Too Jew For You

If you spend any time around me at all, you'll know that I make a lot of jokes about myself. One of my favorite topics (as my father loves to bitch about) is Judaism. Why, you ask? Well, any amateur stand up comedian can tell you. Of all the groups, creeds, and races in the world, few have been so beaten up on, abused, mocked, parodied, stereotyped, and made fun of--BY THEIR OWN PEOPLE.

The three most commonly self-deprecating "ethnicities" are probably blacks, Jews, and the Irish. Not that everyone else doesn't make fun of themselves; I've heard everything from Welsh jokes to Ethiopian jokes to Canadian jokes (oh, Canada, how I love you and mock you and love to mock you). An important point is that very, very rarely have I ever heard truly racist jokes, or any jokes that were meant sincerely. I mean, I have, who hasn't, but the point is, almost everyone mocks themselves and their people at one point or another. In fact, most non-race based jokes are WAY more offensive. I have a friend who knows endless dead-baby jokes, and those ones are just...*shudder*. I have no words for those jokes.

Also, think about the big-time funny people who crack jokes about them and theirs. Chris Rock, Will Smith, Sarah Silverman, Jon Stewart, Seth Rogen, etc. I have a big comedy thesaurus somewhere, and I could probably pull out a few more names, but whatever, you get the point. Basically, it's okay to rash a group of people as long as you're one of them.

Or is it?

My friend Phia is an incredibly funny person, and she often makes Jew jokes; she also happens to be Jewish, and WAY more practicing than I am. She made one joke in particular about Newton, a nearby town with a very large Jewish population. She called it "Jewton", which I thought was funny. Later, while visiting my grandparents who live in Newton, I casually blurted out the "Jewton" joke. It took fifteen minutes to convince my grandparents that my friend was not an anti-Semitic neo-nazi who was influencing me with her evil ways.

Okay, so not quite that bad, but they were pretty upset about it. Mostly it's my fault--what kind of an idiot says things like that around her sweet Jewish grandparents?--but still, it made me think about how many Jew jokes I make, and how okay they are. After all, I'm proud of being a Jew, and it's a very solid part of my identity. I also don't want to piss my fellow Jews off.

Both of my parents are reform Jews with solid Ashkenazi ancestry that goes back as far as anyone can bother to remember. For you goys out there, Ashkenazi Jews are from Eastern Europe, and my roots exhibit that pretty obviously: I'm a fourth Hungarian, a fourth Polish, a fourth Russian, and a fourth German. You can't much more Ashkenazi than that. Also, to explain "reform": orthodox Judaism is the most strict and observant form of Judaism, followed by conservative, then reform (there's another one that starts with an R that I can't remember; might be reconstructionist). As reform Jews, my family...well, we practice in our own way. We always have seders and Hanukkah dinners, and usually go to temple on the High Holidays. But I've only ever done Shabbat at my friends' houses, and I don't think I've been to Friday services since I was little.

I'm pretty okay with all of this. Yeah, I do sort of wish my parents had sent me to Hebrew School because I'd like to know more about my religious fundamentals and stuff, and I wish I'd had a Bat Mitzvah (and not only because you get HUGE AMOUNTS OF MONEY for your Bat Mitzvah). Maybe when I grow up, I'll be a little more practicing than I am now, but in the meantime I'm content. However, as far as cultural Judaism goes, I might as well be a rabbi.

I have a sort of persona...the "bubbe" voice and manner, if you will. Basically, I adopt an accent that sounds like a hybrid Russian/Bulgarian/Polish accent, and become the perfect Jewish grandmother. My friends are well acquainted with Bubbe; I pull her out to cheer people up and stuff like that. My friend Meg knows Bubbe particularly well. During an improv session in our theater class earlier this year, Meg and I were paired together for a scene. Bubbe came right out and set Meg straight in life. It went over quite well.

My features are vaguely Jewish, the most telling being my voluminous curly brown hair which, when unbrushed, collects into a very poofy, puffy Jew-fro. Other than that, my face is not easy to pinpoint. I've been mistaken for Mediterranean and British, though some people do get the Eastern European vibe. My mom looks REALLY Jewish; plunk her anywhere in the world and people will know who she is in a second (and with a last name like "Perlman", it just gets more and more obvious). My father and sister hardly look Jewish at all, with their blonde/light brown hair and round faces. Conversely, my dad's brother is the proverbial Jew, nose included. Oy, who can figure these things anymore? I just think it's funny, the separation of looks in my family. My sister is pure dad's-side, she looks like his carbon copy sans the beard and mustache. I...don't look like my mom's side or my dad's side. GAH IDENTITY ISSUES GAH.

I don't know. Judaism is weird for me to talk about, because I have conflicting feelings about the religious parts of it. When I went to my cousin's bar mitzvah and stood on the bima with him, I felt a weird connection to the Torah and to the words my cousin was chanting in Hebrew. When I went to temple this Yom Kippur, I looked around at my fellows Jews and felt how much I was a part of something: a proud, unbreakable people, stretching back thousands of years in thousands of different incarnations. Also, when you consider the history of the Jews--anti-Semitism stemming from the death of that Jesus guy (who was a Jewish liberal, BY THE WAY), the Spanish Inquisition, pogroms, and the legendary H-word, the Holocaust--well, it's hard to not feel a kinship with the millions of Jews out there. After all, we're all connected through our culture. We're all the Chosen People, or whatever. It's heavy and sort of thrilling, at the best of times.

But most of the time, I have a lot of problems with Jewish faith. There's a prayer where men thank God that they weren't born women; that's not right. I love shrimp (traif) and cheeseburgers (traif) and I eat pork sometimes (traaaaaaif). The rules of Judaism are one of the things that's so easy to mock, because there really are a LOT of them. And when you follow them, it's hard to do much else. I'm not really up for having a Shabbos goy, you know? A little too much to ask of someone, I feel.

Ah, well. We Jews can sure kvetch better than almost anyone else. I gotta go study for French. BLEH. Actually, OY GEVALT.