On Intolerance

by Aron Trauring

A few months ago I came across this article in the New York Times. It really annoyed me. True Schmemann doesn't endorse political correctness, but he still argues tolerance is a "critical virtue." I strongly disagree.

The idea has been percolating in the back of my head, waiting for the appropriate moment to come out. Reading the New York Times in bed this morning, it all came to a boil - I needed to write something in defense of intolerance.

First, I was awoken rudely at 8:30 by the phone ringing - my son's friend. If it's one thing I can't tolerate is being woken up early in the morning (for me that means pre-10:00), especially by the phone ringing and especially on a weekend morning. Of course, I couldn't get back to sleep and I started reading the paper. There were not one, but two articles about the upcoming Mel Gibson movie about Jesus - The Passion, and the controversy it is stirring. This started me thinking about Judeophobia (I won't call it anti-semitism because that relates to all semites, Arabs as well).

Not too long ago I was having a conversation with Sister Bernadette about a Jewish acquaintance of mine who is quite cheap. So Sister B. says "Yes, what's this with Jews and being cheap?" I was somewhat taken aback by this comment. Not that I was at all offended. The good Sister is as close as any person I know to sainthood, and she doesn't have a malicious bone in her body. But it's been a long time since I heard that particular stereotype, so I had basically forgotten about it. It took me back to my childhood. I must have been 9, sitting in the train station in Long Beach (a resort on Long Island where we used to spend our summers). Growing up in an Orthodox Jewish family, I used to walk around in a skull cap. All of a sudden, a couple of teen age girls come up to me and threw some pennies at me. "Here, Jew, you can probably use these," one said, and the two girls ran off laughing.

I was more puzzled then offended. I had no idea what the hell they were talking about. Asking around, I learned that "cheap Jew" is quite a prevalent stereotype. It has it's roots in the Christian Bible - after all Judas was paid for betraying Jesus, and Jesus attacked the moneylenders in the Temple. So during the Middle Ages the idea of the money grubbing Jew, who puts money above all else became widespread. Shakespeare's Shylock is just a literary embodiment of this ancient prejudice. Growing up as a good Catholic, Sister B. probably heard this all the time.

I'm not here to defend the Jews. Remember this is an article in defense of intolerance. But from personal experience, I can say "cheapness" is not a Jewish cultural trait. On the contrary. In my childhood community, calling someone "cheap" was probably only one step above calling him a child molester. Money was not an aim in itself, but a means to showing how much better you were than your neighbor. So you had to have the most lavish bar mitzva or wedding and give the most extravagant gifts on those occasions, so that you can make your friends green with envy and avoid that most horrible canard - cheap.

This trait isn't about showing "the goyim" that they are wrong about us. This is purely an internal Jewish affair. I'll get to its real source in a moment. But first I want to remove a few other "standards" from the list. I went to college at Columbia which is in "Jew York" (a term your garden variety Judeophobe finds uproariously funny). Columbia, like any other respectable New York university, probably has a majority of Jewish professors and a ton of Jewish students. Anyone who goes there, has to have lots of Jewish friends, and most certainly can't be an avowed anti-semite. In the second half of my senior year, for some reason I can no longer explain, I decided that I would like to wear a skull cap. This is not at all unusual or exceptional at Columbia. Lot's of Jews do and feel quite comfortable about it.

A couple of weeks after I started doing this, one of my friends who lived on my dorm floor, and who happened to be the student body President, told me he wanted to speak to me privately. So I went to his room having no idea what we were to talk about (given the gay population at Columbia, it did cross my mind he wanted to confess his love). We sat down, and he says: "Aron, as a friend, I'm very concerned about your decision to wear a Yarmulke (even goyim in New York speaks Yiddish - Yarmulke is the Yiddish word for skull cap). It'll make people think you are one of them."

"Them? What do you mean them?" I say, knowing full well what he means. "You know, pushy, loud, obnoxious. I know you're not that way, but still seeing the Yarmulke, people might get the wrong idea." I thanked my friend for his advice, and hurredly left the room. Here again, I must come to the defense of my people. While many New Yorkers, particularly those who come from Brooklyn and the Bronx (and especially wannabe New Yorkers from New Jersey), can be very pushy, loud and obnoxious, this is not a Jewish trait per se but a New York trait, equally shared by all the many other ethnicities of this great city. And us Manhattanites, Jew and gentile alike, are exceedingly embarrassed by this crude behavior. Perhaps it got associated with Jews in particular, because many TV comedians and actors who grew up in New York and liked to play on this trait, happen to be Jewish. But look at the Sopranos, if you have any doubts. Pushy. Loud. Obnoxious. Italian.

So scratch these off your list. If you want to hear about really obnoxious Jewish cultural traits, then read on. Since familiarity breeds contempt, I have the inside story. The root of it all is what is commonly referred to as Jewish paranoia. Paranoia is not necessarily a bad thing - it can be a useful survival mechanism, especially for a people that has been pillaged, raped, murdered and plundered for thousands of years. In explaining to Sister B. why my mother would be appalled if one of her children or grandchildren married a blond catholic "shiksa" (a very uncomplimentary word, by the way), I noted how my mother grew up in Belgium going to school and being close friends with lots of blond Catholic girls. But when the Nazis came, those girls, her friends, turned their backs on her and the other Jewish girls. Not all of the latter escaped death, like my mother did. So my mother, justifiably, can't abide the idea of her descendants sleeping with the enemy.

But anyone from my generation onwards, has to be totally delusional to think that American Jews are in imminent danger of being marched off to death camps. It is true that Jews in North America are disproportionally in the upper-middle to wealthy classes. And in the past this was a great danger for the Jewish community. But America is different. Not because there isn't Judeophobia here. Some historians actually argue that pre-war United States might have been more racist than pre-war Germany. But Jews have integrated into American society like they have nowhere else.

For one thing, the Judeophobes old canard that the Jews control the media is quite true in America. Hollywood studios are almost universally run by Jews. Major media corporations - also run by Jews (Viacom - Sumner Redstone; ABC/Disney - Eisner; New York Times - Jewish founded and owned; Time Warner/AOL - Gerald Levine until very recently; Fox - Murdoch might as well be a Jew). Many well-known reporters and pundits are Jewish. If anyone thinks the pro-Israel slant of the U.S. press is a coincidence, then think again. This phenomenon isn't, as the Judeophobes argue, some vast Jewish conspiracy to take over the world. One reason this happened was precisely because, in the past, so many talented Jews were excluded from so many other professions. But whatever the reason, the facts can't be denied. Starting a Nazi-like anti-Jewish mass-media propaganda campaign in the U.S. media, is highly unlikely undertaking (which is why so much of that crap comes out on the Internet, which is the least controlled of all media outlets). For another thing, Jews are deeply entrenched in the U.S. political power structure, even amongst Republicans (where the classic WASPish Judeophobes, now joined by their fundamentalist brothers, have their political home).

Hence the lingering Jewish paranoia of so many of my brothers and sisters, has no rational basis. But it leads to some very annoying traits. Like the obsession with "making it," which lies behind the ostentation I mentioned earlier. Being rich isn't a bad thing, but if I don't give a wedding gift from Tiffany's does that make me a bad person? And these over-the-top weddings and bar mitzvahs are highly wasteful and obnoxious, besides being tasteless. And of course, the worst aspect of this trait is that creature known as the JAP (the very opposite of cheapness).

But at top of my list of annoying Jewish traits, is the habit of finding a Judeophobe under every rock. Which brings me to the articles about Gibson's upcoming film. Gibson belongs to some radical Catholic sect that thinks the Pope is an apostate, and still believes the Jews are responsible for the death of Jesus. Jews and Judeophiles are up in arms about the film, demanding to pre-screen it.

Growing up as an Orthodox Jew, the Christian Bible was scary stuff - I was looking at skin mags when I was twelve, but I wouldn't go near what I had been taught was the worst form of pornography. I didn't have a choice when I got to Columbia, because it was assigned to us as a great work of Western literature. And reading it was an eye opener too. I loved Jesus. Hell, I would have signed up for Jews for Jesus, except apparently they never read the Christian Bible either. In fact, it seems to me, that most Christians haven't. I read it all, from beginning to end. I didn't see anything about abortions. I didn't see anything about premarital sex or family values (most of the sex bits are in the Jewish Bible, which is filled with fornication, adultery, incest, cannibalism - you name it). In the four Gospels, to the best of my recollection I didn't see any mention of Jesus as the son of God (it's been a while, so it might have showed up in one of the later, scarier books, but I sort of doubt it). The Gospels do mention the fact that Jesus was a descendant of King David (something my own family claims as well, so that makes he and I distant cousins). And being a descendant he has a claim to being the Messiah (i.e. Christ in Greek). But that just meant he is the annointed one, i.e. he has a political claim to the throne of Judea, which is more than enough reason for the Romans to want to get rid of him.

The Gospels talked about Jesus as a Rabbi, which means teacher. And he taught things that any lefty, anti-war, socialist Jew like me, could only agree with. Love thy neighbor. Don't cast the first stone. Turn the other cheek. Help the poor. He was a king I would have followed. All the horrible crimes that were committed in his name could only have happened because those who did them, did not read what he had to say, or having read it, just didn't want to understand. And that goes for George W. Bush as well.

As for "Jewish" culpability in his death, Judas, like Jesus, was a Jew, as was the the High Priest. But whenever there is an empire, an occupying power, there are rebels and there are collaborators. While collaborators are a particular low form of life, they exist in all oppressed societies, no matter what the cultural background. When I was in the Israeli army, one of the jobs we had was protecting the Palestinian collaborators. I later learned that that there are two types of collaborators. For the most part collaborators are the dregs of Palestinian society, criminals and drug addicts. But some are educated, professional people who either out of hope for personal advancement, or fear of the master, collaborate, even to the extent of betraying their brothers. Judas was of the latter type.

The hero of the Mel Gibson's movie, should be the rebel Jew Jesus, whose followers saw him as an aspirant to the kingship of the Jews (not the Christians - who didn't exist at the time). And in all likelihood, if anyone's good name and character needs defending from this movie, it is probably my cousin Jesus and his teachings, not American Jews. But Abe Foxman, head of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), a Jewish organization whose sole purpose is to fan the flames of Jewish paranoia, is quoted several times in the article foaming at the mouth.

Now I don't know if Mel Gibson is a Jew hater who wants to kill me and my brethren. Somehow, I kind of doubt it. In fact, watching his bad acting often drives me into a murderous rage, so when it comes down to it, he is probably more hated than a hate-monger. On the other hand, there are many Christian fundamentalists out there, who do have genocidal aims when it comes to us Jews. They want to gather us all in the Holy Land and have us wiped out in the belief that this will hasten the return of the Jew, Jesus (if he really does come back, I'm sure it will be to protect us from all these genocidal maniacs). Out of this misguided belief, these fundamentalists are great "supporters of Israel." Like Tom deLay, who in today's paper is quoted as calling himself "an Israeli at heart." Tom deLay and his ilk support the Jewish genocidal maniacs like Benny Elon, in the hope that the war between Jews and Palestinians will hasten the end of days. And yet, Abe Foxman's ADL recently took out full page ads in the New York Times thanking the Christian right for their unwavering "support of Israel."

While in America, Jewish paranoia manifests itself in insecurity, in Israel it usually comes out as arrogance, and a justification for Israeli power mongering and anti-Palestinian xenophobia. Since I write about this often, I will not dwell on it here.

I have no tolerance for Abe Foxman and Jews of his ilk, nor for Israeli Jewish xenophobes. And I have no tolerance for Christian fundamentalists who distort Jesus' message. But my list of intolerances doesn't end there. In fact, I have a long list of complaints against just about every ethnic group on the planet. Every day gives me new reasons to be intolerant of them all. Don't get me started on the Arabs and Muslims. Yes, I know: Islam is a religion of peace. So why are Islamic Chechen rebels blowing up hospitals, for Allah's sake? The other night we were watching the movie Bullworth, and and Halle Barry gives some muddled speech about why there are no great African-American leaders anymore. Well I don't buy it. Surely a people that produced some of my own personal heroes -- Martin Luther King and Malcolm X -- can do better than Louis Farrakhan or Al Sharpton, not to speak of Snoop Dogg. One reads the news, and it's enough to make you be intolerant of the whole damn human race.

Justifying intolerance does not mean justifying hatred and bigotry, and obviously I am not advocating violence against the objects of my intolerance. Yet intolerance is a legitimate human emotion which can range from aesthetic judgments ("Britney Spears drives me up a wall") to moral judgments ("Abe Foxman is a hypocrite").

In the weekend Book Review section there is a review of a new book on the topic of hatred and violence by Willard Gaylin. Dr. Gaylin is Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at Columbia College of Physicians and Surgeons and co-founder of the Hastings Center, the preeminent institute for the study of ethical issues in the life sciences. When I was a student at Columbia, he taught a one semester class on Freud, which was one of the most popular courses in the College. Gaylin the teacher, belies Frank Zappa's pithy saying: "If you want to get laid, go to college, if you want an education, go to the library."

Gaylin was very clear about his intolerances. One day, he took time off from his lectures to talk about the upcoming elections. In no uncertain terms he explained why we should not vote for Richard Nixon and vote for McGovern. Yet his intolerances grew out of his compassionate nature. From his lectures, it was obvious he cares deeply for his patients suffering and he would often talk about the redemptive, healing power of love. The review in question mentions how Gaylin ties hatred and violence to both individual nature and to the specifics of various cultures. But Gaylin is a man who also loves and revels in the richness of human culture. His lectures were a mixture of psychology, anthropology, sociology and philosophy.

Culture is not a luxury, but the essence of humanity. And just like evolutionary biologists talk about the importance of biodiversity for the survival of the species, cultural diversity serves the same purpose. Which brings me one last time to a Jewish trait I can't tolerate - insularity. This, too, comes from Jewish paranoia. In pre-Roman times, the Jewish nation was a prosletyzing group. During the Hellenistic period, millions of people adopted Judaism in one form or another. Indeed these syncretic-Jews formed the infrastructure for the rapid spread of Christianity. When the latter turned on its mother culture, Jewish leaders reacted by turning inwards.

Cultures need living and breathing carriers to grow and prosper. And today, the Jewish nation is dwindling. I believe that if Jewish culture were to disappear, it would be a great loss for humanity. The solution is not for the Jewish people to turn ever more inwards, nor to rail against intermarriage and foreign cultural influences. Demanding total and absolute allegiance to Jewish culture is a certain path to drive even more Jews away. The Jewish people must once again be willing to accept syncretism, as it did in the past. Otherwise, the day will come when people will learn about Jews from what they see in old TV reruns or bad Mel Gibson movies. Now there's a thought that's enough to get me out on the streets with the Mormons and Seventh Day Adventists.