Leonardo da Vinci Was Jewish | Hacker News Reader

Leonardo da Vinci Was Jewish

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14 pointsAmorymeltzer16 comments

There's something comical about a Jewish publication promoting something like this. It reminds me of the feminists promoting "Shakespeare was a woman" theories.

Whether or not the claims in question are true, the whole thing reminds me of Chappelle's racial draft skit.

Chappelle is a genius. And he's not even Jewish ;-)

What bothers me about articles like this is (regardless of its veracity) that when other claims of ethic supremacy (since they often have nothing to do with Judaism) is that there's an unmentioned claim of genetic supremacy (you must have the genes of a Jewish mother, regardless of whether she was a good mom or not, and regardless of whether you were raised in Judaism).

What exactly is the point of such genetically-based claims of Jewish ancestry?

Why do we feel uncomfortable reading claims of Asian claims of musical superiority? Or dark skinned NBA players/athletes? Are ethnic Germans just superior classical music composers, mathematicians, or physicists?

Zukerman is famous for saying in a master class at Juilliard, "In Korea they don't sing".

Articles like this are just insensitive and offensive cultural and ethnic stereotypes.

  “I simply found it impossible to believe that the mother of the greatest Italian genius would be a non-Italian slave,” he told me

Why is this impossible to believe?

If they are a historian something like this would take a mystical person like Leonardo even more mythological. It's almost folk-lore levels of impressive the origin of the greatest minds of western history would be from a less traditional background.

If I was a historian I too would be skeptical. It's just almost too good to be true as far as someone who historically is often portrayed as a type of hero to humanity due to his artistic and objective contributions. One of the greatest painters in history was also born of a slave mother emancipated by that great and inspiring painter's father? It's even romantic!

No one said it was impossible, just impossible for someone in a field of study to believe outright. Good on them for going out and finding out the truth for themselves. Id say that's what it's all about.

A few years ago some researchers recreated (from fragments) one of Leonardo fingerprints and found some traits that are more common in populations of the middle east and thus claimed that the mother could have been a slave of levantine (arabic) origin:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2006/dec/02/arts.artsnews

That wouldn't sound unusual to me at all. Inventors and researchers who break new ground are often from a non-mainstream subculture or from another culture altogether. People from such backgrounds see and approach problems differently.

Turing, von Neumann, Erdos, Einstein, and many others came with non-mainstream backgrounds.

Yes but this is the 15th century were talking about here. Societies were highly strategie, and upward mobility was rare and remarkable.

The fact that she would have come from so far away, and had such a tale to tell is incredible.

That entire theory is based on an emancipation act for someone who had one of the most common first names of the era? And that this person might or might not have come from an area with a Jewish population higher than in other areas? I'm not saying he has a book to sell, but... Hell, I'm saying it.

Also,that might be an unpopular point of view, but unless he was raised in the Jewish culture, he wasn't Jewish even if the claim was somehow true. Perhaps ethnically half-Jewish.

According to Jewish law, if his mother was Jewish, then so was he. The concept of a "half-jew" is modern invention, and not accepted by orthodox Jews

I know, I'm not talking about half-jews at all; if I make up a religion stating lizard aliens identify their descendants with the name Leonardo, does that make him a lizard alien? According to me, yes, but that doesn't change at all who he was.

I find the fact that his mother was a sex slave/prostitute more surprising and interesting than the fact that he was Jewish.

Not a prostitute, but I agree that [edit: the foreign sex slave mother] is surprising and interesting.

Ambiguous. Thanks for the chuckle.

And how she had already been raped enough to have multiple children by the time she was 15.

Can't wait for the new Dan Brown on this.

Actually I think that professor Vecce thought something like "If Dan Brown can do it, why cannot I do it, at least I am a history professor".

The book is seemingly a huge (500 + pages) story that is defined (at least in Italy) as "fictional history" or "romanticized biography".

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