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HarryVanWinkle -> RE: How many people here are Jewish? (11/27/2013 12:21:19 PM)
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I was Jewish once.
It was in the Southern Sun Groggery, in Fort Myers Beach, Florida, sometime around 1982 or ‘83.
The Grog, as we called it, was a commercial fisherman’s bar. I was, at the time, an unemployed fisherman, or should I say, between jobs. I was sitting there one night, broke and feeling sorry for myself, wishing somebody would buy me a beer or ten, when in walked this guy I’d never seen before. He looked around, spotted me sitting by myself at the end of the bar, came over, sat down next to me and introduced himself.
I can’t for the life of me remember what his name was. It doesn’t matter. What’s important is that he ordered a pitcher of beer and two glasses, filled us both up and started talking.
Now, since he was buying, and I was drinking what he was buying, that gave him the right to choose the subject of our “conversation.”
What he wanted to talk about was Jews. He didn’t approve of Jews. He didn’t like them. He didn’t have much good to say about them. In fact, he didn’t have anything good to say about them. He did have a lot of bad things to say about them.
A beer bum’s etiquette is that you don’t argue with the man who’s buying, not if you want to keep drinking his beer. So, I didn’t argue with him; whenever he slowed down and seemed to want some input from me, I threw in a, “Yeah?” or an “Uh huh?” or an, “Is that so?” whichever seemed appropriate to keep him talking and buying.
And he kept talking and buying and I kept listening and drinking. This went on for at least a couple of hours and considerably more than a couple of pitchers.
Every blood libel, every slander, every nasty thing that has been said about Jews in the last five thousand years, he had ‘em all.
They murdered Christ, he said. I didn’t tell him that when I read the story; it seemed to me that it was the Romans who did that. According to him, they barbecued Christian babies. I didn’t ask him if they butchered them in the kosher manner. They were the creators, he proclaimed, and the leaders of and directly responsible for all the bloody crimes of Communism. I didn’t ask him if that included Communism’s persecution of Jews.
The man was a walking, talking, living, breathing edition of “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.” He had more accusations against Jews than Mein Kampf. I know; I’ve actually read Mein Kampf.
But, he was buying and I was drinking and getting pretty good and drunk, like I really wanted to be.
Finally, well after I’d lost count of the number of pitchers he’d bought, he started getting really excited.
“I mean,” said he, practically jumping up and down like a man who needed to pee, “I mean… what religion are you?”
“Me?” I asked, pointing to my chest.
“Yeah, you. What religion are you?”
“Me?” I asked again, batting my big, baby blue, Ubermenschen eyes at him two or three times. “I’m Jewish.”
I would have been Hindu if they were whom he’d been talking about. I would have been a worshipper of Mumbo Jumbo, God of the Congo. I’d have even been a Christian. But, at that moment, I was a Jew and I was proud to be a Jew. I’d never before been, and never have since been, prouder to be a Jew.
The look on his face was priceless. I have never seen a man look more mortified in my entire life. Without saying another word, he got up and walked out of the bar, never to be seen, at least not by me, again.
The best part, however, was when just as the door was closing behind him, the bartender set the last pitcher he’d bought down in front of me.
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