The JOOOOZE!!!!

The internet has an absolutely fanatical obsession with The Jews!(™).  Across every social media platform from the -chans to Facebook to Twitter to anything with a functioning comment section including news, politics, foreign relations, television, movie studios - everything - someone is mashing the “The Jews(™)” button.  Some use it as an accusation, most use it as a dog-whistle, others use it as a pejorative, but there is absolutely no shortage of “The Jews!"(™) being bandied about in cyberspace.

I have never understood the negative sentiment that exists out there where Jews are concerned.

Maybe it was the formative-years parental foray into being Born Again Christians and the accompanying teachings that the Jews were the chosen people and that the Abrahamic God totally, absolutely loved them, maybe just a tiny bit more than the Goyim?  That didn’t faze me at all, frankly and I’ve always been rather keen on Jews in general and have had nothing but positive experiences with every Jewish person I’ve met, associated with, worked for or with.  I’ve never, not once, had an unpleasant experience with a Jew, nor anything even remotely resembling any of the seriously offensive, disgusting stereotypes so frequently and seemingly easily lobbed at Jews.

Okay, maybe there was that one time when my straight-outta-Cedarhurst (Lawng Eyeland, natch), very Jewish roommate and I, living in Boston at the time, went to a deli for a bite to eat and to my more reserved, Bostonian horror, she quite brazenly and loudly made a request for service or something along those lines.  I looked at her, wide-eyed, with a countenance of the sort one might have towards someone who just cut the line or belched loudly in church or something.  We just didn’t do that sort of thing in Boston!  At the time, I had not yet truly experienced the singularly amazing and truly life-changing experience of life in New York City, having only been there once when I was 12.  My most vivid memory of New York, oddly enough, was of the Bowery (which, at the time of my visit in the early 1980s, was a run-down fucking mess bordering on the sort you’d find in many third-world countries), and of that super bitchen polka-dotted, New Wave-y dress my mom let me get.

It was very “early MTV / Cyndi Lauper”, but then again, in 1982, what wasn’t?  But I digress.
Back to the lecture at hand, The Jews!(™) and all the things Jewy, Jewish, Jewtacular, Jewlicious and so forth.  My go-to narrator voice is a strange amalgamation of the Jewish Bubby I never had, but felt like I did, and the chain-smoking, whisky-drinking, raspy voiced Aunt I did have (God rest her soul).

There is a strange familiarity, nee a comfort for me in the Jews, and particularly of the New York variety.  I have had almost no exposure to Israeli Jews, as far as I know.  While I’m sure I’ve met some, I can’t recall ever having a particularly close nor lengthy relationship with someone actually from Israel.  Maybe there are different kinds of Jews? Who knew? (Read that in Mel Brooks’ voice, it plays better).