Not Everyone Was Laughing Last Week

Not feeling quite100% this week, but  considering how lousy I was feeling last week, this is a  vast improvement.  Now, if only I could breathe...

Our Founder, Ziggy

I never expected last  week's column to unleash a small firestorm about humor. I am not the comedy guy in this family. My dad was exceptionally funny, my brother thinks he's funny, Ziggy wrote  Ziggy's Joke o'the Day for pity's sake, and the Senior Son briefly (thank G-d) entertained the idea of being a stand-up comic when he was a kid. (Just ask him to do his James Mason as the 4th Stooge routine. Kills 'em every time.) Being the straight man in this family has its advantages. 

These days, comments on the page are much rarer than I would like, but the emails have always been kinda constant. Usually, they are short, often sweet, and to the point. This week, a little less so. One reader advised that alcoholism is a disease and I should not take it lightly. Another wrote that even a joke about Superman being a murderer was untoward, cruel, and downright mean. A third found it disturbing enough to  question my own sense of humor. And  a friend sent me a joke.  

I will address these in order.

First, both my in-laws (yes, that includes FIL) were alcoholics. My husband was many things, but first and foremost, he was the adult child of alcoholics. He never shied away from talking about that or hid it or diminished its importance. That addiction had an enormous, HUGE, and indelible impact  on his life, and by extension, mine and the boys. FIL ultimately dried out and became a highly functional member of this family, but it took a long time. The specter of alcoholism never fully disappeared. I take alcoholism very seriously, but the Superman joke is not about alcoholism. It's about a guy getting drunk. Ziggy would tell you there is a huge difference between the two. 

Casting Superman in a less-than-heroic role is fair game. Superman is a comic book character. He is not real, cannot  be considered real, and cannot stand up in a court of law to say squat. You didn't like  the joke? No problem at all. You're entitled to your own sense of humor and that's great. Just make sure you're laughing aloud at stuff you find funny in case others want to share your laughter. That's a good thing to do. 

As for the one who questioned my sense of humor? Harrummmppphhhh. And the horse you rode in on. As I tell the Senior Son all the time: NSOH

But what I really want to talk about is the joke that was sent to me:

Two beggars are sitting side by side on a street in Rome, Italy.  One has a Cross in front of him; the other one is holding the Star of David.

 

Many people go by, look at both beggars, but only put money into the hat of the beggar sitting behind the Cross.

 

The Pope comes by. He stops to watch the throngs of people giving money to the beggar who holds the Cross while none give to the beggar holding the Star of David.

 

Finally, the Pope approaches the beggar with the Star of David and says, "My poor fellow, don't you understand?  This is a Catholic country; this city is the seat of Catholicism. People aren't going to give you money if you sit there with a Star of David in front of you, especially when you're sitting beside a beggar who is holding a Cross.  In fact, they would probably give more money to him just out of spite."

 

The beggar with the Star of David listened to the Pope, smiled, and turned to the beggar with the Cross and said, "Moishe, would you look who's trying to teach the Goldstein brothers about marketing!"

This is a mild, clean, seemingly harmless little joke. When I got to the last line, I frowned. There  it was: the trope.

The sender, not Jewish, is the most gentle , kind, good-natured guy who would never do something to intentionally offend anyone. Seriously. The man worries about this stuff. And having just sat through a whole bunch of discussions about Jewish jokes, punchlines, and cultural appropriation, I had to sit and think about this for a while. How should I handle this? Should I say something and risk hurting his feelings? Keep silent and not acknowledge the joke at all? Or write back "cute," and let it go at that? 

This was really hard and I had to pull it apart from nine directions. 

Had  a Jew sent this joke, would I be offended? No. If someone Jewish had sent it, I would've chuckled, but that's about it, and maybe sent something snarky back about being thankful they weren't in Palermo. But that would've been just as stereotypical. 

Would Ziggy have used this joke in Joke o'the Day?  Not very likely. The last line would probably have crossed a line for him, and I think he would've passed on it for the very reason I was uncomfortable with it. 

I ultimately decided to say something:

I suppose that might be considered funny in some circles, perhaps if told by one Jew to another Jew. But honestly, I don't find it funny at all. I hear an old trope that is about as offensive as the N word is to Black people. 

The joke implies that the two men are dishonest, and they are swindling money out of non-Jews by posing as something they are not. Oh, you know, Jews just go for the money any way they can get it.  This joke laughs at us, not with us,  and really says something unpleasant.

I understand your aim was the laugh, not this response. 

He responded with a most genuine and sincere apology which included the line "I apologize for my insensitivity."

Now, I felt really badly and felt that I needed  to clarify my response. Of course, I coulda  just shut up, but I didn't. I wrote:

Until one has been part of a minority continually used as a  trope for mean-spirited or patently false characteristics or conditions, one is conditioned to laugh at the trope. 

When one identifies  the trope as racist/hurtful/false, the identifier is usually accused of lacking a sense of humor....at oneself or people. "Oh, I didn't mean anything by it; you need to lighten up."

Too often we, the intended butt of the joke, smile, chortle, or otherwise dismiss the joke without saying anything. But when an armed gunman comes into your place of worship and demands to know where you (the rabbi) keep all the money, then we had to admit we brought some of this on ourselves with our silence. 

I'm glad to know your sensitivity has been raised, but it is not all Jewish jokes; it's about Polish jokes, Italian jokes, and Japanese jokes. This isn't being woke or cancelling culture; it's about assigning labels that ultimately do perception damage. 

Personally, I used to tell "ethnic" jokes until someone said,  "How would YOU feel if..." That has become my yardstick. 

Let's  just say his response was polite silence, not  that I expected any sort of answer. But I did want him to understand it's not just about Jewish jokes. 

Which brings me to the next link in this thought chain: how did we get here?

Linda LeClair: Photo: Bettman/Getty Images

This is something everyone in these here United States is struggling with whether one wants to  admit it or not. As a child coming of age in the 60s, I remember the paradigm shift with great alacrity. I may be one of the few people who still grins at the name Linda LeClair. She was my hero. I barely knew what sex was, but I knew I wanted to be able to have it when I wanted it and Linda LeClair took on the world for our bodily freedom. Life as  we knew it was changing so fast and so dramatically. Demonstrations, rallies, school strikes...as we slid from the 60s into the 70s, everything changed. 

I remember boys in school making  lewd comments about Linda LeClair. I remember sex jokes once relegated to the boys' gym locker room were suddenly everywhere. This was a harbinger of changing times. That which was escaping some  private place  and slamming  into the public forum was not necessarily a move toward freedom of speech. In fact, it was moving into a language of marginally recognized hate speech.

Ethnic jokes were becoming increasingly ubiquitous. Polish jokes, Jewish Princess/JAP jokes, Italian jokes, Irish jokes, Swedish jokes....substitute any minority and you have a joke. We all laughed. No one thought anything of it. Or did we?

I remember the first time someone called me a JAP. I was on a stage, a hammer in my hand, straddling a ladder, fixing a set piece. Some jackass yelled up to me, "Hey! JAP! You sure you know which end of the hammer to use?" Several guys tittered. I was livid. I waved to the guy, leaned over the ladder, and said, "Come 'ere. Let me check that against your skull." 

Later, I was reprimanded by the head of the theater. "He didn't mean anything, you're being too sensitive. We're not used to Jewish girls hanging off ladders." If he had just said  girls, I probably would've been merely annoyed. But he said Jewish girls and I resented that like hell. Had he said, "New York Jewish girls..." I probably woulda slugged him.

Did that make me politically correct or woke? Nope. I still told my share of ethnic jokes. What I perceived as a slur against me as a Jewish girl did not immediately translate into any advanced state of thinking. But eventually the inequity of the speech caught in my head and I slowly began the move toward not practicing specious speech. 

It started small...discussions between Ziggy and me about what made stuff funny, laughing AT you or WITH you, what is an anti-Semitic joke and what is harmless? Is anything harmless? These were not lighthearted romps; they were deep, soul-dredging conversations in which we did not always agree. Ziggy was particularly aware of anti-Semitic tropes and I remember him going head-to-head with a well-known comic about it. Sometime in the early 90s, I stopped finding Saturday Night Live to be funny. I would occasionally watch the opening monologue with Ziggy, but then we'd turn it off. Were we getting old and crotchety? When did some of the stand-up comics stop being funny? We found we preferred to Dennis O'Leary and Dennis Miller. Dave Barry was funny. So were Billy Crystal and Bill Maher. 

The common thread? Situational humor. 

I suspect we were getting tired of potshots. In our endless dissection of humor, we kept coming back again and again to AT you or WITH you. The older I get, even without  Ziggy at the kitchen table (which, after 13 years, I still hate) I find I am significantly less tolerant of ethnic slurs. That stuff is so embedded in our national conversations that we should be embarrassed by it. And, it needs to stop now.

Do yourself a favor: go back and watch an old western, something like Fort Apache or The Searchers. It's a bellwether. Your response to the films might surprise you. 

This isn't really about being woke or politically correct; it's about perceiving people around us. The operative word in that sentence being PEOPLE. 

The Wifely Person's Tip o'the Week

If you don't like being labeled with an ethnic slur,

don't do it to others. 

It's  just that simple.

Always Leave 'Em Laughing

 What I really want to do is post the Gone Fishin' sign and be done with it.  

I've been feeling kinda punk, even took a  COVID test this morning...it was negative... and although I hosted an old friend for lunch, I cannot seem to shake the lethargy seeping into my bones. Unfortunately, I am also-aware enough to know what's going on. 

Passover is not my favorite holiday. At least it hasn't been for the  last 13 years. On the first day of Pesach 2009 we got the diagnosis. The night before, we'd sat at my cousins' seder and although they knew what was happening, we all chose to say nothing until it was official and we told the kids the next night. That was on April 8th. We counted the omer for 49 days until Shavuot, which began on May 28th that year, the night before Ziggy's birthday. 

There was a shabbat ingathering for his 56th birthday: the Senior Son came in even though they were moving into their new house on Sunday, my folks flew up from Flah-rida. FIL was already living with us. Ziggy held court at the shabbat/birthday table. There were lots of laughs, a few terrible jokes, but behind it we all knew. On Sunday, we had tenaim for the Junior Son and his fiancée. And we all pretended everything was just fine.

One week after that, I became a widow. 

Counting the omer is my least favorite thing to think about. It's the counting of the last days of my husband's life. I should've asked this. I should've said that. If I had... What if...Maybe I should've... That list is endless and every time we count the omen at minyan, another question pops in my head. Not 4 questions. More like 400 or 4000 questions. 

So forgive me if I don't feel much like writing right now. Instead, I will leave you with Ziggy's favorite joke.

Two guys were sitting at a bar at the top of 666 Madison Avenue in Manhattan, drinking heavily. 

 

First guy sez, "Hey, I'm from Chicago and I've never seen the wind blow in any city like I've seen here today."

The second man replies, "Yeah, it's sure something al'right. Why, when they wash the windows over on the Empire State Building?.. They have to tie themselves to the scaffold or get blown off. In fact, right around this building the winds are some of the worst in all of Manhattan because of the way they swirl around all these tall buildings. You see that ledge over there? If the wind's from the north like it is today, it'll be blowing _up_ that side of the building about 200 miles an hour.. fast enough to blow you back onto the deck if you jumped over the railing. I mean, hey, I drink here all the time and actually saw a suicide prevented by that crazy wind pattern. Pretty weird, let me tell you!"

"Strong winds blowing up? Yeah, sure. But blowing up fast enough to blow a guy back onto the deck? Nope. No way. Never!"

The first man draws himself up, "You callin' me a liar? Well hell, I'm just drunk enough to prove it to ya.."

He walks to the edge of the railing, jumps over and falls about 50 feet before rising slowly back to the deck, landing on his feet. After straightening his tie and combing his hair back in place, he turns to his drinking buddy, "There, smart-ass, _now_ do you believe me?"

The first man is absolutely stupefied with amazement. Finally, slamming back the rest of his drink, he says, "That's way cool, dude! I gotta try that!". He, too, walks to the railing and jumps over.. falling 66 stories to a horrible death on the sidewalk below.

The second man returns to the bar wearing a sad grin. "Hey.. Joe! Gimme another one."

The bartender, having observed all this, replies, "You know something? You're a _mean_ drunk, Superman."

The Wifely Person's Tip 'the Week

Always leave 'em laughing. 

Now we are enslaved. Next year we will be free.

I am in the throes of getting ready for Pesach. This is the ultimate punishment for that little incident in Gan Eden involving a tree and a piece fruit. I don't want to talk about why 5 chickens are defrosting in various plastic bags in my still chametz fridge which will be completely pulled apart and scrubbed into insensibility tomorrow morning when the cleaning service comes in for the assist.

The cabinets to be used are already empty. The counters are almost clear....the toaster will go away tomorrow morning after I have my requisite crumpet  for breakfast. Knife, dish, and  coffee mug will also do a disappearing act before we start the BIG SCRUB. Yes, there is boiling water involved. See, I have this plan. 

I work on the action/reward system of motivation. IF I get the whole change thing done by Wednesday morning, I get to play canasta in the afternoon. IF I get the soup started and the matzah balls prepped Wednesday night, I get to have a long overdue manicure (my hands look like chicken feet) on Thursday. That means on Friday, I can stroll through Byerly's for fresh produce and the last of the dairy stuff that has to be bought ahead before I start final preparation for the first seder. 

The TempTee Cream Cheese debacle reached epic proportions last week, but then a fresh supply was spotted at Cub in Knollwood. I alerted my most dear Mrs. Junior  Son who immediately ran over and scored cream cheese for all. Now,  if only I could find  egg matzah which appears to be a casualty of the supply chain. And  I explored large swaths of St. Louis Park this morning armed with a list. I successfully completed the mission...except I forgot to buy new rubber gloves. Thank goodness there's still time for that if there isn't a spare pair in the Pesadik boxes. 

And if that is not enough, second seder has moved from my house to the kids. I am ecstatic! Joyful! And, she's making brisket. This means I shall not be forcing people to eat my terrible brisket. Seriously. I make terrible brisket. There. I've admitted it. Even my mother, who could not cook, made better brisket than I do. 

Read all of the above with the grain of salt I am tossing on it. 

There is plenty of food on the shelves at the grocery store, even if I can't get egg matzah this year. There are still lots of fruits and vegetables to be had, kosher for Passover Coke if you want, and Temp Tee whipped cream cheese. 

The Passover seder begins with Maggid, the telling of the exodus from Egypt, and it begins with this introduction:

This is the bread of our affliction, which our ancestors ate in the land of Mitzrayim [Egypt.]

All who are hungry, let them come in and eat

All who are in need, let them come celebrate Pesach

Now we are here. Next year in the land of Israel.

Now we are enslaved. Next year we will be free. 

The purpose of Maggid is to tell the story in a language everyone can understand. The exodus is meant to be dissected and discussed by all at the table. Questions are to be asked. Children are encouraged to answer as well as ask. Maggid is the transmission of the root story of our very existence. Although we often joke that a distillation of Jewish holidays is "they tried to kills us; we won; let's eat," the  seder provides a prescribed methodology to the tale, asking that as we retell the story in ways everyone can understand, we still manage to transmit the values of Jewish life as we do it.  

"Let them come in and eat," may be the first pointer, but it isn't the last. There are the famous Four questions asked by the youngest at the seder. This teaches us everyone is involved with the telling of the departure from Mitzrayim. Ever wonder about the 10 drops of wine removed from the glass to represent the 10 plagues? That's because our joy at being free comes at a cost to others, therefore our joy is diminished. I can go on forever. 

But I won't. 

Across the globe people are suffering at the hands of others. Right now, much attention is focused on Ukraine...but they kinda look like us. It's easy to sympathize with their plight. Not much attention is focused on Yemen and over 100,000 people who have died in that civil war. Or the Uyghurs in China who are being systematically imprisoned for being Uyghurs. Or the Yanomami of the Amazon who are being beaten off their lands. And, just for good measure, I'll add the Palestinians who are being systematically denied a nation NOT because of Israel, but because their own government will not invest in building an economy and a functional state. Simplifications all, I am certain, but you get the point. 

Every one of those groups wages a war for freedom to be who they are in peace and security, unafraid of what the night will bring. 

Jews make up less than 0.19% of the 7.89 billion worldwide population. Translated, that means out of 7.89 billion people on the planet, approximately 15.2 million people. That's less than the population of Metropolitan New York City (18.9 million people.) We are less than one percent of the total population of the world, yet there is a significant number of people who would like to see that number shrink even more.

That's why, as we come together for Passover this year, we cannot be a silent minority. President Zelensky, a Jew, is standing up to a heinous taskmaster. Jews have not had it easy in Ukraine, yet he is their president and he is doing what nobody believed Ukrainians could do. Would that we could open our doors to all Ukraine to say, "Come in and eat." The total population of Ukraine is around 41.2 million people, and I am certain that number is not adjusted to reflect the refugee departure. The estimated realistic population of Jews in Ukraine is thought to be about 90,000 yet they managed to elect the right guy for this job and he just happens to be Jewish. When we tell the story of our quest for freedom, take a moment to think of those who are not where the grocery stores have food on the shelves because bombs are falling all around them. 

This Passover, the world is looking to him to continue to be the leader Ukraine needs. That he's a Jew shouldn't matter. But to us, it does. 

Next year, may we all be free. 

**Note: population numbers and percentages are from various governmental sources and Wikipedia**

The Wifely Person's Tip o'the Week

If you know someone who is without a seder.

invite him or her to yours.

It's what a community does. 

What He Said: Fill the silence with your music

Folks,

This is what a live hero looks like. This is what an honorable man looks like. This is what a person who is fighting for an entire nation looks like. 

President Volodymyr Zelensky remote addressed the Grammy audience

He delivers his speech in English. Listen to what President Volodymyr  Zelensky says. 

Now, read it just so you can really grok the words:

“The war. What’s more opposite to music? The silence of ruined cities and killed people. Our children draw swooping rockets, not shooting stars. Over 400 children have been injured and 153 children died, and we will never see them drawing.

“Our parents are happy to wake up in the morning — in bomb shelters, but alive. Our loved ones don’t know if we will be together again. The war doesn’t let us choose who survives and who stays in eternal silence.

“Our musicians wear body armor instead of tuxedos. They sing to the wounded in hospitals — even to those who can’t hear them. But the music will break through anyway. We defend our freedom to live, to love, to sound.

“On our land, we are fighting Russia, which brings horrible silence with its bombs — the dead silence. Fill the silence with your music. Fill it today to tell our story. Tell the truth about this war on your social networks, on TV.

“Support us in any way you can. Any — but not silence. And then peace will come to all our cities the war is destroying — Chernihiv, Kharkiv, Volnovakha, Mariupol and others. They are legends already, but I have a dream of them living — and free, like you on the Grammy stage.” 

When We, the People, talk about honor, we don't talk about Donald Trump or Bill Clinton. We talk about dead guys like George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, and Abraham Lincoln. We are looking for those who walked the walk, talked the talk, and stood tall against so many odds.  

Volodymyr Zelensky used to be a comic actor. Hell, he even played a reluctant, bicycle-riding president of Ukraine on The Servant Of The People. Maybe that was on-the-job training. But whatever he did in his past, it has provided him with a steel spine. And brass whatevers. He's not joking now. His nation has more than dented the Russian Army. 

Vadim Ghirda / AP

The Russians are bombing hospitals and civilian shelters, one of the original war crimes  addressed in the Fourth Geneva Convention. There are rules, even in war, and the Geneva Conventions are very specific about what is and is not permitted. Whose orders are Russian soldiers following when they kill civilians, hands tied behind their backs, execution-style?   If these are Putin's orders as relayed thought his officers, they are all war criminals just as the Nazis were. Those who executed civilians are as culpable as Nazi camp guards. 

From the Washington Post:

Bucha’s mayor, Anatoly Fedoruk, told The Washington Post that roughly 270 local residents had been found buried in two mass graves. Roughly three dozen were found dead in the streets, including some who had been bound and executed, Fedoruk told The Post. Bodies of at least 20 men in civilian clothes were found lying on a single street, according to Agence France-Presse journalists. 

And then there are the very young soldiers driving tanks and taking orders because they were told they would be greeted as hero liberators. What do the Ukrainians do with those rather confused soldiers?  This photo, from THE TIMES of London, shows just that: a Russian soldier speaking to his mother in a video call on his captor’s phone. Over and over, Ukrainian officials are hearing from Russian soldiers that they were told they would be liberating Ukraine from Nazis. And not unlike the boy soldiers the Nazis deployed in the field or the Russians deployed during World War I as well as their own 1918 Revolution. These kids seem to be unaware and confused about the mission on which they were sent. That alone is a crime against their own humanity.

Meanwhile, Russian mothers have been offered safe escorts at the Ukraine-Poland border from where they will be taken to Kyiv to pick up their sons, then returned to the border. That made so much sense to me. I hope some Moms take them up on it. I would go. Whether or not they would be safe upon returning home, of course, is a separate question.

Ukraine continues to beg for assistance from the West. The really incredible part? While they're doing just that, they are beating back the Russian Army. 

Glory to Ukraine. 

Coming out of this Jewish mouth, that's really saying something. 

The Wifely Person's Tip o'the Week

Your store is out or hasn't gotten your favorite Pesadik treat?

The supply chain isn't working?

You're not gonna die from a lack of kosher marshmallows. 

Want a serious tip?

Take a moment to check your perspective.