Your Brain Flushes Out Waste Every Night–Here’s How to Help It Clean Up

As we fall asleep, the brain begins clearing out waste.

It operates like a late-night laundry service, with all the water valves opened and washing machines running at full capacity to remove dirt from piles of clothes, flushing the wastewater into the drain.

The brain continuously produces various wastes, and if these are not cleared in time, we feel it. The signs can range from feeling foggy and fatigued to experiencing cognitive impairment.

Fortunately, efforts can be made to optimize waste clearance during the night.

Flush the Waste

The human brain is one of the most metabolically active organs, accounting for about 20 percent of the body’s total energy expenditure. This high level of activity generates significant waste. Smaller byproducts, such as carbon dioxide, urea, and ammonia, diffuse into capillaries and are cleared through the bloodstream. Larger neurotoxic proteins—including beta-amyloid and tau, both widely associated with an increased risk of Alzheimer’s disease, cannot be eliminated through the bloodstream alone due to their size.

In the past, it was believed that the brain lacked a lymphatic system to remove waste and relied solely on internal mechanisms for clearance.

However, in 2012, researchers discovered a specialized mechanism within the brain, analogous to the lymphatic system and capable of flushing out larger waste products from deep within the brain. This system was named the glymphatic system, a portmanteau of “glial” (referring to glial cells) and “lymphatic.” It is also known as the pseudo-lymphatic system.

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How the brain removes waste through the glymphatic system. Illustration by The Epoch Times

Surrounding the arteries in the brain is a sheath-like structure, with cerebrospinal fluid flowing through the space between the artery and this sheath. During sleep, the brain’s blood vessels constrict, increasing the space between the vessels and the sheath, which allows more cerebrospinal fluid to flow in. As the arteries pulse, the cerebrospinal fluid is pumped through brain tissue, flushing out waste—such as beta-amyloid and tau proteins—from the deeper spaces between brain cells, eventually clearing it from the brain.

Deep Sleep

“Waste-removing processes in the brain barely operate during wakefulness. It is very much a process that occurs in our deep-sleep stages,” Moira Junge, who holds a doctorate in health psychology and is the CEO of the Sleep Health Foundation in Australia and an adjunct clinical associate professor at Monash University, told The Epoch Times.

Sleep is divided into two states: rapid eye movement (REM) sleep and nonrapid eye movement (NREM) sleep. NREM makes up 75 percent of total sleep time and is further divided into three stages, N1, N2, and N3—each reflecting progressively deeper levels of sleep.

During N3, brainwaves are at their slowest.

“It’s such a deep sleep that you’re not easily disturbed by the external environment; for example, you don’t hear the dog barking outside nor hear your partner come to bed,” Junge said.

During sleep, the body moves through the stages sequentially, forming a complete sleep cycle lasting around 90 minutes. Throughout the night, a person typically experiences four to five sleep cycles.

The stages of sleep. Illustration by The Epoch Times

The glymphatic system becomes more active during sleep, especially during deep sleep, allowing for more effective waste clearance, said psychiatrist Dr. Jingduan Yang, founder of the Yang Institute of Integrative Medicine in Pennsylvania.

In a mouse study published in Science, researchers used tracers to monitor changes in cerebrospinal fluid flow. They found that during sleep, the interstitial, or intervening, space expanded by more than 60 percent, and the tracer influx increased. The brain’s clearance rate of beta-amyloid doubled during sleep (or under anesthesia) compared to the awake state.

Accumulated Beta-Amyloid

Unfortunately, Americans today are sleeping less than ever.

In 2023, 42 percent of Americans perceive that they get enough sleep, according to Gallup’s December 2023 poll. One in five people sleep fewer than five hours a night—compared to just 3 percent in 1942.

Shorter sleep duration can also be attributed to people going to bed increasingly later. One study found that delaying bedtime by just one hour reduces total sleep by 14 to 33 minutes each night.

In addition to going to bed later and sleeping less, we are also not sleeping well. According to the American Psychiatric Association, more than 50 million people in the United States suffer from chronic sleep disorders like insomnia and sleep apnea.

These issues directly reduce and disrupt deep sleep, shortening the critical window during which the glymphatic system works at peak efficiency. This, in turn, leads to greater waste accumulation in the brain.

People reporting less adequate sleep and more sleep problems had greater amyloid burden in Alzheimer’s disease-sensitive brain regions.

A 2021 human study found that even a single night of sleep deprivation can impair the brain’s ability to clear waste.

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An earlier clinical trial showed that despite the expected relatively sizeable interindividual variation in levels of a type of amyloid-beta, the average beta-amyloid accumulation from three morning samples of unrestricted sleep was 6 percent lower than that of three evening samples.

In comparison, participants who stayed awake for 24 hours exhibited amyloid-beta levels up to 75.8 picograms per milliliter higher. This demonstrated that unrestricted sleep reduced amyloid-beta proteins but that sleep deprivation counteracted this effect. Furthermore, the longer the sleep duration—provided it was not excessive—the greater the reduction in beta-amyloid biomarkers.

Symptoms of Toxicity

The accumulation of waste in the brain can lead to various symptoms.

For instance, if this waste is not cleared and continues to accumulate, it can become difficult to stay clear-headed, Junge explained.

“The most common symptom is a decline in cognitive function,” including memory loss, difficulty concentrating, and trouble managing complex tasks, Yang told The Epoch Times.

The long-term accumulation of these waste products can also affect mood, leading to anxiety, depression, or irritability. Yang further explained that this accumulation may be directly linked to neurodegenerative diseases, such as Alzheimer’s or Parkinson’s, as both conditions are closely associated with the buildup of beta-amyloid and tau proteins in the brain.

A 2021 longitudinal study with an average follow-up of 25 years and involving 7,959 older adults found that those who consistently slept less than six hours per night had a 30 percent higher risk of developing dementia compared to those who slept seven hours.

A 2019 study tracking more than 13,000 Dutch older adults over an average of eight years showed that declines in sleep quality and reduction in sleep duration increased the risk of developing Parkinson’s disease within the next six years by 76 percent and 72 percent, respectively.

Optimize Glymphatic Function

An interesting fact: Deep sleep lasts longer during the first few sleep cycles (the first half of the night) and gradually shortens—or may not occur at all—in later cycles.

This subtle shift reflects, to some extent, the brain’s prioritization of the cleaning and repair processes.

“The glymphatic system likely works more in the first half of sleep because this period includes longer periods of deep sleep (N3), where the system is most efficient,” Kiminobu Sugaya, professor of medicine at the University of Central Florida College of Medicine and head of the neuroscience division at the Burnett School of Biomedical Sciences, told The Epoch Times. “As the night progresses and the duration of deep sleep decreases, the system may still function but likely with less efficiency.

“To optimize brain waste clearance via the glymphatic system, it is important to align sleep with the body’s natural circadian rhythm,” he said, emphasizing that going to bed earlier promotes deep sleep during the early part of the night.

Research has demonstrated the significant impact of circadian rhythm on the glymphatic system and cerebrospinal fluid distribution.

“The ideal bedtime should align with the body’s circadian rhythm, typically between 10 and 11 p.m.,” Yang said, echoing Sugaya’s view.

However, he also said that the pace of modern life makes it challenging for many people to go to bed early. That said, he strongly advises not going to bed later than midnight, as it may impair the brain’s repair functions.

Jonathan Liu, a registered traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) practitioner in Canada and a lecturer of TCM at Ontario Public College, explained that, according to TCM theory, the period between 9 p.m. and 11 p.m. corresponds to the body’s circulation of energy. Sleeping during this time can allow the energy to rebalance. Melatonin production also increases during this time.

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However, Junge explained that some people have different sleep patterns. Their biological clocks may be delayed, meaning their melatonin production and sleep onset occur later than those of early risers, which is why they tend to stay up late and wake up later. Even if these people go to bed after midnight, getting up after 9 a.m. can still provide enough rest.

Side Sleeping

Sleep posture directly influences the brain’s waste clearance.

The glymphatic system operates more efficiently in the side-lying position than sleeping on the back or stomach. Prone (stomach) sleeping impairs cerebral blood flow and increases sympathetic nervous activity, triggering the release of stress hormones that suppress glymphatic function. In contrast, side sleeping reduces sympathetic tone, possibly improving glymphatic influx.

Some experts suggest sleeping on the right side is more beneficial than sleeping on the left. With the heart positioned higher, blood circulation improves, and venous return increases, allowing the heart to work more efficiently while keeping sympathetic nervous activity low.

A 2019 study found that patients with neurodegenerative diseases—such as mild cognitive impairment, Alzheimer’s disease, Lewy body dementia, and Parkinson’s disease—were significantly more likely to spend over two hours per night sleeping on their backs. The researchers speculated that gravity influences the movement and distribution of blood leaving the brain, suggesting that head position may affect the brain’s ability to clear proteins efficiently.

Exercise, Breathing, and Meditation

The heart’s ability to pump blood and the pulsation of brain arteries are closely tied to the efficiency of the glymphatic system. The more blood the heart pumps with each beat and the stronger the arterial pulsations, the more cerebrospinal fluid flows into brain tissue to flush out waste.

However, certain cardiovascular conditions can impair these functions. For example, hypertension has been shown to hinder glymphatic function. Although high blood pressure does not change artery diameter, it alters arterial wall pulsations, affecting the flow of cerebrospinal fluid.

Physical exercise enhances cardiopulmonary function and helps regulate blood pressure.

Using real-time MRI, researchers later discovered that breathing significantly influences the efficiency of cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) flow.

During sleep, breathing drives the flow of CSF through the glymphatic system. Shallow breathing reduces pressure in the chest, indirectly decreasing pressure in the skull. Increasing lung capacity through regular exercise and practicing deep-breathing techniques can enhance breathing during sleep. Along with age-related changes in arterial pulsatility in the brain, these pressure changes inhibit glymphatic function.

Another effective way to enhance glymphatic function and support brain health is through meditation.

“Meditation has a good body of evidence that it can help with sleep,” Junge said. She explained that it helps reduce mental hyperactivity and excessive tension, allowing people to relax fully.

A 2022 study found that mindfulness-based meditation significantly improved both the duration and quality of sleep in 106 older adults with insomnia.

Stress triggers the release of norepinephrine, a hormone that increases alertness. It inhibits CSF secretion and narrows the space between brain cells, restricting CSF flow, which impairs glymphatic function.

A prospective randomized trial found that after 14 weeks of meditation practice, norepinephrine levels in the blood of congestive heart failure patients decreased by about 43 percent.

Meditation has also been shown to increase blood flow to the brain. A 2022 study found that after eight weeks of a mindfulness-based stress reduction program, older adults with an average age of 79 experienced significant increases in cerebral blood flow across multiple brain regions, even at rest. Their brains also exhibited positive attention and memory functional changes.

“The brain consumes a lot of energy, and during sleep, such energy and metabolism goes down,“ said Sugaya, ”so then we can put more of that energy to this glymphatic system.”

He explained that this is why, during the night, we have a better “washout.” He also noted that during sleep, because the neurons are not that busy, the space between them expands. These factors work together perfectly to clear waste.

People are used to putting work, entertainment, or fitness goals ahead of getting adequate sleep, Junge said.

“It’s not too late to instigate making sleep more of a priority.”

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Deagel's Grim Prediction for the USA, Must Read

http://www.youngagain.org/d30.html

"America will be a disaster. Our population will fall 70%, The GDP will totally collapse 87%, the military will disappear 95%, and the economy collapse 73%. Yes, those are the actual Deagel predictions for the United States...All these hundreds of millions will be killed off by starvation, nuclear war, plagues, death vaccines, and scamdemics like the soon coming Bird Flu in January 2025." 

Deagel's ties to Deep State Exposed!!

https://expose-news.com/2024/09/25/explosive-gov-report-quadruple-vaccinated-mortality-rates-skyrocket-shocking-cia-rockefeller-foundation-ties-to-deagels-2025-depopulation-agenda-exposed/

During his life, Dr Edwin served as the Assistant to the Secretary of Defense and the Deputy Secretary of Defense. He was also the Director of International Relations for The Rockefeller Foundation.

And current real-world data on deaths in the West which includes figures on mortality rates per 100,000 showing the quadruple-vaccinated are more likely to die of any cause than the unvaccinated, strongly suggest Deagel's depopulation forecast is not just an estimation but in fact, a target that is on track to be hit thanks to the deadly effects of Covid-19 vaccination.

CONDENSATION OF THE DEAGEL 2025 FORECAST

The original 2014 version of the Deagel 2025 Forecast was taken down like the Georgia Guide Stones. What does Deagel know that we don't know? Lots of things! 

This is what they do for the world military, the U.S. President, CIA, NSA, NATO, OECD, OSCE, Russian Defense Agency, World Bank, UN, Stratfor, and others. 

They are the Deep State. These are very intelligent, very serious people. Next year (2025) this planet is going to collapse with unimaginable suffering. This was written in collaboration with the CIA, DoD, and Rockefeller Foundation. They cover 183 countries in this report. 

Let's go over forty-one of the most important ones: China will thrive. Their GDP, military, and economy will expand. They will be the world leader for the first time in human history. 

They will be the superpower finally. Russia will thrive. Their GDP, military and economy will expand. They will be superior to us militarily. They will partner with China, Iran, Iraq, India, Brazil, Turkey, and many other countries. BRICS is constantly growing. 

India will mostly survive. Their GDP and military will expand, but their economy will drop by 24%. The standard of living will get worse than it already is. 

Japan will fall badly. Their population will only fall 8%, but their GDP will collapse, and the economy will drop by half. 

Brazil will do well. Their GDP will rise, their military will expand strongly, and their economy will be stable. They will work strongly with China and others. 

America will be a disaster. Our population will fall 70%, The GDP will totally collapse 87%, the military will disappear 95%, and the economy collapse 73%. Yes, those are the actual Deagel predictions for the United States. 

China, Russia, and Iran alone will out-number us 16 to 1! We'll be the military laughing stock of the world. The World Bully will be the World Sissy. 

Population down 70%, GDP down 87%, military down 95%, and economy down 73%. A Third World mixed race totalitarian cesspool. 

Mexico will somehow survive, and have a standard of living not much lower than that of America! Only small losses in population and the economy. Go figure. 

Italy will collapse, plus lose 30% population. No hope there. France will collapse with a 60% economic fall. Hopeless weak frogs. Canada will collapse and have a 48% economic loss. The end of Trudeauville. 

South Korea will lose 28% population and 50% of the economy. North Korea is not mentioned strangely enough. This is purposeful. Netherlands somehow will grow their GDP and only lose 10% of the economy. They are the central food source of Europe. 

Iran will grow the GDP and military, but somehow lose 24% of the economy. They will do well, while we will be decimated. Thailand will lose 40% of their economy, but hugely grow their GDP, and their economy will be stable. They will actively cooperate with China and others. Venezuala will keep the population, but lose their economy. This could have been Heav- en on Earth with the abundant oil and natural resources. Socialism won.

Philippines is hard to comprehend. They will double their GDP and stabilize their economy, while continuing to breed like cockroaches. Poverty will always reign. They will partner closely with China, Russia, India, etc. 

(Col Edwin Deagel 1937-2021)

Germany, like America, will collapse entirely. They will lose 44% of their people, have no military, and their economy will drop by 70%. 

Argentina will be a survivor with a mere 25% economy loss and everything else stable. How can a basket case like this survive. Cuba will be a survivor somehow. That means the six decade communist regime will collapse. 32% rise in GDP and stable economy. They will still live in abject poverty. 

Saudi Arabia will suffer a 42% economic loss, but survive unfortunately. They should be wiped off the map. 

Spain will collapse in every way. Hopeless. Australia is no place to flee to. A 35% loss in population, and massive losses in the GDP and economy. 

This has always been a NWO test tube. Dumb as rocks. Chile will do great! A huge growth in GDP and military with a stable economy. 

Belgium will fall in every way including a large population loss of 25%. Finland will do well in every way. Surprise, surprise. 

Go figure. Austria will fall in both GDP and the economy, right along with Germany. Sweden will collapse, of course, with a 60% drop in the economy. 

What else? Switzerland will suffer badly. Huge 36% loss in population, 68% loss in GDP, and 56% loss in the economy. Nothing stable about this country at all. 

United, Kingdom, like America, will be a total disaster. An 80% loss of population and economy just for starters. An 87% loss of GDP. 

Hungary will thrive with a growing GDP and stable economy. Figure that one out. The only white country to survive this. 

Norway will suffer a 29% loss of population, and collapse in GDP and economy. Denmark will lose 34% population, and collapse of GDP and economy. They should do a lot worse due to their lifelong love affair with socialism. Slovakia will be a survivor with a growing GDP and stable economy. They will still have the same poor standard of living.

New Zealand, like Australia, will be a disaster. A 27% loss in population, a 64% loss in GDP, a 62% economic loss. It's always been a Communist Paradise of sheep. 

Israel will lose over half the population, and 80% drop in GDP, and 70% drop in economy. They will no longer have America to support them and fight their wars. 

Henry Kissinger long ago said in 2012 "Israel will be gone in 10 years." 

Like Saudi Arabia, they well deserve to collapse. 

Costa Rica will thrive. Their GPD will grow, and economy will be stable. They will still be poor, with a very low standard of living. Don't even think of going there. 

Uruguay will survive. Population down 16% and GDP down 21%. This may be the least worst country in South America. 

Colombia will thrive surprisingly. A dramatic rise in GDP and the economy. Go figure! 

Ireland, like the United Kingdom, will be a disaster. Why? A loss of 74% population, a 93% drop in GDP (yes, 93%) and 84% drop in the economy. You can see this already. 

Puerto Rico will collapse in every way. Why go into detail? Iceland will collapse. 42% drop in population, 84% drop in GDP and 74% in economy. Aruba will thrive. A desert island with no water? Really? Somehow stable.

Both the Deagel 2025 Forecast and September 2020 Update were taken down by Deagel on April 27, 2021. This is more than just worrisome. 

The original is here in the library at youngagain.org. No need to search it or use the Wayback Machine. It is now almost October 2024, and everyday the world events worsen unimaginably. They purposely say the U.S. population loss will be due to "emigration" to mislead you. All these hundreds of millions will be killed off by starvation, nuclear war, plagues, death vaccines, and scamdemics like the soon coming Bird Flu in January 2025.

 

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Famous People Who Changed Their Names. Why?

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Hidden Facts That Will Shock You. Is Homosexuality Life-giving? Benign? Dangerous?

 

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Nathan Abrams on Jews in the American porn industry

from Jewish Quarterly 2004,

A story little told is that of Jews in Hollywood’s seedier cousin, the adult film industry. Perhaps we’d prefer to pretend that the ‘triple-exthnics’ didn’t exist, but there’s no getting away from the fact that secular Jews have played (and still continue to play) a disproportionate role throughout the adult film industry in America. Jewish involvement in pornography has a long history in the United States, as Jews have helped to transform a fringe subculture into what has become a primary constituent of Americana. These are the ‘true blue Jews’.

Smut peddlers

Jewish activity in the porn industry divides into two (sometimes overlapping) groups: pornographers and performers. Though Jews make up only two per cent of the American population, they have been prominent in pornography. Many erotica dealers in the book trade between 1890 and 1940 were immigrant Jews of German origin. According to Jay A. Gertzman, author of Bookleggers and Smuthounds:The Trade in Erotica, 1920-1940 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999), ‘Jews were prominent in the distribution of gallantiana [fiction on erotic themes and books of dirty jokes and ballads], avant-garde sexually explicit novels, sex pulps, sexology, and flagitious materials’.

In the postwar era, America’s most notorious pornographer was Reuben Sturman, the ‘Walt Disney of Porn’. According to the US Department of Justice, throughout the 1970s Sturman controlled most of the pornography circulating in the country. Born in 1924, Sturman grew up in Cleveland’s East Side. Initially, he sold comics and magazines, but when he realized sex magazines produced twenty times the revenue of comic books, he moved exclusively into porn, eventually producing his own titles and setting up retail stores. By the end of the 1960s, Sturman ranked at the top of adult magazine distributors and by the mid-70s he owned over 200 adult bookstores. Sturman also introduced updated versions of the traditional peepshow booth (typically a dark room with a small colour TV on which the viewer can view X-rated videos). It was said that Sturman did not simply control the adult-entertainment industry; he was the industry. Eventually he was convicted of tax evasion and other crimes and died, disgraced, in prison in 1997. His son, David, continued running the family business.

The contemporary incarnation of Sturman is 43-year-old Jewish Clevelander Steven Hirsch, who has been described as ‘the Donald Trump of porno’. The link between the two is Steve’s father, Fred, who was a stockbroker-cum-lieutenant to Sturman. Today Hirsch runs the Vivid Entertainment Group, which has been called the Microsoft of the porn world, the top producer of ‘adult’ films in the US. His specialty was to import mainstream marketing techniques into the porn business. Indeed, Vivid parallels the Hollywood studio system of the 1930s and 1940s, particularly in its exclusive contracts to porn stars who are hired and moulded by Hirsch. Vivid was the subject of a behind-the-scenes reality TV show recently broadcast on Channel 4.

Nice Jewish girls and boys

Jews accounted for most of the leading male performers as well as a sizeable number of female stars in porn movies of the 1970s and ‘80s. The doyen of the Hebrew studs is Ron Jeremy. Known in the trade as ‘the Hedgehog’, Jeremy is one of America’s biggest porn stars. The 51-year-old Jeremy was raised in an upper-middle-class Jewish family in Flushing, Queens, and has since appeared in more than 1,600 adult movies, as well as directing over 100. Jeremy has achieved iconic status in America, a hero to males of all ages, Jewish and gentile alike - he’s the nebbischy, fat, hairy, ugly guy who gets to bed dozens of beautiful women. He presents an image of a modern-day King David, a Jewish superstud who supersedes the traditional heroes of Jewish lore. No sallow Talmud scholar he. His stature was recently cemented with the release of a pornomentary about his life, Porn Star: The Legend of Ron Jeremy. As probably the most famous Jewish male porn star, Jeremy has done wonders for the psyche of Jewish men in America. Jeremy has also just released a compilation CD, Bang-A-Long-With Ron Jeremy. For £7.99 (including delivery), the lucky listener gets to enjoy Jeremy’s hand-picked favourite porno grooves along with narration by ‘the legend’ himself. As the publicity blurb gushes, ‘Out of the brown paper wrappings and into the mainstream’.

Seymore Butts, aka Adam Glasser, is everything that Jeremy is not: young, handsome and toned. Glasser, a 39-year-old New York Jew, opened a gym in 1991 in Los Angeles. When no one joined, he borrowed a video camera for 24 hours, went to a nearby strip club, recruited a woman, then headed back to his gym and started shooting. Although the movie stank, with a bit of chutzpah and a few business cards he wangled a deal with a manufacturer and started cranking out films. Within a few years, ‘Seymore Butts’ – his nom de porn which is simultaneously his sales pitch – became one of the largest franchises in the adult-film business. As the king of the gonzo genre (marked by handheld cameras, the illusion of spontaneity and a low-tech aesthetic meant to suggest reality), he is today probably the most famous Jewish porn mogul. Seymore Inc., his production company, releases about 36 films annually, most of them shot for less than $15,000, each of them grossing more than 10 times that sum. Glasser employs 12 people, including his mother and cousin Stevie as respectively genial company accountant (and matchmaker for her single son) and lovable but roguish general gopher. Glasser currently even has his own reality TV show (also broadcast on Channel 4), a ten-episode docu-soap called Family Business, whose opening credits show Glasser’s barmitzvah photo.

In search of a buck

Jews became involved in the porn industry for much the same reasons that their co-religionists became involved in Hollywood. They were attracted to an industry primarily because it admitted them. Its newness meant that restrictive barriers had not yet been erected, as they had in so many other areas of American life. In porn, there was no discrimination against Jews. During the early part of the twentieth century, an entrepreneur did not require large sums of money to make a start in the film business; cinema was considered a passing fad. In the porn business, it was similarly straightforward to get going. To show ‘stag’ movies or loops, as they were known, all one needed was a projector, screen and a few chairs. Not tied up with the status quo and with nothing to lose by innovation, Jews were open to new ways of doing business. Gertzman explains that

"Jews, when they found themselves excluded from a field of endeavour, turned to a profession in which they sensed they could eventually thrive by cooperating with colleagues in a community of effort . . . Jews have for a very long time cultivated the temperament and talents of middlemen, and they are proud of these abilities".

The adult entertainment business required something that Jews possessed in abundance: chutzpah. Early Jewish pornographers were marketing geniuses and ambitious entrepreneurs whose toughness, intelligence and boundless self-confidence were responsible for their successes.

Of course, the large number of Jews in porn were mainly motivated by the desire to make profits. Just as their counterparts in Hollywood provided a dream factory for Americans, a blank screen upon which the Jewish moguls’ visions of America could be created and projected, so the porn-moguls displayed a talent for understanding public tastes. What better way to provide the stuff of dreams and fantasies than through the adult-entertainment industry? Performers did porn for the money. As ADL National Director Abraham H. Foxman commented, ‘Those Jews who enter the pornography industry have done so as individuals pursuing the American dream.’

Secular sex

Like their mainstream counterparts, Jews who enter porn do not usually do so as representatives of their religious group. Most of the performers and pornographers are Jewish culturally but not religiously. Many are entirely secular, Jews in name only. Sturman, however, identified as a Jew - he was a generous donator to Jewish charities - and performer Richard Pacheco once interviewed to be a rabbinical student.

Very few, if any, porn films have overtly Jewish themes, although Jeremy once tried to get several Jewish porn stars together to make a kosher porn film. The exception is Debbie Duz Dishes, in which Nina Hartley plays a sexually insatiable Jewish housewife who enjoys sex with anyone who rings the doorbell. It has sold very well, spawned a couple of sequels and is currently very hard to buy - perhaps indicating a new niche to exploit. Indeed, according to an editorial on the World Union of Jewish Students website,

"there are thousands of people searching for Jewish porn. After things like Jewish calendar, Jewish singles, Jewish dating, and Jewish festivals comes ‘Jewish porn’ in the list of top search keywords that GoTo.com provide".

Sexual rebels

Is there a deeper reason, beyond the mere financial, as to why Jews in particular have become involved in porn? There is surely an element of rebellion in Jewish X-rated involvement. Its very taboo and forbidden nature serves to make it attractive. As I written in these pages before, treyf signifies ‘the whole world of forbidden sexuality, the sexuality of the goyim, and there all the delights are imagined to lie . . .’ (‘Reel Kashrut: Jewish food in film’, JQ 189 [Spring 2003]).

According to one anonymous industry insider quoted by E. Michael Jones in the magazine Culture Wars (May 2003), ‘the leading male performers through the 1980s came from secular Jewish upbringings and the females from Roman Catholic day schools’. The standard porn scenario became as a result a Jewish fantasy of schtupping the Catholic shiksa.

Furthermore, as Orthodox Jew and porn gossipmonger Luke Ford explains on his website (lukeford.net): ‘Porn is just one expression of [the] rebellion against standards, against the disciplined life of obedience to Torah that marks a Jew living Judaism.’ It is also a revolt against (often middle-class) parents who wish their children to be lawyers, doctors and accountants. As performer Bobby Astyr put it on the same website, ‘It’s an “up yours” to the uncles with the pinky rings who got down on me as a kid for wanting to be musician.’

As religious influences waned and were replaced by secular ones, free-thinking Jews, especially those from California’s Bay Area, viewed sex as a means of personal and political liberation. America provided the freest society Jews have ever known, as manifested by the growth of the adult industry. Those Jewish women who have sex onscreen certainly stand in sharp contradiction to the stereotype of the ‘Jewish American Princess’. They (and I’m speculating here) may have seen themselves as fulfilling the promise of liberation, emancipating themselves from what feminist Betty Friedan in 1963 called the ‘comfortable concentration camp’ of the household as they set out into the Promised Land of the porno sets of Southern California. It signified their economic and social freedom: they were free to choose to enter, rather than coerced into it by economic and other circumstances. Once they had lain down, they could stand on their own two feet, particularly as female performers typically earn twice as much as their male counterparts.

Sexual revolutionaries

Extending the subversive thesis, Jewish involvement in the X-rated industry can be seen as a proverbial two fingers to the entire WASP establishment in America. Some porn stars viewed themselves as frontline fighters in the spiritual battle between Christian America and secular humanism. According to Ford, Jewish X-rated actors often brag about their ‘joy in being anarchic, sexual gadflies to the puritanical beast’. Jewish involvement in porn, by this argument, is the result of an atavistic hatred of Christian authority: they are trying to weaken the dominant culture in America by moral subversion. Astyr remembers having ‘to run or fight for it in grammar school because I was a Jew. It could very well be that part of my porn career is an “up yours” to these people’. Al Goldstein, the publisher of Screw, said (on lukeford.net), ‘The only reason that Jews are in pornography is that we think that Christ sucks. Catholicism sucks. We don’t believe in authoritarianism.’ Pornography thus becomes a way of defiling Christian culture and, as it penetrates to the very heart of the American mainstream (and is no doubt consumed by those very same WASPs), its subversive character becomes more charged. Porn is no longer of the ‘what the Butler saw’ voyeuristic type; instead, it is driven to new extremes of portrayal that stretch the boundaries of the porn aesthetic. As new sexual positions are portrayed, the desire to shock (as well as entertain) seems clear.

It is a case of the traditional revolutionary/radical drive of immigrant Jews in America being channelled into sexual rather than leftist politics. Just as Jews have been disproportionately represented in radical movements over the years, so they are also disproportionately represented in the porn industry. Jews in America have been sexual revolutionaries. A large amount of the material on sexual liberation was written by Jews. Those at the forefront of the movement which forced America to adopt a more liberal view of sex were Jewish. Jews were also at the vanguard of the sexual revolution of the 1960s. Wilhelm Reich, Herbert Marcuse and Paul Goodman replaced Marx, Trotsky and Lenin as required revolutionary reading. Reich’s central preoccupations were work, love and sex, while Marcuse prophesied that a socialist utopia would free individuals to achieve sexual satisfaction. Goodman wrote of the ‘beautiful cultural consequences’ that would follow from legalizing pornography: it would ‘ennoble all our art’ and ‘humanize sexuality’. Pacheco was one Jewish porn star who read Reich’s intellectual marriage of Freud and Marx (lukeford.net):

"Before I got my first part in an adult film, I went down to an audition for an X-rated film with my hair down to my ass, a copy of Wilhelm Reich’s Sexual Revolution under my arm and yelling about work, 'love and sex'."

As Rabbi Samuel H. Dresner put it (E. Michael Jones, ‘Rabbi Dresner’s Dilemma: Torah v. Ethnos’ Culture Wars, May 2003), ‘Jewish rebellion has broken out on several levels’, one being ‘the prominent role of Jews as advocates to sexual experimentation’. Overall, then, porn performers are a group of people who praise rebellion, self-fulfilment and promiscuity.

What are we ashamed of?

This brief overview and analysis of the role and motivations behind pornographers and performers is intended to shed light on a neglected topic in American Jewish popular culture. Little has been written about it. Books such as Howard M. Sachar’s A History of the Jews in America (New York: Knopf, 1992) simply ignore the topic. And you can bet that the 350th anniversary of the arrival of the Jews in the United States did not include any celebrations of Jewish innovation in this field. Even the usually tolerant Time Out New York has been too prim to deal with it, although the more iconoclastic Heeb plans an issue on it. In light of the relatively tolerant Jewish view of sex, why are we ashamed of the Jewish role in the porn industry? We might not like it, but the Jewish role in this field has been significant and it is about time it was written about seriously.

Nathan Abrams is a Lecturer in Modern American History at the University of Aberdeen. He has just completed a book on neo-conservatism in the United States. 

https://archive.is/N1XuC#selection-389.0-633.144

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