We live in a time of Christian Jewish dialogue, but beyond those formal settings in church and synagogue social halls and sanctuaries, what are we really saying to each other? A popular YouTube video, "Sh*t Christians Say to Jews," attempts an answer by reenacting the not-so-subtle putdowns, clueless questions, and off-putting characterizations that Jews sometimes hear when we walkest by the way.
To back up the video's authenticity, Allison Pearlman, who created it along with Phil VanSpronsen as a tribute/parody to the popular YouTube series, "Sh*t Girls Say," tells us that every phrase used is something that has actually been said to her.
Not to confuse, the video isn't either the hardcore anti-Semitic fighting words sh*t, or the "I'm not being anti-Semitic, just anti-Israel," stuff that you hear either. Relax. It's only the Jews are cheap, loud, self-serving, and "you can pick 'em out," stereotypical kind of sh*t that most of us have grown up with.
Many examples will ring a bell or belfry. I too have been asked how to spell "Chanukah" by Christians (as well as by Jews). I too have been asked if I am related to someone with a Jewish sounding name. Also count me in with having been given earnest sympathy for my lack of Christmas, and even a suspected lack of Thanksgiving. And if I had a penny for every time someone has asked, "Are you Jewish? You don't look Jewish?" I could save the pennys, and like some still think, secretly buy up everything.
Usually, like most Jews, I simply shrug this sh*t off. I roll my eyes, or may even attempt a lame comeback like, "Well, what do you think a Jew looks like? But mostly we learn to ignore and deflect. As a kind of training video, it's good that Pearlman and VanSpronsen are getting this down.
Though a lot of the sh*t is said in ignorance, innocence, or even insouciance, the words can still confuse, anger, or hurt just the same. One of my sons, who attended college in the Midwest, related to me the surprising number of students who commented on his curly hair. At first he thought the attention was OK, until he wondered if his hair was becoming a way to mark him, to set him physically apart as a Jew.
My own experiences at college almost 40 years earlier also involved unwanted attention. For a year, I was editor of the school's Jewish newspaper, "Ha'Am, and as such became identified as being one of the representatives of the university's Jewish population; that was expected.
But one day, for reasons unknown, I was summoned to the assistant dean of student's office. After some pleasantries, the dean began talking to me about the school's Jewish sorority.
"Do you know this student?" she finally asked, supplying a name. "This girl has been causing trouble in the sorority, and we thought you could talk to her," she said.
At first dazed at the request, it slowly dawned on me that not did the dean assume that I knew every Jew on campus but that also as a result of our shared Jewish identity, I could instantly reach out to her.
"There are 10,000 Jews at UCLA. I don't know every one," I remember explaining.
The dean looked disappointed.
Who knows? Maybe she thought that since I was editor the Jewish paper, I would be privy to this kind of news. But I came to realize that behind her assumption was a stereotype of Jews as clannish, and in everyone's business.
It's this kind of walled-in thinking, both conscious and unconscious, that is behind a lot of the sh*t that Christians and others say to Jews. Even now it's aim is to keep us in a kind of ghetto, where we can be neatly identified and our actions predicted, where our names and anatomical protuberances can be catalogued, and where finally we can be adjusted and saved.
Edmon J. Rodman has written about making his own matzah for JTA, Jewish love music for the Jerusalem Post, yiddisheh legerdemain for the Los Angeles Jewish Journal, a Bernie Madoff Halloween mask for the Forward, and what really gets stuck in the La Brea Tar Pits for the Los Angeles Times. He has edited several Jewish population studies, and is one of the founders of the Movable Minyan, an over twenty-year-old chavura-size, independent congregation. He once designed a pop-up seder plate.In 2011 Rodman received a First Place Simon Rockower Award for "Excellence in Feature Writing" from the American Jewish Press Association."
the video isn't either the hardcore anti-Semitic fighting words sh*t, or the "I'm not being anti-Semitic, just anti-Israel," stuff that you hear either. Relax. It's only the Jews are cheap, loud, self-serving, and "you can pick 'em out," stereotypical kind of sh*t that most of us have grown up with.
