Well, I’m here again, heading up Jewcy’s Amsterdam bureau, and figured I’d give you a nice old fashioned dispatch.

Perhaps in all of Western Europe, Amsterdam is the most Jewish of cities.  Any local will tell you as much, in the amused, slightly ironic tone we in the States use to say things like: “You know, the high school gym was built above an old Indian burial ground.”  

You wouldn’t know it from benign army of George Plimpton look-alikes whistling merrily atop their old-fashioned bicycles, seemingly unperturbed by Semitic worries like allergies, or digestive troubles, or genocide, but there are still a few real live Jews tucked away in Northern Holland.  I’ve even met five or six of them, which about as many as we had at my high school in Omaha.  What we didn’t have in Omaha, however, is the shadowy imprint of a once large and influential Jewish presence living in street names, history, and monuments throughout the city my magical, mystical tour of Forgotten Jewish Amsterdam.

If the lines snaking outside the Anne Frank House at Prinsengracht 267 are any indication, the famous Secret Annex and adjoining museum (and café—it wouldn’t be Holland without an attached café, serving sensible luncheon dishes of tomato soup, open-faced cheese sandwiches, and apple cake) are the still the first things people think of when they think of Jewish Amsterdam.  Tucked away around the corner is the little statue of Anne herself, looking for all the world the Degas sculpture La petite danseuse de quatorze ans in the Metropolitan Musuem of Art in New York (Anne herself was about fourteen when she was deported, so that’s a fun fact to know and tell.)  Just next to Anne’s statue is the famous Homomonument, Amsterdam’s tribute to all homosexuals that have been persecuted (especially by the Nazis) so if you’re Jewish and gay, that little stretch of the Rozengracht is really one-stop shopping (or sobbing) before you hit the sex clubs for the night.  

Far lesser known than the house where Anne Frank hid, however, is the house where Anne Frank lived, a nondescript apartment house on the Merwedeplein in the Riverienbuurt (in translation, River Neighborhood), which in the 20’s and 30’s was an overwhelmingly middle-class Jewish neighborhood—sort of the Skokie or Brookline of Amsterdam.  Today, it remains a middle-class neighborhood of comfortable WWI-era apartment houses and retains its Jewish heritage with the presence of an Orthodox synagogue and a small yeshiva alongside kebab shops and supermarkets.

Across town is the more historic Jewish section, surrounding the main drag of the Jodenbreestraat (which according to my handy online translator, translates literally as “Jews Cooked to Mush Street”; while tantalizingly poetic, I’m almost sure this can’t be right).  On this street is the famous Rembrandthuis the residence and studio of the great master Rembrandt van Rijn, who legendarily inspiration in the faces of his Jewish neighbors, many of whom he used as models for his work.  Nearby, taking up nearly the entirety of the Nieuwe Amstelstraat, is the Jewish Historical Museum, housed in four former synagogues, including the former Great Synagogue, once the largest synagogue in Amsterdam and founded in the 1671 by Ashkenazi Jews fleeing from the Chmielnicki massacres in Ukraine.  Next to the museum is the Jonas Daniel Meijerplein, a square named for the first Jewish lawyer in the Netherlands (but rest assured, not the last) who fought for full Jewish emancipation under the law.  The square also bears yet another monument, this one to the dockworkers who briefly went on strike to protest 425 Jewish men and boys being sent to Mauthausen in 1941.  I’m sure it would have made Jonas Daniel Meijer proud.  

There are many, many monuments in Amsterdam; it’s a very old city and a lot of terrible things have happened here.  But my favorite, for sentimental reasons, is the Holocaust Memorial on the Max Euweplein, situated (appropriately, I’m sure you’ll agree) in front of the Hard Rock Café.  It’s a block of marble roughly the shape of a face that reaches to about eye-level, and the site of one of my personal Great Moments in Jewish History: we were returning from a free vodka tasting in a nearby gallery, completely off our faces, and my friend Maarten was amusing himself by drunkenly recounting Nazi jokes.  Sadly, he scarcely had time to crack himself up before he walked face first into the Holocaust Memorial, immediately breaking his nose and thus mingling his literal Aryan blood with the symbolic blood of my own anguished people.  I never laughed so hard in my life (but then I tried to take him to the emergency room, like a nice girl.  He wouldn’t go.)

Further south, behind the Heineken brewery, is a trendy area called the Pijp, and in the center is the beautiful Sarphatipark.  It’s prettier (I think) and more peaceful than the larger (and more famous) Vondelpark nearby, and in the middle is yet another monument (but this one is a fountain) to Samuel Sarphati, the Jewish physician and city planner who dedicated his life and work to improving living conditions for the poor.  The park was planned as a tribute after his death in 1866, and remains named for him to this day—apart from a brief interruption during the Nazi occupation when it was temporarily renamed.  

The Amsterdam ArenA is home of the Amsterdam football team Ajax, colloquially known as “the Jews” (you know, like “the Yankees.”)  I’ve written about Ajax here before, so I won’t go into it all again, but…until you see a giant blond Eindhoven fan screaming “Up with Hamas” to a defiant Moroccan youth in baggy pants and draped in a sheet covered with Stars of David…well, welcome to New Europe, ladies and gentleman.  (Who thought it would sometimes seem so much like Old Europe?)  Often forgotten in Dutch athletic history, however, is the 1928 Dutch Women’s Gymnastics Olympic Team, who won the first gold medal given in women’s gymnastics at the Olympische Stadium in their home town of Amsterdam.  Nearly all of the team was Jewish, including their coach; only one would survive the Holocaust.  

And on that happy note, you can celebrate the fact that you are still alive by engaging in what is possibly the most preferred Jewish pastime of the postwar era—grab a seat at one of the many, many “coffee shops” in Amsterdam and spark up a big fat joint.

Goed zo!  Dat is het!  Dank u well, dames en heren, en tot ziens!
 

Hello Semites and anti-Semites! (Is that like matter and antimatter? Kind of, except instead of totally and mutually annihilating each other they seem to have maintained an antagonistic, yet symbiotic relationship for centuries, deathless and regenerating, occupying the others mind and heart, like Harry Potter and Lord Voldemort. I talk about Harry Potter a lot, don’t I? I think it’s because it makes me sound younger.)

Sorry! Wandered off there for a second. You see, I’m in Amsterdam.

Yes, that Amsterdam, where last weekend I had the singular experience of watching You Don’t Mess With the Zohan in a theater full of Dutch people—Dutch, except for the dozen or so Germans parked behind us, loudly expressing their befuddlement at every cry of “Disco Disco,” and at Lainie Kazan, naked and resplendent, throwing her arms around Adam Sandler and cooing, “Oh honey! You are good at everything that you do,” before she dunks her hunk of pound cake in his coffee and shoves it in her mouth. Were they really allowed to laugh at this?

The New Jew Revolution--this reflexive self-mockery, the transformation of our own stereotypes and internalized self-loathing into something like pride--hasn’t quite gotten here yet. This can make for some intriguing exchanges. When one Dutch woman, somewhat haughtily, asked me why I hadn’t changed my last name upon marriage to Mr. Abramowitz, “subsuming my identity like most American women,” I replied:

“Well, I guess I could feed you a bunch of lines about having already established my professional identity and not wanting to go through all the paperwork, but honestly? I just wasn’t prepared for my name to sound that Jewish.”

She looked at me with undisguised shock. I know it’s difficult to detect irony when you’re not speaking in your first language, and standing just blocks away from the train station that processed the transports to Westerbork, I really should have known better. But before I could tell her I was kidding, she jumped in.

“But your last name is Shukert. That is a already a Jewish name.”

“Kind of,” I said. “In America it’s sort of neutral. In Nebraska, where I grew up, it’s just kind of German.”

“Well,” she said. “In Holland, it’s very, very Jewish.”

Ah! The ghosts of the past!

The Amsterdam Joden: in all of their gloryIn regards to Jewish identity, Amsterdam is special. It has a special name, Mokum, bestowed upon it years ago by its Jewish inhabitants, and has many Jewish leaders, including the popular current mayor, Job Cohen. The old Jewish Quarter boasts kosher restaurants and a pristine Jewish Museum. There are several synagogues and Jewish cemeteries still in use, and the Anne Frank House, with an appropriately solemn façade of glass and steel, attracts thousands of visitors each year. And then there are the Amsterdam Joden.

The Amsterdam football (or soccer, for those of you hopelessly unversed in the ways of the Continent) team, Ajax, is one of the three main Dutch football clubs, and like many such teams, inspires almost cult-like devotion in it’s supporters who call themselves… wait for it… the Jews. At games, they drape themselves in makeshift, sometimes homemade, Star of David flags and wear hats and jerseys with Hebrew writing. Some die-hard fans (most of whom, like the players, are not Jewish) set “Hava Nagilah” as their ringtones, or even go the extra mile and have the word Jood (if you went on a field trip with your Hebrew school class to that traveling Anne Frank exhibit in the late 1980’s, your remember as the Dutch word for Jew), often accompanied by a Star of David, tattooed on their bodies. When the team makes a successful play deserving of praise, or a serious bungle requiring encouragement (or reproach) their supported shout "Joden! Joden!" (Jews! Jews!) down at the field.

I thought it might be funny to take up a similar chant whenever Adam Sandler or Robert Smigel appeared on the screen, but managed, thankfully to restrain myself.

In the years since World War II, we’ve gone from martyrs to mascots.

Click The Image: for more Israeli Anti-Semitic Cartoons!But it doesn’t just stop there! American sports fans may argue over the Yankees vs. Red Sox with conviction and fervor, but rarely does it come to bloodshed. Nor have we perfected the kind of taunting verbal warfare, forged in the crucible of centuries of painful and violent history, that European teams unleash on each other. When some teams play Rotterdam, they sing a song referencing the brutal bombing campaign inflicted on the city by the Germans in 1940: “When the spring comes, we will bomb Rotterdam.” Dutch fans scream at German teams: “Give us back our bikes!” (Interestingly, I don’t believe there are many cases of Israeli fans screaming at the same teams: “Give me back my grandmother!”) When The Hague plays Ajax, they often shout “Hamas! Hamas!” while they goosestep in place and salute straight-armed at the opposing stands. And most famously, and creatively, when the Ajax Joden take the field, you can hear a loud hissing sound come from the Rotterdam stands. This is not a hiss of derision. It is meant to sound like the hiss of the gas. Jews to the gas.

I know. I’d be offended if I didn’t sort of think it was a little bit hilarious.

That’s Holland for you. Jews making Jewish jokes (for example, moi) are goggled at and strangely reprimanded. Non-Jews, however, use the Holocaust as a football chant, and it’s basically fine. (I say basically, because now and then a politician or civic leader plays lip service to how terrible it all is, but it doesn’t make much difference.)

More interesting to me is the evolution. Jews have gone from a being a despised minority to being sainted martyrs, and finally, mascots. I think of a story my mother told me, when we toured the old Jewish quarter of Prague, and came upon a group of elderly women selling little figurines of Orthodox Jews outside the ancient and abandoned synagogue. As one of the women tried to press a ceramic Chasid into her hand, my mother asked her if she was Jewish.

“Oh no!” said the woman.

“What happened to all the Jews then?” my mother asked.

“Oh!” The woman fluttered her hand in the air breezily. “They all moved away.”

A vanished people from a long-past time, whose once reviled customs (and existence) seem quaint and picturesque, now that they’re all gone. How strange to be part of a group filed away into irrelevance by the prevailing culture, the rough, unpleasant edges sanded and swept away by the passing of time.

It put me in mind of another group of people similarly removed from lands that they had lived on for millennia, that we in America currently use as mascots and souvenirs.

The Native Americans.

Is there really so much difference between the “Tomahawk Chop” and the hissing of the gas? Do these cultural appropriations only sting when they appropriate our culture? The only answer, I think, is to just take them back. In the words of Amitai Sandy, the Israeli graphic artist and comic book publisher, in response to the anti-Semitic cartoon contest sponsored by an Iranian newspaper: “We’ll show the world we can do the best, sharpest, most offensive Jew-hating cartoons ever published! No Iranian is going to beat us on our home turf!”

Personally, I’d love to see a version of how the Dancing Mascot of the Amsterdam Joden might look. My guess is that it wouldn’t be like Zohan.

Not many people enjoy both country music and gangsta rap. The average country fan doesn't want to listen to black people complain about the ghetto, and the average rap fan doesn't want to hear some cracker-ass cracker talk about his truck and dead dogs. But thanks to Snoop Dogg and Willie Nelson, Americans can finally cross the racial divide and realize that all of our problems can be solved with giant heaps of marijuana. In the new video "My Medicine," Snoop sings about being "high all day, every day," and Willie -- who also boasts a legendary consumption of cannabis -- assists on guitar.

You thought that Obama would bring this country together? Nah, it's all about Willie and Snoop. And mountains of grass. Don't step on the grass, Sam.

What's up with dogs getting the shit kicked out of them these days? First, the shroomed-up dude in Amsterdam went surgical on his pup with a pair of scissors. Then, some soulless psycho in Long Island tied a pitbull to a tree, doused him gasoline and lit him on fire. No link for this one, but I swear I saw it on New York local news last night. Could barely watch.

More overseas canine destruction, this time at the Tour de France, reports The Guardian. I'm only posting this because the dog's okay and the biker falls. After this, no more puppy bashing on the Shvitz.

I hope the freed spirit of the animal comes back and rips his balls off: 

AMSTERDAM - A 28-year-old Frenchman killed his dog in Amsterdam on Friday while under the influence of hallucinogenic mushrooms and marijuana.

The animal had to be slaughtered using scissors and a knife in order to free its spirit, the man told police.

Ian Buruma bangs that drum again: 

Moreover, fierce attacks on Muslims started to come from people who, raised in deeply religious families, had turned into radical leftists in the 1960’s and 1970’s. From defining themselves as anti-colonialists and anti-racists – champions of multiculturalism -- they have become fervent defenders of so-called Enlightenment values against Muslim orthodoxy. These people feared the comeback of religion; that the Protestant or Catholic oppressiveness they knew first-hand might be replaced by equally oppressive Muslim codes of conduct.

Anti-colonlialism and anti-racism are Enlightenment values, or the logical outcroppings of the liberty-and-reason tradition of the Enlightenment. However, Buruma committs a double linguistic blunder here by referring to jihadist/Islamist piffle as "Muslim orthodoxy," as if the murderer of Theo van Gogh were a reclusive believer who quietly pined for the salvation of mankind and the perdition of infidels. "Orthodoxy" won't cover it when it's an ideological religion, and the only one that refuses to brook criticism or censure from outsiders.

[Every Tuesday, Jewcy's Art Director Michael Morlitz will post an image with commentary to visually spice up the Daily Shvitz. This is his first installment. Cutesy title for this series forthcoming.]

Apparently, this is what they do for fun there, so count me in! The website says: The rules are simple: I put the self-timer on 2 seconds, push the button and try to get as far from the camera as I can.

Plaszoom, Rotterdam

Wijnstraat, Dordrecht

There's a lot of pictures, but it's hard to tell if he's running fast or if he's a slowpoke. I bet he's speedy quick though. He only has two seconds!