A Little History

 Some people find out they are Jews.

They can't believe it.

Thy had always hated Jews.

As children they had roamed in gangs on winter nights in the old
 neighborhood, looking for Jews.

They were not Jewish, they were Irish.

They brandished broken bottles, tough guys with blood on their
 lips, looking for Jews.

They intercepted Jewish boys walking alone and beat them up.

Sometimes they were content to chase a Jew and he could elude
 them by running away.
 They were happy just to see him run
 away.
 The coward! All Jews were yellow.

They spelled Jew with a small j jew.

And now they find out they are Jews themselves.

It happened at the time of the Spanish Inquisition.

To escape persecution, they pretended to convert to Christianity.

They came to this country and settled in the Southwest.

At some point oral tradition failed the family, and their
 secret faith died.

No one would ever have known if not for the bones that turned up
 on the dig.

A disaster.
 How could it have happened to them?
They are in a state of panic--at first.

Then they realize that it is the answer to their prayers.

They hasten to the synagogue or build new ones.

They are Jews at last!
They are free to marry other Jews, and divorce them, and intermarry
 with Gentiles, God forbid.

They are model citizens, clever and thrifty.

They debate the issues.

They fire off earnest letters to the editor.

They vote.

They are resented for being clever and thrifty.

They buy houses in the suburbs and agree not to talk so loud.

They look like everyone else, drive the same cars as everyone else,
 yet in their hearts they know they're different.

In every minyan there are always two or three, hated by 
 the others, who give life to one ugly stereotype or another:
The grasping Jew with the hooked nose or the Ivy League Bolshevik
 who thinks he is the agent of world history.

But most of them are neither ostentatiously pious nor
 excessively avaricious.

How I envy them! They believe.

How I envy them their annual family reunion on Passover,
 anniversary of the Exodus, when all the uncles and aunts and
 cousins get together.

They wonder about the heritage of Judaism they are passing along
 to their children.

Have they done as much as they could to keep the old embers
 burning?
Others lead more dramatic lives.

A few go to Israel.

One of them calls Israel "the ultimate concentration camp.
"
He tells Jewish jokes.

On the plane he gets tipsy, tries to seduce the stewardess.

People in the Midwest keep telling him reminds them of Woody
 Allen.

He wonders what that means.
 I'm funny? A sort of nervous
 intellectual type from New York? A Jew?
Around this time somebody accuses him of not being Jewish enough.

It is said by resentful colleagues that his parents changed their
 name from something that sounded more Jewish.

Everything he publishes is scrutinized with reference to "the
 Jewish question.
"
It is no longer clear what is meant by that phrase.

He has already forgotten all the Yiddish he used to know, and
 the people of that era are dying out one after another.

The number of witnesses keeps diminishing.

Soon there will be no one left to remind the others and their
 children.

That is why he came to this dry place where the bones have come
 to life.

To live in a state of perpetual war puts a tremendous burden on the
 population.
 As a visitor he felt he had to share that burden.

With his gift for codes and ciphers, he joined the counter-
 terrorism unit of army intelligence.

Contrary to what the spook novels say, he found it possible to
 avoid betraying either his country or his lover.

This was the life: strange bedrooms, the perfume of other men's
 wives.

As a spy he has a unique mission: to get his name on the front 
 page of the nation's newspaper of record.
 Only by doing that 
 would he get the message through to his immediate superior.

If he goes to jail, he will do so proudly; if they're going to
 hang him anyway, he'll do something worth hanging for.

In time he may get used to being the center of attention, but
 this was incredible:
To talk his way into being the chief suspect in the most 
 flamboyant murder case in years!
And he was innocent!
He could prove it!
And what a book he would write when they free him from this prison:
A novel, obliquely autobiographical, set in Vienna in the twilight
 of the Hapsburg Empire, in the year that his mother was born.

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