A Sick Chicken or ‘To Be a Jew’ (CJN Article May 20, 2010)

 By Avrum Rosensweig

 There is something particular about being Jewish.

 We celebrate what know other people can, such as the fact hockey is played in Metulla, Israel and nowhere else in the Middle East. Being Jewish means we are exclusively proud of Daf Yomi – a process whereby an individual studies one page of Talmud a day, for seven and a half years, until all tractates are completed.

We rejoice about the fact more than 22% of people who have received the Nobel Peace Prize were Jewish or of Jewish decent. We are excited Jews were dominant in the clothing industry and about 25% of the peoples on average, on Forbes Fortune 500 list are Jews.

Being  Jewish means we have contributed and cheered while valiant and plucky Israeli and Diaspora Jews – our home team – flew on the wings of eagles, saving Jews from Yemen, Ethiopia, Uganda, Odessa, the Baltic, and and and…… 

To be Jewish is to be a member of a clan with a voracious appetite for curiosity, compassion, and intent on self-development and the enhancement of our existence and world.

Of course we Jews have our foibles, and we have our migraines.

Being Jewish means when we see someone with a gold tooth we think of the Holocaust, when our family’s teeth were painfully and hatefully extracted for profit, theft, greed. Our memories, because we are Jews, are littered with sinister and serrated images from every century.

Being Jewish means when your little boy – say one who is four years old – is pretending to be a monster and tries to scare an older woman sitting on a bench in front of your condo, she responds, ‘you can’t scare me zees’ala (sweetheart), I was in the Holocaust.’

Being Jewish means (as funny as it may seem being parodied) – ten Jews around the table really does make for eleven opinions (if we’re lucky) and cause great ethical and practical bottlenecks. (An example: should the unearmarked donation be used to buy more prayer books or redesign the cloakroom? Another example is, should we build settlements in the territories?)

Being Jewish, or more so, being chasidish, means it is difficult to be seen on Friday night, while walking home from shul on a side street. A bekesheh, a man’s silken black cloak, does not reflect light and therefore puts the wearer in danger. (Perhaps our many entrepreneurs in the clothing industry should design a luminous bekeshe strip).  

One morning my boy said mo’de ani ( the prayer thanking God for returning his spirit) by heart. He had heard me all those months. That instance was important because I worry if I am imparting enough to him about Judaism. I glimpsed a success. Being Jewish at that moment meant my son was expressing appreciation, was identifying with creation and the Creator, and stating his place in the world.

Being Jewish at that second was also troublesome as it meant my son is a Jew, was committing to being so, and what parent of our faith doesn’t worry about our safety as a people, particularly our children?

Henny Youngman joked: a Jewish woman had two chickens. One got sick, so the woman made chicken soup out of the other one, to help the sick one get well.

That is the challenge and conundrum of being Jewish. We celebrate our chickens, and then they always get sick. We care, sometime to our detriment. Some Jews are wise, and like Mark Twain said about people in general, “some are otherwise”.

I have such a headache now, but so proud. I’m going to bed. Good night.

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