Posted on 05/27/2009 11:25:34 AM PDT by Cinnamon Girl
The creators of the American Girl doll have added a new Jewish doll to their line of 14 other historically-themed models. She is Rebecca Rubin, who represents the daughter of Russian Jewish immigrants to the United States in the early 20th century.
Rebecca joins the other ethnically-themed dolls in the series, each of which is marketed as 'a girl just like you.' The toy line also includes a Native American doll, a daughter of Irish immigrants and an African-American girl. The Jewish immigrant doll retails for $95. In the booklet sold with the doll, she is described as a poor resident of the Lower East Side of Manhattan in 1914. Rebecca officially goes on sale on May 31.
The launch of the Hispanic doll in the series engendered complaints from the Hispanic community in the US, because the accompanying material suggested that the doll represented a girl who lived in a dangerous neighborhood.
(Excerpt) Read more at haaretz.com ...
But was she a wise doll?
$95? That doll better be able to cook matzah ball soup.
“...the daughter of Russian Jewish immigrants”
Does she come with a red diaper?
If she’s a Princess, she won’t have a kitchen.
But Rebecca's daughter,Sheri,lives in Scarsdale,drives a BMW 750 (when the Prius is in the shop),votes RAT because "those rich people just *don't* pay their fair share" and has had three abortions.
I have to hand it to the liberals. Despite our best attempts to create a melting pot and a uniquely ‘American’ identity, their attempts at multiculturalism have reduced us to a collection of tribes each functioning within our own spheres, each fostering a different culture with different values. We have only to wait for the white tribe to be outnumbered, and our common bond of English to fail before the final collapse.
Final collapse? CA and NJ are getting pretty close because they are broke.
Yeah...maybe. Or maybe the company just wants to make money by selling dolls that customers want.
I see that this thread has quickly taken a turn to the vulgar and offensive. Please ask to have your comment deleted.
Oh g-d.
... I’m a Jewish New Yorker?
I thought I lived in New Mexico... or has the Government finally decided where I am to live now?
I was just at the Scottish Highland games this past Sunday. Do you think it’s wrong that people of Scottish heritage dress up kilts and play in pipe and drum bands? I think it’s awesome, and I’m not Scottish.
That would be her great grand-daughter, actually.
Maybe you’re one of those crypto New Yorkers up in Rio Arriba.
A New York Russian-Jewish-immigrant doll? Ya, huge market there! That must appeal to about 1% of the 1.7% of the American population that is Jewish.
I obviously talking about cultural collapse, not fiscal.
If my post starts with the words “Frank Zappa” it is a given that those easily offended will be.
The song is, was, and remains a joke. Zappa refused to apologize to the anti-Defamation League for writing and performing the song, and I do not apologize for posting it thinking it was funny.
And I think Jewish gals are sexy as hell, especially if they are short and with glasses.... and can take a joke.
A friend’s offspring attended Cornell about 10 years ago. There was an acronym that applied to Jewish female students. Around the school they were called “JAPS” which meant “Jewish American Princesses”.
Were you able to see a picture? I went to the article thinking I would see a picture, but none came up.
I think that if they identify themselves as Scots living in America rather than as Americans who happen to be of Scottish heritage, than it is a problem...and I am Scottish.
Reservations!
It could be her daughter,granddaughter or great grand daughter.My parents were about the same age as "Rebecca" and I'm the right age to fit all the parameters of "Sheri".In fact,I suspect that folks who are much younger than I aren't likely to be able to afford the BMW....or Scarsdale.
However,there *is* such a thing as trust funds.
Spats.... what all the Jewish girls are wearing.... ;)
I have the added advantage of spending a lot of time in Chicago on business requiring taking the bride to the shrine itself, American Girl Place, Michigan Avenue, The Mircle Mile.
I have spent many an dollar hour in that store.
What's a JAP's favorite position during "intimate relations"? Facing Bloomingdale's.
And now a joke about my own people....
Why did God create whiskey? To keep the Irish from ruling the world.
Thank you very much! I'm here all week.
That’s still about 3 million adults. And percentage-wise much higher in urban areas where I would guess the American Dolls sell better ($95 a pop, plus much more when you start adding in outfits and accessories!)
One of my daughter’s had the all-American “Molly”, picked more because she was of my mom’s era (born 1939 - her “father” is a doctor serving in the Army in WWII). The other had “Samatha” a Victorian era girl of privilege. They picked them more for the accessories and appeal of the stories. Actually were pretty good teaching aids for snippets of American history and culture. Pricey, but interesting.
Are you Pro Life / Anti Abortion?
American Girl Dolls has long been connected with Planned Parenthood and Radical Feminist Agenda - big time.
You’re wrong there. Girls really like these dolls and their millions of accessories. And why not? It beats letting them play with Bratz.
..whatever. It used to be a doll was just a stuffed toy with hair. Now it has to have an ethnicity with a cultural history and an immigration status.
...get back to me on sales numbers for that model.
A: Keep the tip!
ZINGnik!
Well, I am half Scots-Irish and we are awesome.
Just don’t peek under the kilts.
These dolls are HISTORY based, and as such, would represent little girls at times throughout the history of the United States. I don't have a problem with it, because it only points up the strength of America, that we have been able to assimilate so many cultures over the years.
We ALL have an ethnic heritage, but some families have been here longer than others, and folks intermarried, so some folks don't have an affinity for any particular ethnic group anymore. There are some for whom Russian Jewry is their heritage, even though they have been Americanized for years, and they would love for their little girls to have this connection to the family's past.
They are cute dolls, but our daughter was never into dolls, so we never bought any of them for her.
Fine, I guess I’m in the minority. If everyone wants racial identity toys than it’s up to you.
Do I recall that these pricy “American Girls” are made in Red China?
Do you have girls? Girls pick dolls on how pretty they are or different. I had several black babies growing up because they looked different than me (white hair and blue eyes).
I'm just afraid that poor little Rebecca will wind up falling in with the wrong crowd. She'll meet a barb-bearded Trotskyite community organizer passing out pamphlets on Delancey Street and the next thing you know, she'll be marching with the Wobblies and taking up collections for the People's Army.
By the eve of World War II, she'll be writing for a left-wing city newspaper and raising her Red Diaper baby by herself after her activist lover wordlessly abandons her to go fight with the rebels in Spain, never to be heard from again. Her son will grow up troubled and rebellious, becoming an anarchist hippie war protester before developing a drug habit and falling out of life for a while. Eventually, he is rescued, in no small part by his mother, who loves him and needs him now more than ever. He cleans himself up, meets a nice girl, moves to the suburbs and eventually settles in as adjunct Professor of Sociology at NYU.
Rebecca will spend her declining years in a rent-controlled apartment on Riverside Drive in a neighborhood filled with nice, polite people; people who grew up in the same places and believing the same things as she does. They even speak a few words of Yiddish now and then, which always takes her back to a time and a place and a man whose face has grown as soft and indistinct as the one in the crumbling sepia photograph by her bedside.
This is a very comfortable place for her, and she has also softened with time, no longer angry at the world's manifest injustices, just weary at the prospect of them outliving her and yet she is happy, loves her life, her grandchildren.
On certain evenings she sits in her favorite chair balancing a fragile floral china coffee cup between calloused fingers. She looks out the bay window there on the 8th floor, out over the Hudson River, conjuring old pictorials behind her eyes and wondering what her life might have been like had she'd ever dared to travel outside New York and meet people from so many other walks of life. Funny how they were always there but rarely considered, those whose horizons extended to ideas and seas she knows she will likely never see.
So there's my biography for Rebecca, 1914; based on a few lives I know and have known.
"Darling," says one, "That is a beautiful ring! Look, it's huge!"
"Oy," says the other, "This is the fabulious Goldberg Diamond! But you know, it comes with a curse!"
"Really!" says the first, and she leans in close, "What's the curse?"
"Mr. Goldman!" says the first!
...I really don’t care actually.
The fiscal collapse or theft by taxes is destroying the culture. Americans taxed to death to pay for illegals and welfare cases. Obama’s goal is to bankrupt the middle and upper middle class for total control.
That’s part of it, but there’s a deep cultural regression in my opinion.
I see from googling that info that there is that claim, but couldn’t find a primary source to confirm it. Their website mentions the united way and Special Olympics. Do you have a source showing that they are currently giving to Planned avoidance of Parenthood?
To make sure none of this happens, get a WWII-era GI Joe doll for Rebecca to date (okay, now we need a GI Yossi).
Hi Suzi. Fascinating doll here. My wife, whom you, is a third generation descendant of Russian Jews, exactly the ethnic group being presented here. Her grandparents came over in the early 20th century from Minsk, which was more than half Jewish at the time. After being conquered by the Nazis, most of the Jewish population were executed, nearly 40,000 I think.
How’s the family?
You are quite the writer!
Better plot and character development in those few paragraphs than I have seen in entire novels! ;)
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.