It is not easy listening to Frank, a man of no teeth and a big smile. Yes, Oscar: I have found good people, right here in the south. I’m gonna stick around for a while in the south. I want to meet more good people.
Gate Twenty-Two
If you are planning on having sex, wait for your partner’s verbal permission before each successive step
MISSISSIPPI. I’M DRIVING IN MISSISSIPPI. “WHEN LIFE GETS TOO HARD TO stand, kneel,” reads the big sign at the First Baptist Church in Gautier, Mississippi. A bigger sign, on the right, states: “We Support Israel. Genesis 12:3, Psalms 122:6.”
Here’s the Genesis verse (NIV): “I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse; and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.” The Psalms verse (NIV): “Pray for the peace of Jerusalem: May those who love you be secure.”
For two thousand years, most Christians did not view these verses as applying to a Jewish state, or to Jews in general. This Mississippi church, like the people of CUFI, are certain that these verses apply to today’s State of Israel. How did this change come about?
I get out of beloved Captiva and go to the church, where I meet Pastor David, the boss of the place. I ask David if the support for Israel is just because of the Bible, or if there is also some kind of inherent support for the Jews. He won’t answer. Why?
The church is a tax-exempt organization, he says, and it might lose its tax status if he, the pastor, answered this question. Period. But if I want to know what he thinks, he goes on, he’ll willingly share his opinion provided I stop recording him.
I turn my iPhone off and we have an interesting conversation which, sadly, I cannot share. This is called freedom of speech, American style.
Not that people are not allowed to talk in this country. Sometimes, surprise, they are requested to talk nonstop.
Case in point: Governor Jerry Brown of California has just approved legislation that would require schools offering health classes to teach a “yes means yes” doctrine in sexual relationships. This means that people who are engaged in sexual activity must ask for a “yes” from their partner for every step in their sexual contact.
It would go something like this: May I tell you what I feel for you? – Yes, you may.
I am attracted to you. – Thank you.
May I touch your hands?
Yes, you may.
May I caress them?
Yes, you may.
May I kiss you?
Yes, you may.
May I touch your knees?
Yes, you may.
May I touch your nose?
Yes, you may.
May I take off my shoes in front of you?
Yes, you may.
And so on, and on and on, and on and on and on, until a baby comes along – if at all.
This is part of liberty, California style. I don’t think that anybody in Mississippi will ever abide by such rules.
A gallon of gas here in Mississippi costs $1.74. In Castro, San Francisco, it cost $3.89.
What else is new these days? Canada’s Prime Minister Stephen Harper lost in the general elections, and he will be replaced by Justin Trudeau. The Huffington Post, in a byline by the Associated Press, describes Harper thusly: “He gradually lowered sales and corporate taxes, avoided climate change legislation, supported the oil industry against environmentalists and backed Israel’s right-wing government.” Climate change, Israel. What a nice salad.
I stay the night at the fabulous Beau Rivage Resort and Casino in Biloxi, Mississippi, where I bet one dollar at a slot machine, lose eighty cents immediately and allow the young girls with the sexy smiles to supply me with never-ending free drinks, and in the morning Captiva says: Let’s go to Montgomery, Alabama! No problem, Captiva. If you’re into it, I am too. Let’s go!
Gate Twenty-Three
For $10 million, 23 percent would become a prostitute for a week or more and 16 percent would give up their American citizenship
WOULD YOU LIKE TO KNOW AT WHICH HOTEL I STAY IN MONTGOMERY? I’LL tell you. The Hilton. And they give me a smoking room. God bless Montgomery!
I sit down, smoke in the room, feeling free in the Land of the Free, and only then get up to walk the streets of Montgomery, the Home of the Brave.
Montgomery was the first capital of the Confederate States of America. It is out of Montgomery that the order for the first shot to be fired in the American Civil War was issued. It is here that Martin Luther King Jr. had his church, the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church. And it is here, in this city, that Rosa Parks refused to give up her bus seat to whites, which prompted the Montgomery bus boycott and set into motion the civil rights movement in this country.
How do I know all this? Some locals tell me. What locals? I’ll tell you soon.
At the beginning of my journey through America I thought that Philadelphia represented the most “historic” city of this country, and then I thought maybe it was Gettysburg, but now that I’m here I think that the title “America’s Most Historic City” should in fact belong to Montgomery.
Yeah.
I go to visit the Dexter church, which is practically a museum and charges a $7.50 entrance fee. Have you been here? Martin Luther King Jr.’s office, right here, is an interesting sight to see. The desk, Martin’s original desk, is the most prominent item in the room, and there’s also a bookcase with a few books. I check out the books. Most of them are scattered volumes of an old Jewish encyclopedia. How did they get here?
It is here that I learn that Martin Luther, both Sr. and Jr., did not start life with this name. They used to be called Michael, but following King Sr.’s 1934 travels to Berlin and Jerusalem the names were changed to a loftier one: Martin Luther.
I stick around for a while, and then I exit. Outside I spot two black people on a small vehicle that looks like a mowing tractor, and I ask them to tell me when blacks were first allowed to vote in this country: Was it after President Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation in 1862, or only after the 1965 Voting Rights Act?
They don’t know. They gotta mow, not vote.
An attractive young black lady with pink lipstick also says, “I don’t know.” What she does know is this: “My first crush was Martin Luther King Jr.”
Who was your second?
“Obama, but not anymore.”
Why not?
“I’m disappointed with him.”
Why?
“Don’t get me started.”
Who knows everything about black history?
Now I’ll tell you. The locals who know everything about voting rights, King, Parks, and the rest of this country’s black-white history, the locals who tell me all about it, are the local Jews and their leaders. These Jews support the blacks and have dedicated their time to helping them.
How many blacks are on the side of Jews in their struggles against anti-Semitism? I ask them.
They can’t name one.
Soon, “they” will be no more.
The Jewish community in Montgomery is gradually disappearing. These days the Jewish talk in Montgomery is of combining the two remaining synagogues into one, due to the dwindling number of Jews in the area. They want to delay the inevitable demise of the Jewish presence here, but they know that the end is near. It is the story of American Judaism that I have already seen: people who dedicate their resources to help others and to fight themselves are doomed to succeed on both fronts.
I get to talk to a number of them, off the record, and I share these thoughts with them. They don’t take it lightly.
“You are forcing us to look at the mirror,” a Southern Jew tells me, “and it’s hard, very hard. It’s not a comedy. There will be no happy ending.”
I get to feel it personally. A week or two ago I sent my monthly column to the Forward, this time about blacks and Jews: about the Jews in St. Paul who are busy talking about helping blacks and ever busier criticizing other Jews. I have been writing for the Forward, a liberal Jewish publication, for some y
ears by now and never had any problem with them.
This time, writing on this sensitive issue, is different. The story is being censored. Liberal Jews, I guess, can’t stomach a mirror. What shall I do? I quit on the spot. I don’t like censorship; I’m not built for it.
Liberals were my first crush, but they have been disappointing me ever since.
• • •
I keep on driving and reach Mountain Brook, a city that’s practically all white. “Here,” a resident tells me, “you will be pulled over by police if you are caught driving DWB.” I know DWI, which stands for Driving While Intoxicated (and in some states: DUI, Driving Under the Influence). What’s DWB?
“Driving While Black.” Funny people.
• • •
On Sunday morning I go to pray for the peace of Alabama. The best prayers, I already know, take place in megachurches. Alabama, as you might expect, has got the best of them: the Church of the Highlands in Birmingham, the state’s largest city, has more than thirty thousand members.
Just yesterday I had no idea that such a church existed; today I’m driving to attend its services. It is a sight to behold. As I advance close to the church at about nine o’clock in the morning, I see a huge line of cars leaving the area on one side and another huge line queuing up to go into it.
Am I in Penn Station, New York? No. This is God’s Station, Alabama. The cars leaving and coming are of people attending different services. The church has five services on Sunday.
I have heard much about the Evangelical and Charismatic Southern Christians. Jews of the South have been telling me that these people are in love with Jews and will support the Jews until their last breaths. I want to meet such idiots, creatures who are ready to help those who won’t help themselves.
Before I join the nine-thirty worshippers I stop to chat with some of the eight o’clock flock, who are on their way out. Right next to me I see two well-dressed young couples on their way to their cars and I ask them the easiest question I can think of: Who are God’s Chosen People?
“God’s Chosen People are the people who follow Christ,” one of the young women says, and the rest agree.
That’s you, right?
“Yes.”
Aren’t the biblical Chosen People from somewhere far from here?
“The first Chosen People were the Israelites, yes.”
Remembering my discussion with William Atkins in Utah, I ask: Are the Jews in America the same people as the “Israelites”?
“No.”
So, they are not chosen?
“No.”
Only the Israelites?
“In the past they were the Chosen but not anymore.”
Where was Jesus born, in what country?
“Bethlehem.”
Where is that?
“In Jerusalem.” All agree.
Jerusalem is a city, and Bethlehem is a city. What country is Jesus from?
No one knows more than they have already shared.
What country will Jesus return to?
“He will return and all will see His glory.”
What country?
“What’s the difference?”
The Bible gives a location, doesn’t it?
No one knows.
There’s only one issue that not all of them agree on. Three of them say that they support Israel “because of the history of the Israelites,” and the fourth person has not made up his mind yet. These are the young Christians. Maybe their parents were in love with Jews; they are not.
I go to join the service. The church is packed with thousands of people. As I enter, they sing: “I was bought by Jesus’ blood.” How lovely.
There are five singers on the stage: a black male and female, two white females and one white male. All that’s missing here is a Chinese LGBT and they will be completely “diverse.”
The founder and senior pastor, Chris Hodges, appears on stage. He is white. He delivers a sermon. About money. The church, he says, has existed for fifteen years and is growing, without ever undertaking donation campaigns to raise the money.
This is church talk, by the way. Which in this case means that soon, very soon, ushers will move in with buckets to collect donations.
As in every other church that doesn’t raise funds, there is an envelope in front of every seat in which worshipers are called upon to give a tithe to the church. A tithe is 10 percent of gross income.
Chris keeps talking. He also presents some survey results to the believers. The question is: What would you be willing to do for $10 million?
The responses:
Twenty-five percent would abandon their entire family.
Twenty-three percent would become a prostitute for a week or more. Sixteen percent would give up their American citizenship. Ten percent would withhold testimony letting a murderer go free.
Seven percent would kill a stranger.
Three percent would put their children up for adoption.
Surveys, like other statistics, must add up to 100 percent, yet this one adds up to eighty-four only. But who cares? The people are impressed and go on to pay the tithe.
Once the prayer service ends, one of the pastors of this church, who goes by the name of Kory, approaches me. He has been told by security that I interviewed people outside, and he would like to know what my story is.
I have a question, I say to him, and I’m looking for an answer; that’s my story. The question is: Will the Jews go to Heaven or to Hell?
“To Hell.”
Do you support Israel, by the way?
“Yes!”
But they will go to Hell?
“If they don’t want to go to Hell they must start believing in Christ.”
Bingo.
I thank him profusely and leave.
• • •
As I’m getting ready to leave Alabama, fate dictates that I meet a charming Orthodox Jew, a Jew whose business it is to lend money at extraordinarily high interest rates. Anti-Semites have been accusing Jews of doing exactly this kind of business for the past six million years, and now I get to meet a professional.
Bob Nelson is his name. At least that’s the name he goes by when making his deals.
Bob didn’t start out his life being a loan shark. His previous job, interestingly enough, was in the rabbinate. The problem was that this former rabbi’s flock was not bought by Jesus’ blood and they would never even entertain the thought of giving him 10 percent of their gross income. Which left him very poor, his wife very upset and his children ever more demanding. A stressful life. To get out of his bad situation, he became a loan shark.
No. He doesn’t call himself a loan shark.
What do you do? I ask him.
“I make a living.”
How does Bob make a living?
“Through commercial finance.”
What does that mean?
“Commercial finance means supplying businesses and corporations with working capital. If a company needs money they can be supported through our business.”
How does it work?
“Let’s say you need $10,000.”
How long does it take to get such a loan, by the way?
“Twenty-four to forty-eight hours.”
How much interest do you charge?
“Between 15 and 40 percent.”
Not 49 percent?
“In certain circumstances.”
He looks at me, feeling a bit uncomfortable, and he tries to explain himself a bit better. “This is America,” he tries his hand at explaining, “a land of opportunities. It is in America where a person can one day be a rabbi and the next day a ‘commercial finance specialist.’”
So be it.
He doesn’t stop here. He does not give the actual loans, he says. Simply put, he doesn’t have this kind of money. What he does is more like “matchmaking,” as he calls it. He matches the people who have lots of money, Orthodox Jews like him, with the people who need big sums of money very fast. He is, i
n other words, a broker. As a broker, he gets his cut the moment a loan is made, and he doesn’t lose his share if the borrower defaults.
Are Jews, compared to other ethnicities, more into finance than other groups?
“Yes.”
How come?
“It requires a Yiddishe kop [Jewish mind].”
Explain to me this Yiddishe kop.
“In general, in lending, there’s always a risk attached, because you need your money back – and it takes a Yiddishe kop to mitigate your risk.”
Give me an example.
He does. And it’s genius.
Once a borrower has paid, let’s say, half the initial loan plus the interest, Bob calls him and offers him an additional loan in an amount that is double the unpaid balance, for a lower rate. When this second loan is approved, the borrower must immediately pay the rest of the first loan, which is automatically deducted from the second loan by the lender. The borrower now pays a lower overall interest rate, calculated on the total amount of the second loan, but in reality he’s paying a far higher total amount of interest because he’s left with only half of the second loan.
In short: everybody feels happy, and the Jews get richer. Jews, you see, have to work much harder than pastors to make a living.
My Captiva is outside, on the road, and she doesn’t hear any of this. Good. But she misses me, my Captiva, and I go to see her.
We have a little meeting and both of us decide that it’s time to move ahead. Where to? Tennessee.
Where in Tennessee? Lynchburg. Why? No particular reason.
Gate Twenty-Four
When the atomic bomb fell on Hiroshima, people went out to the streets, yelling and dancing and having a good time
ONCE WE ARRIVE, MY CAPTIVA WANTS TO REST A LITTLE, AND SO I WALK on foot. In Lynchburg’s historical district I see this poster on a window: “Homeland Security. Fighting terrorism since 1942.”
Cute.
Here they also sell cute t-shirts, like this one: “I’m the God fearing, gun toting, flag waving conservative liberals warned you about!”
The Lies They Tell Page 30