AOC the JAP

AOC, of course, being short for the "much beloved in these precincts" Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez.

JAP being an acronym that, I believe, took off in the 1960s and has nothing to do with orange meatballs and Nippon.

Soooo ....

Per the AOC Wiki page, as I first blogged a full year ago, I'm waiting for her likely ungrounded claim to have Sephardi Jewish ancestry to be deconstructed. And, since nobody else jumped in, I guess it's me doing this.

This isn't just on her. In New Mexico, many Hispanos claim to have Sephardi ancestry and its more likely that they're descended from Protestant Adventist converts of the late 19th century. And, as for a breast cancer mutation proving Sephardi Marranos in New Mexico? Uh, no, Jews haven't so often married within their religion as the story claims, among other things. Also, Smithsonian doesn't tell you that those families denied being Jewish, as NIH reports.  And the British Medical Journal notes the mutation arose more than once. It also tells you that this mutation has been found frequently in ASHKENAZI Jews, an entirely different kettle of fish. (Smithsonian's breathless story also fails to note this issue.)

There's just too much "looseness" to satisfy me here still. Beyond that, if the mutation goes back to before the start of the Common Era, it could have arisen in Herod's Idumeans or something. And, yeah, I'm going to go there — at times, it comes off like Oklahomans claiming to be one-eighth Cherokee. That's you, up in Massachusetts.

Seriously ... given that an estimated 3.5 million direct descendants of Marranos exist today? Scattered all over Latin America and beyond? I highly doubt her claims. And, I find it "interesting" that she made them between the election and starting office. She may sincerely believe what she said her family found. I'm skeptical.

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Update, Aug. 10, 2026 

AND, it's not just me.

Forward had a serious "flags" piece at the time of her announcement. This:

But some experts say that even if Ocasio-Cortez says she has Jewish ancestry, there is likely no evidence — either documentation or family traditions — to support it. 

“All of this talk about lighting candles and sweeping the floors, it means nothing,” said Judith Neulander, a lecturer on Jewish studies and folklore at Case Western Reserve University. “If you go back in history and look at these things, it’s sad, but nothing holds up.”

Is the bottom line.

So why?

This, perhaps? 

Some ancestries are more coveted than others. Neulander calls Sephardic ancestry a “prestige lineage,” one that many people claim because it carries exotic, intellectual or otherwise special connotations. The fact that we think of it that way may have to do with Jewish elitism itself.

I would totally agree, whether or not the third sentence has any real basis.

The rest of the story dovetails with the links I have above about Spanish converts to Adventist Christianity, in the second generation or beyond, thinking that Adventist Saturday rituals were actually signs of Sephardi Judaism. Indeed, per the Forward piece, Neulander is the person who studied those legends.

Also, as I was wondering, per a Jerusalem Post piece, crypto-Jews were only "hunted" in the New World in Mexico (which included New Mexico within Spain, pre-1820) and Peru.

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What? AOC might be  Just.Another.Politician.™? Quelle horreur!

Actually, we'll probably hear from AOC the Kabbalist next.

Smithsonian blows another story

This month’s gaffe?

Omitting hugely important relevant information about Judaism in its story on the alleged Hispanic Jews of the San Luis Valley of southern Colorado.

A bit of background.

For generations if not centuries, rumors have swirled that some Spanish the original territory of Mexico, including the Mexican Northwest or our Desert Southwest, actually were Marranos — descendents of Spanish Jews who were “passing” to avoid the Inquisition.

Per the story, I agree with Judith Neulander, an ethnographer and co-director of the Judaic Studies Program at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland (and many others) and disagree with University of New Mexico prof Stanley M. Hordes. These are Spanish-Americans who picked up some type of Adventism, whether from today’s official Seventh-Day Adventist Chruch or elsewhere; they’re NOT marranos. 

See all the details here.

(Note to Mr. Hordes: Outside the American flag, two hundred or even one hundred years ago, six points was the normal way to make a star; that’s NOT the Magen David, necessarily, on tombs. At least some Adventists officially practice circumcision.

But, that’s an issue of interpretation, not the gaffe I’m going to talk about.

Here’s where the story blows it. And, if the author, Jeff Wheelwright, was that ignorant of Jewish groups and distinctions, he shouldn’t have been writing this story in the first place. And, if the Smithsonian can’t have an editor pick up on the difference between Sephardic and Ashkenazi Jews, then the mag really is in trouble.

Because THAT’s the gaffe.

In a nutshell, the alleged marranos of San Luis have been found to have a higher-than-statistically probable rate of a breast cancer precursor gene, 185delAG. The story notes that “the genetic mutation that caused the virulent breast cancer had previously been found primarily in Jewish people whose ancestral home was Central or Eastern Europe.”

Well, beyond the bare bones of geographic separation, those Jews are Ashkenazi; the Jews of Spain are Sephardic.

Of course, there’s argument that the genetic mutatin is not limited to Ashkenazi. If that’s true, well, then the story is wrong in another way, and Wheelwright shouldn’t have written what he did.

In the title, I noted that Smithsonian blows another story. This has become a recent problem.

In recent months, on straight history it has claimed the Acoma Indians built their Sky City pueblo for protection from Navajos 400 years before Navajos arrived in the Southwest, and misidentified a Canyonlands National Park picture as coming from Arches. (It corrected the photo mistake, but did nothing about the far more egregious error.)

On news analysis, it picked the wrong 20th-century political conventions as the top four of the century, and so far, at least, hasn’t even deigned to look at 19th-century ones.

I had hoped things would get better with Lawrence Small finally getting a well-deserved boot as Smithsonian secretary.

Instead, the magazine, at least, gets worse, and the Institute has the gall to send me a fundraiser e-mail last week on top of this.