Jewish poker professionals

[PayTheSnucka]

Since it is only a matter of time before this thread gets really controversial....(disclaimer - I am a Jew but more of the cultural type)

Perhaps the most basic stereotype about Jews is the one about how they love money and will backstab anybody for money (this dates back to the Romans and their anti-usury laws where only Jews were allowed to loan money for interest and Jews were tax-collectors).

It is ironic that a Jew, Stuie Ungar, is probably known as the person who most devalued money. Mike Matusow (also a Jew) is a well known money degenerate. Add to this the many Jews who are involved with gambling and you have either a strange coincidence, or a backlash to the stereotype.

So take a group who are known for producing a disproportionate share of the world's Nobel Laurete scientists and entrepenuers and mix in MAJOR MAJOR PSYCHOLOGICAL ISSUES ABOUT MONEY FROM LITERALLY MILLENIA OF PERSECUTION OVER IT and you are bound to have some top notch poker players emerge. Of them, I would guess that you see mostly 2 extremes - the really successful business people (Greenstien, Berman, Orenstein) and the total degenerates (Ungar, Matusow).

[LittleOldLady]

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An ethnic Jew and an expert on Kristin Lavransdatter. Well, now we know which side of the family Ed gets the brains from.

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Edward's father is an economist and no dummy either....

To paraphrase Edward's MySpace comments: what do you get when you cross an English professor and an economics professor--a poker author!

[johnnycakes]

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Mel Judah sounds like a good candidate?

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He is Arab. Maybe Lebanese?

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"Mel Judah is a poker player born in Calcutta, India moved to the UK and was a London hairdresser before coming a ful-time poker player"

[doc_1982]

Standard.

[dlk9s]

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I'm pretty sure Barry's dad was born in america. Israel was created in 1948, so there's no way Barry has "Israeli ancestry."

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Israel has always been there. It just wasn't "officially" a country until 1948.

[burningyen]

David Grey
Mickey Appleman
Perry Green
Jay Heimowitz
Chad Brown?
David Benyamine?

[okterrific]

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Umm, how can he be a Jew and an atheist? Jew implies following the Jewish religion.

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Nation, what you says seems logical but it is historically
erroneous to think this way. Jew means your mother was
Jewish. In Germany in the 40's the Nazi stormtroopers
did not politely stop you on the street to ask you if you
fasted on Yom Kippur or had decided to become an atheist.
They threw you in the oven.

And so it has been for at least the last 2000 years.

Suerte,
Jonathan

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And everything always goes back to the nazis.

[uDevil]

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To paraphrase Edward's MySpace comments: what do you get when you cross an English professor and an economics professor--a poker author!

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Heh. My guess would have been "expelled."

[colgin]

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Perhaps the most basic stereotype about Jews is the one about how they love money and will backstab anybody for money (this dates back to the Romans and their anti-usury laws where only Jews were allowed to loan money for interest and Jews were tax-collectors).

It is ironic that a Jew, Stuie Ungar, is probably known as the person who most devalued money. Mike Matusow (also a Jew) is a well known money degenerate. Add to this the many Jews who are involved with gambling and you have either a strange coincidence, or a backlash to the stereotype.


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Or maybe the stereotype is just a bunchy of anti-semitic [censored] in the first place.

[Sparta45]

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I just found out that The Grinder is Israeli and it got me to thinking about how many other pros out there are fellow Jews that I wasn't aware of.

Help me complete this list. Forgive any misspellings.

Barry Greenstein
Howard Lederer
David Sklansky
Eli Elezera
Michael Mizrachi
Phil Gordon
Mike Matusow
Gabe Kaplan
Cory Zeidman

By the way, I'm refering to the ethnicity, not the religion, as I understand that a lot of these guys are atheists and such.

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Wow. I'm not offended by your post because I don't think you meant any malice at all, but if you have no idea what you're talking about, you really should just refrain from making posts like this.

Anyway, Jewish people are not a race. If they are, what "race" do you think they belong to? I suppose the "Jewish" race, right?? First cousin's to the "Christian" race, the "Muslim" race, the "Hindu" race, and the other races.....

Judiasm is a religion. I'm not going to try to "prove" this is correct, but let's just say that if anyone cares, 5 minutes of internet research will prove this.

With that being said, I did not know that the Grinder was Israeli. However, even if he is, it doesn't mean he's Jewish. Many Israeli citizens are not Jewish. Many of them are Christians, many of them are Muslims. Most of them are in fact Jewish, but a good percent of them are not. I don't know what the % breakdown is, but my point is that he may very well not be Jewish....I really don't know.

Anyway, ignoring all that, onto what I think was the point of your post, there are many many Jewish people playing poker professionally and I'm always surprised when I watch television how many Jewish people I *suspect* are Jewish (as a Jew, I think I do this naturally [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img] )

At any rate, I'm nobody's biographer, so I don't really know, but I think it's safe to say that Stu Unger was (although never practiced). I think it's safe to say that Matusow is by the "Chai" necklace he often wears on television. I *suspect* Jeff Schulman is. I *suspect* 2 of the guys on this past week's final WPT table were Jewish, but I'm not sure, they're just guesses based on last names. I *suspect* David Singer is Jewish. I know there are others, but none that come to mind off-hand.

Are you sure about your list? Howard Lederer?? Eli Elezra?? I know Elezra is from Israel, but again, he may very well not be Jewish.