Jewish Bigotry and Jewish Pain
by: Schvach Yid



One of my favored peeves is Jewish bigotry; you know, the sort of stupid things some (or many) of us say or do to insult members of other groups. Face it, there're a lot of jackasses in the Jewish community.

Here I go: once upon a time I was acquainted with a Jewish female medical student. One fine day she passed a Chinese-American classmate (I was there) and let loose with her impromptu impersonation of Chinese people.

Here’s another: once upon a time I was sitting in the break room at work. Two graduate students were present. One was Jewish – red hair, blue eyes, body builder’s bod; the other was/looked (what I like to label) ‘Pacific Rim Asian’ – no offense intended. The Jewish student sidled up to the other student and let loose with a comment about ‘Chinese people’ and ‘chop sticks’. The recipient of this remark very slyly returned the rude remark with a grin and intoned, ‘I wouldn’t know, I’m American and my parents are Korean’.

There’s a reason G-d created the word 'schmuck’!

Same work place, different student. She’s Jewish. Whenever we bumped into each other at lunch and sat together, the conversation would invariably turn to Jewish matters. One day she announced, “Judaism, who needs that ‘shit’”. Some months later she approached me in the same break room and, with a giant grin on her face, informed me that she had converted to Catholicism, ‘And I love it’.

Okay. Why bother to bring up the subject? Because her parents were Jewish, and divorced. She moaned about the divorce frequently. She was fifteen years old when the ‘fit hit the shan’. Had her folks been devout Catholics, they might not have divorced, out of religious conviction, and, so she probably reasoned, she would have been spared what she considered to be the tragedy of her life.

I’ve bumped into her on rare occasions since. Nothing seems to have changed; certainly, she doesn’t seem any happier.

Jadies and Jents, have you taken a good look at the JBlogosphere? Have you read any of the personal profiles, as in ‘About Me – View my complete profile’? Have you read any Jewish blogs in which the writers scream in pain? Often these offerings are disguised as bravura, especially the ones who post about dating. The singles in their thirties and forties, the single parents who dare the reader to see the humor in a humorless life, the amateur literary pugilists who waste their adult lives chasing their tails, searching for the right solution to a clueless existence. The answer, they convince themselves, is career.

Horse baloney! The career doesn’t help. They’re groping at perfection when perfection is indefinable. Competition? You won? Mazel tov! Now what? You’re still miserable. Well, at least you don’t have to hang you head in shame in synagogue over your occupation, but over the absence of a family…?

What’s the answer? Who knows? It’s not buying a new pair of shoes - that fix fixes nothing.

I think, perhaps, the Aybischter created the coccyx as a tease. We have a backside that hides a very truncated tail – like dogs with docked tails. Doberman Pinchers are the clueless recipients of docked tails, received at the hands of their breeders. That breed of dog can be vicious, usually (I think) when they are deliberately trained to be.

Happiness doesn’t come from training. It comes, in part, from acceptance – of the mutual variety. The assertive competitive schtick has its limitations, but regrettably, in our society, I think most of us have been indoctrinated in little else. Just try to find someone to like you.

And so my fellow Yiddin, I wish us much luck, and remember, according to the Chinese calendar that New Year will bring in the Year of the Ox. Let’s not make it the year of the boor.