See? I can always find the exception to the rule!
His mother, Regina Wender, was Jewish (Polish-Jewish descent), and his likely biological father, Paul Nemenyi, was Hungarian-Jewish — so he was Jewish on both sides, and Jewish by matrilineal tradition regardless.
The twist is that Fischer himself vehemently denied it in his later years and became notoriously antisemitic, ranting about Jewish conspiracies in radio interviews from the 1990s until his death in 2008. He tried to disown the heritage, but the heritage was unambiguous.
In an open letter Fischer wrote on June 28, 1984 to Encyclopaedia Judaica, he demanded they remove his entry. In it he wrote: “I am not today, nor have I ever been a Jew, and as a matter of fact, I am uncircumcised.” He also accused them of “fraudulently misrepresenting me to be a Jew” and distributed the letter publicly.
What makes it more interesting is the trajectory. In a 1962 Harper’s interview, when asked “You’re Jewish, aren’t you?”, Fischer answered “Part Jewish. My mother is Jewish.” So as a young man he acknowledged it. The hardening into outright denial came roughly two decades later, after his involvement with the Worldwide Church of God.
Then in later radio interviews, when interviewers pointed out he was Jewish, he’d deflect mockingly — in one case responding “Shall we go to the toilets and prove it?” , referencing the circumcision point from the 1984 letter.
The narrative is that he became “psychologically unstable” but personally I think that’s bullshit. He was never diagnosed and even if he had been, my opinion of psychiatry as a whole is somewhere below phrenology.
My view is that he was a high IQ with probable Aspergers. Which would make him, like yours truly, absolutely search for truth as best as he could and despise liars with some passion.
But even if he had been a bit crazy, imagine yourself as an honest person that finds out he is Jewish. Who wouldn’t lose it a bit. And he certainly never behaved like the classic Jew, which to my mind explains his denial of his heritage. And again, which honest person would not want to distance himself from that pernicious, vicious, tribe of absolute liars?
This post was originally published on my Substack. Link here
