In "Borat," "Kazakhs" stand in, in Sacha Baron Cohen& #39;s mind, for his ancestral enemies, the Cossacks (the Christian Slavic cavalrymen whose pogrom ruins the wedding of the daughter of Tevye, whom SBC played in a Cambridge production of "Fiddler on the Roof").

If you& #39;re wondering, Cossacks were Christian Russian serfs who ran away to the Russian-Islam steppe frontier, where they adopted the horseback-lifestyle of their Muslim Kazakh enemies. Later, they became the Czar& #39;s light cavalry, and were notorious during anti-Semitic pogroms.

It& #39;s funny that, despite the immense amount of cultural commentary generated by critics trying to explain Sacha Baron Cohen& #39;s "Borat" movies, virtually no critics noticed that SBC makes fun of "Kazakhs" as vengeance on Cossacks.

In the Forward, Andrew R. Heinze, author of "Jews and the American Soul," notes:

"In & #39;Borat,& #39; we see the recycling of one of the most basic stereotypes in the Jewish imagination: the viscerally antisemitic Slavic peasant."

"Life Among the Goyim" http://jd.fo/g8p1b ">https://jd.fo/g8p1b&quo...