It is Literally Impossible to Be a Jew Today
A Jewish ode to the Barbie Movie rant on double standards
It is literally impossible to be a Jew today. No matter what you do or how you live, you are always doing it wrong. Not only are you doing it wrong, it’s all your fault.
You can have money, but if you have too much money, are too showy, too New York Jew-y, you are a JAP (Jewish American Princess). If you bargain too hard, you are “jewing” down the price. Even if you have money, you are probably a Democrat, but the progressives in your party hate Israel. So you consider being a Republican, but the populists in your party hate Jews and consider both sides “very fine people” when neo-Nazis went rampaging in Charlottesville.
You have a nose, but if it’s too big, you look like a hook-nosed Jew, a Shylock. To play a Jew in a movie, you need to wear a prosthetic nose, because everyone knows Jews have big noses. And no one complains when they cast non-Jews as Jews in movies. But Hollywood is run by Jews, who also control the media, according to antisemites.
You have brown hair because Jews aren’t blond, right? How are you Jewish if you don’t look Jewish? You think that is why the Nazis made Jews wear stars, because Jews can be too hard to identify.
You are not white, but because you are a Jew, some consider you to be white and therefore privileged, so DEI shouldn’t apply to you. But white supremacists and Nazis don’t think you are white — so you are white but also not white — unless you are actually not white because there are plenty of Jews who are not Ashkenazi European Jews.
You celebrate Hanukkah because it is a Jewish holiday commemorating a Jewish uprising against the Greek-Seleucids, who tried to outlaw Judaism in the same land Jews are being killed today by Hamas. You are told that anti-Zionism is not antisemitism. You are told that chants of wiping Israel off the map are not antisemitic. Hurling a 350 pound menorah into Lake Merritt in Oakland with graffiti saying “We’re gonna find you” is not antisemitic, only anti-Zionist. Threatening Jews with genocide is “all in the context,” according to three Ivy League presidents.
If you don’t fight for your rights like the Jews who were rounded up by the Nazis, you are weak and a victim. And attacked by pogroms in Russia. And thrown out of Iraq, Yemen, Morocco, and other Arab countries on the eve of Israel’s independence. And you go to Israel because that is a place you can be Jewish.
You need to be liberal and progressive, because never again means genocide shouldn’t happen to anyone else. But after standing up for BlackLivesMatter, Anti-Asian hate and DEI, the allies have walked away when there is the highest level of antisemitism since the 1930s. You stand for MeToo but watch as UN agency for women stays silent when Jews are raped in the name of resistance.
You are anti-Hamas because Hamas are terrorists. Because if a mob of men with guns overran towns anywhere but Israel, attacked and killed women, men and children in barbarous ways, taking hundreds hostage, it would be clear that there would be a war until Hamas was defeated. But barbarously killing Israelis is celebrated as acts of resistance because Jews shouldn’t have been given their own land.
But you are also torn up by seeing people killed in Gaza used by Hamas to sway public opinion for a cease-fire so they can live another day to again try to destroy Israel. You want peace but you want Israel to continue to exist.
You are against a cease-fire because stopping the war means Israel’s very existence is threatened. Israel, who TikTok’ers have been taught is an occupier and an apartheid state, despite being a democratic state that gives rights to Arabs and Jews, is always in the wrong and Palestinians should be free from Israelis “From the (Jordan) river to the (Mediterranean) sea” which is exactly the location of the entire country of Israel.
It turns out that to be Jewish today is impossible. No matter what you do, you are doing it wrong. Not only are you doing it wrong, it’s all your fault.
