I was born into a Jewish family that practiced Judaism. We practiced but didn’t always succeed. Here’s what it means to be a Jew.…

3 Jewish flavors

Jews come in 3 popular flavors: Orthodox, Conservative, and Reform:

Since Reform Jews ignore the rituals, Orthodox Jews accuse Reform Jews of being negligent and non-religious. Since Orthodox Jews perform all the old rituals, Reform Jews accuse Orthodox Jews of being hopelessly old-fashioned and out of touch with modern needs.

But although Orthodox Jews consider Reform Jews to be misguided, and vice versa, they respect each other. Jews don’t despise each other the way Protestants and Catholics do in Northern Ireland. Christians have wars about religion; Jews don’t. Jews are quiet people.

Do Jews fight?

Although Jews are quiet, they aren’t humble. They don’t agree with Jesus’s recommendation to “turn the other cheek.”

If a Jew gets into a fight, he’ll run away or defend himself or try to talk the opponent out of fighting. But he won’t let himself be turned into a punching bag. Jews don’t believe in self-sacrifice.

Jews try to avoid fights just if they’re “typical” Jews, not commanders of the Israeli military, who are paid to love war. It’s amazing how a paycheck can change one’s sense of values.

Life after death

Christians worry about whether they’ll go to Hell instead of Heaven. Jews ignore the issue of “life after death,” since the Old Testament hardly even mentions the issue.

Once a year, at the Yom Kippur holiday, they pray that God will put their names in His white book instead of His black book. But they believe that if they’re good, their rewards will occur relatively soon, rather than in the hereafter.

According to Christian doctrine, all non-Christians are sinners: they can’t go to Heaven and must instead go to Hell or at least “purgatory” (which is a nightmare that resembles a Howard Johnson’s restaurant on the lonely road from Hell to Heaven). Jews, by contrast, believe non-Jews can get to Heaven and that Jewish rituals just help Jews get an “in” with God. (“Hey, guys, we Jews are God’s chosen people. If you join us, we’ll help you get into Heaven; we’ve got contacts up there. We’ll help you reach the Top through our old ‘Jew-boy’ network. Just follow our rituals — come to our synagogue and bow down at the right times — and do good deeds; then we’ll make sure God treats you right.”)

Missionary position

Since Christians think all non-Christians are sinners, Christians hire missionaries to turn non-Christians into Christians. That’s why Christianity is called a missionary religion.

But Judaism’s not a missionary religion: Jews don’t hire missionaries to turn the rest of the world into Jews. That’s because Jews consider Judaism to be an aid but not a necessity for getting into Heaven.

To be a good Jew, you must perform many Jewish rituals. If a Christian wants to convert and become a Jew, the rabbi is required to warn the Christian how difficult Judaism is. In fact, according to Jewish law, the rabbi is required to try 3 times to dissuade the Christian from converting. If, after the 3 attempts to dissuade the Christian, the Christian still wants to become a Jew, the rabbi knows the Christian is serious, so the rabbi must help the Christian complete the conversion process, by teaching the Christian about Judaism, until the Christian can pass a test proving the Christian understands Judaism thoroughly — more thoroughly than the average Jew!

Bar Mitzvah

When a Jewish boy turns 13, he undergoes a ceremony called Bar Mitzvah (Hebrew for “son of the commandments”). In the ceremony, he agrees to observe all the Jewish commandments forever. If he breaks any commandments after making that agreement, he’s considered a jerk.

Since the Bar Mitzvah ceremony marks the kid’s acceptance of adult responsibilities, it’s become a manhood ritual, accompanied by lavish feasts & presents.

Even if a Jewish boy skips the Bar Mitzvah ceremony, Jewish law still considers him an “adult responsible for his actions” when he turns 13 (unlike the U.S. constitution, which considers him “just a kid” until he turns 18 or 21).

Do Jews belittle women?

Judaism is a male religion. In traditional Orthodox Judaism, the men go to the synagogue while the women stay home to cook. Modern Orthodox synagogues let women enter but force the women to sit in the back and to the side, in the “ladies” section. Some women feel as if they were blacks being forced to sit in the back of a bus.

To hold an Orthodox Jewish ceremony, you must gather at least 10 men: women don’t count. That’s because in the traditional Jewish family, the man is supposed to take care of problems with God, while the woman takes care of problems with kids.

On Friday night, the woman is supposed to light candles. The Talmud (the book of Jewish law) says that since a woman threw the world into darkness (when Eve let herself be tempted by the snake), women should atone by bringing the world back to light.

In Jewish hierarchy, women are lower than men. For example, every morning when an Orthodox man wakes up, he’s supposed to say this prayer:

In a feminist magazine, a Jewish woman wrote an article on how to be an Orthodox Jew and a feminist simultaneously. She found the assignment difficult!

Modern Orthodox Jewish men have invented a new excuse for that discrimination: those men say they admire women so much that they give women the privilege of not having to go to synagogue.

Conservative and Reform Judaism try to let women get more involved. For example, Conservative and Reform Jews have created a ceremony called Bas Mitzvah or Bat Mitzvah (depending on your accent), which means “daughter of the commandments.” In the Bas Mitzvah ceremony, the 13-year-old girl pretends she’s a boy and goes through the Bar Mitzvah ceremony. That ceremony financially strains the girl’s parents, who must throw a huge party for the 13-year-old girl but keep saving money in case she wants a wedding party 5 years later.

Since girls mature faster than boys, girls may get Bas Mitzvahed when they turn 12. Yes, Jewish law considers a girl to be an “adult” when she turns 12, though a boy at that age is still considered “just an irresponsible kid.”

Holidays

In the Christian calendar, each day begins at midnight. For example, Thursday begins at Wednesday’s end, at midnight.

The Jewish calendar begins each day at sunset instead, so a Jewish “day” consists of evening followed by night followed by morning followed by afternoon. That’s because the Book of Genesis says that when God created the universe “It was evening and then it was morning, one day.” So the Jewish Thursday begins at the end of Wednesday (at sunset) and continues until the end of Thursday (at sunset).

Sabbaths Jewish tradition says the most important holiday is the Sabbath (Saturday). Jews start celebrating it Friday’s end (at sunset) and keep celebrating it until Saturday’s end (at sunset).

During the Sabbath, Jews go to the synagogue to pray — especially in the evening, after Friday’s sunset, during what Christians call “Friday night.” So on “Friday night,” while Christians throw wild parties, Jews are stuck in the synagogue, praying. What a drag!

During the Sabbath, Jews aren’t allowed to work.

Yom Kippur (which means “Day of Atonement”) is a special holiday, nicknamed “The Sabbath of Sabbaths.”

Lesser holidays Much less important than Yom Kippur and the Sabbaths is Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year’s celebration. Lower than all them are the other holidays, such as Passover, Purim, Succoth, and Chanuka. (To correctly pronounce the “Ch” in “Chanuka,” say an “H” while gargling.)

What a drab religion, to have the biggest holiday, Yom Kippur, be a day of fasting! And what a boring religion, to have the 52 other important holidays all be Saturdays that are identical to each other and all prohibit you from driving your car and even from phoning your friends! Of all the world’s popular religions, Judaism is the most morose.

Christmas competition When American Jews saw their Christian neighbors enjoy Christmas and throw wild Christmas parties, they got jealous and began placing an artificial emphasis on Chanuka, since Chanuka (like Christmas) involves giving presents and comes at the same time of the year. But according to old Jewish tradition, Chanuka is supposed to be a minor holiday, because it just commemorates a minor favor that God’ gave a group of Jewish warriors: He let the oil in their synagogue burn for 8 days. A little tale about high-grade oil can’t compete with Christmas and Easter, the two Christian holidays that marked the beginning of all Christianity!

During Christmas, Jews feel lonely at being left out of Christmas parties and secretly wish they were Christian. Reform Jews often buy Christmas trees but tell their Orthodox friends that the trees are just “Chanuka bushes.” While Christians preach love at Christmas, and say “keep the Christ in Christmas,” Jews just say “keep the Ch in Chanuka.” While Christians give gigantic presents on Christmas day, Jews must be stingy and give tiny presents instead, because Chanuka lasts 8 days and you’re supposed to give each person 8 presents: one each day! For example, if there are 3 other members of your family, you must buy a total of 24 presents for them!

Celebrate twice In ancient Israel, the Jews weren’t sure which days the holidays fell on, because the calendar depended on the moon’s phases. On a cloudy night it was hard to tell whether the moon was full. So to be sure they celebrated Rosh Hashanah (the Jewish New Year) on the right day, they celebrated it twice.

The Jews who lived outside Israel were even less certain about the holidays, since they had to wait for a messenger to travel from Israel and tell them what the Israeli judges had decided about whether the moon was indeed full yet. So outside Israel, to be safe, Jews celebrated most holidays for an extra day.

For example, if Passover was theoretically supposed to fall on a Thursday, the Jews outside Israel celebrated it on both Thursday and Friday, just to be sure they didn’t miss the right day. They performed the entire Passover ceremony on Thursday, and then repeated the entire ceremony again, word for word, on Friday, while trying not to snore.

The main exceptions were Yom Kippur (no Jew would stand for fasting two days in a row!), the Sabbath (no Jew could afford to relax more than 1 day per week), and Chanuka (8 days is enough already).

Now Orthodox and Conservative Jews demand two days off from work for each holiday. Reform Jews have cut back to just one day per holiday. So Orthodox and Conservative Jews seem twice as religious as Reform! But actually, the typical Orthodox or Conservative Jew doesn’t go to synagogue on the holiday’s second day: instead, he hides from the rabbi and goes fishing!

What Jews eat

In the Old Testament, God gave 613 commandments. He made Moses put the 10 most important ones onto a tablet but warned that the other 603 must be obeyed also. Several commandments concern food.

No meat with milk God said:

God felt so strongly about that commandment that he said it twice: he said it in the Book of Exodus (23:19) and also in the Book of Deuteronomy (14:21).

Apparently, God thought it’s okay to eat a goat and drink milk, but boiling a goat in the milk of its own mother is gross. The Jewish God always insisted on good manners! You must eat the goat before drink the milk, or vice versa.

That law can be hard to enforce: if you go to a supermarket to buy goat meat and some goat’s milk (true delicacies!), how can you be sure that the goat who produced the milk isn’t, by some weird coincidence, the mother of the goat you’re eating? You’d be upset if, while drinking the milk, you nibble at the goat meat and suddenly God stabs you with a lightening bolt. It could ruin your whole day.

To protect against lightening bolts, Jews adopt a simple insurance policy: never eat any kind of meat with any kind of milk. Jews won’t even eat chicken with cheese, even though it’s highly unlikely that the chicken’s mother produced the cheese. In fact, if the chicken’s mother did produce the cheese, she’d be a miracle, like the Easter bunny who lays eggs. But Jews still consider it possible that the cheese might have come from the chicken’s mother, so Jews refuse to eat cheese with chicken.

“Never eat any kind of meat with any kind of milk” has become a Jewish law, but Jewish lawyers (who are very clever) noticed the law contains a vague word: “with.”

No pork Besides the prohibition against eating meat with milk, the Bible contains other laws about meat. For example, it prohibits eating meat from any animal that has a “cloven hoof.” Since the most popular animal that has a “cloven hoof” is the pig, Jews can’t eat pork.

Although beef is okay, the cow must be killed in a special way — by slitting the cow’s neck while saying a blessing. The cow probably doesn’t appreciate the blessing, but God does.

No shellfish The Book of Deuteronomy (in chapter 14, verses 9 and 10) lets you eat a fish just if it has fins and scales. So you can’t eat shellfish: Jews can’t eat shrimp or lobsters or clams.

What about swordfish and sturgeon, which have fins and scales for just part of their lives? Orthodox Jews refuse to eat them, but Conservative and Reform Jews indulge.

4 categories All those rules about food are called the dietary laws or kosher laws. (Kosher is the Hebrew word for “clean.”)

Jews view all food as falling into 4 categories:

Acceptable meat is called kosher meat. Unacceptable meat and shellfish are called trayfe, which is the Hebrew word for “dirty.” Milk products (such as milk, cream, butter, and cheese) are all called dairy and can’t be had with meat. Neutral foods (such as grains and fruits) can be eaten with either meat or milk and are called pareve.

Symbols When I was a kid, the symbol for “kosher” was a tiny K in a circle, and the symbol for “pareve” was a tiny P in a circle. For example, if you went into a supermarket and bought a package of Jewish meat, you’d see a circled K on the package; and if you bought a package or ordinary cereal (such as Kellogg’s), you’d see a circled P on the package, which meant that you could eat the cereal even if you were Jewish.

Now the circled K has been switched to an uncircled K, and pareve foods have a K instead of a P (because the typical stupid Jew doesn’t know what “pareve” means). In short, the K today simply means “this product contains nothing that would discourage a Jew.”

The K costs money. For each box of cereal that Kellogg sells, Kellogg must pay a rabbi, who inspects the cereal to make sure it’s manufactured in a clean and unsurprising way. Paying the rabbi is like paying the Mafia: “If you don’t pay me, I’ll make sure the sales of your cereal to Jews will decline.”

Instead of a K, you’ll sometimes see a circled U, which means that the food is approved by the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations.

Substitute foods Since Jews can’t eat pork, Jewish hot dogs are all-beef. Since Jews can’t eat bacon (which is made from pork), Jews eat “imitation bacon” made from soy. Since Jews can’t have meat with milk, Jews avoid milk products: they use margarine instead of butter and use “non-dairy creamer” instead of real cream in their coffee.

Obey all that? Orthodox Jews obey all those rules all the time. Reform Jews usually ignore all those rules.

Conservative Jews adopt a creative compromise: they obey all those rules at home (they “keep a kosher home”), but ignore all those rules when they visit restaurants. So at restaurants, they “pig out” and eat everything they’re not allowed to eat at home.

Chinese restaurants Conservative Jews love to eat at Chinese restaurants, because Chinese restaurants serve everything that Conservative Jews can’t eat at home, such as pork, shrimp, and lobster. Here’s another reason why Jews love Chinese restaurants: those restaurants, like Jewish culture itself, are ethnic adventures.

The fastest way to find a Jewish community is to look for a Chinese restaurant. In the typical Chinese restaurant, most of the customers are Jews!

To compliment a Jew, say “You’re like sweet-and-sour pork, but without the sour and without the pork: you’re just sweet!”

Jewish intellectuals

Judaism’s an intellectual religion.

To become a good Jew, you must study many rituals. For example, to prepare for Bar Mitzvah, the Jewish boy must undergo many months of training.

Judaism is based on the Old Testament, in which Abraham, Moses, and the rest of the gang continuously debate with God.

Reading the Old Testament is like reading the record of a legal trial: in the end, God wins, and the Jews agree to obey His 613 commandments, but the interpretation of His commandments fills another set of books, called the Talmud, written by Jewish religious lawyers. In the Talmud and later writings, Jews analyze what God means: Judaism is an analytical religion. Studying Judaism is good preparation for being a lawyer. Several American law schools offer courses in Jewish law.

Maimonides One of the wisest Jewish scholars was Maimonides, a Jewish doctor who was born in 1135 A.D. and lived in Spain during the Middle Ages. He was interested in medicine but also Jewish law: his Jewish mom was proud that he was a doctor and a lawyer! He put the finishing touches on the Talmud (the book of Jewish law). He also developed the ladder of charity, which went far beyond anything ever proposed by his predecessors (such as Jesus).

Maimonides’ ladder of charity had 8 steps. At the lowest step, the rich man gave money to the poor man in an obvious way: the rich man knew who the poor man was, and the poor man knew who the rich man was and felt embarrassed. At higher rungs, the charity was given anonymously, so that the poor man didn’t know who the rich man was, the rich man didn’t know who the poor man was, and the rich man couldn’t “gloat” over the poor man. But the very highest step on Maimonides’ ladder involves no money: instead, the rich man spends time with the poor man and trains him in a new skill, so the poor man can get a job and won’t need charity anymore!

Maimonides wasn’t the only person to think of that. For example, the Japanese have an old saying that summarizes Maimonides’ ladder; the Japanese say: “If you give a man a fish, he’ll eat for a day; but if you give a man a rod instead, he’ll eat for a year.” Actually, the Japanese say it using Japanese grammar, like this: “Give man fish, eats for day; give man rod, eats for year.”

Notice that Jews, like Maimonides, worry about climbing social ladders, whereas the Japanese say “hell with society” and prefer to simply eat fish.

No blind faith Although Christianity encourages “blind faith,” Judaism does not. Judaism encourages thought more than faith. Jews are told to think about how to interpret God’s law.

No Pope Catholics are told the Pope is infallible — always right — and to obey the Pope’s command without questioning. Jews have no Pope. The word rabbi means just “teacher”: a rabbi is just a scholar who’s studied religion thoroughly but who, like any other human, might be wrong. It’s okay for a Jew to argue with his rabbi.

Unlike a Catholic priest, a rabbi has no mystical powers. You don’t need a rabbi to perform a Jewish service: you need just 10 ordinary men, and one of the men must agree to act as the leader.

You need a rabbi’s signature just on legal documents, such as marriage contracts and divorce papers. So a rabbi is just a bright guy who’s also empowered to act as a notary public.

Study hard Jewish parents encourage their kids to study hard: finish college then get advanced degrees.

Top 5 The Western world’s top 5 intellectuals were all born Jewish. Each explained everything his own way:

What Jews think of Jesus

Jesus was Jewish. His Last Supper was a Passover ceremony.

Jesus was a teacher (“rabbi”) who was more humane than most other rabbis. He criticized the other rabbis for being greedy, bureaucratic, and pigheaded — and was right.

According to Jewish tradition, a Messiah would come. Many nuts claimed to be the Messiah. Jesus, too, claimed to be the Messiah. Other Jewish rabbis believed that Jesus, too, was a nut.

Jesus’s most important contribution to our culture was to emphasize the importance of love and forgiveness. He turned away from the harsher ethics espoused by other rabbis.

Modern Jews think Jesus was a great teacher but still just a human whose advice, though quite wise, could still be further improved and refined.

Jewish money

Jews have been stereotyped as being “money-grubbers.” The connection between Jews and money has a long history that was actually the fault of the Christians!

Jews still view money differently than Christians. Christians view money as something to spend immediately and enjoy; Jews view money as something to put in the bank to protect against impending disaster. When Christians think of money, they think of the joy of spending it immediately; when Jews think of money, they think of the disasters money protects against. When a Christian looks at his piggy bank and sees it’s half full, the Christian is happy about the thought of spending the half-full piggy bank immediately; when a Jew looks at a half-full piggy bank, the Jew sees it’s half empty, and worries that a disaster might strike for which a half-full piggy bank won’t be enough.

Jewish merchants tend to be long-nosed but also hard-nosed. Shakespeare exaggerated when he said the Jewish merchant Shylock demanded a pound of flesh, but even now Jewish merchants often tell their complaining customers, “You don’t like it? So sue me!” That’s why Jews tell this tale:

Jews are worrywarts

Jews always worry. They worry whether the meat they’re eating is kosher. They worry that they don’t have enough money in the bank. They worry that the Christians and Arabs will persecute Jews again or at least give Jews a hard time.

Those worries extend to the rest of life also. Jewish mothers worry that their sons won’t become famous doctors; they also worry that their daughters will marry dumb, brutal Christians. During the 1960’s, Jewish students worried about Viet Nam; in fact, the whole antiwar movement was begun by 2 groups of left-wing agitators (the Students for a Democrat Society and the Weathermen), who were all Jewish! If it weren’t for those Jewish students, we’d probably still be in Viet Nam!

Yes, Jewish men always worry: they’re never happy-go-lucky. That’s why Jews don’t drink much beer: Jews can’t adopt the ho-ho-ho attitude that beer-drinking requires. Instead, Jews prefer wine, which is quieter and more morose.

All Jewish culture is summarized in the personality of one man: Woody Allen. In his films, Woody spends most of his time worrying. In his earliest films, he worried about household appliances taking over his life. In later films, he worried about whether Diane Keeton loved him. In his most recent films, he worries about problems that are more profound.

When Jewish men (like Woody Allen) try to date, they continually worry that their girlfriends will reject them. Jewish men’s fear of women continues even after the men are married.

Yes, Jewish men are always pessimistic about sexual relationships — unlike Italian men, who are always optimistic. The contrast between Jewish men and Italian men is the subject of this famous joke:

Jews like Soft & Dry deodorant because of Soft & Dry’s ad:

Since Jews are always nervous, they’re always deodorizing.

Jews worry about illness. Here’s another tale from the Internet about desires and worries:

Yiddish humor

German Jews invented a dialect of German called Jewish German or Yiddish German. It used German grammar and vocabulary but borrowed some words from Hebrew. The entire Yiddish German language was written using Hebrew characters instead of the German alphabet. As the popularity of Yiddish grew, it spread to nearby countries (such as Hungary and Russia) and borrowed words from Slavic and Russian languages.

The Yiddish language developed its own brand of humor, which still gives smiles to Jews all over the world. One of the most popular techniques of Yiddish humor is to answer a question by giving a counter-question. For example, suppose a Yiddish Jew is trying to quit smoking, but hasn’t succeeded yet. If somebody asks him “Are you still smoking?” he’d reply, “Do fish swim?” or “Is the Pope Catholic?” If somebody else asks him “Have you stopped smoking?” he’d reply, “Can a fish climb a tree?” or “Is the Pope Jewish?”

Schmuck Though Yiddish is based on German and Hebrew, cynics call it a perversion of German and Hebrew. For example, consider the German word schmuck, which means “ornament.”

Schlemiel The most popular pair of Yiddish words is “schlemiel & schlimazel.” Both words refer to unlucky guys. A schlemiel is a bungler who causes many disasters (accidentally); a schlimazel is a guy who’s continually the victim of disasters (caused by schlemiels).

For example, suppose two waiters accidentally spill hot soup onto your lap — 5 times each. The waiters are schlemiels; you’re a schlimazel.

Goy The Yiddish language divides the world into two kinds of people: those who are Jewish, and those who are not. A non-Jew is called a goy.

A typical Yiddish war-cry among Jewish mothers is:

In Yiddish life, everything is classified as being either Jewish or goy. If an activity is mindless — totally devoid of cleverness or originality — it’s called goy, because it requires no clever strategy.

Aha Jews love to say “Aha!” (To say it properly, say the “A” softly in a bass pitch, and then say the “ha” loudly in a treble pitch.)

This story shows the meaning of Aha!

Hebonics After some schools started considering “urban black street talk” to be a foreign language called “Ebonics,” an Internet report joked that the New York City Board of Education declared “Hebonics” (Jewish English) to be a foreign language also.

In Hebonics, each question is answered with another question that implies a complaint:

Instead of beginning the sentence with a subject, the subject is moved to the sentence’s end, with the subject’s pronoun put at the beginning.

For sarcasm, “shm” is put in front: “mountains” becomes “shmountains”; “turtle” becomes “shmurtle.” The two words are then used together:

Here’s how to reply Hebonically:

Jewish women

Jewish women look like Italian women.

In Boston’s red-light district, Italian hookers complain that guys mistake them for being Jewish. That’s partly because Italian hookers, like some Jewish women, love money.

JAPs Most Jewish women are wonderful, but a few are obnoxious. A young Jewish woman who loves money obnoxiously is called a Jewish-American Princess or JAP.

At Jewish parties, scared Jewish guys tell each other, “Let’s get out of here! The JAPs are coming!” They aren’t talking about the Japanese.

Such Jewish women — JAPs —love to wear a long dress having a long slit up the side. I learned that lesson the hard way, by embarrassment:

Those Jewish women decorate their homes with art that’s abstract and gaudy. Though my own family is Jewish, we can’t help calling that art style “kike modern.”

Such Jewish women wear lots of jewelry. That tradition began centuries ago, when Jews were chased from country to country, and the only valuables small enough to carry easily were jewels.

Jewish girls have a reputation for being frigid. The joke about how the typical Jewish man begs for 3 hours to get the girl to say yes is typical of the way Jewish girls like to be treated.

Several other jokes poke fun at the frigidity of Jewish-American Princesses (JAPs):

JAPs refuse to do housework:

JAPs are materialistic:

You can find more such jokes in Truly Tasteless Jokes (by Blanche Knott) and Utterly Gross Jokes (by Julius Alvin).

Jewish mothers No matter how good a Jewish boy is, his mother will nag him to do even better, even after he’s become an adult. According to the Internet, here’s what celebrities’ mothers would say, if they were all Jewish:

Relating to kids

Here’s another story, passed to me by my crazy Jewish relative....

How Jews treat blacks

Blacks and Jews can be friends — or enemies.

When I was a kid, my teacher showed my class a documentary movie called The Poor Pay More.

But the first national political organization for blacks — the NAACP — received most of its donations from Jews. That’s because Jews — especially Jewish liberals living in rich suburbs — believe strongly in fairness, equality, and liberty for all.

The history of Jews resembles the history of blacks. Both groups are minorities. Both groups have been persecuted for many centuries.

Jews in the town of Brookline, Massachusetts, get together with blacks and celebrate Passover together, since the Passover ceremony, which commemorate the escape (by Moses and his Jews) from slavery has meaning for both Jews and blacks.

Some blacks demand to be called “Afro-American.” I guess we “Jews” with big noses should act similarly and demand to be called “Nostril-American” — or should we go Latin and opt for “Rhino-Caucasian”?

In New York City’s Harlem, you can find a group of black Jews.

Jews everywhere

Just 2% of Americans are Jews, but 35% of Ivy League students are Jews.

“Irving Berlin” (whose real name was Israel Baline) was the American Jew who composed subversive songs secularizing Christian holidays: