Good News for the Jews: Bar Refaeli Is Pregnant

It’s time we started looking for omens of what 2016 is going to be like. Traditionally, I cast runes, read tea leaves, and most importantly, consult various social media feeds, which have augured a very promising new year indeed: Bar Refaeli is pregnant! The mother-to-be recently announced her good news by posting a picture of her positive pregnancy test on Instagram, along a brief series of infant-themed emojis. You know, just like they used to back in the shtetl.

I’m old enough (sadly) to remember when it might have been considered in poor taste to transmit a photograph of an object recently soaked in one’s own urine to millions of people worldwide, but such things are de rigueur for celebrities and lay people alike these days. And, I have to say, I’m delighted by Bar’s news (despite the fact that she’s reportedly under investigation for tax evasion).

I wrote last year about how after years of hanging around with tomcatting movie stars like Leonardo DiCaprio (or really, only Leonardo DiCaprio), Refaeli had finally settled down with a nice Jewish boy, Israeli businessman Adi Ezra, and how it was only a matter of time before she started doing her duty to the yentas of the world by cranking out genetically blessed, 100% Jewish babies to refresh the gene pool. And so she has. It’s more than many of us can say. But why should we care that yet another successful and rich Victoria’s Secret model is having a baby with a successful and rich man?

Well, Bar Refaeli is not just a Victoria’s Secret model. She is, to my knowledge, the only internationally famous Jewish supermodel in the world, a representative of willowy blondeness for a people who historically (and only with partial accuracy) have not been typically depicted as willowy blondes. Bar isn’t just a model, she’s a symbol, and as such, it’s news that she will spawn a race of fierce and beautiful Hebrew Übermensch to counterbalance hundreds of years of media depicting Jews as not particularly, well, model-esque (to use a favorite phrase of Tyra Banks).

But there’s also the fact that most of last year’s crop of (mainly Gentile) superbabies have been kind of a wash. William and Kate keep such a tight leash on images of little Princess Charlotte that the next time we see her, it’ll probably be having whatever the royal family equivalent of a bat mitzvah is, and may already have less hair than her father. Kim and Kanye seem hellbent on giving their kids names of such increasingly ludicrous grandiosity, that the next one is probably going to be named, like, “Your Eminence” or “Your Holiness” or maybe just “God,” which makes all those zurbbly-blurbly chubby-cheeked baby pictures splashed across the Internet somewhat bittersweet: Sure, the kid is adorable and wearing an outfit that cost more than your entire month’s salary, but you can’t help but feel a little pity.

But Bar still has a chance to do it right, to create a royal-ish baby we can all be proud of. I’m not saying that it’ll actually be the coming of the Messiah—but yes, that’s exactly what I’m saying. Bar Refaeli may currently be pregnant with the Messiah. So we better all start crocheting now.

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Bar Refaeli Marries Billionaire, Tries to Set No-Fly Zone Over Wedding Ceremony