Art historian Sarah Lipton traces the association of a hooked nose with Jews to the 13th century. Prior to that time, representations of Jews in art and iconography showed no specific facial features. "By the later thirteenth century, however, a move toward
realism in art and an increased interest in
physiognomy spurred artists to devise visual signs of ethnicity. The range of features assigned to Jews consolidated into one fairly narrowly construed, simultaneously grotesque and naturalistic face, and the hook-nosed, pointy-bearded Jewish caricature was born." In his
History of the Indies, (1653),
Francisco López de Gómara argued for the thesis that the native population of the Americas must have descended from the Israelites, whom, a decade earlier,
Antonio de Montezinos/Aharon Levi had claimed were the lost tribes of Israel, by citing the size of their noses.
George Mosse, describing negative stereotypes about various parts of a Jewish body, wrote: "The so-called Jewish nose, bent at the top, jutting hawk-like from the face, existed already as a caricature in the sixteenth century [...] It became firmly established as a so-called Jewish trademark only by the mid-eighteenth century, however, and soon became a foil for the straight nose of Greek beauty." In the late 1800s, German anthropologists remarked that
Pacific Islanders, like
Palauans and
Papuans, possessed similar noses to Jews. The hooked nose became a key feature in antisemitic
Nazi propaganda. "One can most easily tell a Jew by his nose," wrote Nazi propagandist
Julius Streicher in a children's story. "The Jewish nose is bent at its point. It looks like the number six. We call it the '
Jewish six.' Many Gentiles also have bent noses. But their noses bend upwards, not downwards. Such a nose is a hook nose or an eagle nose. It is not at all like a Jewish nose." According to writer Naomi Zeveloff, "in prewar Berlin, where the modern nose job was first developed, Jews sought the procedure to hide their ethnic identity." The inventor of
rhinoplasty,
Jacques Joseph, had "a large Jewish clientele seeking nose jobs that would allow them to pass as gentiles in Berlin", wrote Zeveloff. But this negative view of the Jewish nose was not shared by all Jews; Jewish
Kabbalistic texts consider a large nose as a sign of character. In his book
The Secrets of the Face (), Kabbalistic Rabbi Aharon Leib Biska wrote in 1888 that Jews have "the eagle's nose". "A nose that is curved down [...] with a small hump in the middle attests to a character that seeks to discover the secrets of wisdom, who shall govern fairly, be merciful by nature, joyful, wise and insightful." in a publicity photoshoot for
Hello, Dolly! (1969) Among those seeking surgery to make their noses smaller were many American Jewish film actresses of the 1920s to 1950s. "Changing one's name is to Jewish males what fixing one's nose is to Jewish females, a way of
passing," writes film historian Patricia Erens. One of the actresses to undergo surgery was
Fanny Brice, inspiring commentator
Dorothy Parker to comment that she "cut off her nose to spite her race." According to Erens, this fashion ended with
Barbra Streisand, whose nose is a signature feature. Streisand told
Playboy magazine in 1977, "When I was young, everyone would say, 'You gonna have your nose done?' It was like a fad, all the Jewish girls having their noses done every week at Erasmus Hall High School, taking perfectly good noses and whittling them down to nothing. The first thing someone would have done would be to cut my bump off. But I love my bump, I wouldn't cut my bump off." "As Jews assimilated into the American mainstream in the 1950s and '60s, nose jobs became a rite of passage for Jewish teens who wanted a more
Aryan look," wrote Zeveloff. By 2014, the number of rhinoplasty operations had declined by 44 percent, and "in many cases the procedure has little bearing on [...] religious identity." == In non-Jewish literature and cinema ==