Why you wear that thing? (MySpace 10/06/2008)

Subject	Why you wear that thing?
DateCreated	10/6/2008 9:37:00 PM
PostedDate	10/7/2008 4:24:00 AM
Body	Rachel Corrie, remember her? - the young American who got crushed by an Israeli bulldozer some years ago. In her memory, I started wearing a small enameled flag of Palestine on my lapel, and continued to do that for several years. It soon became a daily habit, part of getting dressed. I'd usually forget I was wearing it - until the occasional comment or encounter... I was at a pot-luck supper, following a concert by a mostly-Gypsy string folk ensemble from Hungary that was passing through town. Our host was fluent in the language, and likes to cook Hungarian - both of which the guys appreciated. Their second language of choice was German not English - so conversational opportunities were limited. I recall one American woman's brazen yet touchingly naive attempt to tell a dirty joke about a fireman, his wife, and fire-bells - and a Hungarian's bizarre story about three construction workers, a Frenchman, a Russian, and an American, arguing about which country makes the best rubber. (no, it was not about condoms) But the encounter that is the subject of this blog happened later in the evening. The shortest musician, who has a lighter skin than the others, walked up to me, and his face literally tightened. "I am Jew-eesh. You are Jew-eesh." Uh, oh. He can't read my mitochondrial DNA, so it must be THE NOSE. He pointed a pudgy master-fiddler's finger at the lapel pin. "Why-you-wear-that-thing?" Having been outed and accused by this "Zionist agent," I found myself speechless. Completely forget about Rachel. Upping the nastiness quotient, he said, slowly and deliberately, "Maybe you like the colors... eh?" (dead silence in the room) This could get ugly. A perfect Jew-on-Jew comeback would have been "Yes. I get tired of the blue-and-white, and the white-and-blue, over and over again!" But I didn't say that, and it took a week for that option to even occur to me. Fortunately, it did not come to blows. But we got to talking, and funny, we found that both of us were much more reasonable than we had initially thought. What really broke the ice was discovering that we were both supporters of the "single-state solution" - a minority viewpoint, but to its supporters, the most rational and only practical approach to the ongoing crisis. Rare birds of the same feather, we were essentially brothers. He mused, "But making a new flag will be a problem. Can't have the Magen David." (huh?) "You know, Magen David!" He scowled in disgust at my blank expression. But this time, it dissipated quickly. Amid the sense of relief, it did not occur to me to go borrow a box of crayons from our host's daughter... Before leaving that evening, I encountered another musician who knew English, and I told him about the awkward dispute, which, nonetheless, had worked-out in the end. He said, "Oh, Lazlo! Don't worry about him. Two years ago he discovered he is Jewish, and he has been giving us a hard time since." [Hungarian rubber joke in comment below]

Unfortunately, when MySpace dropped the blog feature, it archived the original blog posts, but not the comments. But I found a copy on my hard drive...

the Hungarian Rubber Joke  (from a musician on tour)

Three construction workers - a Frenchman, an American, and a Russian - were sharing a lunch break, and arguing about which country makes the best rubber.

"France, said the Frenchman. "Thirty years ago, a worker fell from the Eiffel Tower, but his French-made suspenders caught on the structure, and that saved his life."

"That is nothing," said the American. "Twenty years ago, a worker fell from the Empire State Building, but on the way down, he stuck his chewing gum to the side of the building, and that saved his life."

"You are both wrong," said the Russian. "Ten years ago a worker fell from the Ostankino Tower, and he was wearing boots of Russian rubber, the best in the world!" He looked down at his own boots and smiled. "But what happened to him?," asked the other two. "He died, of course. But just look at them - they look almost the same as when he was wearing them!"