16 Years Later, And I'm Still the Same

I feel like I have to write about this. Like it's my duty as a 21st-century Jew to tell you all about what happened to me on Saturday night, and how I was so shocked that it did that I couldn't even work up a response. Because, as I said to Dani later, "that hasn't happened to me since I was in sixth grade, and one of my classmates told me to go 'pick up a penny like a Jew.'"

I don't like to be particularly detailed in my posts here, mostly because I really don't need the people in my law-school-cum-high-school to know who I am. But this deserves detail, this deserves something more.

On Saturday night, Dani and I were standing on Amsterdam Avenue outside of Land Thai Kitchen. To paint the scene, this is an area of the Upper West Side that I refer to as "frat row" because it is on the same stretch as Brother Jimmy's, The Gin Mill, Jake's Dilemna, and other fratty bars. While we were waiting for friends inside Land, a middle-aged African American man came up to us to ask for money. He said "I'm asking you for some change, but I'm not like everyone else, I'll recite a poem for you" and started to do so. As he continued, Dani and I both apologized and said that we would not be giving him any money.

At this point, he looked at me and said "you know, you Jews are all the same. You're all alike. You know, your money doesn't do you any good when you hold onto it so tightly. You can't take it with you. You fucking Jews, you don't know what it means to give."

Yeah, okay, I have curly brown hair. And yeah, okay, I've got a Jewish nose. But what right did that give this man to judge me and who I am based on my religion? I was so shocked that someone was saying this to me on the Upper West Side of New York fucking City in 2009 that I just looked at Dani and started to cry while she made every attempt to tell this guy to fuck off and go away. And though it took a good 3 minutes for her to convince him to leave, he did.

No one has the right to disparage me because of outdated religious stereotypes. It is so hard to believe that 16 years after my first and only exposure to direct anti-Semitism, I encountered it again on the Jews' home turf.

In case you didn't know, anti-Semitism is alive and well, and begging for change on the Upper West Side.