Dear Achmed:
My ten-year-old son likes to draw figures in art class. I discourage him, or try to get him to separate the heads from the torsos. His art teacher says this is not necessary in an art class. Am I right in Islamic law?
Dear Mrs. Metuffah W.: You are correct. As you know, Islamic law forbids the drawing of full figures of people or animals. Therefore, try to get your son to draw geometric patterns or landscapes. If he insists on drawing figures, make sure he separates the heads from the bodies. Talk to the school administration about this art teacher, since he is leading children away from the correct Islamic path.
Tired of our Kingdom prison, we fantasize aloud the ways we intend to escape the Saudi sand-box. We have been advised by Saudia, for whom we fly the Hajj contract, that no one will be allowed to go home during the hiatus, the break between the first and second “wave” of the Hajj. We will all be stuck out her for the full ninety days… not going home, not seeing family for three months.
I’ve just finished reading the “Ask Achmed” column, and I say: “I know how I’ll get out of here. I’m going to start an “Ask the Rabbi” column in the Arab News. Maybe I’ll even put a classified ad in the Arab News, “
None of my companions yet know that I’m a Jew, since there are no Jewish pilots, they think it’s a joke.
Mark Lippi laughs, and volunteers that he’s sure I’ll be out of the Kingdom real soon. “Rabbi,” Mark says, “you can be the Chief Rabbi of Saudi Arabia… briefly!”
“Yeah, Rabbi, they’ll ship you home head first …body to follow!”
The other guys all add their comments, and I am forever dubbed “The Rabbi.” This nickname is particularly amusing to me, as the secret in-kingdom Jew. It’s a joke on the Saudi’s as well, but it’s a more subtle joke on my (mostly) Jew-hating comrades.
The real joke is of course on me. Loving, and being loved by a group of guys who might hate me, if they knew my hidden label, is tough to live with. The worm always eats at my soul, when I allow the anti-Semitic venom to lap around me, without fessing up. I am, after all, selling out my mother and father, my kids and all my family for acceptance, which for all I know might be mine, regardless.
Sitting in the midst of these friends, some my undeserved enemies, my mind plays with the ancient riddle. Jew, Jewish, Semite; Sand-nigger, Mockie, Kike; God, Hatred, Love and Death. How the fuck do any people get from God and Love, to Hatred and Death?
My mind wanders further back now, back to my earliest recollections.
“Stevie, I’d like you to meet your Uncle Harry, and Uncle Benny, and this is Uncle Moishe. Your uncle Davie is still in the hospital, but you’ll meet him today when we visit.” I was five years old, and World War II had ended. My mother had nine brothers and sisters, and all the men had been away for the duration. I was now meeting my uncles, my new-met heroes, for the first time.
This vivid scene has stuck with me through all the years, as only certain childhood memories do. The significance of what I was witnessing didn’t register ‘til well into my adulthood. Only my father, with two kids, and bad vision, had remained behind. All the other uncles and uncles-in-law had been off fighting the Nazi’s and the Japanese. Remarkably all eight of them had come home alive.
Moishe, a strapping, natural athlete, had been a Pacific marine, who landed on Tarawa and Iwo Jima. God knows what he saw and did, since he’s a quiet man, who settled down, raised a family, started a business and never talked to any of us about the war.
Davie, the uncle who was finally released from St. Albans Naval Hospital months later, had been a radio operator on a bomber in the Pacific. He and his five crewmates lived, played and flew together. For years, they fought their missions, marauding the Japanese fleet. During the last of their missions, towards the end of the Pacific campaign, they were blown out of the sky.
My Uncle Dave’s chute somehow opened, and he was machine gunned across his throat and down one leg, while dangling unconscious in the parachute harness. A navy PBY swooped in and plucked him from the ocean, flying him to an American held island base. Business at the field hospital was light that day, so the triage surgeon allowed him to be worked on. He was the only member of his crew to survive. This story comes to me from his wife, my aunt Helen, since I’ve never heard war stories from Davie, either.
The rest of my uncles, all Jews, of course, fought in the Italian, French and German campaigns. Except for the foreign coins they gave me (very exotic stuff for a kid at the time), I never heard a word about the war from any of them. Years later, I learned of the family members back in Germany and Poland, whose correspondence suddenly stopped, forever.
The family was very close, all living within walking distance of each other, and this large, ethnic clan would kibitz, and scrap, tease and laugh over impossibly large meals, bustled to the table by my Grandma Minnie, my mom, and aunts. I had tens of cousins close in age to play with, and the warmth and camaraderie was an encapsulating cocoon of love and support.
In the nineteen fifties, The Bronx, New York, was a peaceful blend of Jews, Irish, and Italians. My being Jewish was no big deal. Although my family, especially on my father’s side, was orthodox, the fact that I was Jewish had been only that to me, just another fact. I was male, American, a kid, and I also happened to also be Jewish. I thought everybody’s home had meat dishes, milk dishes
It wasn’t until I was about nine-or-so, and being sent to Hebrew school, that the loathing and terror of my Jewishness took root, quickly consuming, and finally overwhelming any spirituality I might ever have developed.
The Rabbis that taught Hebrew school at Temple Beth Elohim made it very clear from the beginning. We Jews were God’s chosen people. I was given no choice, I was chosen, period. That being initially (and continually) emphasized, we were taught the litany of cruel tortures and deaths that Jews over the centuries had suffered to retain their Jewish ness, this “privilege” of being God’s Chosen. From the flaying alive of Rabbi Akiva, the tortures of the Spanish inquisition, to the
By the 1950’s, when I was the student-target of this mayhem of information, all the facts were in. We were treated to detailed accounts of the atrocities committed at the various extermination camps. We were shown the pictures of the piles of gold teeth pulled from Jewish mouths, the piles of Jewish hair used to stuff mattresses, the stockpile of soaps made from Jewish bones. I was treated to all this horror, and told to be proud to be Jewish, and to resist to the death any attempt to un-Jew me. The films of the concentration camps’ Jewish inmates were particularly unforgettable as a nine, ten and eleven-year-old. “Never again” was the watchword, “Not me!” became my motto.
As a result of the mind I was born with, the sensibilities of delicate youth, and these wonderful examples of the positive nature of religion, I was thoroughly traumatized. At once, I was ashamed of being Jewish ( why didn’t those millions of people defend themselves and their children? ), terrified of being Jewish ( I never, ever admit to being Jewish under ordinary circumstances ), and had no use for God — mine or anyone else’s.
My Mother’s Affair
My mother was having an affair as far back as I can remember, and I’m sure my father never knew. It started out as a “radio affair,” but at some point it went to TV. Bronx housewives were all enamored with Arthur Godfrey. Vacuuming, dusting, “
Life flowed smoothly in the fifties, as we all stayed abreast of the lives of Holli-Loki, Julius La Rosa, Arthur and his wonderful home-awayfrom-home, Godfrey’s Kennelworth Hotel on Miami Beach…. every Jewish housewife’s
