14 January—George Santos lied about his Jewish heritage to get Jewish votes on what I’ll now spell semi-phonetically as Lawn GUY-lind. [I’ll spare you the dialectally correct pronunciation in International Phonetic Alphabet.] George used the fact that many voters will vote within their ethnicality or race no matter what. And his opponent was Jewish. So George knew what he was doing. Why else would a gentile who’s not crazy claim to be Jewish?

It worked. So, as they say in Yiddish (which George probably learned at least a smattering of to perfect his scam), “Call him pisher.” Representative Santos doesn’t care. He’s right at home, after all. For now, anyway. And, as Dan McLaughlin wrote in National Review Online, “If we kicked all the liars out of Congress, neither house could muster a quorum.”

But let’s leave George Santos where he belongs. For now, anyway. Because Benjamin Disraeli, 1^st (and only) Earl of Beaconsfield, the great British statesman (i.e., dead politician who got away with it) and novelist, also lied about his Jewish heritage. But not quite like George.

Disraeli was in fact baptized into the Church of England when he was 13, the age good Jewish boys become bar mitzvahs—or are bar mitzvahed, as it’s incorrectly put these days. His three surviving siblings also were baptized. They had in fact been born Jewish to Isaac and Maria (née Miriam) D’Israeli, native-born Brits who started out as Sephardic Jews who, however, like most thoughtful people, had far more important things than religion to keep them busy.

But Isaac D’Israeli, Dizzy’s father, had a (probably insignificant) fight with his synagogue. That often prompts Jews to start their own new congregations, usually just to spite the momzerim (bastards) running the old one. (I won’t tell you stories about that, involving my family.) But Isaac chose instead to essentially excommunicate himself and his family.

Had it not been for his concern for the kids’ futures, Isaac probably never would have joined any religion. It worked to Dizzy’s advantage to be a card-carrying Christian, mind you, but that wasn’t his father’s intention. And Dizzy himself not infrequently boasted about his Jewish heritage.

And that’s where he pulled a Santos. In a way. But nowhere near as crudely. Benjamin Disraeli, possibly for purely egotistical reasons—although an impressive family tree couldn’t hurt in his literary and political careers—embellished and romanticized his origins.

Benjamin Disraeli’s paternal forebears were nothing to write home about. They evidently were good, solid, upstanding, mostly Sephardic (broadly, Hispanic) Jews with a smattering of Ashkenazim (broadly, German Jews) thrown in, but not particularly distinguished. But Ben had pretensions, so he claimed his father’s family were Venetian and Iberian grandees. Jewish, of course.

Kind of like Richie Blumenthal claiming that he served in Vietnam.

On the other hand, Disraeli pretty well ignored his maternal ancestry, even though the Cardozos, Goldsmids, Mocattas, and Montefiores—his mother’s notable forebears—had, in addition to big bucks, what an Episcopal bishop’s granddaughter of my acquaintance and blessed memory called come-from. They usually go together. (She had come-from and never let me forget it.)

Benjamin Disraeli was funny that way. In politics, too. But it’s not like he was a plagiarist or a serial fabulist . . .