The great 20th century novelist Bernard Malamud once said, “If you ever forget you’re a Jew, a Gentile will remind you.”
Perhaps we can add to that what I’m going to call Edelman’s Corollary: “If you ever forget Bernard Malamud’s statement, a Jew will remind you.”
Way back in January, I posted on this blog a little contest called The Jewish Marxist Werewolves in Bolivia Infoquake Giveaway. The aim of the contest was to write the introductory paragraph to a bad fictitious novel about Jewish Marxist werewolves in Bolivia. I received a number of very amusing entries, topped by a hilariously bad entry by Josh Vogt. (Read the winning entries here.) As a fun little teaser for the entry, I spent fifteen minutes one Friday night Photoshopping a fake werewolf mask onto a picture of a rabbi and then adding in a white knit yarmulke. You can see the image here on the right.
I happen to think the photo is hilarious, but a few commenters on my blog don’t agree with me. Check out the comment thread for this post. Here’s one:
SHAME ON YOU! jew’s are HUMANS just like everybody else
THE ONLY WOLF AROUND HERE IS YOU
And another one:
you fucker bech i am a Jewish and i prove theth you can onli to suck my dick and your mom to fucker my dream is to kech peple like you ..bech
And a third:
We lost more then 6,000,000 people for nothing they said we are beast ,they said we are ugly , they said we are stupid they said every thing to people start hate and murder us i dont know if you realy jew or not but present us (in the picutre) like evil people that their holy book is evil himself and that fucking not funny….
Now finally the latest:
Listen to me carefully you little cock sucker, you will take this picture down I don’t even care if its a joke or not. This is very offensive and you speaking high language saying “I’m sorry if you’re offended by this, and I’m sorry for fucking my grandmother and getting her pregnant” we just don’t give a fuck….This is very disrespectful and I am not asking, I’m demanding you to take this off! Got it, bitch? don’t make me take actions I prefer not to.
I’m unclear whether this is all coming from the same person or not, but I assume it is. I wish this guy would have the courage to put down a consistent name and/or e-mail.
My first reaction to this was, come on, dude. It’s clearly a joke, and not even a particularly cutting edge one at that. The whole thing has a whiff of that Mel Brooks/Borscht Belt comedy that’s pretty much culturally dead in the water at this point. The photo’s been up on the web for nine months, thousands of people have seen it (including, presumably, many Jews), and nobody’s thought to complain about it being offensive up to this point. In fact, I discovered this morning that someone appropriated the image for this entry on the 92nd Street Y blog — presumably a Jewish organization. Their caption: “Stay the Night for Tikkun Leil Shavuot: All fun, no werewolves!” See screen cap on the left.
But then it occurred to me: There are people around the world who believe that Jews are monsters. There’s a small but very vocal minority who believe that Jews are evil tools of Satan, or vampires out to suck the blood of your children, or — well, I don’t know what exactly they believe, but you know what I’m talking about. And it’s not outside the realm of possibility that some asshole searching the web for “Jewish werewolf” will appropriate this photo without permission for his anti-Semitic propaganda rag. (If you search Google Images for “jewish werewolf,” my image is the top result.)
It would be quite galling, to say the least, if this image ended up propagating around the web to anti-Semitic groups like the cartoon of Calvin pissing has ended up on the back of pickup trucks everywhere. (Incidentally, in case you’re not aware, possession of that Calvin pissing image is grounds for having the windows of your car smashed in by a heavy brick, as far as I’m concerned.)
So the big question is: what kind of responsibility do I have to the Jewish community?
One thing that us Jews are painfully aware of is that not believing in Judaism doesn’t exempt you from the hatred of anti-Semites. This was Bernard Malamud’s point. I don’t believe a word of the Torah, just like I don’t believe that some dude turned water into wine two thousand years ago, just like I don’t believe that there’s a God who wants us to pray towards Mecca five times a day. But the Nazis (just to name one group) didn’t care. They dutifully stuffed the secular Jews and the atheist Jews into their ovens right alongside the orthodox Jews. I’m sure Osama bin Laden wouldn’t bother giving me a Talmudic quiz either before taking my head.
In fact, I think some groups hate Jewish skeptics like me even more. According to their logic, people like me are either sniveling pussies who don’t have the strength to maintain their convictions, or just undercover Zionist agents who are faking their skepticism in order to integrate into society.
My feeling on offensive iconography is that it should be embraced. Why? Because embracing it is the easiest way to deprive it of its sting.
Look at the homosexual community. These people have done a terrific job of advancing their civil liberties over the past thirty years, and to my mind it’s because they haven’t shied away from the so-called offensive stereotypes and slurs. Can you think of an insult you can throw at a gay person that he or she can’t easily shrug off?
BIGOT: You pansy-ass, cocksucking, queer, fairy faggot.
GAY PERSON: Yay! I’m a pansy-ass, cocksucking, queer, fairy faggot!
The words are no longer so shocking and offensive in and of themselves. The problem, of course, is that the words are sometimes backed by a gang of rednecks carrying baseball bats and broken bottles.
Spend five minutes reading Dan Savage’s column, and you’ll see him gleefully refer to people of his sexual orientation with those kinds of terms all the time. Shows like “Will & Grace” embraced the stereotypes of the effeminate, Barbra Streisand-loving, fairy queen rather than avoid them. The result? Well, gays still can’t get married yet in most states and still endure plenty of persecution. The 80% of gay men who are not flirty, effeminate, limp-wristed designer clothing fanatics feel like they’re misunderstood. But in thirty years, they’ve gone from a completely closeted community to a public community of great diversity, strength, and clout. Thirty years ago, TV stars risked ending their careers if they came out of the closet; today, TV stars risk ending their careers if they insult homosexuals. The gay movement has a long way to go — but they’ve already come so far.
(For this same reason, I think the elder statesmen of the black community are making a grave mistake by trying to repress the use of the word “nigger.” I say, embrace it! Personally, I’m looking forward to the day when I can call a black friend a nigger and he can call me a kike, and nobody gets upset. I’ll toss him a piece of fried chicken, he’ll drop a penny on the ground to see if I pick it up, and then we’ll both laugh our asses off and go back to whatever we were doing.)
But back to the Jewish werewolf picture.
I’m not inclined to take the photo down. If another Jewish organization in New York found it amusing and inoffensive enough to repost, why shouldn’t I keep it up? One exception I would make is if the rabbi himself in the photo — a Rabbi Aaron Goldscheider of the Mount Kisco Hebrew Congregation in Mount Kisco, New York — took objection to the photo. I could understand this particular rabbi or congregation having trouble with this photo. There’s no need to throw someone else into the middle of a censorship spat if he doesn’t want to be there. But understand that if this particular rabbi doesn’t want to be involved in this, I’m just going to go find another rabbi photo to doctor up; or hell, I’ll pose for one myself.
Your thoughts?