Funny You Should Say That

The latest from Casa Donneliscia is an unbroken string of guests since my parents came to visit. It's fun, and taxing at the same time. Not anyone's fault, we just tend to be very private people. The busy summer should wrap up soon, and we can go back to the crutch of blessed routine. Also there's a lull in elder care, and after Lisa took five days off at her good friends John and Mary's mansion in Sebastopol (Think Lifestyle of the R and F)  she is back to her usual, glowing self. 

And now for something a little different.

 I recently reconnected with a well-intentioned French friend, with conservative leanings, but nothing extreme. She's a practicing doctor, was involved in  numerous charity-based projects across the world, writes charming essays on Greek mythology, in French, so nothing I can share, and is generally what you might call an enlightened traditionalist. I think she has a catholic background, but not sure whether she practices. 

Probably because she's a good person at heart, she's somewhat tone-deaf to ordinary prejudice: what has come to be known as micro-aggressions. Confession: I used to laugh about this type of language. Now I don't. 

Today she shared with me a Jewish joke. I think it was her way of acknowledging my Jewish-ness, and implying that because she's not prejudiced, it's OK for her to tell such jokes. I'll revisit this in a second. The joke goes like this. Jo Goldenberg, a restauranteur (by the way, that's an actual and famous Kosher restaurant owner in Paris, which is part of the "joke"), seeks an audience with the pope. The joke meanders as Jo clears hurdles and finally gets to see the Pontiff. The pope asks whether this is about a recent matter, and Jo says not quite. The Pope the states: "As long as this doesn't date back to Jesus Christ ..." Jo: "That's the thing, we have a bill for an unpaid Last Supper for thirteen people." 

Ok so it's semi-funny. But the first thing I noticed is that this is a story about Christians owing Jews money, and Jews never letting go of a debt. Shylock and all that. Then throw in Jesus and the Pope, and suddenly this gets incredibly uncomfortable. It's the worst stereotyping there is, portraying Christians as victims of Jewish financial rapaciousness. The sub-text is: Come on, the Last Supper, this is the story of the Son of God betrayed by a Jew, and you're focusing on the restaurant bill? That's how I reacted to it. 

That makes me trigger-happy, I realize. Then I thought more about this ... I've been on the receiving end of many such jokes, but also blatant antisemitism in France, when people didn't know I was Jewish. This happened in the US as well, and the shooting of ten worshippers in a synagogue in Pittsburgh did nothing to put me at ease. My mom and her sisters were hidden children during the war. Much of our distant family and certainly our family's acquaintances ended up in gas chambers. So no, I don't like it when non-Jews tell Jewish jokes. It feels like a total lack of empathy and crass ignorance on top of it; and a perpetuation of lies about Jews that have caused us tremendous harm. 

I'm not going into what's funny and what we should be allowed to joke about. That's not the topic. I agree with comedians when they say nothing is sacred, but the best of them NEVER engage in prejudice, on the contrary they dissect and ridicule the mechanisms of prejudice. Let's leave it at that. 

I think a good rule would be to never tell a joke from an ethnic perspective that is not yours. No Black jokes, no Native jokes, no jokes about women, no queer jokes unless you belong to one of those groups. The French (and much of Europe) bristle at this, because, understandably, they think we are hypocrites and cancel culture has gone too far. That may be true, but it's still not the topic. The path of kindness is to not add to the suffering. We don't have to laugh at someone's expense. 

All right, here's my alternative news:

From Seymour, a link to a recently discovered 78-year-old Pakistani virtuoso, Ustad Noor Baksh

If you know qawwali devotional music and Nusrat Fateh Ali, you're in for a treat. 

From Eric J., some potentially world-changing news: scientists may be zeroing on a fifth force of the Universe. Today's Standard Model, as it is known, encompasses Einstein's relativity and all of quantum physics, and describes four forces: gravity, which keeps you from floating into space and causes double-chins to appear in middle-age; the weak nuclear force which explains why elements like Uranium are radio-active, and makes possible every single nuclear reactor in the world; the strong nuclear force which prevents the nucleus of the atom (you know, the stuff we're all made of, whether we are money-grubbing Jews or noble Christians - see that's a Jewish joke I can tell, coz I's Jewish) from blowing apart into protons and neutrons, and ultimately into quarks; and of course electro-magnetism, which governs any particle with an electric charge, positive or negative, and is what powers your home and allows me to write and send this post over the Internet. So a fifth force? What the heck would it do? Well it might explain why there's so much dark matter and dark energy, and why galaxies are flying apart so long after the Big Bang. If you want to understand this better, gimme a shout. 

Let's throw in my absolute favorite version of Fernando Sor's 90 seconds of sheer bliss, study 1 opus 6, a piece I'm having trouble mastering, but getting there ... Played by  Brazilian guitarist Edson Lopes with such depth that it makes me cry each time. 

From Lisa D: The kind of encounter that caused young Siddhartha to wake up to how life really works. 

Also Lisa D: Just a little redwood beauty ...

And my latest illustration for Lucy On the Vine in the Evening - at this point the main AI character is reaching the fabled "singularity" ... maybe: