On our trip, and on a previous trip to Portugal, I noticed that many Portuguese men had “a look”. That is, I noticed that, just as I often can tell when someone looks Jewish, I could tell that someone looked Portuguese.

It’s a look that I can’t quite define and shouldn’t attempt to, but will. Sort of a “hang dog” look – depressed or dejected, sad, turned down mouth and so forth. But on top of that, something else that I really can’t describe well – it’s like their face is front loaded and that, if it weren’t attached to the rest of their head, if they leaned forward, it might fall off. (I told you this wasn’t politically correct.)

During the course of our trip, I would see many people meeting this description, and sometimes I would even point them out. I certainly didn’t consider this look at all attractive or appealing.

Move to yesterday morning at the Lisbon airport. Noticing that Edie was using a cane, a young uniformed woman came over to her to permit Edie and her family to skip the long line and have priority check-in. We followed her, and then, after talking to Edie in perfect English, she spoke to me in Portuguese. I was surprised, and told her I didn’t speak Portuguese.

She looked at me, apologized, and said “Sorry…..but you have such a Portuguese face.”

Aside: this morning, my first morning back, a friend gave a talk on Jewish humor that I attended via Zoom – my Thursday morning breakfast group. I told this story at the end of his presentation and asked the group if this was an example of Jewish humor. Most thought it was – self deprecating, etc. And that the Jewishness had nothing to do with the incident itself, but rather in the telling of it.

My friend that countered with his own joke: A woman walks up a man, a stranger, and says “Are you Jewish?” He says “no”. She asks again. He again says he isn’t. She asks a third and a fourth time and gets the same answer. Finally, he looks at her and says “I can’t keep denying it. I am Jewish.” She looks at him and says, “Funny, you don’t look Jewish”.

There you go.