren (who played Meir) wearing a prosthetic nose that was more pronounced than Meir's own nose.
• Licorice Pizza: Casting agent Mary Grady extols the Israeli-American Alana Kane's warm smile and "Jewish nose", which Mary says is becoming more fashionable.
• The film Maestro, a biopic about Jewish composer Leonard Bernstein, came under fire before it was even finished when photos surfaced of (the non-Jewish) Bradley Cooper wearing a prosthetic nose to portray Bernstein (when Cooper's own unmodified nose looks pretty much the same as Bernstein's).
• The Mayor of Hell: A gang of teenage delinquents includes a Jewish kid named Isidore whose dad talks Yiddish to him in court. The other kids call Isidore "Schnoz", and the actor does in fact have a prominent nose.
• Monty Python's Life of Brian:
  • Most of the nose-based insults in the film come from Jewish characters themselves, with one (played by Eric Idle) calling another Jew (played by Michael Palin) "Big Nose," and telling him and Brian "Where are you two from, Nose City?"
  • Brian self-consciously asks his mother whether his nose is really that big. Thinking it's a "men with large shoes" style euphemism, she goes off on him for always thinking about sex.
  • Later, when Brian learns from his mother he's the bastard son of a Roman centurion, he denounces his Roman ancestry by saying:
    "I'm not a Roman, Mum, and I never will be! I'm a kike! A Yid! A Hebe! A hook-nose! I'm kosher, mum! I'm a Red Sea pedestrian, and proud of it!"
  • Inverted when a Jew taunts John Cleese's Roman centurion character while on his way to remove Brian from his cross after he's been crucified:
    Jew: Big nose!
    Centurion: Watch it! There's still a few crosses left...
• OSS 117: Lost in Rio: French spy and dimwitted bigot OSS 117 assumes that the ex-Nazi will recognize Mossad agents because of their big noses. The Mossad agents that are talking to him boggle at his stupidity, with one of them asking "You're France's best agent?"
• Miracle Max and his wife Valerie in The Princess Bride are a kvetching couple of Alter Kockers portrayed by Billy Crystal and Carol Kane, respectively, who both wore large prosthetic noses for the role.
• A Serious Man: Larry protests his daughter Sarah saving up to get a nose job, implied to be to cover up her Jewish heritage.
• In Spaceballs, Princess Vespa, a Druish Princess, had gotten plastic surgery as a 16th birthday present from her parents to slim down her comically large nose. Dark Helmet intimidates her father King Roland into giving up Druidia's air shield code by threatening to get a plastic surgeon to restore her old nose.

Jokes

• Many jokes told about Jews (though generally less acceptable to tell nowadays if you're not Jewish yourself) involve noses. If they're about Jewish men, expect the size of their noses to be compared to other organs.
• Via Stephen Fry's grandfather: "Do you know why we have such big noses? Because air is free."
• One of Russell Peters' standup routines involves talking about how absurd American Sign Language's different signs for "Jew" are. The first and least offensive is pantomiming having a long beard. The second is mimicking a long, pointy nose. The third is rubbing one's fingers together like you're asking for money.

Literature

• 19th-century German Jewish poet Heinrich Heine sardonically muses in his novel The Baths of Lucca that Jews have such large noses because God's been leading them by the nose for so long as they await the restoration of the Jewish homeland.
• In Ben-Hur, author Lew Wallace often mentions noses when describing Jewish characters; for instance, he describes a group of rabbis as having "long beards, heavy brows, and beaked noses." He also writes that Balthasar, one of The Three Wise Men who traveled from Egypt, has an "aquiline nose."
• Agatha Christie's early novels are sprinkled throughout with antisemitism, references to Greedy Jews and, sometimes, their big noses.
  • Lord Edgware Dies: Ronald is talking about going to the opera with a Jewish family hoping to match him up with their daughter Rachel. Ronald says "Her long Jewish nose is quivering with emotion."
  • Peril at End House: Hercule Poirot describes a character as "the long-nosed Mr. Lazarus" while discussing why he finds his apparent generosity suspicious.
  • Sad Cypress: In Elinor's POV at her trial for murder, she repeatedly describes prosecuting attorney Sir Samuel Attenbury as having a "Jewish nose." In this case, it's meant to portray the prosecutor as antagonistic.
  • The Secret of Chimneys has Herman Isaacstein, the unpleasant, sneaky person trying to negotiate for Britain the oil rights in a Ruritania-style country in Eastern Europe. The narration specifically notes his "big nose".
• The 2004 novel Seventy-Two Virgins by then-MP Boris Johnson (later Mayor of London and Prime Minister of the UK) frequently describes the Arab characters as "hook-nosed". This, as well as other stereotypical or offensive ethnic descriptions, became a source of controversy in the lead-up to his 2019 victory in the Conservative Party leadership election.
• The Pyat Quartet: Pyat laments that his big nose makes people think he's Jewish, which he isn't, not one bit, no sirree!
• Years of Grace: Jane contemplates Mrs. Lester at Mrs. Lester's 75th birthday party, Mrs. Lester being part of a Jewish family that has tried to assimilate in WASP Chicago (the novel is set in the early 20th century). She observes Mrs. Lester's "great gaunt nose hooked over her ridiculous cascade of double chins" and decides that she has "come to look much more Jewish" in her old age.

Live-Action TV

• The Big Bang Theory: When Howard and Raj get action figures of themselves made, Raj is caught off guard that his got a much darker skin tone, but the Jewish Howard is absolutely mortified that his got a massive nose.
• Broad City: Discussed in "Sliding Doors," which depicts two variations of Abbi's and Ilana's first meeting. Ilana is surprised when Abbi mentions that she's Jewish, and specifically points out Abbi's nose as the reason she's doubtful of her Jewish heritage.
  Abbi: Yeah, I'm completely Jewish.
  Ilana: (pointing at Abbi's nose) Check the records.
  Abbi: Had a bat mitzvah.
  Ilana: Did you get work done?
  Abbi: No!
• Brooklyn Nine-Nine: In the episode "Moo Moo," the day after Jake and Amy babysit Terry's daughters, Terry gives them a thank you card that his daughters made for them. Jake is Jewish, and he points out that while he appreciates the card, the fact that the girls drew him with a gigantic nose feels a bit odd, especially after they'd had a conversation about racism the previous night.
  Jake: Pretty sure my nose isn't quite this big, especially with all the racial sensitivity talk, but I appreciate the effort.
• Crazy Ex-Girlfriend: Darryl is surprised to learn Rebecca is Jewish, as she has a "tiny" nose.
  Darryl: It's like a button.
  Rebecca: ...Thank you.
• In Deadwood, when Al is wondering how much "juice" a rival has, Wu, who speaks a very broken English, misunderstands the word and asks if Al meant "Jews", waving his hands to draw a big nose in the air for confirmation.
• Glee: Rachel has a large nose owing to her Jewish heritage, which she is portrayed as insecure about. When her nose is injured during rehearsal in "Born This Way", the Ambiguously Jewish doctor suggests she get a nose job, mentioning that it's something of a rite of passage for Jewish girls. She ultimately refuses and keeps her nose as it is.
• Jewish actress Jennifer Grey appeared in the short-lived 2000s sitcom It's Like, You Know... As Herself, and was the subject of frequent jokes about her 1990s rhinoplasty, which significantly reduced the size of her nose.^note She originally got the rhinoplasty to avoid being typecast as Jewish characters, but it actually hurt her bankability in Hollywood more than it helped.
• A League of Their Own (2022): When Vivienne Hughes is brought in to make the players look "palatable for an audience," one of the first things she and her team of stylists do is examine and criticize the facial features of all the women. When she gets to Shirley Cohen, who is Jewish and has a prominent hooked nose, Vivienne immediately remarks, "Too Semitic."
• M*A*S*H: Corporal Max Klinger, a proud Lebanese-American (just like his actor Jamie Farr), is often the recipient of numerous remarks about his nose when he's not making them himself. In one episode, Klinger's nose is broken, prompting Hawkeye and BJ to joke that he'd injured over 50% of his body.
  Col. Potter: Every time you tell a lie, your nose gets smaller.
• Monty Python's Flying Circus: Played with in the "Raymond Luxury-Yacht" sketch. When a TV host (played by Michael Palin) refuses to put up with the silly antics of a guest (played by Graham Chapham, wearing a massive, obviously fake nose) and abruptly ends the interview, the guest angrily accuses him of antisemitism. The host nonchalantly points that the nose is polystyrene and pulls it off his face.
• Ramy: Arab-American Dena tells her therapist that her grandmother told her she'd get her a nose job at sixteen. She didn't get one only because said grandma died when Dena was fourteen.

Music

• "The Stereotype Song" by Your Favorite Martian features the lyric "You gotta go big like an Israeli nose!"

Theatre

• In Margin for Error, the Jewish policeman Moe says he'll likely be blamed for the German consul's murder because "for a lot of people, the shape of my nose is plenty of motive." He also notes that "there are still a lotta people with noses like mine in Germany," and worries about antisemitic backlash to the news when it reaches Europe.

Webcomics

• Billy the Heretic: A given, considering that the comic openly espouses and promotes antisemitic libel.
• In Bite Me! and Family Man (Dylan Meconis), the half-Jewish Luther Levy has a comically long, pointed nose, as do his brother and every other Jew he meets. Word of God implies that it's actually nowhere near that big, and Luther mentally exaggerates it due to internalized disdain toward his Jewish heritage.

Web Video

• In "Ancient Aryans: The History of Crackpot N@zi Archaeology", Atun-Shei says that he is repeatedly mistaken for a Jew in his YouTube videos' comments because of his hooked nose.
  "For some reason, people in the comment sections of my videos often assume that I'm Jewish. (Turns head sideways to show facial profile) No idea why."
• If Disney Cartoons Were Historically Accurate: The Jews are depicted as cutesy little forest-dwelling critters whose faces are approximately 50% nose.
• Nazi from the Jreg series Centricide presumes that the offscreen narrator in "Meet the Extremists" is Jewish because of his "schnozz."

Western Animation

• Bosko's Picture Show is a 1933 American cartoon depicting a literally Ax-Crazy Adolf Hitler chasing big-nosed actor Jimmy Durante with an axe in the fictional town of Pretzel. Durante was not Jewish, but the cartoon was a Take That! at Nazi Germany's obsession with racial profiling and racism and that stock antisemitic caricature in particular.
• Family Guy:
  • In "Road to the Multiverse," Brian and Stewie briefly end up in a Disneyesque universe. When Mort walks into the house, he's shown to be the only character in the Disney universe with a hooked nose. The other characters shout "JEW!" and promptly beat him into a bloody pulp.^note A reference to Walt Disney's alleged antisemitism. Ironically, Mort's nose in the normal show is drawn very similarly to many of the other characters' noses.
  • In "Family Goy," it's revealed that the distinct shape of Lois's nose is because her mother's family are Jews who fled the Holocaust. Apparently, Lois never figured that Grandma Hebrewberg might be Jewish.
  • In "Jerome Is the New Black," Peter sees a Time-Life Music ad on TV for a compilation of "the Rat Pack's most bigoted songs," including one by Frank Sinatra called "Jewish Nose":
    She's got a big, beautiful Jewish nose
    And it's there two minutes early, wherever she goes
  • Subverted in "Brian Griffin's House of Payne." Brian meets with two CBS executives, makes an ill-timed Hitler joke, and asks "Nobody here's Jewish, right?" Cue the revelation that both executives have massive hooked noses when they turn to look at each other in annoyance. However, they start laughing and tell Brian they're actually Italian.
• Grunkle Stan in Gravity Falls has a large, bulbous Gag Nose and is Ambiguously Jewish, judging by dialogue mentioning things like having a Bar Mitzvah. Word of God has since confirmed that he was indeed raised Jewish.
• The Simpsons:
  • Mr. Bergstrom has a rather stereotypical Jewish appearance and Lisa comments on his "Semitic good looks" at one point.
  • Marge's one-time high school prom date and longtime Stalker with a Crush Artie Ziff.
    Marge: My husband's going to jail, and it's all your fault! Do you know why no one likes you?!
    Artie: Antisemitism?
• South Park:
  • Kyle's Jewish Mother Sheila Broflovski, the only Jewish woman in South Park, has a hooked nose that sets her apart from other characters, who (prior to Art Evolution) all had tiny button noses.
  • In "The Passion of the Jew," the villainous Jews in The Passion of the Christ are shown with large, ugly, bulbous noses. There's a bit of Hypocritical Humor later on, as a sequence of increasingly large-nosed attendees of Kyle's synagogue are shown complaining about the film's stereotypical depictions.
  • In "The List," Gerald says that Kyle has his mother's nose, causing Kyle to freak out. This is an Informed Attribute; Kyle, like most fourth graders on the show, is drawn without a nose.
• The 1933 version of The Three Little Pigs had the wolf disguise himself as a caricatural Jewish peddler selling brushes, including a mask with a big nose. It was replaced by a Paper-Thin Disguise without a trace of antisemitic caricature in 1948.

Real Life

• The depiction of the hook-nosed Jew is almost synonymous with antisemitic propaganda produced by Nazi Germany in the 1930s and '40s, as well as their predecessors and later imitators:
  • Der ewige Jude, or The Eternal Jew, was a 1940 Documentary of Lies claiming to accurately show Jewish ghettoes as dens of squalor and depravity (needless to say, it was all staged and many of the Jews were acting under duress). Its release poster, by Hans "Mjölnir" Schweitzer, is a painting of a hook-nosed Hasidic Jew doing a Kubrick Stare.
  • Der ewige Jude was also the name of a 1937 art/propaganda exhibition, whose advertisements depicted a Soviet Jewish peddler with a beak-like nose. There was a French version of it, "The Jew and France", that was organized by Les Collaborateurs in occupied Paris in 1941-1942 with the blessing of Joseph Goebbels' propaganda services, and it displayed similar imagery.
  • Another 1940 Nazi propaganda film, Jud Süß, depicts the Evil Chancellor character Josef Süß Oppenheimer on the poster with a prominent nose.
  • One of the more infamous antisemitic images of the last several decades, the so-called "Happy Merchant" by A. Wyatt Mann, depicts a malevolent Hand Rubbing Jew with an oversized head and an even bigger nose.
• President Ronald Reagan reportedly said to the Lebanese foreign minister (in what was considered an embarrassing gaffe), “You know, your nose looks just like Danny Thomas’s.” Danny Thomas was an American actor of Lebanese descent.

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