Traditional Jewish Jokes & Anecdotes, No. 21

A Night Out on the Town

There are many ways to approach Jewish jokes, as I have pointed out before, but it is not easy to know which is most appropriate to the particular anecdote or witticism one is trying to retell for a contemporary readership. When the faces of the audience are not visible and the setting is not clear, the writer has to recreate something vivid and persuasive and at the same time not be intrusive or say too much so as to spoil the gradual build-up, release the surprise in a punch-line, and allow the shock to subside in an entertaining manner. In other words, sometimes it is better not to say too much, but other times—well, you know what happens.

There was a great to-do in the front of the Grand Hotel last Saturday night at about a quarter past eleven.  Crowds of people came running from surrounding streets and very soon police cars, ambulances, fire engines could be heard with sirens blaring as they made their way through traffic to the entrance to the building.  From inside, you could hear lots of screams, the sound of furniture being broken, and some people swear they also heard gun shots.  This was no ordinary to-do, let me tell you.  Never in a neighborhood right on the boundary between the ordinary citizens and the Jews was anything quite like it.

If you want you can take the hotel to be the whole world or Israel or the Temple Mount or the Second Temple in all its ancient glory.  The disaster would therefore be any or all of those Jews have lived through in the last three milennia.  As long as we live in a non-Jewish world, this is what we learn to expect.

The police cleared away through the crowds.  The ambulance men filed in carrying large bags of medicine and pushing at least three gurneys to carry away any injured parties.  The fire officers unrolled hoses and carried large battering rams, pikes and axes.  As I said, this was no ordinary Saturday night to-do at the Grand.  For this hotel was usually a place of peace, where different nations met and conducted themselves according to diplomatic niceties.

Now maybe you think the scene has shifted and you are at the United Nations building in New York.  That would be a good guess, but still only a guess. 

Within a few moments, the noisy shouts began to tone down, the breakage of chairs and tables came to an end, and there were no further rumors of bullets being fired.  Slowly, between a cordon of the various officers who had arrived, a bedraggled and motley group of men and women, looking none the worse for their ordeal, shuffled out in dribs and drabs.  Most were youngish, in their early twenties, the kind of revellers you would expect to get caught up in such a to-do, but in some other part of the city; no one would dare deny that there was a binge drinking problem in this neck of the woods, this little enclave between the Ghetto and the Christian and Muslim quarters.  Then came a few older ladies and gentlemen—the terms here are advisably used for their ironic effect—who supported one another in their staggering departure from the Grand Hotel. Most of these youthful and more mature persons were allowed to pass through the cordon of police and firemen, but occasionally a senior officer would nod his head discreetly and someone in the departing group would be steered towards one of the waiting squad cars. 

This whole to-do is some balagan, or tumult, right?  But if you think in more specific terms, well, it is a pogrom in progress, or one just over, leaving a legacy of resentment and anger.

It took only ten minutes for the bulk of the patrons to be accounted for.  The manager of the Hotel and the head bar-tender stood next to the most authoritative policeman, someone in plain clothes, as they say, but obviously the regulation blue suit and black necktie that served as a surrogate uniform.  They took turns whispering in the detective’s ears, who smiled or frowned as the information was received, like translators at some great international convention who had to exchange many languages simultaneously.  Then, without any formal announcement, the police, fire, and ambulance staff began to depart themselves.

If you have been reading the newspapers recently about what goes on in the world the scene is all too familiar. When it comes down to, the world doesn’t care what happens anywhere, unless there are people you know right there—and even then, well, they have to be people you like.  And you know who the world has never liked.

However, the detective chief, the hotel manager and the head bartender remained where they were.  They watched patiently as the crowd that had gathered marched away themselves, leaving the street in front of the hotel now virtually deserted and quiet.  This was as it should be: a no man’s land, an open and neutral urban area.

It could be a terrorist attack in Nairobi or Washington, DC or almost anywhere in ther world, eventually the crowds disappear, the mess is wept up, and the life of the people comes back to normal.  Except in one country where no one forgets and everyone waits almost resiognedly for the next explosion.  They always come, these attacks out of the blue.

At that point, the detective said to the other men: “Now let’s go in and inspect the damage and pick up the wounded.” 

Once you start to read defective for detective, then the ironic disintegration of the primary narration starts to transform the whole context of the story.

Inside, the dust now settled, the small group found three men seated at a table.  One was an Iranian mullah, another a Norwegian diplomat, and the third an Israeli falafel maker.  Each one looked exhausted, somewhat battered, and barely able to keep his head up.

Here is where a joke of a different sort might begin: the three characters who each have some peculiarity that makes them foils for one another, until the last one tops them all and emerges as the clear heroic winner.  Unfortunately, nothing of the sort happens here.

The chief detective, wiping his brow, and taking a deep breath to address this trio of elderly representatives commands everyone’s attention.

Be on the alert for what happens here.

“Gentlemen,” he started, “it gives me no pleasure to see you in this condition.  You are allowed to come here on condition that you behave yourselves.  Your job is to have an exchange of views, so that we may create an era of peace and harmony.  Your task is to implement the programme set forth by our Great Leader to work out a system of disarmament and to insure at the same time the security of all.  But just look at you,” he said, pointing to them, “you are, if I may say so, a disgrace to yourselves, to your people, and to my office which is sent here to ensure your safety.”

Aside from the fact that this is all pretentious nonsense, everyone will recognize who he is—or at least, what kind of a leader this is supposed to be.  He comes to the platform of the world stage, razzes his hosts, distorts history, and claims the authority of victimhood.  Sometimes he smokes a fat cigar, sometimes he appears to be a mystical guru, at other times a simple peasant, a guerrilla leader, a self-made minority businessman, an athlete, a magician, a famous singer, or anything you want him to be.

The three looked sheepishly down, furtively glanced at one another, and then turned their regard firmly back to the chief detective.

This is all pretence too, well, at least for some of those old men sitting at the table

“And so, what have you to say for yourselves?” he asked.

The game is familiar.  But the outcome may not be. 

The mullah spoke first: “I am not ashamed of myself, of the democratic and peace-loving Iranian people, or of the speech I came here to deliver, but I am surprised by the reaction of my two colleagues.”

The mask starts to fall.

“And?” said the chief detective.

The other mask is put on.

“And when I came here, expecting to be welcomed and honored by all, having only recently been elected president of my nation by popular acclaim, and being distinguished by the august Council of International Jurists with the appointment to the Disarmament and Security Committee,   I found that no one believed my words or recognized my credentials.”

You can see how the rules of the game are being switched around.  The trouble is, as we all know, most of the people seeing or reading about this encounter have no memories or are so steeped in their own propaganda, so brain-washed they take everything at face value, provided the face is the one they have  been taught to expect to see there.

“Is this true?” asked the chief detective.

In case you ever need to explain the word disingenuous and need an example.

The Norwegian diplomat coughed and said: “This is indeed not true.  My delegation and those of my Nordic neighbors, you can be assured, welcomed the mullah and wished him good will.  We know that his intentions are good and his experience a guarantee of his sincerity.  But we ourselves were unprepared for what happened next.  You see—“

The asymmetrical warfare becomes visible now.  The in-group, the majoritarians, know precisely what they are doing and have only been waiting for the code words to be set out.

He pointed to the Israeli falafel maker, shook his finger, and continued: “Ffehh ffehh on him.  He is a spoiler.  He doesn’t believe anyone, and yet we know—all of us, to be sure, all of us who are good Christian Europeans, we know that these people are not to be trusted.  I don’t know why he is here.  I would have walked out if it weren’t in bad taste and we were not expecting a big banquet tomorrow afternoon.”

Once the traditional game starts in earnest, with all the insiders in place, the ironies can twist around one another, and the victim slowly entrapped, although he has long since recognized the role he is expected to play.

“What do you have to say to this?” asked the chief detective, looking sternly at the Israeli.  “If you can’t be civil, I have the authority to toss you out on the street, after requesting that you pay the bill for all this damage you have obviously caused.”

These words need not even be spoken.  They are taken for granted.  The trap is quickly lowering over the poor little fellow, and though he knows what is going to happen, he wishes so much that it wouldn’t that he goes along just to see what will be the outcome this time.

The falafel maker, a short and pudgy man, with big bushy eyebrows, stood up, banged on the table, and said:

If you think he is surprised and if you think he believes he can make a valid protest in this venue, you have never read a history book in your life.

“Me you accuse of being a trouble maker?  You know what I think?”

Whether he means it to happen or not, when he speaks it is the old routine or shtick all over again: he has to say this.  If there were alternatives, he wouldn’t be there in the first place.  It is embarrassing, to be sure, but ineluctable.

“No,” said the chief detective, and I am not interested in what you think, only in what happened.”

There it is.  You can here the clunk of the cage door shutting.

“Throw the bum out,” said the Norwegian.

But the players in this festival of Risus  and of blood and of injustice are not going to let the victim get away with a mere humiliation and a short-term torture, they are going to spin out the game for as long as possible.  What could be more fun?

“No,” said the Iranian, “let him stay.  I want the whole world to see what kind of a person he is, this sneak, this betrayer of all honor and dignity, this dirty little—well, you know exactly what I mean.”

So here they go, all of them, getting on their high horses, taking the moral high ground, performing their role as the self-righteous with indignation and boastful triumph.

“Will somebody, please, tell me exactly what happened?” asked the chief detective.

The leading question as though he didn’t know exactly what had been planned all along, and now will be exhibited to the media for everyone to see.

“Just look at who we have to deal with,” said the Norwegian and the Iranian at once.

How very disarmingly honest and frank of them both: the Sword of Damocles now begins to lower.

The Israeli falafel maker smiled sheepishly.

This is the archaic smile of the entrapped victim: within, he calls up all the precedents of his people, recited their piyyutim of martyrdom, and prepares for the worst.

“Well,” said the chief detective to the Israeli, “clearly your presence is and was and always will be a provocation to violence.”

This is the sentence passed, even before the mock trial is over; he is accuser, judge, jury and executioner all in one.

“What do you mean?” he said.  “I own this place.  It’s my hotel.  They came in here and started making trouble.  They insulted all my customers, told them to get out if they didn’t want to be known as supporters of a ruthless, neo-Nazi, Apartheid state.”

The plea has no chance of being heard, except as a strong of confessions to the crimes the court claims he has committed—and in the claim lies the facts of the case against him. They echo down the centuries.

“Are you going to believe him or us?  Make your choice,” said the two diplomats.

“I think you better leave now,” the chief detective said, pointing a finger at the falafel maker, “or there is going to be big trouble.  I mean BIG trouble.”

We have seen this in the trial scene in The Merchant of Venice when Shylock is trapped, forced to submit, and cast away into the oblivion of a conversion that cannot be other than a punishment in itself.

“You heard what he said,” the two shouted.  “Now—out with you.  Quick.”

They were thus chased out of England, then out of France, then out of Spain, and then from a hundred other states, cities and territories.  Convert or die.  Get out and leave everything behind.  Your presence is an insult to the rest of humanity. No one will accept you? Too bad.  We must extirpate this foreign, diseased being from our midst.

“What is this, some kind of a joke?” the Israeli said./  “I have been here more than fifty years.  My family owned this hotel generations ago and they were thrown out.  So I came back.,  I had to fight me to be here, and I worked….”

Some joke. 

“Yeah, yeah, yeah” the two diplomats and the chief detective said.  “We’ve heard the same sob story before.

The crowd goes wild.  They shout from the rooftops, as the Philistines did at the Temple of Dagon when Samson, blinded and shorn of his hair, walked in for their delight and delectation. But this time around, the game having been perfected in Europe during the 1940s and being readied for the Middle East a half century later, he won’t be able to bring the house down with a different kind of a laughter.  Or will he?

“What the—?”

Here is the classical  eiron, the Socratic little fool, the Silenus with his text tucked in his heart  like the scroll in a mezuzah (that whirl-a-gig on the door frame that Samson wrenched out and carried away from the Gates of Gaza.

At which point, they all lifted him up bodily, tossed him out the door, and, as he ran away, they fired shots at him.

This is one possible conclusion to the anecdote. The wicked clod Mak is tossed in a blanket, tarred and feathered, ridden out of town on a rail.  King Lear reduced to Poor Tom unaccomodated man and weeping over Cordelia, his poor foolish heart, a parody of the Pietà. 

“Now that’s a joke for you.”

This is another possible conclusion, though you must decide whose voice is speaking here and to whom. Is it Buncha Shwei the Silent One or Brutus the noble Dumby waiting to read what is hidden in the hollow tube. It could be you or me or you know who.