Posts tagged words

Michael Chabon wrote a curious op-ed in The New York Times this weekend decrying the Jewish people’s “chosenness” and alleged superior intelligence that left many Jews scratching their heads, thinking either “why is he writing this now?” or “duh, we knew that already!” Either way, many were saying to themselves (and their friends), “please don’t publicize this to the rest of the world.” The Yiddish Policeman’s Union author uses the occasion of the Flotilla fiasco to puncture the Jewish belief that they are chosen — and smarter — than other peoples. “Jews are stupid in roughly the same proportion as all the world’s people — but simply because from an early age we have been trained, implicitly and explicitly, to ignore them. A stupid Jew is like a hole in the pocket of your pants, there every time you put them on, always forgotten until the instant your quarters run clattering across the floor.” Forget, for a moment, the flotillas; forget that Chabon lumps together Israeli and American Jews, peoples with as different psyches as the British and the Americans