guide to the jewplexed
 


What haunts Jews?Jews Have Their Own Kind of

It's that time of the year when our neighbors' lawns and porches (some of ours too) begin to fill up with the ersatz creepy detritus of way too many trips to the Halloween warehouse.

Everyone's looking for the next big boo. But for the Jewish psyche, do animated skeletons and LED-lit talking plastic skulls really give us the heebie-jeebies? Or do they just leave us flat and waiting for December's Christmas chazerai? (At least it's cheerful.)

To discover what really gives us the creeps I wandered through my own haunted house of Jewish memories and came up with this list (you may have additions) of the stuff that really gives Jews the Hebrew-Jebrews:

-Supermarket white bread is far scarier to many Jews than eyeballs of newts, or buckets of brains. The stuff is maybe good for rolling into little balls and using for fish bait, but not much else. Soft, squishy, store bought bread was one of the few things I ever heard my mother refer to as "vile." For the total white bread horror show--spread a little mayo on it.

-For Jews, missing a chance to vote is the noir-est of nightmares. Whether we just turned 18, or are 91 and are on oxygen at the rehab home, we live in terror of not casting our ballots. We are just 2% of the population, and you would think that wouldn't make a difference. But at the polling place, like the Hulk, we grow awesomely larger. Dr. Herbert Weisberg of Ohio State University has said "Jews vote at a rate of 15 percent more than non-Jews." Even if we get a little farblunget, confused, as has happened in Florida, no one will ever confuse us with the silent majority.

-For us, sitting too close to the entrance of a restaurant is sheer horror. The door closes; you take your jacket off. The door opens, you put it back on. It's torture. Then there's the people coming in-- they stare at your food. And to the people watching you through the restaurant's front window: Shoo. This isn't the zoo. Remember, we spent forty years in the desert looking for the Promised Land, so searching for the perfect table is a walk in the park.

-Nothing gets our collective fright wig on more than injustice. For a people who have been told "Justice, Justice, you shall pursue," be they Republicans, Democrats, old school lefties, or tea party activists, injustice is the vampire that stalks innocent victims. We don't use a cross to ward them off, that isn't our thing--more like a picket sign.

- We are terrified of showing up as a guest somewhere without something in our hands. At the host's door, it is our knees that are doing the knocking. Whether we know it or not, our compelling desire to bring flowers, wine, or cake is derived from a kind of a Talmudic hospitality code that tells us to bring things that will benefit our host and help them with their needs--and who doesn't need chocolate? In "trick or treat" maybe we invented the "treat" part.

-The knock on the door by the neighborhood evangelist, Mormon, or Jehovah's Witness is a real chiller. Rising in the morning to haunt our neighborhoods in their zombie-like quest to make us like them, our mezuzahs provide zero protection. "Do you realize that our world is falling apart?" the Witnesses always ask me with a glint of horror in their eyes, as I open the door. "Nice day to you too," I reply, thinking, "If I offer them a Snickers, maybe they will shuffle away."

 

 

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."