Humor

DAY FOUR

We go to the Tel Aviv Center for Educational Technology in order to hold an experiment in “open space technology,” which is a fancy way of describing the act of sitting in rooms and talking. Sessions include “Can I Be a Bad Jew and Good Person?” “The Future of Fundamentalism,” “Kosher Sex,” which I don’t attend because I don’t want people to get the impression that I’m some kind of pervert, and “Jewish Continuity in 2020,” which I do attend hoping for a discussion of flying cars. Unfortunately the conversation is a series of tirades against intermarriage.

“Why should Jews survive?” I ask to my own surprise. Everyone stares. “Like, if it’s just about breeding for the sake of breeding, what’s the point? And even if Judaism does die out, billions of people are still going to worship our God, right?”

The other attendees stare at me with eyes like daggers (For the record: I’m not a self-hating Jew; I’m a self-loving asshole.)

Worse for the Jews than the Babylonian hordes: The bacon double cheeseburger“Oh, I’m just fucking with you,” I say. “We survived Pharaoh, the Romans, the Diaspora, Hitler and the Bacon Double Cheeseburger. The fact that WASPs finally let us bang their daughters is not exactly the most daunting crisis that we’ve ever faced.”

(Replies to my outburst: “It is a crisis,” “It’s the crisis of freedom,” “You are clearly misinformed.”)

Later in the afternoon a few Israeli ROI attendees complain that American Jews are pathetic, neurotic dweebs who analyze our identities to no end and refuse to perform any manual labor. None of the American Jews protest these hurtful stereotypes because they are 100 percent accurate.

This gets me thinking: If secular American Jews and secular Israeli Jews don’t have a shared religion or culture, what do we have in common besides a distant family tree? But there I go analyzing my identity like a weakling American Jew who enjoys laughing, knows how to stand in a line without cutting and doesn’t dress like a European disco addict or flamboyant homosexual.

We enjoy dinner and more free wine (this time really good free wine; I help myself to nine glasses) along the Tel Aviv port. Lynn Schusterman announces a $100,000 grant for ROI participants’ projects but I’m too busy getting loaded off her booze to pay much attention. The next couple of hours are hazy in my memory; apparently I reminisced about seeing a live porn shoot in Los Angeles (I believe the working title was Atomic Ass Whores), belted out Beatles and Elvis Costello tunes as everyone tried to sleep on the bus back to Jerusalem, and when I overheard a hippy chick from California say, “I just love animals so much and want to help them in any way possible,” I replied, “Yeah, I like to help them into a bowl of honey barbeque sauce.”

Everyone thanks God when I lose consciousness.

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Organic farming: One of the 613 commandments?DAY FIVE

Amazingly I do not have a hangover, but I am sickened when the hotel charges me $35 for my late laundry. The desk clerk won’t let me check out until I’ve signed. Without getting too dramatic, this fucking hotel is the only place in Israel that I hope Palestinian terrorists incinerate on the condition that only the desk staff is killed.

A closing ceremony follows lunch. A top ROI staffer suggests that we all make aliyah and asks us to stand for “Hatikvah,” the Israeli national anthem. (Apparently I’m the only person in the room who does not know the lyrics.) After the closing ceremony everyone hugs goodbye and swears that ROI has changed their lives. And maybe it has. These Young Jewish Innovators are clearly passionate about our religion and culture. I might not understand them or their nonprofit world, but maybe they will make a difference someday. Then again, I’m still not entirely sure why it matters that these goddamned hippies are Jewish goddamned hippies. (Correct me if I’m wrong but the thirteenth-century Kabbalists didn’t equate tikkum olam with campaigning against factory farms, which by the way are awesome.)

As for me, I’m Jewed out. All I’ve heard for nearly a week straight is Jewish this, Jewish that, Jewish Jewish Jewish Jewish Jewish, and I need a vacation. I don’t want to talk about Jews anymore, I don’t want to think about Jews anymore, and I certainly don’t want to look at Jews anymore. You hear me? I’m done with Jews.

So I say goodbye to my fellow Future Jewish Leaders, take one last glance at the Jewish Promised Land and board a plane back home…

To Brooklyn.

Fucker.

A few months ago I was invited to participate in the ROI (“Return on Investment”) Global Summit for Young Jewish Innovators, held in Jerusalem between July 1 and 5. By some miracle my invitation was not nullified after I posted this online profile: “I write books for a living, although sometimes the living is more like starving to death. … I figured that if I suck up to the Zionist-controlled media, I might get some work.” Apparently the ROI staff believed that this was a joke of some kind. (Ha! Ha!)

A certain mystique surrounded the Global Summit. I learned from the ROI website that the trip was funded by the Schusterman Family Foundation, which is partly responsible for the Taglit-Birthright Israel program. Otherwise, though, the site seemed alternately vague (ROI’s participants are “forging new frontiers in … contributing to the evolution of Jewish identity”) and psychedelic (ROI’s goal is to “create a hub in time and space in Jerusalem—THE hub of time and space—for intensive engagement and collaboration…forming a dynamic, eclectic, and international pod of leaders.”)

This struck me as shadowy and exhilarating. Perhaps I would observe the inner mechanics of that Jew World Order I keep reading about online. (Fun Factoid: Did you know that Hillary Clinton is a genocidal lizard from outer space?) Anyway, I could hardly turn down a free ticket halfway around the world. Especially if it meant I were joining the Illuminati.

When I learned that I was signed up for the “Content Delivery” track, however, I panicked and called ROI staff member (and Jewlicious head honcho) David Abitbol. “Listen, you Jew bastard,” I said, “I’m an objective journalist. I can’t distribute pro-Israel press releases to my media contacts whenever the IDF bulldozes some goddamned hippy, as much as I enjoy the thought of crushed, bloodied vegans. Are you trying to ruin my career?”

“No, it’s not like that,” Abitbol said. “Think of ROI as a networking and brainstorming session for twenty- to thirty-year-old Jews like you who’ve excelled in their fields. You’ll make some great contacts. Trust me. Just do it.”

“Okay, you Jew bastard,” I said. “Let’s skull-fuck this bitch.”

…………

 

Extremely tolerant of drunken shenanigans: Y LoveDAY ONE

When I arrive at the Jerusalem hotel, I’m infuriated to discover that the editors of the ROI attendee profile booklet have changed one of my answers. The question: “What keeps you up at night?” Their answer: “Attitudes Toward Intermarriage.” My answer: “The Orthodox screaming at me for dating a shiksa; she doesn’t eat pork so get off my back and let me finish what Hitler started, you frummer-than-thou motherfuckers.”

The woman in charge of registration forces me to sign a waiver stipulating that if terrorists kill me during the conference, my family can’t sue the ROI organizers. Furthermore if I engage in “illegal drug use or excessive alcohol consumption” I’ll get sent back to the U.S. on my own dime.

“Could you please define ‘excessive’?” I ask.

Appropriately the first ROI event is a wine tasting at 9:00 on the hotel veranda. Unfortunately the wine is kosher, which means I’ll probably get diabetes long before I get drunk.

Over the next hour I meet the other 119 future Jewish leaders. I’m hoping for a diabolical cabal of global power players sacrificing human children to Moloch, demon lord of the Phoenicians, but the ROI attendees are considerably less exciting. There are a few creative types, such as members of Israeli rock bands the Carsitters and missFlag, the Hasidic author of Never Mind the Goldbergs, and African-American rapper Yitz “Y-Love” Jordan, who converted to Orthodoxy a few years ago and now lays down his Babylon-disrespecting rhymes in Aramaic. (Later in the week, I drunkenly tell Jordan that he should change his stage name to “Blackisyahu.” To his infinite credit, he does not cap my ass like an O.G. Maccabee.)

Empowered Jewish youth: Activate!However, the vast majority of the ROI participants are from the Jewish foundational world: youth leadership directors of JCC and AIPAC chapters, Hillel directors, organizations that train Jewish college kids to defend Israel on their campuses in order to “empower them to make a change.”

While these people are nice, I don’t know how to speak their language. They speak of “community with a big ‘C,’” “incubating pilot programs” and “changing the world.” Every third word is “empowerment,” as if American Jewish youth are the Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers—merely waiting to be activated!—and these archaic foundations are Zordon of Zion. (“It’s continuity time!”)

There are also plenty of hippies: activists for “gender equality and social justice,” organic-lifestyle “ecological farmers” who believe that “feeling the earth here is really special,” the LGBT Coordinator of the International Union of Socialist Youth. The activists are not amused when I recount how I once accidentally urinated on the Israeli embassy when I lived in Washington, D.C. (It’s a long story, but basically I was very drunk.) They are also not amused by the story of when I urinated on a Tel Aviv beach while waving around my U.S. passport and screaming, “You can’t arrest me—I paid for this sand.” (Again, I was very drunk.)

“Why are so many of your stories about pissing on things?” asks another attendee. I have no good reply.

…………………..

 

Hell on earth: The bird sanctuary in Ramat GanDAY TWO

We’re forced to wake up at 6:30 a.m., which is not easy when your internal clock hovers somewhere over the Atlantic. (Or when your internal clock actually hovers around 6:30 a.m.)

Yoni Gordis, director of the Center for Leadership Initiatives, explains that our first day will involve hours upon hours of community service, adding that the Hebrew word for “service” is the same as “punishment for white collar crime.” We will be gardening, which is exactly what I enjoy doing before the sun fully rises. A middle-aged female hippie tells us that “developing a community garden is definitely an empowering experience,” because “you can feel healthy in it” and “make a difference.” (Kill me. Kill me now. Kill me hard.)

My group is taken to the Jerusalem Bird Sanctuary, a mosquito-ridden swamp that smells like animal shit and is equally pleasant to walk around in. A conservationist explains that preventing development here was a “victory” for environmentalists. We’re then forced to pull thorny plants from the ground without any gloves; I wind up with more pricks in me than the starlets of Campus Gang Bang #16.

For some reason I’m the only one unhappy with this situation; the other ROI participants are enjoying themselves. A girl from Chicago even swears that she doesn’t see the trillions of mosquitoes sucking harder than the starlets of Campus Gang Bang #16.

At the end of the torture session, the conservationist thanks us for our help.

“Nooooooooooo,” the hippies say in union. “Thank youuuuu.”

This is a sign of collective mental illness. Our people escaped slavery in Egypt thousands of years ago; there is no good reason to replace the Pharaohs with the pigeons.

No shirt, no shoes, no service: The underdressed authorWe’re given two hours to shower for a fancy dinner at the Jerusalem Museum. However, the woman at the hotel’s front desk fails to effectively communicate to me when my laundry will be done—and since she’s Israeli, she blames me instead of apologizing—so I’m forced to wear dirty jeans and a short-sleeved shirt instead of my dress clothes, which is humiliating until the fourth glass of (halfway decent) wine takes away the shame, as alcohol tends to do for people with zero dignity.

A lady with quite a bit of dignity (and money!), Lynn Schusterman, who funded the ROI conference, addresses us before the dinner, praising our “infectious energy and enthusiastic vision.” She seems like a nice person; I briefly meet her later in the evening and thank her for all the free shit.

However, I leave the dinner early with my homosexual friend Jamie Kirchick of the New Republic. We find a downtown bar and knock back a couple Israeli beers. (You’ll get a drink faster in the Negev desert than an Israeli pub; apparently nobody in the Jewish nation’s service industry expects a tip.)

“I don’t understand Christians,” I say, drunk enough to wonder if I’m going to wind up experimenting with my sexuality tonight. “They decide that the Old Testament is invalid when it comes to pork and shellfish—because Jesus says that what comes out of your mouth matters more than what goes in—but they rail against your brand of degeneracy, which is also forbidden in the Old Testament.”

“What comes out matters more than what goes in?” Jamie asks. “So Jesus would be down with cock-sucking?”

What would Jesus suck? The Holy Land is filled with mysteries. Jamie invites me to a Jerusalem gay bar—which would only be more out of place in Disneyland—but I must save my energy (and my anal integrity) for tomorrow's ROI events.

……………..

 

Holier than thou: Reading TalmudDAY THREE

I wake up with more energy than I expected but lose consciousness again thanks to the ROI-mandated 9:00 a.m. Talmud study. “You are about to take part in a 2,000-year-old tradition of studying text,” Gordis says, distributing a reading about the holiness of the Holy of Holies, which is apparently very holy.

I can’t face debating the Oral Law before I’ve digested breakfast, so I stagger to the men’s room and nap on the cold, bacteria-ridden floor. When I drag myself back to the conference room, the rest of the ROI attendees are enthusiastically discussing the passage: “So like, what is our holy of holies?” “Life is the journey.” “It’s like the audacity of hope, which is a phrase Barack Obama uses.” “We are so lucky to meet in a city where we can forge our own destinies.” “You can’t go into the Holy of Holies physically but you can go there spiritually.” Why is nobody else kvetching? What the fuck is wrong with these happy people?

Next we break into our tracks: Content Delivery, Community Service, Environmental Activism, Youth Programming and Israel Advocacy. Dave Abitbol leads the Content Delivery session, during which we mostly discuss how the blogosphere and YouTube have impacted Old Media.

“It always helps to look at pornography to see where the next tech boom will come from,” Abitbol explains to our group of twenty.

“It always just helps to look at pornography,” I contribute.

One track member complains about the lack of cultural literary in the Information Age: “A lot of American Jews don’t even know what Hamas is.”

“Isn’t that what you eat with pita and falafel?” I jest to no one’s amusement.

Jeremy Kossen, the CEO of JewTube.com, informs the group that he had a baby six months ago.

“Mazel tov, man,” I say privately after the group session. “The kid didn’t have any birth defects or Down’s syndrome or anything, did it?”

“No.” He stares at me in disgust. “Did you really just ask me that?”

Not an outtake from that Maxim shoot: Have we mentioned Israelis are gorgeous?We take an awesome tour of the Old City walls at twilight, get our daven on at the Western Wall, then go to a bar to enjoy performances from our fellow ROI attendees in the Carsitters and missFlag. On the way back to the hotel, my roommate Tomer Altman of Oy-Bay.org complains that his back hurts from walking all day long. I’m happy to finally meet someone who is capable of complaining about something.

“Man…” says 26-year-old Tomer. “It’s not easy becoming decrepit.”

“It’s the Jewish male curse,” I say. “We’re so adorable when we’re young and then wind up looking like the lovechildren of George Costanza and Rob Reiner.”

Speaking of which, Israelis are gorgeous. I’ve made it approximately 60 hours without masturbating in the Holy City, which is not easy when the local female population is comprised of olive-skinned goddesses armed with AK-47s, which for some reason makes them a thousand times hotter. (Why do I desperately want to make love to these women who could kill me in 500 different ways?)

You know, if Jewish American Princesses weren’t so reflexively horrified by the Second Amendment and skin cancer—and if Jewish American nebbishes looked anything like our IDF counterparts—perhaps the American intermarriage rate wouldn’t be quite so devastating.

Next: Our correspondent says something inappropriate and horrifies everyone. Again.

Sydney, Australia, 1994. I was in year nine (equivalent to American 10th grade) at Moriah College, Sydney’s biggest Jewish school, when our surly new sports coach gathered us in the auditorium to announce we would be fielding the first rugby team in the history of Sydney’s Jewish community. The auditorium filled with excited murmurs as we crowded around the coach to sign up. Visions of a scrum descending into bloody, out-and-out violence filled my mind. I could be fearless, brutal—and this was my chance to prove it.

An argument broke out the moment I got home from school.

“But Mum!” I shouted.

“You can’t play rugby. Jews don’t play rugby,” she said, punctuating each word with a forefinger.

“But why not?”

“They just don’t.”

“That’s not a reason.”

“It is in this house.”

“But why?”

“Because Jews are different. We are not brutes.”

“Yes we are!”

My overprotective mother wasn’t the only parent unhappy about the school’s new contact sport. The Parents and Friends Association made an official complaint to the principal. Rugby was a dangerous, violent game, they said, one that goyim played when they weren’t too busy drinking cocktails and reading biased reportage about Israel.

The most experience Moriah College had ever had with rugby was through our unofficial bookie, Moshe Ben-David, an enthusiastic Sephardic boy with sleek black hair and an excess of saliva. During the finals season of the Australian professional league, when he wasn’t horrifying the girls with an extracted pube he was impressing and confounding us with professional gambling talk: “I’ll give you four-to-one odds on a half-time five-point lead for the Tigers.” No one understood a word, but we handed him our lunch money and he wrote receipts on brown lunch bags. When word got around that he’d bought a new Game Boy that very week, we did what any group of vengeful adolescents would do: we went to the principal. The principal gave us a lecture and, instead of returning our embezzled funds, placed Moshe Ben-David’s crisp fifty-dollar bill in a blue tzedaka box.

I was about fifteen at the time, and not ready to accept that I was 105 pounds, 5 feet 1 inch tall, and pathetically uncoordinated. I couldn’t sleep at night, imagining the winning tries I’d score in the final moments of a game; I spent my hard-earned pocket money on cleats and a mouth guard and practiced sprints in the afternoons. I was determined to invalidate my mother’s shtetl rhetoric.

Tryouts began, and, while the sidelines oohed and aahed, Moshe Ben-David surreptitiously took bets on who would make the cut. The South Africans proved the outstanding faction, with their freckled noses, broad shoulders and effortless brutality. And Fatty “Babke” Feldman, a boy who was often teased for his girth, became something of a hero. No one could stop him once he got going, his big legs pumping like fattened pistons. We were invincible, and we knew it.

But when it came time for the coach to announce the team, my name wasn’t one of those mentioned. I was left to stand on the sidelines and talk about the game with the white-skinned Russians and hairy Sephardim. My dreams were shattered; I went home despondent, my pristine mouth guard rattling in its clear plastic case.

***

The team practiced every lunchtime; on the sidelines our discussions became increasingly Talmudic.

“You call that a kick? That’s not a kick. Goldberg can kick a hundred meters. You need to kick at least a hundred meters.”

“Fifty meters is plenty.”

“Hundred meters at least.”

“Skovron reckons forty meters is professional-selection standard.”

“What would Skovron know?”

“He knows.”

“He knows as much from football as I do from seafood. Where do you get your information? Even thirty meters is enough.”

After I overcame my initial disappointment, I stubbornly refused to be excluded from the action and continued to show an embarrassing and arguably unhealthy interest in the team. I could often be spotted running off-field to retrieve an over-kicked ball, or sprinting on-field to massage the fullback’s cramping quadriceps.

The coach approached me one day after lunchtime.

“Listen, Nathan. It’s real helpful of you to take on the position as, sort of…team doctor and all—“

“Well, you know, my father is a neurosurgeon.”

“Really. That’s great. But it’s a bit difficult when you actually run on the field during play.”

“I just thought it would be good to be close by in case of an accident.”

“Look,” he sighed. “I think it’s better if you stay on the sidelines until I call you. You’re going to get hurt.”

“Okay coach.” I said, jogging on the spot, shadowboxing. “I want to keep fit, just in case someone gets injured.”

He shook his head and walked away.

Kids can be cruel, but my allegiance must have been so pitiable that none of the other players said a word. In fact, they encouraged me. When I ran a water bottle to a winded prop, everyone just nodded at me and said, “Good work.” If I jogged on-field with a little mound of soil for a goal kick, the players slapped my back: “Nice work, Besser.”

Practices were actually very pleasant. Every one was concluded with fruit and cheesecake and most of our training sessions were spent arguing over rules and regulations.

***

Before the first game, the team huddled into a grunting circle. I stood at a distance, busying myself with water bottles. Then I heard the coach shout “Wait. Where’s Besser? The water boy. Our masseuse. The Doc!” He held out one last jersey and I stepped proudly forward to receive my greatest high-school accolade. I was pulled into the circle, and Feldman’s grip gave me a big shoulder bruise.

Our first game was against Scots College, a private school in the rich hills of Sydney. We piled out of the bus enthusiastically, pouring into formations, passing balls, sprinting, running backwards, dodging each other. As I arranged the water bottles and quartered oranges, I saw our opposition in the distance. The enormous Scots College kids were fiercely tackling a thinly cushioned steel pole. They scored a try within the first five minutes of the game. We pretended it meant nothing. “Next time, boys,” the coach said, twitching.

During our second game, against St. Ignatius, we didn’t fare much better. Blond hair billowing and muscles rippling, they stomped — or rather, strolled — all over us. We had our high-flying South Africans, but the St. Ignatius scrums were heavier and faster. Two of our players got injured, and we lost by 26 points. We were knocked out of the league competition in three disastrous games, losing the third by a mortifying 48 points.

During our final game, Lukowitz, the athletic, ginger-haired winger, was subbed off by the coach. Somehow, I thought he was just thirsty, so I sprinted towards him with a drink bottle and, in the middle of the playing field, sprayed a long stream of water into his face. As it went up his nostrils and in his eyes, Lukowitz became furious, gasping for air and making a guttural gagging sound.

Then, with a quick, furious jab, he broke my nose.

We spent the bus trip home in a weighty silence, a team of gloomy Jewish rugby players and one pathetic water boy with tissues up his nose and blood all over his jersey. Lukowitz was quick to apologize, and I accepted his regrets — after all, it was my mistake. Moshe Ben-David said I could make a mint from litigation, but I thought it was best to let sleeping dogs lie.

Mum almost fainted when she saw me and my mangled schnoz. I told her that I was hit during a tackle.

“You see, Nathan,” she said. “A Jew would never do such a thing.”

I was tempted to tell her the truth, but I just sniffed indifferently. The team had one last, somber cheesecake, our parents breathed a collective sigh of relief, and I never stepped onto the rugby field again.