HalfSours

I was in Penn Station two days ago on, as far as I’m concerned, the worst day of the year to be in Manhattan. I shan’t mention the name of the culpable Catholic holiday on this page, as that would preclude my blog from being introduced into the canon in years to come. The city, especially the train station, was teeming with pasty New Jerseyans with cheap green plastic beads hanging down their chests. The streets of Midtown later, like I’ve trudged over in Dublin, were an expansive swamp of vomit.

As I see it the Irish paid their dues to the city when they built all those bridges and whatnot. Where I’m concerned, they can have their one day to run amuck of the city. Heck, when I was a senior in high school and working as an intern in the publishing racket I got to watch the parade in person. My office was right off of Fifth Avenue, and every third Irish boy had cut school that day to run around, red heads blazing, asking girls to kiss them in the merit of them being born of the clan. Fortunately, my usual penchant for red heads was curbed by the smell of the fresh morning puke.

This year I experienced a different unpleasantry: rollicking anti-Semitism. An older frum man with full beard and fur hat (not a striemel, but a fitted, Russian style hat) was walking on his way somewhere. A group of about 10 of the aforementioned pasty New Jerseyans passed him in the terminal. The tallest of the group, flanked by women, pointed his long arms out at the frummy and said; “Yeah, there’s my man right there.” The frum man then said; “what is wrong with you?”, and continued walking in the opposing direction. Another guy at the front of the group then said loudly; “this is America, ya know?” Not one member of their group chided either of them. Some laughed along with them, some paid no mind.

I was a bit taken aback by this. The Irish and the Jews by all accounts should have a strong kinship forged by a similar history of subjugation. Ireland’s history is one of the least tarnished by violent anti-Semitic crimes. There was one incident known as the Limerick Pogrom which, as pogroms go, was actually pretty pathetic; thank G-d no one was actually even killed. The rest of their record is relatively clean.

Irish-Americans have a more extensive history of anti-Semitism, which culminated in 1902 during the funeral of Rabbi Jacob Joseph; Irish workers from the R. Hoe company attacked mourners, throwing iron and other projectiles at them. The police called to the scene, mostly Irish, then came and indiscriminately clubbed the Jews in the crowd. Prior to and after that incident it was not uncommon for Jewish peddlers in New York to have their beards pulled by dock workers.

The jerks in the train station were not pulling on the frummy’s beard, but in my mind there was still an injustice done; the guy was just walking through the hall, looking a bit different and minding his business.

I wish I had the wherewithal to say something to them. I was in the midst of a long trip back home from Vermont, was balancing several irregularly shaped objects in my arms, and looked too disheveled to want to draw attention to myself. My usual biting tongue did not feel that it have the go-ahead to lash out at that moment. Quite honestly I’m not sure that protesting that kind of behavior really helps in any case. Ethnic tension is as old as ethnicity. We’re all guilty of ethnic bias; until Messianic days it is here to stay. I like the approach of Eileen Scully, an Irish-American history professor, who once taught me that you can’t use logic or persuasive argument to sway people out of their set opinions. Your actions and behavior are your best modus operandi to sway minds.