Cohen Questions..........?

[GregBaron]

Hey, sorry all but I'm probably bringing up rehashed stuff but some of
us are too lazy(me) to research when someone may more quickly shed
light from the top of their head.

1) Someone said there is a description of Cohen....if so can someone
recant the basics........?

2) Do we know where he lived......did he live with family?

3) I struggle with the mania thing......cause I think JtR a sociopath
not a schizophrenic....could syphillis have caused the mania? Did he
have syphillis? Someone said he died of tuberculosis..?

4) Is it reasonable to think 23 year old men would seek out 46 year
old whores during the Autumn of terror without arousing suspicion? From
the ladies I mean....

5) Do you all think fellow Jews may have indeed sheltered what they
knew to be the fiend among them?

6) I suppose we know nothing of the upbringing of this guy. He must have
had a history of perversion(possibly hidden) before he starting hacking up unfortunates...

7) What is the likelihood of JtR coming from the close knit Jewish
community? How many Jewish serial killers has history produced?


Greg

[empty]

1) To my knowledge, there is no physical description of Cohen.

2) He is on record as having no family.

3) He is on record as dying of "exhaustion of mania", which I guess means his mind burned out. Syphilis doesn't make people serial killers. Serial killers are out there waiting for the trigger to activate them. Finding out he had an STD might have been the trigger. An STD itself doesn't make you a serial killer! Nathan Kaminsky found out he had an STD in March (I believe) and Ada Wilson (almost certainly a prostitute - maybe even THE prostitute who infected her attacker) was attacked the day after he was released, which is of interest.

4) I'm not sure what you mean. A man who goes out to kill a woman, will take what woman he can find at 1am in the morning (or thereabouts). JtR wanted to kill women, you seem to be implying that he only wanted to kill women he was attracted to???

5) No, I don't, but it could have been. Until the culprit is definitely identified, we can't say. Anderson said the witness identified the Ripper then refused to testify because he didn't want the murderer's execution on his conscience. Swanson later said it was because "he was a fellow Jew". However, if, as we must believe, the suspect was already incarcerated, he was no further harm, so the witness (if this is what happened) maybe thought "they're not going to kill again, so I don't need to be responsible for their death".

6) Yes. Problem is we know absolutely nothing about Cohen before his arrest. We don't know if he was really called David Cohen even. If, as Fido asserts, he was Kaminsky, we need to find out more about him, apart from him being a boot maker who lived in Black Lion Yard (the heart of the murders) and having an STD (meaning he had contact with prostitutes) - what happened to him? No one knows.

7) Not sure what the point is - why would Jews be more or less likely to be serial killers? Jews are Humans. Humans produce serial killers in the same way that they produce people with dyslexia or bi-polar or schizophrenia. According to Anderson and Swanson, the only people to have reviewed ALL the evidence at the time, the murderer was a low class Polish Jew living locally, of which there were very many at the time (only one of whom was guilty). The sightings seem to endorse this. It's not a reflection on Jews anymore than Peter Sutcliffe's identity means that ALL lorry drivers are killers. JtR wasn't acting as a Jew, or a sailor, or a Christian, or a barrister. He was acting as his mind and his circumstances drove him to behave. That he was or was not a Jew is entirely irrelevant.

[C. F. Leon]

1)
7) Not sure what the point is - why would Jews be more or less likely to be serial killers? Jews are Humans. Humans produce serial killers in the same way that they produce people with dyslexia or bi-polar or schizophrenia. According to Anderson and Swanson, the only people to have reviewed ALL the evidence at the time, the murderer was a low class Polish Jew living locally, of which there were very many at the time (only one of whom was guilty). The sightings seem to endorse this. It's not a reflection on Jews anymore than Peter Sutcliffe's identity means that ALL lorry drivers are killers. JtR wasn't acting as a Jew, or a sailor, or a Christian, or a barrister. He was acting as his mind and his circumstances drove him to behave. That he was or was not a Jew is entirely irrelevant.

I understand and agree with your basic claim, empty. However being Jewish (or Polish, or Irish, or Egyptian, etc.) may have affected how his madness manifested itself, and therefore be VERY relevant. RivkahChaya mentions in another thread that Kosminski's "eating food from the gutter" may have been religiously motivated, for instance. MMcN does stress that the reference to a 'Jew' is a racial description (opposed to 'French' or 'Spanish', for instance), NOT a religious one. I suspect that ORTHODOX Judaism probably has produced FEWER serial killers than mainstream Christianity for various psychological and social reasons.

[RivkahChaya]

A lot of people do have Cohen as a last name, but "Cohen" is the Jewish word for "priest." It's remotely possible that if the killer was a Jew, and a Cohen, "Cohen" may have been a pseudonym he came up with on the spot, and not his real name.

Or, if there were more than one person named, for example, "Nathan Davidowicz," and one was a Cohen, while the other wasn't, people may have come to call one "David(owicz) ha-Cohen," and the other "David(owicz) Yisreal." (People are cohanim, Leverites, or Yisrael.)

As far as a young man killing women in their 40s-- I think it was primarily a matter of what was available, but I have wondered one thing: there probably were not many prostitutes over the age of about 50, given how harsh a life it was, but there may have been a problem with very long postmenopausal woman, since the killer was clearly interested in uteri, and it shrinks and atrophies in a women who has been menopausal for many years.

On the other had, sexually active women in their 20s had a good chance of actually being pregnant, and the killer may have found it a mood-killer to discover a fetus present. Maybe he ironically felt bad about killing a "baby," or maybe he just didn't like to share, and he felt jealous of a fetus, to whom the womb "really" belonged.

Attacking women in their early to mid forties was a good strategy for avoiding pregnancies, but still finding uteri that looked, well, in working order.

[Chris2307uk]

David Cohen's crimial past?

Does anyone know what crime David Cohen commited in 1885? According to www.findmypast.co.uk there is a David Cohen down as having commited a crime.....

[lynn cates]

same?

Hello Chris. Do we know it is the same one?

Cheers.
LC

[Chris2307uk]

I don't.....All I know is that it was in London.... I would assume that anyone who has researched him thoroughly would be able to tell me if it is the same guy for sure, and if so what his crime was

[Errata]

3) I struggle with the mania thing......cause I think JtR a sociopath
not a schizophrenic....could syphillis have caused the mania? Did he
have syphillis? Someone said he died of tuberculosis..?

5) Do you all think fellow Jews may have indeed sheltered what they
knew to be the fiend among them?

6) I suppose we know nothing of the upbringing of this guy. He must have
had a history of perversion(possibly hidden) before he starting hacking up unfortunates...

7) What is the likelihood of JtR coming from the close knit Jewish
community? How many Jewish serial killers has history produced?


Greg

3: Exhaustion of Mania is exactly what it sounds like. I don't know if you ever seen anyone on cocaine, but that would be the closest analogy to Mania I can come up with. It is inflated mood. It comes with feelings of being truly alive, and often leads to feelings of invulnerability. It is a high in it's purest form. Some people are aggressive it this state. Some people are expansive, some are hypersexual, some are thrill seekers, etc. A manic phase can cause someone to get in fights, sleep with a lot of people they wouldn't ordinarily touch, spend thousands of dollars on a whim...

But one thing manic people don't do is sleep. They can't. Their endorphins are screamingly dominant that other neurochemicals get drowned out. Including those governing sleep. Nowadays, if someone is manic for too long they are put to sleep. Literally. Lack of sleep causes psychosis, illness, pain, loss of motor control, tics, overwhelming feelings of paranoia, fear, and feeling like the patient is dying. And they're right. They are dying. Their brain unravels from lack of sleep. Exhaustion of Mania comes from having gone so long without sleep that the body has shut down and the brain cannot function correctly. They haven't slept, they haven't eaten, they havent been able to keep fluids down since about day five. It's frankly horrible.

Syphilis does not typically cause mania. Both cause psychosis, but because syphilis works on the actual structure of the brain, there is a fairly predictable set of symptoms and progression. One can expect psychosis, but what form it takes is going to be a crapshoot. Mania is typically a result of a neurochemical imbalance. Like Bipolar or depression. Typical onset is somewhere between 18 and 20. Severity depends entirely on the individual.

5: Probably not. Everyone feared the mad. There would be no reason to believe that the man they sheltered wouldn't start killing their own. They certainly wouldn't trust any promise he made, because he was clearly mad. The only scenario I see where the Jewish community protecting his identity is if they put him down like a dog. At which point they couldn't turn him over to the police, and any explanation would result in the prosecution of his killers. So they would stay quiet.

6. Not necessarily. The typical signs you hear about only show up in about 50% of serial killers. They also learn shame and secrecy very young, and are experts at manipulation and not getting caught by as young as 8.

7. There are a disproportionally higher number of Jewish serial killers than the Jewish population should support. I mean, you assume that serial killers should mimic the populations percentage wise. But they don't. There are far fewer black serial killers than population would suggest, and far more Jewish serial killers. Don't get me wrong, that's still only like three Jewish serial killers. But that's a lot more than the Jewish population should support. I don't know if being Jewish is a contributing factor, or if it's random. But it is certainly not statistically impossible for the Ripper to be a Jew. I think other factors make it unlikely, but not the numbers.

[Beowulf]

How many Jewish serial killers has history produced?


Greg

Well, they say he was...

[keithsmurray]

Old as things are here on this thread, it remains a valid point that the pathology of anti-Semitism does seem to wriggle its way into every subject. Certainly the last post here - too ambiguous for the the assumption of sarcasm - has begged comment for quite a while. So here it is: disgraceful.

As a new member, I hope this sort of thing is not typical of the site or its participants.

[Damaso Marte]

Speaking of anti-semitism, to me it's entirely plausible that "the witness didn't want to testify against a fellow Jew" was the police interpretation of the refusal to testify, and not necessarily the reason the eyewitness had for not testifying.

Suppose Lawende/Schwartz/Levy initially said "yes, that's the man I saw at the crime scene", and then said "well, actually, I'm not 100% sure, so I'm not going to testify at a capital murder case".

The police might have been the ones who said "oh, it must be because the suspect is a Jew and the eyewitness is a Jew".

One other thing I want to point out is that we should by no means assume that people living in Whitechapel in 1888 who are ethnically Jewish are also observant religious Jews. Especially if they're committing acts that are manifestly against Jewish law, such as murdering people or eating human organ meat.

[GUT]

G'Day Keithsmurray

As a new member, I hope this sort of thing is not typical of the site or its participants.

You will find plenty of argument here, some of it bitter disagreement, but I honestly don't think there is much if any real spite, just have a look at some of the threads when someone is ill or has a bereavement. I think you'll agree that in the face of strongly held beliefs, by some, goodwill underlies it.

And welcome to the boards on your first post.

[GUT]

I also doubt that you will find any more anti-Semitism here than you will find anywhere else.

The only thing is that you can't really discuss Jack the Ripper without some discussion of Judaism, unfortunately there was in 1888 a lot of finger pointing at the Jewish community.

[Errata]

Old as things are here on this thread, it remains a valid point that the pathology of anti-Semitism does seem to wriggle its way into every subject. Certainly the last post here - too ambiguous for the the assumption of sarcasm - has begged comment for quite a while. So here it is: disgraceful.

As a new member, I hope this sort of thing is not typical of the site or its participants.

As for Beowulf's post, that isn't a joke about Jews, thought on the surface it appears to be. It's a joke about language. Is a Jewish serial killer a serial killer who is Jewish, or a serial killer who kills Jews? It's not anti semitic. In poor taste perhaps, but it made me laugh. There comes a time when everything has to have some humor in it. Holocaust jokes are not funny. A time will come when they will be. AIDS jokes are not funny, but there comes a time when they will be. Jokes about these things are the sign that we have gotten past the pain and the horror. Some subjects are still "too soon". But they won't always be. In my book Beowulf's fine. The joke is about the unclear adjective. The example is Hitler.

[GUT]

G'Day Errata

Holocaust jokes are not funny. A time will come when they will be.

I hope not! That's a pain I hope never fades for the world. Because as long as the pain continues we will be vigilant to try and ensure its like never occurs again.