Whoopi and Us Jews

Stereotypes are a given. There was a time when stereotypes were not called out for what, in fact, they are: broad characterizations of people based on the perceived traits and behaviors defined by race, ethnicity, sex and/or religion.

Today, their mere utterance are recognized with such immediacy as to render the speaker a villain against all that is considered right and proper in society.

When I was a kid, people told ethnic jokes—many of them suggesting a number needed for changing a light bulb. (Blondes had yet to be recognized as an ethnicity.) Although seemingly unkind in retrospect, they didn’t mean to be. They were not mean-spirited or vulgar. A morning drive-time radio host on WGN in Chicago told jokes about Poles, Irish, Italians, French, British, Germans, Mexicans, and Bohemians. I am part of that latter group, and the host would ask if his audience if they knew what a set of Bohemian luggage was. The answer: “A pair of matching shopping bags from Goldblatt’s.”

Goldblatt’s was a discount department store that would have made Kmart look upscale. When my grandmother Liska would take the bus to come visit us, she carried her belongings in a pair of shopping bags from Goldblatt’s.

Because we, as a nation after World War II, were still in the throes of being a melting pot, certain stereotypes unwittingly defined us as an emerging nation. Jobs further defined us and there were certain trades that were somewhat exclusive by nationality. The Irish became cops; the Italians worked in sweatshops and groceries; Poles worked in the steel mills. Previous generations of Chinese had built the railroads. My grandfather was a steelworker; his wife, a seamstress.

As I recall, there were no jokes about Blacks or Jews that made it to the radio. Those jokes whispered on the schoolyard to select friends—not quite out of earshot to those being ridiculed—were vile, mean and decidedly racist. The kids who told those “jokes” no doubt learned them at home—the then-modern birthing grounds of antisemitism, racism, sexism, and hatred.

Jews and Blacks, along with other peoples, share in common a history of slavery. The escape from servitude is never quick or easy, and certainly not guaranteed. But escape is the key word. It is our nature to escape what we see as holding us back, that which is littering our paths to success, equality, and acceptance. Poor people want to rise above the cruel and unforgiving poverty that wrongfully defines them. And so it is that work has been the promised escape vehicle.

Greeting the arrivals to the gates at Auschwitz were the words Arbeit Macht Frei, or “Work Makes You Free.” To the Jewish prisoners, it provided false hope. There was no promise of freedom in Hitler’s “final solution” to the “Jewish problem.”

But hard work and diligence are admired traits. We are taught to value education and are encouraged to strive for something better than what our parents had.

Jews, another group of which I am a part, are not particularly known for our athletic prowess, although there are a great number of renowned Jewish players in American sports. Culturally, we trend toward science, the arts and letters, dentistry, business, anxiety disorders, and chess. (Personally, I gave up on chess when a cousin cried “checkmate” on his third move against me. It added to my angst.)

The topic of both Jewish and Black participation in sports is discussed extensively in academic and popular literature. Some scholars believe that sports have been an avenue for both peoples to overcome obstacles toward their participation in society. As a kid, I participated in Golden Gloves, a boxing program as common as Little League on Chicago’s West Side. Boxing one’s way to fame and fortune was as good as any other route, save crime. (I was as bad a boxer as I was a chess player.)

It worked for the Nebraska-born Max Baer, the world heavyweight champion from June 14, 1934, to June 13, 1935. Two of his fights (1933 win over Max Schmeling, 1935 loss to James J. Braddock) were both rated “Fight of the Year” by The Ring magazine.

Baseball provided outs for Henry “Hammerin’ Hank” Greenberg, the first Jewish superstar in American team sports, and Sandy Koufax, a left-handed hurler who pitched 12 seasons for the Brooklyn/Los Angeles Dodgers from 1955 to 1966. At age 36 he became the youngest player ever elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame and has been hailed as one of the greatest pitchers in baseball history. Both refused to play on Yom Kippur, garnering national attention as a conflict between religious calling and society.

In Olympic swimming, Mark Spitz won nine gold medals, one silver and one bronze, and has the second-most gold medals won in a single Olympic Games (seven). It wasn’t that long ago that Jews were not even allowed in the pool.

Currently, Ryan Turell, the 6-foot-6 senior center at Yeshiva University in New York, is averaging 28.1 points per game, the most by any basketball player in all three divisions of the National Collegiate Athletic Association, male or female.

With all that Blacks and Jews might share in common, I was somewhat taken aback by comments last week on “The View” that got Whoopi Goldberg a two-week suspension from ABC Television.

I’ve known Ms. Goldberg since 1986 when she and I worked on the first of seven HBO’s Comic Relief, a televised program hosted by her, Billy Crystal, and Robin Williams to aid the homeless. She is kind, obviously witty and talented, and as sweet as a person could hope to be. She also doesn’t take any crap from people.

The thought of her being antisemitic is as preposterous as her being called a racist because her one-woman stage production that launched her career was titled Spook Show. As Al Franken pointed out, she even took a Jewish name as her stage name (she was born Caryn Elaine Johnson). Her comment about Jews not being subjected to racism is based on her belief, however misinformed, that racism is based on the color of one’s skin.

Technically, there is not a Jewish race. Hitler deemed Jews as a race, and there are interesting genetic traits that, for instance, Ashkenazi (Eastern European) Jews share, namely, an occurrence of the rare disease, tay sachs. But anybody can become a Jew. (As my father opined when Sammy Davis, Jr., converted, “Doesn’t he have enough problems?”) I cannot, however, become Black, Hispanic, or Asian.

As Ms. Goldberg pointed out to Stephen Colbert, if she and a Jewish woman were walking down a street and the KKK was approaching, she’d run. It is unlikely that the Klan would identify the other woman as a Jew.

Sadly, I think we’ve reached a point where Thornton Wilder’s The Matchmaker, the play on which Hello, Dolly was based, couldn’t be produced without cries of antisemitism.

As for life as a Jew? (Here comes the last joke.) It’s like Fiddler on the Roof without music.

Composition and photography by Courtney A. Liska

Beef Brisket

There was a time when brisket was a cheap cut of beef. It needed hours to bake, which meant it could be prepared before sundown on shabbat and eaten the following day. Serve with roasted potatoes and plenty of horseradish.

1 beef brisket (point cut), about 5 to 6 pounds
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
1 large carrot, cut in 1/4-inch dice
2 sticks celery, cut in 1/4-inch dice
1 large onion, cut into 1/4-inch dice
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 sprig fresh rosemary
3 chicken livers
1, 15oz. can of crushed tomatoes
1 bay leaf
1 bottle (750ml) dry red wine
1 1/2 cups chicken stock
4 sprigs of parsley, chopped

Heat the oven to 325 degrees. Score the fat cap on the brisket and season with salt and pepper. Heat the oil in a large, heavy casserole, and sear the brisket on both sides until it starts to brown. Remove the brisket from the casserole.

Add the diced vegetables and garlic, and sauté for about 5 minutes over medium heat or until onion is translucent. Add the rosemary, chicken livers, tomatoes, and bay leaf. Return the brisket to casserole. Completely cover the meat with the wine, adding chicken stock if necessary.

Cover the casserole and bake in the oven for 3 to 3 1/2 hours or until the meat is fork-tender. If the liquid reduces by more than half during cooking, add a small amount of chicken stock.

Transfer the meat to a dish and keep warm. Remove the herbs, and purée remaining liquid with the vegetables and chicken livers until smooth. If the sauce is a little thin, return it to the casserole and reduce over medium-high heat until it reaches the desired consistency. Slice the brisket and arrange it on a deep platter with the sauce. Garnish with chopped parsley.