It’s official, the mysterious English prostitute Belle du Jour is Jewish… and somehow the real life woman, a cancer researcher named Brooke Magnanti, credits (is that the word?) her Jewish background for leading her to become a high-priced call girl. This from ” title=”Joseph Kessel”>Joseph Kessel, the Argentine-born Jewish writer.)
The blog made no secret of Belle du Jour’s Jewish background. But in a recent ” title=”Daily Mail”>Daily Mail it’s all his fault: after his dovorce from Magnanti’s mother, he visited as many as 150 prostitutes, and introduced his daughter to many of them.
‘Of those, four or five were deep emotional relationships, and Brooke met those women. She saw that prostitutes were human. They were women.
‘Brooke did not approve of me seeing the prostitutes, not because they were selling their bodies for sex but because of their drug use.
‘We had a very big falling out. Brooke said some harsh things that she hoped would help me – but which had the opposite effect.’
But the former plumber said he was proud of his daughter, saying: ‘She has not done anything wrong. Brooke is a very independent woman, and I support whatever she has done.’
He added: ‘I am glad that she is no longer a prostitute. In my experience prostitution is wrong and corrupts people. I know that from my own experience.
So what does Judaism teach about prostitution? ” title=”condemns”> condemns prostitution. Then again, it has some pretty harsh things to say about eating shrimp, and plenty of Jews enjoy that too. So are we shocked, shocked that a bright Jewish woman would turn to tricks to make a living? No—just that she’d somehow ascribe “a pathological aversion to being in debt” as a Jewish trait. Way to shatter one stereotype and spread another.
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