My wife has long tried to convey to me that I'm "thick" in order to help me with social relations. In my mid-50s I'm beginning to accept that she's right. In my pride, I liked to think of myself as swift. You're not swift, you're thick, my wife says. There were a couple of incidents recently. One, we were at a friends' for dinner and I was talking to the wife in the kitchen about a mutual friend's marriage, how the friend had complained to me that his marriage was grinding. The wife said, "Well honey Jimmy Goldberg (pseudonym) is married to a psycho lunatic, of course he thinks it's grinding." Just then her son came up to us. He's probably 13. He said, "Jimmy Goldberg is married to a psycho lunatic?"
And the mother said, "Not that Jimmy Goldberg, we're talking about another Jimmy Goldberg."
I said, "Do you know two Jimmy Goldbergs?"
My wife has been laughing at my expense since this episode. In other situations she will just say, Do you know two Jimmy Goldbergs?
I realize how thick I was, and how my thickness was actually hurtful on that occasion.
I'm forgetting the other incident. But they're legion.
I was thinking about how thick I am this morning because I'm working on a Jewish identity book and I was writing up something that happened to me a few years ago. I was sitting in an editor's office and we were talking about our non-Jewish wives, and he asked, "Well you know the only question about your wife's family, of course-- Will they hide you?"
"Will they hide me?" I said.
He had to repeat himself. Of course he meant, will they hide you when the Gestapo come.
I realize now, that was thick. Not understanding him. I'd never even thought about that. But he obviously worried about it. So do a lot of American Jews. Some even have bags packed, against that day coming. But I don't believe that day is coming. Those other Jews would say, Well he's thick, and other words. Naive, credulous.
Maybe it's not the worst thing to be thick?
Hard to know what you mean by thick.
Also hard to know what you mean by “identity”.
There’s that old ethnic slur hidden similie noun “thick (as a) mick.” I’m not alone in growing up with it, same as that old ethnic slur verb: “Don’t try to jew me down!” Does that help?
How about “goyishakopf?”
“Shiksa?”
“Greaseball?”
Etc.
“Will they hide you?”
Huh?
“Will they screw you?”
Huh?
“You think they care about you?”
Huh?
“Do the neocons care about you?”
” Well, they always say, ‘First let me say, thank you for your service…’”
Phil, you’ve never indicated how your wife thinks about the USA’s relation to the I-P conflict though we assume she knows that is a major concern of yours, which she is supporting. What’s her take? Is she “thick” there in your opinion, or not? I don’t expect you to answer this, but it’s annoying you give us tidbits about her POV but never anything to give us a clue whether she even has a political opinion beyond sometimes she
thinks you are not up to par as a civilized society participant. Careful or we might
think she only knows you in the same way wifey knows her hubby on Curb Your Enthusiasm. That’s the impression I get. Anyone else care to comment?
All we really know from what you’ve told us is, she’s no Anne Coulter. She also doesn’t
appear to be a Rachel Maddow. Perhaps it’s not for nothing that Larry David’s show
has never brought up the Palestinian issue although his show is not immune from
addressing the foibles of PC politics in the least.
Richard, if I may help you: thick = mentally not very agile, versus his self-perception that he is very swift?
Admittedly, I didn’t like the way Phil used the “Will they hide you?”-question in his article then. But I am not sure if this is swiftness versus agility. It is obviously not part of the American experience and knowledge. Maybe part of Jewish American identity via European Jewish identity. Obviously Phil doesn’t know many of the European Jewish tales from the thirties onwards. Otherwise he wouldn’t have been “thick”.
Strictly I wonder if the man asking the question does. I don’t think it would have been ver wise for the family of the spouse to hide the Jewish partner. Among the first places to check? I don’t know a single story were the partner survived that way. But I obviously don’t all stories. The ones I read or know are very, very different. Most of course surrendered to pressure it seems.
Tomorrow the survival story of the Jewish couple Spiegel. Marga Spiegel wrote it in the sixties to thank her “little helpers”: three peasant families. Took quite a while to find actors, producer and money. Among Peasants – Saviors in the Night
If you show a story about the few, the many must feel guilty, so better don’t touch the subject. Better wait and wait … while teaching your kids the importance of moral courage (German = Zivilcourage, strictly: civil courage, versus the courage of the military or the state powers), take care to not show them what this does really look like and how dangerous it is.
Tomorrow the survival story of the Jewish couple Spiegel can be watched in the movies.
Tomorrow interested Germans can watch …
“Thick” includes habit. You can be dumb or you can be habitual and still be “thick”.
Its good that Phil is actually inquiring into the consciousness of holocaust experience and survival. My mother-in-law experienced individuals that hid her (literally), and individuals that told on her. (Both individuals that her father had successfully treated as one of two doctors in her Hungarian town.)
Its a question to individuals. And, in the environment of horrific consequences (punishment of death for all of one’s relatives if caught “hiding”), only enthusiastic betrayal is really evil.
The evil is in the mode of punishment.
Please note that in Israel, the shministin girls most painful consequences were isolation and ostracism for their contreversial actions. In Palestine, individuals are hanged for a gamut of crimes (as if they were at actual war).
Yes Richard my wife meant thick to mean slow.
I dont think you can compare Shministim to the experience of collaborators in a resistance situation, which is the Occupied Territories. I believe there were such killings in the Warsaw ghetto too. Certainly in Ireland. And our revolutionary war, too.
My wife basically agrees with me on I/P stuff but is sick of hearing about it.
If that is the permanent state of things, that is the same as is rationally criticized in Israel.
That is my consistent point, that emphasizing militancy KEEPS the status quo.
The efforts that change the relationships are of collaboration NOT of isolation and confrontation. Finding individuals and groups that will identify as civilist (not nationalist, not ideological, not religionist), finding individuals and groups that will collaborate on solving common problems (ecological, cultural, peace, law).
She must be sick of tension as well as the subject matter and likely as well as the approach to the subject matter.
Where is your accomplishment in this? How do you define that? Is it by change in the objective situation? Is it by some stature for you as a journalist in a particular subject area?
How do you get there?
The comment on the Shministin is both a comment on them (the degree of courage that they demonstrate) and a comment on Israel (the absence of violent threat of retribution).
“resistance situation, which is the occupied territories”. You’re now an advocate for revolutionary culture, rather than civil?
Richard all you are is an advocate for Zionist delusional thinking and consequence, all of the elaboration is nothing but embellishments on the same spurious foundation. Of course, in this situation the Palestinians must think in revolutionary terms, there is no accommodating Israel so in reality one of the problems is not thinking and acting in world class revolutionary concrete terms as a unified whole.
They must think in institution building terms, so that no matter what happens they have functional and responsible systems and leadership in place.
The politics first, social institutions second, is a recipe for disaster.
The social institutions first, political change second, allows for innovative and undeniable political sovereignty.
It was the path of success of Zionism. That Israel had a government, a body of law, social services, economic development, is what made it undeniably a viable state.
Er, if anyone tracks the history of pre-state Israel (including the diaspora advocates), don’t they come to the conclusion
that the motivating force was political? The jews, in comparison to the arabs in what was known and implemented as the English (colonial) Palestine Mandate, had the advantage of social institutions such as the Jewish Agency, and obviously, the advantage of numerous quid pro quos for favoring the Jews, e.g., the Jewish chemist who so aided England in WW1, and Wilson’s Jewish consultants–Palestinian arabs
had no such European or American connections. Richard Witty, the path of success of Zionism cannot possibly be the same as any path foretelling the success of
Palsetinian resistence, the Palestinian version of “Don’t Tread On Me.”
Richard, do you mean social institutions like the police force that was wantonly bombed by Israelis? Or are you talking about the hospitals that are bombed? Perhaps you mean the neighborhoods that are systematically destroyed? Could be talking about foundation commerce, like for instance the only flour mill that was bombed? Perhaps you are talking about trade which stops at the hermetically sealed borders of Gaza? Yet you persist in this charade of things running normally, like they (Palestinians) inhabit some sort or paradise watched over by benevolent humanitarian peaceful overseers. This is what I mean by “…Zionist delusional thinking and consequence, all the [verbal] elaboration is nothing but embellishments on the same spurious foundation.” Thank you for being a live object lesson.
Please note that in Israel,
Richard, could you please point out why you feel forced to tell me this? Did I ever compare the Israelis to Nazis?
From my point of view it’s much more interesting how the very comparison is used by both sides of the issue. My general impression is that similar, although less straightforward allusions could be more easy to find in your mails than in mine. I know myself for several decades now … Why should I use this comparison when I really detested it all my life?
This would be a better point if you’d acknowledge how Israel sometimes destroys social institutions the Palestinians try to build, or alternatively turn them into vehicles of collaboration. There might conceivably be some competent technocrats in the PA, for example, but they are linked to a corrupt institution which does some of Israel’s dirty work for it.
It would also be good if you didn’t make stupid comparisons, always carefully chosen to make Israel seem more “civilized”. In white South Africa the liberals didn’t face the possibility of “necklacing” and I’m sure white South Africans were happy to point this out as evidence for the moral superiority of their side. Life is generally uglier for the occupied than for the occupier. Your arguments for nonviolence would come out better if you didn’t make these morally obtuse comparisons.
LeaNder,
I don’t believe that I was responding directly to your post.
When I am replying to individuals’ comments, I generally note them by name. Otherwise, my comments are directed at the original author, and Phil as editor.
Also,
I didn’t refer anything to nazis. I’m not sure how that came up.
The long-term state of deferred war has horrid affects on both communities.
Philip, if not anything else you could turn the idea of being “thick” into a coarse joke –
TWICE THE SIZE
LOL
Phil’s not advocating; he’s saying you, richard, are comparing apples and oranges. You don’t convey any real sense of what it’s like to live under a foreign state’s occupying thumb.
What if there’s no gestapo, but there are modest restrictions on Jewish influence, like the old Ivy League quotas (in the name of true diversity and having a representative elite)? Would many Jews leave the US? In other words, is their Jewish-American identity conditional on Americans’ exceptional indulgence of them as Jews?
I’ve seen lots of ostensibly Jewish immigrants from the former Soviet Union. Politically they’re way to the right of most US-born Jews and seem to love the US and act as good patriotic Americans. Then again, a decade or two ago they were good patriotic Russians, Ukranians and Moldovans.
Sometimes, rational people might say that some squirrels overdo it with their
constant hoarding of food. The squirrel is preprogramed; the squirrel cannot help itself from constant hoarding. Does this mean Reason must simply defer to that
obsession (and pay for it), no matter what Reason might know of the reality of the season? Doesn’t there ever come a time when the squirrel might realize it’s done
enough hoarding? No. But there is allegedly a difference between squirrels and humans. Will they hide you in the closet? No? You mean they might think of themselves first? Interesting that this POV turns Israel and its USA blank check
supporters into Skinner animals, rather than humans, as it does to all gentiles, and, further, it says that Jews who don’t believe in Jesus as a model, actually do the contrary. Jesus is great so long as Jesus is pro-Zionist?
America First- In answer to your question – No, Jews will not leave America if American ivy league colleges institute the anti Jewish quotas that you have in mind. They will persevere in America and succeed despite the quotas that would have people with lower academic accomplishments take those places in those ivy league schools.
There are no Jews with their bags packed. This is either hyperbole on Mister Weiss’s part or hyperbole on the part of someone to whom Mister Weiss has spoken. This is continued thickness on his part taking them literally or thickness on his part expecting people on this blog to take him metaphorically.
Some people have bags packed? Wow. How come Muslims don’t have bags packed? If anybody should be scared in America, it should be Muslims, in my opinion, and despite the hate in media and the increasing scrutiny in our lives by the FBI, ICE, etc, we are happy and pretty much content.
I don’t know anyone who wants to leave. And it has nothing to do with economics either, for most, anyway. I don’t know about other countries, but Pakistanis that manage to do so are middle and upper class people. Even the super rich leave.
Sure, they invest their money back home and make additional income, and avoid some taxes (increasingly getting harder to do), they don’t plan on leaving.
Sorry, still typing from my phone. I meant to say that many ppl who left pakistan are usually people who didn’t have it bad there. And after oming here, they have managed enrich themselves in both countries, but they would never leave, and are not fearful to the point that they have bags packed.
I was kind of wondering about that myself. I know an awful lot of Jews in North America, Western Europe and Israel, and I have never heard of anyone with bags packed against the possibility of anti-Semitism. A rabbi or two (probably apocryphal) with a bag packed as a symbol of complete faith in the fact that the Messiah could come at any moment. Holocaust survivors who must have bread in the house at all times. But never, bags packed in case the Gestapo comes knocking. The fear of anti-Semitism is certainly exaggerated and manipulated, but American Jews ready to flee at the drop of a hat? Sounds strange to me.
The reality in the USA is that Saleema is correct in wondering why USA muslims
don’t have their bags packed. Yet instead we have USA jews saying they should have thier bags packed. Talk about paranoia; does it all come down to deep latent white
anti-semitism? Should the USA rubber stamp Israel for another 200 years to convince
jews that American gentiles are not born in original (“ant-semetic”) sin?
Witty, who would be the first to acknowledge and justify the psychology and actions of
the Warsaw Ghetto resistence, is the last to imagine or feel what it’s like to live in Israeli occupied territories. Who would you rather have as your landlord, Phil Weiss or Richard Witty? Case closed.