Do it the French way

Every December observant Jews who function in the larger society face a dilemma. We live among and work with Gentiles, and wish to give gifts to some of them. I feel funny giving them Christmas presents when I do not celebrate the holiday. Generally, I am not very enamored of the French - effete, emasculated characters whose butts we American cowboys saved twice in the last century and who show little gratitude. But they have a wise solution to the December gift-giving quandary. When they had a revolution in 1789, the new regime followed our lead and separated church and state. A good thing too, since countless good Frenchmen and women were slaughtered or driven out of France in wars of religion. As Justice Frankfurter said, keeping religion separate from the state is best for religion and best for the state. The French even experimented with a new calendar to replace the Gregorian church calendar. That experiment failed; the Gregorian calendar whose year begins tomorrow conquered the world because it is the most accurate calendar devised to date, including the Jewish calendar which has Pesah slowly creeping into summer, against the Torah's mandate that it be celebrated in spring. In France only children get Christmas presents; adults exchange gifts at the New Year. The New Year is thoroughly secular; how many Christians know that its origin is their savior's brit milah? All Americans, ourselves included, use the Gregorian calendar in business and even socially (When is Pesah this year? March 30). I gave my Gentile neighbors a New Year gift yesterday and they were gracious, probably realizing how awkward it would be for me to have given it a week earlier. If you look hard enough, you can find secular New Year cards in stores; they feature pretty snowmen instead of the red-and-green glitz. Or use the blank cards we all get from charities to which we contribute anyway.

This will probably be my last post in 2009, so I wish my readers a happy, healthy, safe and prosperous New Year.

Imagine. . . .

Imagine all the people living life in peace. . . . .John Lennon










On December 8, 1980 John Lennon of Beatles fame was shot and killed in front of his apartment building in Manhattan. His widow Yoko Ono endowed Strawberry Fields, a patch of serenity in Central Park named for one of Lennon’s songs. Every year on December 8, people gather in Strawberry Fields for an impromptu “healing circle.” Many bring guitars and play Lennon’s songs. The rest listen, reflect and perhaps light a candle. One year I stumbled upon the gathering, having gone to Central Park for another purpose. This year I had the time and deliberately went there. Most of my generation of Americans remembers Lennon’s song Imagine, where he beautifully expresses our hope that all of humanity would learn to stop fighting one another and simply get along. John F. Kennedy expressed that hope in his campaign speeches. I remember reading an op-ed in the Jewish Press knocking the song and its writer as utopian. Well, utopian it is, but so what? Is it any more utopian than our hope for Mashiach? Where would we be if we couldn’t imagine a world better than the one we have? Would we strive to make a better world, a world free of racism, poverty, disease and other scourges? Indeed, while many scientific discoveries come about by serendipity (looking for one thing and finding something else even better), others came about because scientists imagined something new and better, then set about creating it. They imagined a world without polio and developed vaccines that eradicated the disease, imagined a world without unwanted children and came up with The Pill.





Imagine a world where two strong, healthy men could get together and, without forbidden sexual contact, make strong, healthy boys. Or the analogous situation for women. Most of the technological dots are already in place, but nobody seems to be connecting them. If it ever becomes reality, would there be any rationale for a secular society not to allow same-sex marriage? What about all the halakhic problems such an arrangement would engender? Must we wait until such problems are upon us before we start thinking about them?



Now imagine a world where Jews and Arabs in Israel put aside a century of enmity and live together in peace. Pipe dream? Yes, unless young Jews and Arabs make it a reality. And the place to start is Jerusalem. There is no separation barrier there. That came down in 1967. Anybody can walk from one part of the city to the other. Imagine five Jewish teenagers dribbling a basketball into the Arab part of town, finding a court with a game going, and challenging the winners as kids do the world over. Presto - human contact. You can't hate and play basketball at the same time. In their commingled sweat they will discover their common humanity and how wonderful it is to be young, strong and full of life. Hey, it worked in Crown Heights.

Holding on to Judea and Samaria as I believe we must (click here) with its large hostile Arab population that is not about to pack up and leave will require imaginative, outside-the-box thinking. An example of such thinking is the Elon Plan, which posits only one Palestinian state, the one that already exists and that sits on 80% of mandatory Palestine. It is called Jordan. The Arabs of Judea and Samaria would be citizens of Jordan living in Israeli territory. They will carry Jordanian passports and their children will go to Jordanian schools that will fly the Jordanian flag on Israeli territory. The guiding principle is known as extraterritoriality. It was never tried before on such a grand scale. But America's founding fathers knew well that they were setting up a form of government - a republic - that had not been tried since Roman times and that failed then. The rest, as they say, is history. Extraterritoriality can work if both sides are determined to make it work, and one of its pillars must be regular and frequent sporting contact between Israeli and Arab schoolchildren. One thing is certain. If the past 60-plus years is any guide, peace will not come down like manna from heaven. It will not come from governments. But people-to-people contact might just make it grow from the ground up.

As Robert F. Kennedy said, "Some see things as they are and say why; I dream things that never were and say why not."

Meah Shearim in Brooklyn?

You better watch out
If you're liberty's guy
Better raise a shout
I'm telling you why
Tyranny is coming to town. . . .

It seems like the same goons who think they own the streets in Jerusalem think they own Bedford Avenue in Williamsburg too, and the city is playing into their hands in a cynical ploy for a powerful voting bloc. After the usual approval process, the city painted a bicycle lane along Bedford Avenue in the Hasidic area of Williamsburg. It appears that Bedford Avenue is a prime route for bicycle commuters seeking to access the bicycle path across the Williamsburg Bridge. Demarcated bike lanes protect cyclists from onrushing automobile traffic, a major cause of bicycle and pedestrian fatalities. The downside is less space for automobiles. I don't drive or ride a bicycle. I get around on foot (running and walking) and by public transportation (bus and subway), so I am probably the closest thing you will find to an impartial observer. The city has been moving for some years in the direction of more environmentally responsible transportation. Automobiles contribute to air pollution from carbon monoxide and particulates, though much less now than in years past. They use massive quantities of increasingly scarce fossil fuels whose burning contributes to climate change. Simply put, a car occupied by only the driver is the most irresponsible, wasteful and inefficient way of getting from Point A to Point B. Bicycles do not burn fossil fuels at all, hence do not pollute the air. They use human muscle power, and thus contribute to not only a greener New York but a healthier one (see my previous post). Thus, the city is right to encourage bicycles at the expense of automobiles.

When a bike lane is painted on a street, even after a lengthy approval process where everybody has a chance to be heard, people are unhappy and they gripe. I saw that when a bike lane was painted on Bedford Avenue in my own neighborhood of Midwood. In a short while people get accustomed to the bike lane, and even come to like the new reality of more healthy people and fewer cars. But that has not happened in Williamsburg. There the gripes persist, and recently the city, admittedly to curry favor with a large voting bloc (probably the only one left in New York) erased the bike lane. Bicycle activists responded by clandestinely repainting the lane, and two of their number were arrested and charged with criminal mischief.

Urban guerrillas repaint the bike lane - Nonviolent direct action is
a time-honored American method of effecting social change.

The complaints of the Hasidim center around two alleged problems:
1. Cyclists create a safety hazard for children going to and from school. Granted, Hasidim have more children than most New Yorkers, and they go to school earlier and come home later, meaning when it is dark outside in wintertime. However, the safety hazard is mostly from automobiles and not from cyclists. Bicycles are inherently safer since they travel more slowly and can stop on a dime. And the automobiles are driven largely by Hasidim whose reckless, devil-may-care driving is legendary. As in so many other areas of life, these people seem to think that the traffic laws are mere suggestions, to be flouted whenever convenient. Kent Avenue, a block or two west of Bedford, is a case in point. Hasidim claim that a dedicated bike lane exists on Kent Avenue and therefore the one on Bedford is superfluous. Well, this is how the Hasidim treat the lane on Kent Avenue:

That's right; they park right across it. The bike lane exists to provide free parking for their catering halls, and the police don't do a thing about it. Nor is this a matter of Hasidim vs modern New Yorkers. Baruch Herzfeld, a modern Orthodox Jew, set up a "bicycle gemah" to help Hasidim who want to ride bicycles but aren't quite up to buying one yet. He is now in Copenhagen to confront Mayor Bloomberg on the issue at the climate conference.

He reports that quite a number of Hasidim actually want the bike lane, but they won't appear on camera or give their names. I wonder why.

Some cyclists do ride recklessly and ignore the traffic laws, perhaps out of ignorance of the fact that they are considered traffic and must stop at red lights, go the right way on one-way streets and so forth. Periodic enforcement blitzes would be in order, until cyclists know the law and act accordingly.

2. Women ride their bicycles in "immodest dress," meaning exposed elbows and knees and their own uncovered hair. This is too much for their sexually repressed men to handle. They might actually see females that aren't covered from head to toe, and who knows what will happen to their pure unsullied souls then. But I guess it's okay for those men to molest young boys in yeshiva and at the mikva. Well, guess what - bike lane or not, bicycles have a right to use the streets, and they will use the streets. The only difference will be that without the lane there will be more conflict between automobiles and bicycles, therefore more injuries and deaths. And, newsflash - American streets are public thoroughfares. Anybody of any persuasion may walk, run or ride a bicycle on them, dressed as he or she pleases. And we will walk, run and ride our bicycles dressed as we please. If our dress causes Hasidic men eye strain, ain't that too bad? If we allow these people to impose their will on the rest of us, what's next? Gender-segregated public buses? Men and women forced to walk on opposite sides of the sidewalk?

Enough is enough. These religious obscurantists must be given to understand that they do not have ba'alut (ownership) over any street, and we will not allow them to turn our country or any part of it into Talibanland. Accordingly, a protest ride will start at the foot of Williamsburg Bridge this Sunday, December 13, at 2:00 P.M. to culminate with a rally at Bedford Avenue and Wallabout Street at about 3:00. Cyclists and sympathetic pedestrians are invited. Dress for the weather.

Hasidim - A word of advice. You can't beat us, so you might as well join us. You don't like the sight of attractive women dressed the way American women dress? Well, we don't like the sight of ugly, repulsive men with fat bellies. It makes us want to puke. Get a bike from Mr. Herzfeld's gemah and get on it. Get yourselves a pair of running shoes and use the bodies God gave you to use. You'd be surprised at the goodwill you will generate. I am appalled at the ill will you generate right now; just look at the comments in the articles I linked to and the cross-references there. Get out there and move. You will be happier and healthier.

Let freedom ring.

Remember Pearl Harbor

Today is Pearl Harbor Day. 68 years ago Japan carried out a sneak attack on our Pacific fleet and all but destroyed it while their diplomats were still negotiating with ours in Washington. Our intelligence community and military brass were caught napping. Thousands of servicemen lost their lives. America's isolationists and Nazi sympathizers were finally shut up and the country entered World War II, which had already been raging for over two years. At first, victory was far from certain. The sneak attack was followed by the Bataan Death March. Japan's brutal maltreatment of the conquered Chinese and of Korean women (Japan occupied Korea in 1910 and did not leave until its defeat in 1945) are matters of record. So much for Japan's vaunted code of honorable warfare. Unlike Germany, Japan has yet to own up to its crimes and make amends. At first, victory was far from certain. The tide did not begin to turn until the Battle of Midway a year later.

Victory took a dreadful toll of blood and treasure. If we had to fight the war today, who knows if this hedonistic generation would have persevered. Our president just spoke to the nation, committing thousands of brave men and women to battle and not daring to use words like "win" and "victory" or tell us what victory would consist of.

Let's remember Pearl Harbor and the brave men and women who fought and died there as we face our current foe. Let's never forget that freedom is not free, and never will be until Mashiach comes.

Pearl Harbor during the attack

JFK and America's talking asses

In the 46 years since President John F. Kennedy's murder on this date, revisionist history has taken to besmirching his memory and debunking his accomplishments. They call him an inveterate Cold Warrior, fixated on the evils of Communism. Well, that is precisely what made him great. He wasn't wearing blinders or rose colored glasses. Communism was the primary source of evil in the world during his presidency, and he acted accordingly. He stood up to the Soviets in West Berlin, Cuba and all over the world. Even when he botched badly, as in the Bay of Pigs, he "failed while daring greatly," to borrow a phrase from my other Presidential hero, Teddy Roosevelt. Think of the kind of world we would be living in if he had allowed the Communists to have their way.

I watched a 60 Minutes episode several years ago about a historian whose name I forgot dredging up dirt about the President that had been concealed from the public when he was in office. Behind the facade of a youthful and vigorous leader was a man gravely ill with Addison's Disease (adrenal insuffiency) and in constant pain from a bad back. We knew about the bad back when he was President. We did not know that he constantly took amphetamines to mask the pain that dogged him constantly. When I heard all that I wanted to slug the television and shout, "Bil'am Ha-Rasha!" Bil'am came to curse the Jews and in spite of himself ended up blessing them. This talking ass came to debunk the legend of President Kennedy and instead magnified it. We always thought that the President acquired a bad back as a result of his heroic exploits on the PT109 in World War II, where he towed a badly wounded comrade to safety after their boat was rammed and sunk by a Japanese destroyer. Now we know that John F. Kennedy did what he did on the PT109 with a bad back that he had since childhood. If he wanted to, he could have sat out the war with a desk job, or perhaps even dodged service entirely with a 4-F medical exemption, but that is not what Kennedys do. He did full duty, and even returned to active duty after aggravating his back on the PT109. The pills he was addicted to were standard treatment for his condition at the time, and helped conceal the gravity of his illness from potential enemies. True, he would probably not have been able to conceal his illness from the public with today's media coverage, but that says more about the media than about the President. In the early '60s the media for the most part still put country first, before sensationalism and journalistic coups. That the nature of the President's illness was successfully kept from the Soviets was certainly worth its being kept from us.

Then there is the matter of President Kennedy's widely publicized extramarital affairs, also wisely kept from the public during his presidency. If I had a dollar for every man who had extramarital affairs, I would be a very wealthy man. And if sainthood were a requirement for public office, nobody that we should want in office would qualify. We don't want a Mother Teresa in the White House; we need someone willing to get down and dirty with unsavory characters who seek our harm. There is reason to believe that powerful men are genetically programmed to seek multiple sexual partners and thereby spread their genes; see Our Inner Ape, by Frans De Waal. The wonder is that, sick as he was, he was capable of sexual activity altogether. When I think of the courage and steadfastness with which he guided the ship of state, I am more than willing to forgive him his sexual peccadillos.

The talking asses will continue digging up dirt and throwing it at better men than they. That is all they are good for. I thank God every day that we had John F. Kennedy in the White House for the thousand days we had him, and I wish we had a leader like him as we confront another implacable enemy hell-bent on destroying us and our way of life.

Settlements - An Obstacle to Piece

Broaden the space of your tents and stretch the curtains of your dwellings, spare not, lengthen your cords and strengthen your poles. For you shall expand left and right, and your seed will possess nations and inhabit waste places. . .(Isaiah 54:2,3)


This passage is read as the haftara for Parshat Ki-Teze, the fifth of the seven haftarot of consolation between Tisha B'Av and Rosh Hashanah. It is also the haftara for Parshat Noah. It is alluded to in one of the piyyutim recited on Hoshanna Rabbah before we beat the arava. Since the Six Day War, the message has been unmistakably clear. The Prophet is speaking to us. The ge'ula is unfolding before us, and we are called to possess and inhabit the waste places that had once been ours, and to make them flourish once again. And since the Six Day War, dedicated hatutzim (just about the only ones left!) under the influence of Rav Tzvi Yehuda Kook zt"l have done exactly that. Settlements have sprung up all over Yehuda v'Shomron on land that belongs to us even if the rest of the world says otherwise. American Presidents have repeated the same litany since the Six Day War: the settlements are illegal and an obstacle to peace. Since Oslo, American Presidents have maintained that the land involved shoud become a "Palestinian" state. Never mind that for nineteen years when the Arabs held the land there was never any talk of a "Palestinian" state, nor indeed of a Palestinian people. The land was held by the Palestinian state that already exists, namely Jordan, but Jordan's sovereignty over it was recognized by only two nations on earth: Great Britain and Pakistan. The Arabs' intentions were and are crystal clear, except to the deliberately self-blinded: destroy Israel. If they can't destroy it all at once, they would destroy it piece by piece. Whatever concessions they can wring out of us with the help of a craven American administration they would take, and use it to prepare for the next round. There never was a peace process, only a "piece process" - one piece of Israel to our enemies followed by another and another. The settlements create facts on the ground that are difficult to erase, as a faithless Israeli government learned in 2005 in Gaza. The settlements came down but at a cost to Israeli cohesion and soldiers' morale that future governments should be loath to repeat. And what did we get for it? Daily rocket fire on Sderot and as far north as Ashkelon. A piece process indeed! The settlements are quite legal by God's law, and "an obstacle to piece."

But what about the soldiers who will have to fight to defend them? Do we want more boys coming home in caskets? Of course not, but even worse would be the peace of the grave. Since before the founding of the State we made a value judgment that it is better to go down fighting than to go down not fighting. Actually, this is a value judgment that men have made from time immemorial. We are primates, and primates are territorial animals; sorry folks, nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution. We defend what is ours. On December 8, 1941 young American men, enraged by the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, queued up to join the Army. Imagine if Americans then had regarded peace as the highest priority, and not unleashed our full power on Japan and Germany. Think back to 1861, and imagine if Abraham Lincoln had listened to the "anything for peace" counsels, and there were many, and allowed the South to go its way. America would have been spared a long and bloody war with frightful losses. But it would not have become a superpower, able to stand up to the Nazis and the Communists, and the world would be a different, and much worse, place. Those of us who would walk away from Eretz Yisrael are infected by two millenia of deterritorialization, also known as galut, as well as by decades of secularist claptrap questioning whether the land is really ours. Or perhaps they had their manhood sucked away by two generations of feminist propaganda. We've been told for as long as I can remember to be "sensitive," to "get in touch with our feminine side," that machismo is bad, that we're all suffering from a fictitious malady called "testosterone poisoning," ad nauseam. We're even made to feel guilty for thanking God we're men. So now we're sold on the idea that nothing at all is worth fighting for. We won't stand up to the schoolyard bully, the mugger on the street, or the Arab enemies who will never accept an Israel of any shape or size.

Many good and decent Jews, religious and secular, disagree with the above, including the writer of a blog I regularly read and with whom I generally agree. How should we relate to them? I have heard them characterized in the vilest of terms, quite unbecoming people who should know how to conduct a mahloket l'shem shamayim (argument for the sake of Heaven). Our ba'alei plugta (ideological opponents) must be treated with the utmost respect. Words like "traitor" have no place in the discourse; traitors are motivated by personal gain, while our opponents genuinely believe they are acting in the best interests of Israel and the Jewish people. The boycott by a Knesset member of the special session in memory of the late Yitzhak Rabin is exactly what is not needed. Even when the opposition calls us warmongers and such, we should not respond in kind. The argument must always be ad rem (to the thing), never ad hominem (to the person). As I learned as a child from Rabbi Chaim Yachnes, even when somebody's pshat is totally wrong, always attack the pshat, never the person. I am certain that Rav Kook and his son would not have it any other way.

Plus ca change. . . .

The following was forwarded to me by email. It is originally from a powerful Maccabi weightlifter who visited Austria, the new enlightened post-Nazi Austria.

WHILE IN VIENNA, KARYN AND I WENT LOOKING FOR A GIFT FOR ALAN.
WE THOUGH A ARMY SURPLUS STORE WOULD DO NICELY.
ALAN COLLECTS OLD ARMY STUFF.
THE STORE WAS CLOSED, 3 HOUR LUNCH BREAK.
WE LOOKED THROUGH THE WINDOW.
IN AUSTRIA, I EXPECTED TO SEE NAZI THINGS.
NAZI ARM BANDS, SWASTIKAS, NAZI FLAGS,
I EXPECTED THIS.
I DIDN'T EXPECT TO SEE THINGS STOLEN FROM TEMPLES.
YODS, TORAH FACE PLATES, YELLOW STARS, ARM BANDS FROM DIFFERENT CONCENTRATION CAMPS...
WHEN I TOLD KARYN WHAT THESE THINGS WERE, SHE WAS VERY UPSET...
I WAS VERY ANGRY.
WE WALKED AWAY.
WE SEPARATED AND WERE TO SUPPOSED TO MEET JAN FOR LUNCH.
I WENT FOR A WALK TO CLEAR MY HEAD BUT STARTED TO HAVE A ANXIETY ATTACK INSTEAD.
[this is hard to write]
I FOUND A PHARMACY AND SPELLED OUT XANEX.
I COULD BARELY SPEAK AT THIS POINT.
I TOOK A LOT OF LITTLE PILLS TO TRY TO CALM DOWN.
I CALLED ABE AND BETTY WEINTRAUB BACK HOME TO ASK WHAT TO DO.
I WAS READY TO MAX OUT EVERY CREDIT CARD I HAD.
THEY BOTH TOLD ME THAT WOULD ONLY MAKE THE MARKET FOR SUCH THINGS TO PROSPER.
AND NOT TO GIVE THEM A DIME.
TO TRY TO CALM DOWN...ME, CALM DOWN, RIGHT.
I STILL DON'T KNOW IF THEY WERE RIGHT.
i'm starting to lose it again just remembering this nightmare.
I MET KARYN AND JAN, KARYN KNEW ME BETTER BACK THEN.
THEY LOOKED AT ME AND SAID WE SHOULD GO FOR A DRINK.
I HAD ONE DRINK.
I TOLD THEM I WAS GOING BACK TO THE STORE.
KARYN LOOKED ME RIGHT IN THE EYE AND ASKED ME IF I WAS GOING TO GET ARRESTED?
IN A LOW VOICE I ANSWERED - I DON'T KNOW...I WAS STARTING TO TREMBLE, TO LOSE IT AGAIN.
I WALKED BACK TO THE STORE NOT REALLY KNOWING WHAT WOULD HAPPEN.
I WIPED MY FACE.
i could never tell this story face to face. i'm getting upset now because i still don't know if i did the right thing.
I WALKED IN THE SMALL STORE AND LOOKED AROUND AT EVERYTHING.
I DIDN'T WANT THE OWNER TO KNOW I WAS JEWISH.
FINALLY I ASKED HIM WHAT THE "SILVER POINTY THING" WAS AND HOW MUCH WAS IT.
HE TOLD ME IT WAS A ANTIQUE BABY RATTLE [IT WAS A YOD] AND WAS 350 EURO.
I CONTINUED TO LOOK AROUND AND SAW AN VERY OLD TORAH FACE PLATE.
HE SAW ME LOOKING AT IT AND TOLD ME IT WAS 800 EURO.
HE THEN TOLD ME THE "RATTLE" WAS REALLY USED TO READ JEWISH SCROLLS.
I TOLD HIM I KNEW EXACTLY WHAT IS WAS.
NOW HE KNEW I WAS WAS JEWISH.
WITH MY BACK TO HIM, I ASKED WHY THESE THINGS WERE SO EXPENSIVE.
JEWISH PEOPLE BUY THEM TO RESCUE THEM, OTHERS BUY THEM FOR THEIR HISTORY.
i remember this as if it was this morning.
HE ASKED ME WHAT I WOULD BE WILLING TO PAY.
MY JAW TIGHTENED, I CLOSED MY FISTS AND TURNED TO HIM.
I BACKED HIM TO THE WALL, INCHES FROM HIS FACE.
I ANGRILY RAISED MY VOICE AND ASKED HIM HOW MUCH HE WOULD PAY FOR A RELIGIOUS ITEMS STOLEN FROM A RANSACKED CHURCH?
I DON'T WANT ANY TROUBLE!!! HE SAID RAISEING HIS OPEN HANDS.
YOU ALREADY GOT TROUBLE!
I WAS LOSING MY MIND!
I WAS SWEATING, MY HEART WAS POUNDING!
A 265 LB. BOMB ABOUT TO BLOW!
READY TO POUND HIM AS HARD AND AS LONG AS I COULD...
EVERY MUSCLE WAS TIGHT, HE HAD NO PLACE TO GET AWAY.
I KNEW IF I THREW ONE PUNCH, I WOULD HAVE THROWN ONE HUNDRED.
I WOULD HAVE BROKEN HIS FACE, HANDS, KNEES AND FEET.
IF HE SURVIVED I WOULD MAKE SURE HE WAS IN PAIN FOR THE REST OF HIS LIFE.

I NEVER WAS, NOR HAVE I BEEN SINCE, THAT CLOSE TO WANTING TO CRIPPLE SOMEONE WITH MY BARE HANDS.
I NEVER EVEN THOUGHT OF A WEAPON, ONLY MY JEWISH HANDS WOULD DO.

THE LOOK FEAR IN HIS EYES, HIS FACE TURNING PALE, HIS BODY SHAKING LIKE A LEAF, WAS JUST ENOUGH TO SLOW ME DOWN.
I THOUGHT OF WHAT KARYN SAID, ARE YOU GOING TO GET ARRESTED?

AN AMERICAN AND A JEW IN AUSTRIA...THIS IS NOT A GOOD IDEA.
I WALKED OUT OF THE STORE.

THIS SHORT STORY TOOK ME WELL OVER AN HOUR TO WRITE. I HAD TO STOP SEVERAL TIMES.

PEOPLE TELL ME IT WAS A LONG TIME AGO. I SHOULD LET IT GO.

WE WENT TO A STREET FAIR THE DAY WE WERE LEAVING.
THERE WERE OLD BLACK AND WHITE PHOTO'S FOR SALE.
GIANT SWASTIKA'S PAINTED PROUDLY ON BUILDINGS.
I ASKED WHAT THEY WERE.
THE OLD MAN SAID:

BETTER TIMES...

SOME PEOPLE SAY I HAVE CHIP ON MY SHOULDER.

WHEN ISRAEL PAINT STORE DID THEIR SIDEWALKS OVER, SOMEONE CARVED A SWASTIKA IN THE CEMENT.
J. ISRAEL WAS THE ORIGINAL OWNER THREE OWNERS AGO.

IN 1972 MY UNCLE SLIM TOOK ME TO A FLATBUSH TEMPLE ON YOM KIPPOR.
THE ARABS JUST ATTACKED ON THE HOLIEST DAY OF THE JEWISH YEAR.
THE RABBI, NO MIKE, HAD A BOOMING VOICE.
HE SAID, AND I QUOTE:

SHAME ON YOU,
SHAME ON YOU ALL YOU JEWS WITH YOUR PORSCHE'S AND MERCEDES BUILT ON THE BLOOD OF YOUR PEOPLE!
YOU CAN NEVER FORGET!
NOR CAN YOU LET OTHERS FORGET!
I'LL KEEP MY CHIP, THANKYOU VERY MUCH.

I'M SORRY, BUT YOU ASKED...

MARK
REMEMBER THIS NEXT TIME YOU OR YOURS GOES CAR SHOPPING.
YOU WHAT HAPPENED IN AUSTRIA... [Ad kan leshono - end quote]


Note how the Austrian trafficker in stolen Jewish property went pale and shook as soon as he was confronted with a Jew who didn't fit his stereotype of the weak and frightened ghetto Jew. Perhaps this weightlifter should have proceeded to give the shopkeeper a taste of the Jewish fist.


This brings back memories of what my father a"h told me of growing up in Vienna in the 1920s and '30s, before Hitler came to power. The streets were teeming with brownshirted Nazi thugs who regularly harassed and beat Jews on the street. Mind you, these Jews were not the despised ostjuden with their beards, strange dress, foreign language and outlandish mannerisms. These were acculturated Jews who considered themselves Austrians, dressed like Austrians and spoke German like Austrians. Many even fought for Austria in World War I. My father a"h was an amateur boxer and gave the brownshirts a taste of Jewish strength. Who knows how things might have turned out differently if there had been more like him.