Anti-Semitism and the Dog Beach

 

It was a gorgeous day for a beach romp and sunbathing at 42 degrees with a mild breeze, Celebrating my fiftieth year on this beach, Gem Gem and I were attacked by two Yorkie Terriers. Gem Gem warded them off, after I had called out to their owner from 100 feet away to leash them. "You [people] just come here and think you're king of the beach!" she sneered. The news that I'd been coming to this beach for fifty years failed to cool her scorn. Walking away, she shouted over her shoulder, "you're a jerk off!"

"You don't need to get so nasty," I replied. "That's not nasty," she bellowed, "this is New Jersey!" Always the gentleman, I told her to have a nice day. I love this state.

There's more. There's always more.

This pleasant encounter was more complicated than you'd think. Her reference to me as "you" (as in "you people") was an anti-semitic swipe at the wealthy Syrian Jews, who have bought all the beach front properties for miles around here, including privatizing and closing off the very beach we were standing on in Loch Arbor. In essence, her deceptively simple outburst was the coded resentment of class and race. The nice white American lady mistook me for a carpet bagging Syrian (Sephardic) Jew from Brooklyn, whereas I am merely an Ashkenazi Jew from Eastern Europe. Wow, if she had known that, she might have come up with a better slur--uh, I don't know, bagel vendor, sheenie, kike, all of which I've been called in my own hometown. Thank יהוה that I now have Gem Gem to protect me.