Posts from — August 2005

I had to buy four text books for my Fall Graduate School Class: New Perspectives on the History of the American West. I purchased all four used. At first it seemed that one would be a new book, hence more expensive. But after pleading with the sales clerk to check once more, indeed a used edition was found.

For a cheap Jew like myself, this seemed the greatest of mazel. In my euphoria, I walked twenty blocks in the rain. I just didn’t notice it was raining until it stopped.

Saving money makes me high. It is better than alcohol and drugs, as there is no hangover.

A tip for all like myself, as I am in a generous mood, and wish to spread the wealth, particularly as the Fall shopping season approaches.

Do not shop for sales items at chains on the Upper West Side. Yid after yid has combed these sales racks dry.

Go to where the fashion kings queens live. Go to Chelsea. The fagelahs are not as concerned with thrift the same way we are. They have disposable income, and worry more about looks and the most current fashions. Do they have dates who demand sushi on a daily basis? No. Their dates don’t eat fish.

So there you go. Who says there is nothing to be gained by reading The Kvetcher? Next time you see a Modern Orthodox fellow pulling his hair out at the Banana Republic searching for an elusive find, but scoring only the most chalushes of garments, laugh out loud. You know better. You read The Kvetcher.

Sometimes even the most degenerate Jewish hipster must take time off reviewing burlesques and other aspects of the yiddishe underworld to talk about “serious” things. Like why the “kiruv” movement is such a disaster, and a bitter dissappointment for many of us who experienced it.

It is been many years since my experience, and I have never publicly spoken about it.

It is hardly a source of pride.

But I am talking now, in collaboration with Un-Orthodox Jew.

Holocaustism Reaches New Shrill High

Even a loose canon can hit its target once in a while. Check out his story on this Zionist shmuck of a Rabbi, paralleling the Gaza pull-out to–what else–a “mini-holocaust.”

What an ignorant misuse of Holocaust imagery. We have made ourselves a laughing stock to the world. This is what we get when we enshrine Zionism on the altar of a crematorium.

Time to close the museums. All of them.

The whole world is howling at us for comparing Sharon and our own soldiers to Nazis and pillaging Cossacks.

No more crying foul when the arabs and the Left use such comparisons to the Israelis. We have demonstrated that such comparisons are just swell.

Even (the more responsible) cheerleading Zionists are horrified at your despicable behavior.

You are a bad joke. And the joke is on the Jewish people.

Enough! Never Again will we let you build bullsh-t ideologies on top of others ashes.

You have been warned. No more free ride for you sicko ZOG zealots.

You call good men Nazis in public, we will call you silly, shrill kikes in public.

It has to be.

Anyone else with me?

I meant to cover the Quiz Show. I ended up in the Quiz Show.

Jewschool exclusive here.

I’m out covering Howl for Jewschool, so this week’s entries will be limited, as I am dutifully partying (hard) in the East Village and Lower East Side.

See Day 1 and read how Streit’s gives the kids a break.

I eat lunch a lot at B and H Dairy, a stealth kosher luncheonette on Second Avenue, a relic leftover from the Yiddish Theater days of the neighborhood, when the East Village was the upper Lower East Side.

The food is classic Yiddish fare, and unlike its fleishig brother up the street, is cheap, which as anyone who reads this blog regularly knows, is of importance to me.

B & H attracts a diverse crowd – and its share of freaks. Today, however, a couple of gays next to me started making out while I was in the middle of my yankee bean soup.

Now what they do is their business. But there is such a thing as respecting the space.

This is not “The Cock� bar. This is an antiquated, yiddishe, milchig restaurant. Keep your fly up and your arms in front of you for twenty minutes. Show some restraint. B & H Dairy has all the flamboyancy of a bowl of vegetarian split pea soup. Do you have no concern about where you are when you do what you?

Try to respect that we are eating.

Esther posted a tasty short on Jewlicious about a couple referred to as the “Jew couple,” as their detail oriented waitress clearly noted on their bill at a restaurant.

Reminds me of my DC days when I was hanging out with a hipster Berber chick from Morocco I met at Cafe Le Trec. We never really dated, it would have been a bit of a stretch –our peoples being at war and all, and our circles comprised heavily of our respective peoples — but we were friendly, and did hang out a little.

Anyway - we were in Georgetown, grabbing a drink, during the last days of crackhead Mayor Marion Barry’s reign, and as we crossed the street, a schizophrenic homeless guy — smelling and looking something foul — asked me for change.

Normally I give nothing, but I was with a chick, so I didn’t want to reveal my stinginess, so I gave him a dime.

He was furious at the paucity of my donation.

He cursed, and finally yelled, “Shalom!!!”

I realized that if I can be outed in a multi-cutural setting by the likes of this sociologist, everyone - absolutely everyone - knows what I am. They just don’t all scream at me in Hebrew.

It’s easier to date one’s own, where you don’t have to make modest pretenses that you aren’t a cheap Jew. And that is, as you can see, the most I am willing to make.

Thought about it yesterday when I was harassed by a panhandler on my subway ride home.

Made me nostalgic. For more innocent, younger days, and Hizzoner, Former Mayor Rudy Giuliani.

There were less homeless people then to violate my civil liberties.

I don’t tell Israel what to do, and I will skip the preamble about my empathy for the settlers.

As an American, the only thing I feel I have a right to an opinion about is the language (and violence, which is off the charts — and needs no explanation of condemnation) coming from some of the settlers, verbally comparing Israeli soldiers and Sharon to historic enemies of the Jews.

Shame on you, Dikla Cohen. Or congratulations! You are quoted in the NY Times comparing the disengagement to a “pogrom.”

This is disgusting nonsense, and should not be tolerated.

I am not usually an advocate of mandatory sensitivity training - but for the likes of Ms. Cohen, I would probably agree. She might actually learn something about Jewish history prior to the Six Day War.

Sharon is not the czar, his soldiers are not drunken cossacks, and if this is the angle the settlers want to take, it must be asked if they are the exceptions, or representive of this movement as a whole.

Dov Bear recently posted an interesting article (he has quite a few of those) on profiling. In it, he makes the case that profiling could be used against whites generally, and Jews specifically. For instance, Dov Bear brought the issue of Jewish slumlords as a possible target for special watch by the Housing Authority.

I personally would have suggested profiling Jews for embezzlement of government funds and retailer tax evasion in ultra-Orthodox communities, but his point stands, and I am willing to allow profiling for broader crimes including ones DB feels are appropriate for targeting the Jewish community if that is the only way he will agree to profiling.

Of course, I might prioritize crimes not of the white collar variety in communities that don’t wear black hats. Fair is fair.

However - his proof that profiling hurts the many for the crimes of the few I agree with, as it illuminates the point that we aren’t always profiling smartly.

I would refer Dov Bear to consider that issue that Al Jazeera raised in a recent story on how passengers intent on boarding have been grounded because their infant or child’s name is “the same as or similar to those of possible terrorists on the government’s no-fly list.”

Perhaps the problem is not that we profile, but how we should profile. Perhaps we need a more personal and individualistic approach.

Profiling, if ubiquitous, makes no sense. No more than random searches. Or no profiling.

One profile does not fit all.

Even Al Jazeera would ostensibly agree.

With me.

So my ex-girlfriend protested something with others in a topless protest in the park. (Not my Orthodox ex-girlfriend - Orthodox ex-girlfriend did not join topless protest on Tisha B’ Av)

I don’t know what she was protesting. Perhaps it was the destruction of the 2nd Temple. Perhaps it was something to do with Gaza.

For me, and perhaps other men, it wasn’t the object of protest that interests me, but the protest itself.

She has done this before. In college.

Some guys would pull up lawn chairs. Others would use binoculars.

I would have just brought suntan lotion, and offered her some.