Saturday, May 11, 2024

Minor sync: The possible Jewishness of John Keel

I just finished Operation Trojan Horse by John Keel. I had downloaded it, along with another book by him called The Eighth Tower, some months ago when someone one /x/ recommended them. Just after finishing Operation Trojan Horse but before opening The Eighth Tower, I visited Keel's Wikipedia page to see what other books he had written. Wikipedia mentioned that his surname had been spelled Kiehle at birth, which together with certain other biographical details -- journalist, raised an atheist -- made me wonder idly whether he might be Jewish.

Wikipedia had no information on this one way or the other, nor did a Google search for is john keel jewish turn up anything, so I gave up trying to find out and instead opened my epub of The Eighth Tower for the first time. The very first sentence in the book is:

"What's a nice Jewish boy like you doing in a place like this?"

Reading on, one finds that the question has no reference to Keel himself; it is spoken to Jesus by one of the crucified thieves.  Still a bit of a coincidence.

2 comments:

jason said...

Only Jews use the phrase "nice Jewish boy" as only Jews think "nice" is an attribute of Jews so its not a coincidence. Cohencidence maybe though.

Wm Jas Tychonievich said...

Well, the line is put in the mouth of one Jew speaking to another, so it doesn’t necessarily imply anything about the author’s own ethnicity,

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