For Thanksgiving my wife and I went to my parents’ place outside Philadelphia. My wife is also from Philly, and on Friday night we went to Chestnut Hill to a relative of hers for post-Thanksgiving dinner. As we were getting ready to go, my father joked that he wasn’t invited "due to anti-semitism." My wife never rises to the bait. It’s one of her rules in life. She said, “Maybe,” and just smiled. But my father brought it up again later, now naming a Christian friend of my wife’s and saying she’s anti-semitic, and my wife said something vague, and then my father said with an ironical meanness made naked by being in his 80s, that he thought all Christians were anti-Semitic.
I ignored the whole thing. I was changing, getting off my muddy boots. I’d been moving rhododendrons.
My mother ran into the mud room and said that I should say something to my father about it, that he was outrageous, and he would listen to me not to anyone else, because my dad and I are close. Then my wife and my sister came in talking about it, and my wife said, "It hurts my feelings, Phil." I waved it off. I said, “Don’t give in to the feeling. You’ve known about this 20 years, don’t decide to get upset.” Later I said, “You’ve been bonding with my mother, and that’s great. But don’t use this. You don’t need to get sensitive about this stuff.”
It did hurt my wife’s feelings 20 years ago, when she first met my family. She said, “I’ve heard about anti-semitism, but I never heard about anti-anti-semitism.” She’d just met my father, and he had called her Brenda Frazier. I think my wife and my father were the only ones who knew who he was talking about. Brenda Frazier was a big debutante back in the ’30s and ’40s; she symbolized a class, and she was vapid. My father was calling my wife Brenda Frazier because he put her in that social caste. It upset my wife, and I got angry at my father about it, came down on him hard. But I don’t think it had much of an effect. It’s my father’s genuine world view. My father lives in his head even more than I do, and he and Jeffrey Goldberg have a lot in common: Jeffrey Goldberg wrote that there is a “river” of anti-Semitism running under American society. He probably still believes it. My father believes it too. He’s only half-ironical about it. What are you going to do? Half his kids are married to non-Jews, a couple of whom employ Yiddish better than his kids.
At the Thanksgiving party we went to later, my wife explained to her cousins who the biggest gonif was in the family they were gossiping about, and then she had to explain the way that gonif means a thief and not a thief in Yiddish, that it’s a half-respectful term for a certain kind of cleverness.
On Saturday morning I got up at 8 and was in the kitchen alone with my father. I saw my wife buzzing about but she didn’t come in and I wondered if her feelings were really hurt, and if she’d never talk to my father again, and if I was being insensitive and spineless with my father. I love my father. He’s brilliant and idiosyncratic and uncomfortable. His sociological views are formed by his own Brooklyn-CCNY-Ivy League experience. He was as unready for the world his intermarried children made as I am for all the young anti-Zionist Jews I meet who don’t even identify as Jews. I said to my father, “Dad, a word to the wise. When you talk about anti-semitism in Christian families, it hurts some people’s feelings. There’s a lot of anti-semitism out there, but I wouldn’t say it’s true of my wife’s family really.” My father nodded and looked back at his paper, but I’m pretty sure the hook went in.
My mother came down to breakfast, then my wife came into the breakfast room and we all had coffee. My mother asked about the dinner the night before, and we related the gossip about the family with the gonif in it, and then I told a Jewish story of my own on a related subject. Thirty years ago a friend of mine from Elkins Park PA was dating a girl from this big fancy Main Line family. My friend is the wittiest person I know. They were all at dinner and passing the vegetables around properly in the same direction, when my friend said, “Boy this is nothing like my house. It’s pandemonium and everyone is yelling for the beans or the mashed potatoes.” The patriarch of the famous family raised an eyebrow and said, “Jewish?” And my friend said, “Yes. Sorry.”
Then a few minutes later at dinner, the patriarch turned to my friend and said, “By the way, when I asked if you’re Jewish, I didn’t mean it was a bad thing.”
“Oh of course not,” my friend said, with his wicked little grin.
After that I drove my wife to her yoga class. The whole way she kept laughing about my friend’s line of 30 years ago. She said she’s going to use it herself. “Are you from Philadelphia?” “Yes. Sorry.” I haven’t told you that story before? I said. No! she said, she’d have remembered that line.
When I dropped her off I told her what I’d said to my father. “That was a good way to say it,” she said. I’m hoping that’s the end of it.
It was a good way to say it. 80-year-olds often think that others know what they are thinking, not only what they are saying.
On the other side, it would also be informative for you to ask your father what he meant.
I’ve had a number of experiences of blacks describing racism that I just didn’t see, both in interpersonal, and in collective settings. It turned out that even some of the comments that I and other took as offensive were also true, or would be obviously true with even just slightly different language used.
Holy fucking shit Phil! Has anybody in your family ever heard of manners? Just the plain decencies which make social intercourse possible? And keep family dinners from dissolving into fisticuffs?
I hope you don’t think your family is typical. And I would never, ever no matter what it cost me, display that kind of ballessness in front of my wife.
That’s an interesting story. It’s one thing to deal with such conflict within a family, but to add such distractions to the other problems society faces, makes me wonder if it is worth it to have multi-ethnic socieites.
“makes me wonder if it is worth it to have multi-ethnic socieites”
So tell me, genius, do you think we have a choice? Should we be rounding up boxcars, and constructing camps?
Or do you see enforcing American cultural orthodoxy as the way to go? As we know, enforced cultural orthodoxy always pays dividends- for facists.
Do you claim that a multicultiral or multiethnic society is without problems? This thread and the Yoga thread are ridiculous, and if this is what multiculturalism brings to us, then the experiment wasn’t worth it. And you can allude to the holocaust all you want, I don’t care. I don’t claim to be a genius, and I don’t suspect that you are one either.
For Thanksgiving my wife and I went to her parents’ place in a northern suburb of Chicago. My wife was born in Chicago; while I only lived there for 30 years, including many years in Skokie, home of the Shoah survivors, and on Friday night we went to Northbrook, to a relative of hers for post-Thanksgiving dinner. As we were getting ready to go, my father joked that he wasn’t invited “due to he was Irish-German, just a Mick and Kraut.” My wife tries to ignore the bait. It’s one of her rules in life. She said, “Maybe,” and just smiled. But my father brought it up again later, now naming a Jewish friend of my wife’s and saying she secretly hates goys, and my wife said something vague, and then my father said with an ironical meanness made naked by being in his 90s, that he thought all Jews hated goys.
I ignored the whole thing. I was changing as I had been out tending to my tomato and pepper plants.
My mother came to me and said that I should say something to my father about it, that he was outrageous, and he would listen to me not to anyone else, because my dad and I are close. Then my wife and my two sisters came in talking about it, and my wife said, “It hurts my feelings,” I waved it off. I said, “Don’t give in to the feeling. You’ve known about this 30 years, don’t decide to get upset.” Later I said, “You’ve been bonding with my mother, and that’s great. But don’t use this. You don’t need to get sensitive about this stuff.”
It did hurt my feelings 40 years ago, when I first met her family. At the time, I said, “I’ve heard about anti-semitism, but I never heard about anti-anti-semitism.” I’d just met her mother, and she had called me a NAZI and minimally, a goyschekopf. I think my wife and her father were the only ones who knew who she was talking about, not that either agreed completely. I was put in the particular class; I had to deal with her relatives on that basis. My father was alluding to my wife as “kinda dark.” This upset me, and I got angry at my father about it, came down on him hard. But I don’t think it had much of an effect. It’s my father’s genuine world view. He never trusted Jews. My father does not live in his head more than I do, and he and Pat Buchanen (sic) have a lot in common: PB wrote that there is a “river” of pro-Semitism running under American society that is, will be its on-doing. He’s only half-ironical about it. What are you going to do? Half his kids are married to non-Jews, a couple of whom employ Yiddish better than their kids.
At the Thanksgiving party we went to later, my wife explained to her cousins who the biggest gonif was in the family they were gossiping about, and then she had to explain the way that gonif means a thief and not a thief in Yiddish, that it’s a half-respectful term for a certain kind of cleverness. I didn’t buy it, but I let it slide. To me a thief is a thief.
On Saturday morning I arose and soon found myself in the kitchen alone with my father. I saw my wife buzzing about but she didn’t come in and I wondered if her feelings were really hurt, and if she’d never talk to my father again, and if I was being insensitive and spineless with my father. I love my father. He’s brilliant and idiosyncratic and uncomfortable. His sociological views are formed by his own Irish-German American experience–all own bootstraps up types. He was as unready for the world his intermarried children made as I am for all the young Liberals I meet who don’t even identify as “white Christians.” I said to my father, “Dad, word, When you talk about Jewish bias in our nation in even most Christian families, it hurts some people’s feelings. There’s a bit of anti-semitism out there–but it’s magnified by Jews because of their history in the diaspora; I wouldn’t say all Jews hate the Goy, and will never trust them–it’s only true of some of my wife’s family really.” My father nodded and looked back at his paper, but I’m pretty sure the hook went in.
My mother came down to breakfast, then my wife came into the breakfast room and we all had coffee. My mother asked about the dinner the night before, and we related the gossip about the family with the gonif in it, and then I told a story of my own on a related subject that had to do with the myriad ways one can be a thief. Many years ago in Chicago I was dating a girl from a fancy Main Line family, the Pritzkers. AT the time she had come off a relationship with one of the Jazz Allstars, and thought of me as
as a new alternative–she liked my dancing, art, and general hotness; We were all at dinner and passing the meat and vegetables around properly in the same direction, when a friend said, “Boy this is nothing like my house. It’s pandemonium and everyone is yelling for the beans or the mashed potatoes.” The patriarch of the famous family raised an eyebrow and said, “Jewish?” And my friend said, “Yes. Sorry.”
Then a few minutes later at dinner, the patriarch turned to my friend and said, “By the way, when I asked if you’re Jewish, I didn’t mean it was a bad thing.”
“Oh of course not,” my friend said, with his wicked little grin.
After that I drove my wife to her yoga class. The whole way she kept laughing about my friend’s line of 30 years ago. She said she’s going to use it herself. “Are you from Philadelphia?” “Yes. Sorry.” I haven’t told you that story before? I said. No! she said, she’d have remembered that line.
When I dropped her off I told her what I’d said to my father. “That was a good way to say it,” she said. I’m hoping that’s the end of it.
difference being, Citizen, that in some nations your satire could land you in jail, while Phil’s gets a shrug of the shoulders.
Jesus Christ, no manners in your family either, Citizen?
Militant Zionists would like to institutionalize anti-anti-Semitism.
” … and then my father said with an ironical meanness made naked by being in his 80s, that he thought all Christians were anti-Semitic.”
“…and my wife said, “It hurts my feelings, Phil.” ”
“You don’t need to get sensitive about this stuff.”
“It’s my father’s genuine world view.”
Just blow off your wife and her girl friend.
Count on them taking a “good Christian view of it all.”
Count on them turning the other cheek.
What else are they good for?
The difference being the elder Weiss imposes his parochial world view only on his family, Goldberg imposes it on millions of gentiles, in the guise of objectivity.
RE: “Jeffrey Goldberg wrote that there is a “river” of anti-Semitism running under American society…”
MY COMMENT: Perhaps I’m being overly optimistic, but I would characterize it as more of a ‘babbling brook’.
“Chinatown” (1974)
[Gittes pretends to seek a nursing home for his father]
Jake Gittes: “Do you accept people of the Jewish persuasion?”
Mr. Palmer: “I’m sorry, we do not.”
Jake Gittes: “Don’t apologize – neither does Dad.”
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Wow. Your dad sounds like a creep! You ought to tell him to put a sock in it.
I’m glad that Phil regards his relationship with his Dad as family, permanent, undeniable.
He’s not in his twenties, vainly attempting to establish his adulthood, his independence, and by rejection rather than nuance and appreciation.
I just think Witty’s worried about being regarded by most people the way Phil’s dad is going to get regarded.
“Dad, with all due nuance and appreciation, put a sock in it.”
Like that?
I think some of you are coming down on Phil’s dad too hard. So what if he has a group of people that he doesn’t care for? Unless he’s actively harming people of that group, does it matter? The rudeness seems uncalled for, but maybe there is more to the story. Would it be better if Phil’s father were accepting of all people as long as they held the right opinions? This is what we get with a multiethnic society.
Actually? Being labeled as anti-Semitic in the United States will get you blacklisted, big time. And in Europe, it can get you jailed. So throwing around that accusation rather does count as “actively harming” others.
It sounds like a family squabble to me. If Phil’s father has caused real harm to others, then he is the creep that some claim he is.
And don’t think I’m not tired of the anti-Semitism BS, but I’m not really sure what I could be blacklisted from. Sometimes being a complete nobody without major ambitions has its advantages.
For crying out loud, this is not some abstract intellectual exercise; it’s about Phil’s wife, who sounds like a gem.
Stick up for your wife, Phil.
I agree with Judy here. I’ve always stuck up for my wife when my father berated her for her birth origin, and my wife has always stuck up for me when her mother did the same as to me. We both love and have always respected our parents–but when they
made bigoted remarks we always called them on it. Interestingly, my mother and her father never made a single bigoted remark to either of us about our spouse.