“But that’s such a terrible movie,” I said.
“Did you see it?”
“Of course—otherwise, how would I know it was a terrible movie?”
“When you went to see it, did you see a boy there?”
“Avraham, that was a year ago, how would I remember?”
“That’s when he saw it, about a year ago.”
Avraham changed the subject again. “What’s your favorite book, of all the books you’ve ever read?”
“That’s a difficult question,” I said. Even though I keep lists of all the books I read and choose my favorites at the end of each year, I really didn’t know what my favorite book was. “I know what my favorite non-fiction book of last year was. It even won over the Bible. It’s called Let Us Now Praise Famous Men by James Agee and Walker Evans.”
As I thought about it, I was stymied when it came to fiction, non-fiction, and poetry, but I suddenly realized that I did have a favorite play, and that was Hamlet by William Shakespeare.
“We’re not allowed to read Shakespeare because he’s anti-Semitic.”
“Really?”
I went into my apartment and got The Merchant of Venice. “Have you heard of this play? I’ll show you the most famous speech in it and you tell me if you think it’s anti-Semitic or not. The man speaking is named Shylock and he’s a Jew.” I found the right page and handed it to Avraham.
Shy. To bait fish withal: if it will feed nothing else, it will feed my revenge. He hath disgraced me, and hind’red me half a million; laughed at my losses, mocked at my gains, scorned my nation, thwarted my bargains, cooled my friends, heated mine enemies; and what’s his reason? I am a Jew. Hath not a Jew eyes? hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions? fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer, as a Christian is?
If you prick us, do we not bleed? if you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die? and if you wrong us, shall we not revenge? If we are like you in the rest, we will resemble you in that. If a Jew wrong a Christian, what is his humility? Revenge. If a Christian wrong a Jew, what should his sufferance be by Christian example? Why, revenge. The villainy you teach me I will execute, and it shall go hard but I will better the instruction.
When he had finished reading I asked him if he thought it was anti-Semitic. He thought about it for a moment, and said he didn’t think so. And then he asked me what “anti-Semitic” meant.
“Let’s look it up.”
I looked up “Semite” first:
Sem’ite, Shem’ite, n. a member of any of the peoples whose language is Semitic, including the Hebrews, Arabs, Assyrians, Phoenicians, Babylonians, etc.; not, specifically, a Jew.
This definition didn’t seem to please Avraham very much. I looked up “anti-Semitic”:
an’ti-Sem’it’ic, a. 1. having or showing prejudice against Jews: disliking or fearing Jews and Jewish things.
2. discriminating against or persecuting Jews.
3. of or caused by anti-Semitism.
Here was a definition that Avraham accepted. As for myself, I found it strange that while “Semite” designates a wide range of peoples (as I had so believed), “anti-Semitic”—according to an official dictionary definition—has an exclusively Jewish connotation.
I’d thought “anti-Semitic” was an exclusively racial term: I didn’t realize it could be ideological as well.
18 / anti-semanticism
When I told my friend Josh about my conundrum concerning “Semite” and “anti-Semitic,” he said I still hadn’t got it right— that “anti-Semitic” was not an ideological as well as a racial term: it was only an ideological term.
According to Webster’s New Twentieth Century Dictionary of the English Language /Unabridged!/Second Edition:
an’ti-Sem’i-tism, n. 1. prejudice against Jews; dislike or fear of Jews and Jewish things.
2. discrimination against or persecution of Jews.
So, is it a racial or an ideological term?
I guess that depends on how you define “Jew.”
Jew (ju), n. [ME, Jew, Giw; OFr. jeu, geu; L. Judaeus; Gr. loudaios, a Jew, an inhabitant of Judea, from Ioudaia, Judea, from Heb. yehudhah, Judah.]
1. a person descended, or regarded as descended, from the ancient Hebrews of Biblical times.
2. a person whose religion is Judaism.
Ju’da-ism, n. [LL. Judaismus; Gr. Ioudaismos, Judaism, from Ioudaizein, to Judaize.]
1. the Jewish religion.
2. conformity to the Jewish rites, ceremonies, customs, rules, etc.
Well, “a person descended, or regarded as descended, from the ancient Hebrews of Biblical times” sure sounds like a racial term to me.
But is it? Just what exactly does “racial” mean?
ra’cial (=shal), a. of or pertaining to race, family, or descent; of or pertaining to the races of mankind; ethnological.
race, n. [Fr. race; It. razza, race, family; perh. from L. generatio, a begetting.]
1. (a) any of the major biological divisions of mankind, distinguished by color and texture of hair, color of skin and eyes, stature, bodily proportions, etc.: many ethnologists now consider that there are only three primary divisions, the Caucasian (loosely, white race), Negroid (loosely, black race), and Mongoloid (loosely, yellow race), each with various subdivisions: the term has acquired so many unscientific connotations that in this sense it is often replaced in scientific usage by ethnic stock or group; (b) mankind.
2. a population that differs from others in the relative frequency of some gene or genes: a modern scientific use.
3. any geographical, national, or tribal ethnic grouping.
4. (a) the state of belonging to a certain ethnic stock, group, etc.; (b) the qualities, traits, etc. belonging, or supposedly belonging, to such a division.
5. any group of people having the same activities, habits, ideas, etc.; as, the race of dramatists.
6. a group of people having a common parentage; the descendants collectively of a common ancestry; family; clan.
7. (a) a breed; a stock; a large division or class, the species and genera of which are traceable to a common origin; (b) in zoology, a subspecies or variety.
8. characteristic strength or flavor indicating the origin of some natural product; as, the race of a wine. [Rare.]
Syn.—breed, family, nation, people, tribe.
According to the Encyclopaedia Judaica (second printing, 1973), “anti-Semitism” is a term coined in 1879 by “the German agitator Wilhelm Marr to designate the then-current anti-Jewish campaigns in Europe.” The encyclopedia goes on to say: “It is often qualified by an adjective denoting the specific cause, nature, or rationale of a manifestation of anti-Jewish passion or action: e.g., ‘economic anti-Semitism,’ ‘social anti-Semitism,’ ‘racial anti-Semitism,’ etc.”
As far as the word “Jew” is concerned, according to the encyclopedia it was “originally applied to members of the tribe of Judah ...” After the destruction of the Northern Kingdom of Israel the term lost its specific connection with the Southern Kingdom (Judah) and first began to be used as a religious term.
With Christianity began a series of negative connotations for the word and, as the encyclopedia points out, “Many attempts to root out these derogatory meanings by having the dictionary definitions revised have been made in the United States, England, and Europe but have, however, met with little success, since the problem is not one of ill-will on the part of the lexicographers, but rather of semantics and popular usage.”
The Encyclopaedia Judaica goes on to state that the definition of “Jew” is very controversial, with the rabbinical courts standing behind the “Halakhic Definition”:
A child born of Jewish parents or a convert to Judaism are considered Jews, possessing both the sanctity of the Jewish people (Ex. 19:6) and the obligation to observe the commandments. The status
of children from intermarriage is designated by the Mishnah and Talmud as following that of the mother (Kid. 3:12; Yad, Issurei Bi’ah 15:3-4). “The son by an Israelite woman is called thy son, but thy son by a heathen woman is not called thy son” (Kid. 68b). A child born of a non-Jewish mother must therefore undergo ritual conversion, even though his father is Jewish. The halakhic definition was accepted for centuries. However, in modern times and particularly since the establishment of the State of Israel, the definition has been more and more questioned. The act of conversion is of course a religious act and thus any candidate for conversion is required to subscribe to the principles of Judaism and practice all the mitzvot, something which the majority of born Jews do not do. Thus it is felt in wide circles that identification with the Jewish people and its fate should constitute sufficient grounds for being considered a Jew, particularly since during the Holocaust tens—even hundreds—of thousands of Jews, who were not halakhically so considered, perished because the Nazis had considered them Jews . . .
On my way to the store one afternoon I passed a man wearing a yarmulke and said, “Shalom.” He answered me and then asked if I was Jewish.
I cycled back around to him, explaining that I wasn’t, and that I actually only knew a few Hebrew words. He said he was here in Los Angeles to study with a certain rabbi in order to “squeeze knowledge out of him, like juice from an orange.” During our brief talk, the question of the definition of “Jew”came up, and when he said it was not a racial term, I pointed out to him some of the definitions of the word “race.” He conceded my point and said, “It’s all right to call the Jews a ‘race,’ as long as you don’t say it with any negative connotations.”
I nodded my head.
Gotcha.
19 / the hat
Now that I had some money, I thought it might be time to get one of those black dress hats the boys wore on special occasions. I drove around the Fairfax area and asked at a few clothes shops if they had any hats and was surprised to learn that you could get them at Atara’s, the store where I’d bought my tzitzis and yarmulke. They were kept in the very back of the store, behind the books.
While I was waiting for the old man who ran the store to finish helping an Orthodox Jewish boy I didn’t recognize, a young man with a beard came in, the guy who’d read my story the other day and told me I had a good prose style.
“I wrote about you,” I told him, “and what you said.”
“You write down the compliments people tell you?” he asked.
And then he asked me what I was doing there, and I told him I was looking for some books. I was hesitant somehow to tell him I was looking for a hat. The old man overheard part of our conversation and was surprised to learn that I wasn’t Jewish. I was wondering if he might then tell me I couldn’t buy the hat, or to get out of his store. I felt bad because, while I wasn’t actually saying I was Jewish (even though I had a week or so of stubble and was wearing a yarmulke), I didn’t want to have a conflict of ideology with an old man. And this bearded guy was taking advantage of my precarious position.
“So why do you have all this interest in Jewish things?”
I reached in my pocket and pulled out a quarter. “See this,” I said, and pointed to the words next to the embossed portrait of George Washington: “ ‘In God We Trust’—those words are on my money. All the money I make, every penny I spend, has those words on it: ‘In God We Trust.’ The Jews invented God—how could I not be interested in Jewish things?”
“The Jews didn’t invent God,” the bearded young man said, rather hesitantly.
I shrugged my shoulders: Whatever you say—it’s all semantics.
We looked at one another for a long moment, and then the bearded young man said he had to go and we wished each other a good day.
After the old man had finished waiting on the Orthodox boy, he helped me pick out a hat, size 73/4, which cost $55. It was very cool. I also bought a couple of books, Hasidic Tales of the Holocaust and a prayer book, The Artscroll Weekday Siddur. He didn’t seem to be bothered by the fact that I wasn’t Jewish, and I wondered if that was because the relationship between a merchant and his customer is more primal than that between a Jew and a Gentile.
It was almost three-thirty when I got home, too hot to justifiably get into the full outfit with my new hat, so I went outside and sunned a little. My landlord stopped by and I told him that two months’ rent was in the mail, and then I just had to show him my hat. George is Jewish and speaks with a Hungarian accent, but he is also an atheistic heterosexual Republican, and I thought he might be amused at this new demonstration of my cause. I went into the apartment and put the hat on. George was impressed and we talked for a while. He said he was doing some large painting about the Holocaust, and so I showed him The Auschwitz Album. He went through it carefully, and although he was torn between wanting to look at it and not wanting to, I think he was a bit disappointed that there weren’t any conventional atrocity pictures.
When George had finished looking at the book he went to check on one of the empty apartments. It was getting on in the afternoon and, what with the overcast weather we’d been having—like June although it was still May—I felt it wouldn’t be that inappropriate if I went ahead and got all dressed up. I put on my black pants, coat, and shoes, the tzitzis under a white shirt, and my new dress hat and checked myself out in the mirror: yes indeed—all dressed up and with my scruffy-looking face I looked like a real Jew. I moved my chair into the shade and sat down with my newspapers.
When George came back from his inspection of the apartment, he was impressed by my appearance and said he was sure I was going to become Jewish. We talked for a few minutes and he told me a story about the Jews I’d never heard before: the reason lineal descent is on the mother’s side is because, in the centuries after the fall of the Temple, so many Jewish women were raped by marauding bands that it became impossible to determine patriarchal descent and it was determined that if the line had continued through the father’s side, there soon would have been no more Jews.
I asked George what he felt about the possibility of my actually telling people I was Jewish. He said he thought I should. I told him I wasn’t really comfortable lying, but was wondering if this was something I should do to follow through on this project of mine. (An imagined bit of repartee: “Are you Jewish?” “No, it’s just a stage I’m going through.”)
After George left I noticed that there were some boys in Avi’s room looking out at me. I stood up and held out my arms to show off my outfit. “Good?”
No response.
Several minutes later two boys came over, Avi’s friend the Nondescript Boy and a bespectacled fellow who told me his name was Jerry, but whose real name was Vladimir. He was from the Ukraine and said he couldn’t give out his last name for security reasons. I didn’t care.
The Nondescript Boy sat opposite me and we discussed morals, the concept of good and bad, and the value of life and property. I expounded:
“When I first came to Hollywood I had a roommate who threw my diaries away one day. I don’t think he meant to, I think it was just an act of extreme inconsideration. But those diaries were the most important things I had in the world. Every other material thing I owned could be replaced, but all those pages, all those notebooks I’d written in as a teenager—those things could never be replaced. And I felt really bad, but I made up my mind then that I was never going to be attached to material objects again. So, if you took all my stuff—yes, I guess I’d feel bad, but I’d feel even worse that I felt bad at all. ‘Property is theft’—that’s what the anarchists used to say.”
“So do you think it’s a sin to kill someone?”
“Of course not. I don’t think there’s any such thing as ‘sin.’ If you think there’s sin, then there’s sin for you, but it’s a completely subjective experience.”
“You don’t think it’s bad to kill someone?”
“No. Not unless you think so. Then it is. It’s bad for the per
son getting killed if they want to be alive, but it’s not bad for the person doing the killing unless they think it’s bad.”
“So why don’t you kill someone?”
“I don’t want to kill anyone,” I said. “Besides, I don’t want to have to deal with the law and that whole process of courts and jail and all that stuff.”
“What if one of the boys wanted to kill you, you don’t think that would be a bad thing?”
“It would be bad for me if I wanted to be alive, but it wouldn’t be bad for him unless he thought it was bad,” I reiterated. “But you know what really interests me? If one of the boys tried to kill me, would he think he was doing it just for himself, or would he think he was doing God’s will?”
I’m not sure if they thought this was too theoretical or not, but they didn’t answer me. The Nondescript Boy brought the conversation back to tangibles. “Would you feel bad if I put this cigarette out on your pants?”
I shrugged. He moved his hand with the burning stub toward me, and I moved my leg away.
I was a little embarrassed, and they smiled at this victory.
The Nondescript Boy brought up my homosexuality. He’d obviously told the Russian guy about me and was showing me off, as it were. I dutifully went through my paces. Vladimir asked me if I found his friend attractive. I said I didn’t.
“I think he’s attractive,” I said, and I motioned toward Avi, who was standing in his window, looking over at us.
“It’s Avi’s birthday today.”
“Really?” I brought the date into focus. “May twenty-third.”
The Boys Across the Street Page 13