All Jews, at some point in their lives, dream of wagging their fingers at an audience and saying, "Jew you down? I'd like to throw you down!" But few members of the tribe can do it with such instinctive brio as spoken word artist Vanessa Hidary, a.k.a. the Hebrew Mamita. Hidary, a 30-something Syrian Jewish girl, who has appeared three times on Russell Simmons' Def Poetry Jam, and has performed on the Comedy Central Stage in Los Angeles, was raised in a mixed neighborhood on the Upper West Side and is now making a career out of telling us about it.

Though her act is spoken word, Hidary's shows go through all the usual motions of a song and dance number. She keeps a low center of gravity, her hips circulating her body and her arms cutting through the air, fingertips-first. She constantly alternates grace with sauce, as if she is a ballerina acting out a breakup scene, with all the attitude left in. In her aptly-titled piece Hebrew Mamita, a man on a bar stool tells her she doesn't look Jewish to which Hidary fires back, "What does Jewish look like to you? Should I fiddle on a fuckin' roof for you?" Clearly, this is not the kind of poetry that can be left on a page, unperformed. Hidary wants her poetry to be heard, to reach high notes, to stop dead in dramatic pauses, to sink quickly into ear canals. And sink quickly they do, bungling almost every Jewish stereotype along the way. After a Hidary performance, the members of the audience will be praying that they never be left alone in a dark alley with someone who has two x-chromosomes and, heaven forbid, a decipherable ration of Jewish blood.

For the past few weeks, Hidary and I have been volleying emails back and forth, talking about identity politics, haters and the man who "fucked like Brooklyn."

RA: I like your name Hebrew Mamita.

VH: Thanks. People usually assume it's a name coined from being part Latina and part Jewish. But I'm a Syrian/Ashkenazi Jew. I'm a Jewish girl who grew up around many Latinos and feel a connection to that community. And "Mamita" is a term of endearment, that I have heard my whole life. It made sense to put it with the "Hebrew." I like putting unique titles together, and more importantly, bringing people together. Something that gets people thinking and asking. In fact, right now, I'm about to be on a weekly radio show on UrbanLatino.com. My girl La Bruja heads a show called "Late Night Bru." I'm one of the sidekicks. My Hebrew Mamita segment will include a Shalom Alechim/Reggaton remix. If I can get one Jew a week to call in that would be an achievement! Here's the plug: we launch November 16th at 8pm on Urbanlatino.com

RA: When did you become a spoken word artist?

VH: It was in 2000. I had been writing my own monologues for awhile and then I saw a Def Poetry Jam performance at The Brooklyn Museum and I knew this genre was for me.

RA: You were a Sephardic Jewish girl who grew up in a black and Hispanic neighborhood. Wonderful! Now you have material! What would you write about had your upbringing been "normal"?

VH: I would rather describe it as a very mixed neighborhood. Jews, Blacks, Latinos; this was in the 70's, when the Upper West Side was not considered the upscale area it is now. My parents were public school-teaching, channel 13 tote bag-carrying liberal Jews, who took a chance investing property in what was then considered somewhat of a risky neighborhood. I always thought, growing up, that everyone lived like this. With Puerto Ricans knowing what lox was, and Jews drinking Malta. There are many of us from this area who know what I'm talking about and had similar experiences. I just felt a mission to write about it, and represent this very New York City experience. So I guess what I'm saying is that it is a "normal" experience. You just gotta be an old School New Yorker to get it.

RA: Can an artist still be an artist without experiencing an extreme, or at least, unique hardship?

VH: Yes, aren't they called musical theatre performers? Kidding! Kinda. Am I gonna get hate mail for that? Sorry, they just seem pretty chipper to me.

RA: Does being a Syrian Jew give you more ethnic cred in the hip hop world than, let's say, us unexotic ol' Ashkenazi?

VH: Nope. I don't think most people in this country even know what a Sephardic Jew is. But that's another article. And I'm half Ashkenazi so let me represent my Russian side too!

RA: Is there a history of spoken word in the Jewish tradition?

VH: I know we have always been great storytellers.

RA: In your piece, The Hebrew Mamita, you speak about Holocaust memory. Do you ever feel that as a Jewish artist you carry the "burden" or responsibility of talking about our rich, chronically tragic past?

VH: Not a burden. But a responsibility, yes. A vessel to carry along our story and our culture.

RA: You wrote about a man who fucked you like Brooklyn. Ever had a man fuck you like Manhattan? Queens?

VH: Err, when someone else quotes my pieces it always sounds dirtier to me! Let's just say nothing sounds better linguistically than Brooklyn. Do you think people would feel the power of something like, "He Fucked me Like Tribeca?" Okay, this subject is closed.

RA: Was anyone ever upset about the way they were represented in one of your pieces? Is it difficult to find the balance between being honest about the people in your life without throwing them to the lions?

VA: No. I disguise people very well. Or I just take them off my show mailing list. :)

RA: You're performances are very rhythmic. How much does music influence your work? Which musicians?

VH: Hip- Hop , comedy, and theatre. A combo of the three are my recipe. I love Lauren Hill, Big Daddy Kane, The Beatles, Led Zepplin, Saturday Night Live, etc....

RA: Would you write your poetry differently if you were not going to perform it?

VH: Yes. Less wordy pieces for performances.

RA: Do you write better when you are calm or when you're in a fit of passion?

VH: I don't know this word "calm" you speak of.

RA: I've never experienced it either. Where do you write?

VH: Starbucks. I know, I know, it's kinda capitalist and not unique and "artsy," but its close and when they see me coming they begin to make my drink. Big shout out to Josh, Luis, and Scarlet on 86th street! I can't write at home. I'm too distracted.

RA: Tell me about your haters!

VH: Wow, am I popular enough to have haters? Well, I guess Hebrew Mamita haters would be those who think we should all live within cultural or racial boundaries. People who are like, 'why is she calling herself Mamita when she's not Latina?' Or people who try to reduce my poems to "man bashing," or criticize me as a woman using "dirty" words, because it makes them uncomfortable. But in general I feel very blessed to get a lot of love from every race, gender and religion. I also think when you have any success, people quickly forget how much hard work one puts in. I've been producing, promoting, hosting and performing my own shows for years. Any success I've had had lots of sweat behind it. It kills me when I see someone in the game for a year and they're whining about not getting paid.

RA: I've heard that it's difficult for spoken word artists to understand what their audience is thinking. Musicians get applause. Comedians get laughs. But poets get more of a "Mmmmm." Is this difficult for you? Do you constantly have your audience on your mind when you're performing?

VH: Hmmm, I don't really see it that way. I feel I can feel and hear the response of my audience. I try not to think of them too much though. Every audience has its own personality.

RA: Do you think urban poetry could ever hit the mainstream?

VH: Well, Def Poetry Jam was the closest we ever got. I think if people are creative more things could develop. a reality show perhaps? Another "Slam" movie? But sometimes I think the art form is best when experienced live. Please come check out my show, The Culture Bandit Soul II, this Wednesday night at 8:00 pm at The Zipper Factory with another artist that breaks race boundaries, the amazing soul singer, Maya Azucena!

At the Metro Club in New Orleans, I was dancing with a law school student named Hendrik, who kept palming his way down the backside of my thighs.  Without hesitation, he told me he had been waiting all night to dance with a Jewish girl, especially one as "full-bred" as myself.  Oh God. Was it really that obvious? I wondered, reminding myself that if I would just stand 45 degrees to the left of guys, when speaking to them, that my nose would not seem nearly as obtrusive.  "You know, its so funny," Hendrik said, "My grandfather was a nazi officer but my dad and I, we absolutely love the Jewish people.  Especially the women.  Huge fans."

I Got Blitzed: by a nazi boyIt was weird and not very smart of Hendrik to natter on about his Nazi-infested genes before even scoring my digits.  I liked his honesty though. I also liked how his shoulder muscles packed so nicely into his ski sweater and how his strong, steroidal voice would crunch all the way down to a creak whenever he tried to be romantic.  "Did anyone ever tell you that your hair is the exact same color as your eyes?" Creak.  Creak.  Creak.  He made me want to dig into his esophagus and slowly and tenderly caress his vocal chords.  But I--fortunately--held myself back. 

My first date with Hendrik was a stroll through the New Orleans French Quarter. Hendrik spoke with terrific emotion about ex-lovers, probably to make me jealous, but I didn't really like him enough to mind.  There was Michelle Rosenthal with her nasal South Jersey whine; Mimi Moskowski who sported an unshaven hippie bush which Hendrik found endearing (though he did not find Mimi herself endearing); and Avivah Katz who used to bob her tongue into Hendrik's earlobe in the back row of Temple Emanu El's Friday night services. "It was just her way of saying ‘Shabbat Shalom," Hendrik insisted.  The list continued on with clunky Jewish last name after clunky Jewish last name, lots of bergs and ovitskys, very few vowels.  I could just picture the kid masturbating to a map of Israel every night.

Hendrik's flaming Jewish fetish made me a bit more self conscious or at least more aware of my voluptuously Jewish facial features.  One night, when Hendrik and I were enjoying our privacy outside an empty Café du Monde, Hendrik traced his finger along the curve of my nose as if it were as arousing as a breast.  I wanted to reroute his fingers to someplace-anyplace-sexier.  Look! Down below! There's these fat, flowering 32D melons just above my ribcage, here, have a stroke!  Hendrik couldn't hear my thoughts of course, and began to molest the bridge between my nostrils. I could practically hear him humming, "Ahhhh Juuudaism."

Trying to be heard over street music jazz, Hendrik said to me, "Um Rachel...sweetheart...would you mind singing a little Hebrew prayer for me? Please? Like the ‘Barak ata' one? It gets me off.  I'm being serious." He laughed at this, appreciating his own sexual weirdness.  I sighed and whispered "baruch atah adonei eloheinu meleh ha'olam" into his ear in my slinkiest phone sex operator voice.  He fondled my nose again and I giggled.

I imagined Hendrik dreaming up various Jew-girl-on-Nazi-descendant storylines before he went to bed at night. 

Fantasy #1: The Jew girl, with her inky black eyes and teeth slanted shyly inwards (think Anne Frank) kisses goose-stepping boy atop Noah's ark.  The only two humans left after the flood, the fate of humanity rests upon them to procreate (cue the urgent music).  Their limbs tangle about, arms becoming legs and legs becoming arms, they tangle about some more, the rhythm of the Mediterranean Sea eggs them on and then, suddenly-voila! The bible's first-ever half Christian/half Jewish baby is conceived! 

While my feelings toward Hendrik never did approach love, I, in utter anti-feminist fashion, wanted him to love me.  But I wondered: could a guy nursing a fetish ever truly fall in love with his fetish girl? 

I doubt it. It seemed I could never be the object of Hendrik's cosmic, chemicals gone haywire, rocket-fire love because I was the object of Hendrik's typecasting.  Hendrik was casting for his real-life Noah's Ark Jewess and I was the one who best fit the bill.

Who in Their Right Mind: would turn this down?A few weeks after I began dating Hendrik, I went through a serious Dolly Parton phase, perhaps in rebellion to all the pretentious snot clogging up my college campus. I wrote country songs and performed them before my full-length mirror and my roommate, who promised not to judge.  I wore cowboy boots and peroxided my hair so blonde it washed all the Jewish character out of my face.

I e-mailed Hendrik a digital picture of the new me labeled "Just as Hitler ordered" and I expected at least some kind of half-pleasure to come out from under him; maybe he would call me his "sexy little Barbara Streisand" or he would tell me gently that I looked very hot but that he wanted his Jew back. I just assumed that all guys, even the most Jew-chasing among them, were turned on by blonde.  I thought it an evolutionary thing.

For a good few hours, I stared, autistic-like, at my computer until an instant message from bodyofgod937 popped up on the screen: "Call me when you have better judgement" is all it said.  My better judgement told me that I should take Hendrik's number out of my cell phone and that I should have listened to my mother in the first place and only date nice Jewish boys.  Jewish boys, after all, would never pass up on a good shiksa.