Mila Kunis and Ashton Kutcher

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Is she actually a Russian that was born in Ukraine? Or Ukrainian that like so many speaks Russian in her family? I think I heard her say in interviews that she is Russian.

She is neither. She is Jewish and that’s why her family was able to get an immigrant visa to the US.

That makes no sense. Plus there are plenty of Russian and Ukrainian Jewish people. She can identify as both, like so many here identify as both. I am sure Jews in the U.S. would take offense to your telling them they are not American.

It makes perfect sense. In the former USSR space, ethnicity was separate from nationality. So no, if you were Jewish, you could not be Russian or Ukrainian. I mean I grew up there. I am of Armenian ethnicity. I couldn't be Jewish too unless I was of mixed parentage.

American is different because it's not an ethnicity.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Fiddler on the Roof was about Jews in Tsarist Russia. Tsarist Russia was a hotbed of antisemitism and Jewish persecution. Several Tsars encouraged pogroms, they were exposed to persecution, economic, structural, direct, you name it. Tsar Alexander II was "better" towards Jews and did not physically persecute them but attempted to assimilate them. After his assassination, Alexander II blamed Jews for his murder(on account of some revolutionaries being Jews) and started even worse terror on Jews in Russia. Ukrainian and Polish groups were not really any better toward Jews.

You mean from the grave?

Historically, most authentic Jewish settlements were located in present-day Ukraine or Moldova. Few of them were in Russia proper.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

^Correction - I looked it up and it appears that Ashton studied Biochemical Engineering at U of Iowa but left school to pursue modeling/acting. Regardless, he must have been a decent student to be admitted into Biochemical Engineering.

He has an IQ of 160!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:He is so painfully unfunny and obnoxious and full of himself. She is a mean-girl bore who isn't attractive without makeup.

I like them much better than the fake celebrity hook-up designer couples. Unpretentious and a good match!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:He is so painfully unfunny and obnoxious and full of himself. She is a mean-girl bore who isn't attractive without makeup.

I like them much better than the fake celebrity hook-up designer couples. Unpretentious and a good match!

Intelligent great idea. In comparison there are so many tweets, instas, and youtubes of foks doing TikTok dance, make-up posts and stripping that annoy me for #coronoovirus

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:He is so painfully unfunny and obnoxious and full of himself. She is a mean-girl bore who isn't attractive without makeup.

I like them much better than the fake celebrity hook-up designer couples. Unpretentious and a good match!

Intelligent great idea. In comparison there are so many tweets, instas, and youtubes of foks doing TikTok dance, make-up posts and stripping that annoy me for #coronoovirus

Meant to say celebrities not everyday folk, just trying to stay relevant!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Is she actually a Russian that was born in Ukraine? Or Ukrainian that like so many speaks Russian in her family? I think I heard her say in interviews that she is Russian.

She is neither. She is Jewish and that’s why her family was able to get an immigrant visa to the US.

That makes no sense. Plus there are plenty of Russian and Ukrainian Jewish people. She can identify as both, like so many here identify as both. I am sure Jews in the U.S. would take offense to your telling them they are not American.

It was very different in the Soviet Union. Your passport listed your ethnicity. Jewish was listed as a separate ethnicity, as were Russian and Ukrainian. There were basically no practicing Jews in the Soviet Union (or very few, since religion had been banned for decades), so Judaism was mainly an ethnicity, not a religion. Most of the Soviet provinces were heavily settled by Russians, including Jews of Russian extraction, as part of the Soviet attempt to integrate the provinces into the larger Soviet community. After the breakup of the Soviet Union, many of these Russian families were very unwelcome in many of the provinces (regardless of whether they were born there), and the Jews even more so. Many emigrated. Anyway, within 20th century Russia, most Jews would consider themselves as having a dual ethnic identity as Russian and as Jewish, but its not as simple as an American Jew just saying that they are "America" but "Russia" wasn't even a country from 1917 to 1991 -- it was a republic and ethnicity within the country of the Soviet Union. But a Russian Jew living in Moldova, for instance, would not consider themselves Moldovan, nor would the people in Moldova consider them Moldovan.

While it's a separate historical point, I don't think there were a ton of Ukrainian Jews that survived the Holocaust. My husband's family was from a Jewish town in the Ukraine and literally the entire town was killed.

Of course Jews in Moldova would not consider themselves Moldovan. That is where some of the worst pogroms happened! Kishinev? Priest calling for killing of Jews? I though that initially identification by ethnicity was meant to allow for education in the USSR to be more inclusive. In the first few years of it, of course it back fired terribly when Germans entered Ukraine and could track every single Jewish person all over the place. Clearly, Stalin was also anti Semite and a mass murderer. Killing Jewish doctors left and right in some perceived conspiracy theory. If Soviets identified everyone by their ethnicity, was this any different for Kazahs or Jews?
About her family, you are essentially saying that they were persecuted because they identified as Russian in Ukraine? Not just because they were Jewish? So, this was a backlash against the Russian hegemony in the USSR?

To answer your question, no, I doubt they ever identified as Russian and the Russians were not persecuted in Ukraine for being Russian back when they lived there. They were persecuted for being of Jewish ethnicity. They couldn’t get into good universities/were prohibited from getting higher level jobs and generally were mistreated by the ruling elite. It didn’t matter in what part of the USSR they lived since the Soviet government made sure to make them feel unwelcome in all parts of the country. That’s why most of them got out as soon as they were able to obtain a visa to the US/Israel/Germany,etc.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Is she actually a Russian that was born in Ukraine? Or Ukrainian that like so many speaks Russian in her family? I think I heard her say in interviews that she is Russian.

She is neither. She is Jewish and that’s why her family was able to get an immigrant visa to the US.

That makes no sense. Plus there are plenty of Russian and Ukrainian Jewish people. She can identify as both, like so many here identify as both. I am sure Jews in the U.S. would take offense to your telling them they are not American.

It was very different in the Soviet Union. Your passport listed your ethnicity. Jewish was listed as a separate ethnicity, as were Russian and Ukrainian. There were basically no practicing Jews in the Soviet Union (or very few, since religion had been banned for decades), so Judaism was mainly an ethnicity, not a religion. Most of the Soviet provinces were heavily settled by Russians, including Jews of Russian extraction, as part of the Soviet attempt to integrate the provinces into the larger Soviet community. After the breakup of the Soviet Union, many of these Russian families were very unwelcome in many of the provinces (regardless of whether they were born there), and the Jews even more so. Many emigrated. Anyway, within 20th century Russia, most Jews would consider themselves as having a dual ethnic identity as Russian and as Jewish, but its not as simple as an American Jew just saying that they are "America" but "Russia" wasn't even a country from 1917 to 1991 -- it was a republic and ethnicity within the country of the Soviet Union. But a Russian Jew living in Moldova, for instance, would not consider themselves Moldovan, nor would the people in Moldova consider them Moldovan.
While it's a separate historical point, I don't think there were a ton of Ukrainian Jews that survived the Holocaust. My husband's family was from a Jewish town in the Ukraine and literally the entire town was killed.

Of course Jews in Moldova would not consider themselves Moldovan. That is where some of the worst pogroms happened! Kishinev? Priest calling for killing of Jews? I though that initially identification by ethnicity was meant to allow for education in the USSR to be more inclusive. In the first few years of it, of course it back fired terribly when Germans entered Ukraine and could track every single Jewish person all over the place. Clearly, Stalin was also anti Semite and a mass murderer. Killing Jewish doctors left and right in some perceived conspiracy theory. If Soviets identified everyone by their ethnicity, was this any different for Kazahs or Jews?
About her family, you are essentially saying that they were persecuted because they identified as Russian in Ukraine? Not just because they were Jewish? So, this was a backlash against the Russian hegemony in the USSR?

To answer your question, no, I doubt they ever identified as Russian and the Russians were not persecuted in Ukraine for being Russian back when they lived there. They were persecuted for being of Jewish ethnicity. They couldn’t get into good universities/were prohibited from getting higher level jobs and generally were mistreated by the ruling elite. It didn’t matter in what part of the USSR they lived since the Soviet government made sure to make them feel unwelcome in all parts of the country. That’s why most of them got out as soon as they were able to obtain a visa to the US/Israel/Germany,etc.

Gary Vaynerchuk and Sergey Brin are also of Jewish decent and had to flee to the US to escape persecution. They would probably have never achieved their level of success had they stayed in Russia.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
To answer your question, no, I doubt they ever identified as Russian and the Russians were not persecuted in Ukraine for being Russian back when they lived there. They were persecuted for being of Jewish ethnicity. They couldn’t get into good universities/were prohibited from getting higher level jobs and generally were mistreated by the ruling elite. It didn’t matter in what part of the USSR they lived since the Soviet government made sure to make them feel unwelcome in all parts of the country. That’s why most of them got out as soon as they were able to obtain a visa to the US/Israel/Germany,etc.

You are just repeating the stereotypes someone taught you. The top echelons of science and arts in the USSR were literally brimming with Jewish names. That's not to say discrimination didn't exist, I'm sure it did at some level, but to say that Jews were kept from education and high-level jobs is nonsense. The faculty at top universities was heavily Jewish.

Yes, the Jewish citizens of the USSR got out when they could but guess what! So did everyone else! Life in the USSR was harsh for everyone at some level so the Jews got out to escape the USSR, not the discrimination. They left first because they were the first to be allowed exit visas.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
Gary Vaynerchuk and Sergey Brin are also of Jewish decent and had to flee to the US to escape persecution. They would probably have never achieved their level of success had they stayed in Russia.

They didn't flee prosecution. They left for better opportunities, just like most everyone in the USSR who could.

As to what level of success they could have achieved, let's ponder this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Russian_billionaires

Of the top twenty billionaires in Russia, five have recognizably Jewish names.

Here's Arkady Volozh, a mathematician and computer scientist, who with late Ilya Segalovich (a recognizably Jewish name), founded Yandex, a Russian search engine that was at one point more popular than Google in Russia. As of August 2018, he was worth $1.3 billion.

Had Segalovich lived long enough, he'd be a billionaire too, I'm sure.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arkady_Volozh

[Anonymous]

I wonder what their prenup looks like.

[Anonymous]

They’re both hot and smart. They’ve got it all.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I wonder what their prenup looks like.

I'd guess iron clad -- Kushner is worth 50x whatever she brought to the table.

[Anonymous]

They're actually both incredibly lovely people - a good friend's husband is related to one of them and both of them came to their wedding/baby shower. They were friendly, funny and put on no airs, and they also seemed genuinely happy. Great couple and adorable kids.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:She is a mean-girl bore who isn't attractive without makeup.

She's not meaner than you, but she is 100x more attractive than you. Without make up.

DP but actually is very unattractive without makeup. I agree with the PP. Not a judgment, just an observation.

She looks cute without makeup to me. Not that drastically different.

I think she's gorgeous in this video. I don't know what she looks like with makeup, so I can't compare. Her eyes are kind of mesmerizing.