Getting Past Death-Com 1: Day Old Bagels Do Their Magic
Joel B.Levine MD
I wonder what would happen if there were a whole lot of 7-foot-tall Jews. Maybe a carload or two of football lineman types that could do the 40 yard in a few seconds. It would beg the question about the appeal of antisemitism if it kept your NBA or NFL team from winning. Yet with so much kugel always in the pipeline, not much luck in waiting for that.
But we have Ye. Kanye West’s is a ‘canary in the synagogue”. He is many remarkable things all rolled into a set of bipolar diatribes. Sure, his “death com 2” for Jews” evoked condemnation as well as a really strong desire to know how I had gotten past “death com 1”. The umbrage taken was, as usual rhetorical in form. Swat teams breathed sighs of relief there was no furiously davening hoard of yamake clad JLM’s in sight. Jews are historically well-mannered victims.
First, Kyrie, then Kayne evoked spurts of rejection but Kyrie is again under the hoop, not huppa. Hey, we have a game to play here. As for Kanye, someone will soon likely tell him that Hitler did not invent the highway or microphone, as was his praise of the Fuhrer but his contrition will not be far behind.
Not needing that soon to be tear filled moment, the revisionist undercurrent has predictably already appeared. One famous singer in Britain said, “well, it doesn’t affect me personally…we all have opinions…” More to the point, Nick Fuentes cloaked his venom in a rational analysis of how many ovens, working how many hours, would be needed to kill 6 million. To my relief, he concludes that it could not have been more than a few hundred thousand.
Racism, when racial, almost always is reported as a red zone level event. The negative consequence is wide ranging and even justifies racial violence. It is, to coin a phrase, a white-hot issue. But Jew bashing, even literally, is, well, more intellectual, in keeping with the “implicit “bias that Jews are “smarter”. No one expects Jewish customers in Katz’s to go on a rampage. No bagels tossed through windows, i.e., a day-old bagel is quite lethal. “We won’t buy Adida’s anymore” is seen by some as a gesture akin to Nathan Hale’s, I regret that I have only one running show to give “. Well, not to be too snarky, I do anticipate a smoked fish layout at the next Music Awards in gastronomic solidarity.
Antisemitism is gift that keeps on giving. What is enduring is that the anti-Jewish tropes are perennials, never changing or modernizing. It is true I hear less of Jews and Cadillacs, but money and power shapeshift. But, like all good bias, there is always a kernel of kasha at the heart.
Jews are evident in many professions and industries or were. Media, finance, and landlords are tried and true but, curiously, Jewish noses are not prominent in the virtual world. In the world of chips, chapati is king. It is as if South Asians are made invisible, not visibly Brown, affirming that true tolerance appears when your Mac fails.
Kayne has been a gift for Progressives. He set the bar just where it was safe to rail against him but not so close that being against Israel is not a “safe space” to occupy. Do not get me wrong. Many domestic Israel policies are not to my liking, but I do not hear a lot of angst about Myanmar and the Rohingya, China and the Uyghurs. And dare I mention Ukraine?
Just two facts of many are enough for a modern context. In 1941, it was the Ukrainian Auxiliary Police that rounded up the 33,971 Jews for the Babi Yar massacre. By 1942, the German SS in occupied Ukraine was composed of 238000 Ukrainians and 15000 Germans. Western Ukraine has a horrific history of antisemitism so well documented that it is even in Wikipedia. If Jefferson has become a pariah and US history is revisited in 1619, why is not modern Ukraine history fair game? Point is that some human tragedies are always remembered and some always forgotten.
My guess is that Kanye was off his meds. More to the point, he, as many, are undereducated as to the history of Jews. Lots of blame to go around as much of all history is selectively retained or erased.
All kind of modern, in many ways. It was a wonderful gift for the anti-Trumpers. Put aside he hired mainly Orthodox Jews in his business, or that his daughter and grandchildren are Jewish. This dinner was the best two-fer going. One an orange fool, the other Black. Orange really is the new Black.
