A Nice Jewish Goy

One of my former students posted a clip from Southpark on Facebook. It was called, “A Jew on Christmas.” Knowing the show, I figured it would be stupid or crude and moved on. I paused to think about Jason. A recent graduate of Brown, Jay was in the first class I ever taught. I thought again of the South Park clip and realized, Jay’s Jewish. Intrigued, I scrolled back to watch the clip. As expected, it was about a lonely Jewish boy surrounded by all of his Christian friends. There was a series of jokes about dradles and not playing reindeer games. Some of it was funny, some of it made me cringe.

I thought about Jason growing up as the only Jewish kid in his group of friends in Woodbury, CT. I know Jason and his friends, they’re nice kids. I know he had a very happy childhood. I also think there had to be the occasional slip, the “Oh I didn’t mean anything by that Jason” comments. And outside Jason’s group of friends, the comments might not have been so benign. I thought if any of Jason’s gentile friends posted that clip, people might get mad. I thought about this age of political correctness and my own Jewish friends who might post something like that. Dave Gordon and Steve Stemmer came to mind, guys I joke around with all the time about our “differences.” I thought of my other Jewish friends who would never post something like that, who would have been insulted by the clip. Which response is better? Isn’t it hard to judge with humor? The Irish and the Jews have been making fun of ourselves for years. And when we are poking fun at some of our stereotypical behavior, if it’s meant in fun, if it’s not mean-spirited, is it okay?

My mind wandered to relationships I have had over the years. I could think of a lot of my friends, who happened to be Jewish, who seemed to hang out with a lot of Catholic, mostly Irish, guys. I thought of Glen Gruder, Dave Gordon, Eric Friedman and how their experiences were probably similar to Jason’s. Boys enduring the lighthearted ribbing, ignoring the occasional slight and sticking up for yourself when it’s warranted. I pondered the attraction between the Irish and the Jewish people. You could make the case that the Irish and the Jews have always been kindred spirits in their shared history of persecution, having for the longest time been second class citizens. We share an ability to laugh at life, to use our sense of humor as a tool, a weapon, a coping mechanism. Is it this shared sense of humor that brings us together?

Jason made me think of one of my best friends, a real mensch…Around 5th grade, 1974, I was living what can only be called a parochial existence. Our neighborhood was mostly Irish and Italian. I attended Immaculate Heart of Mary, the local Catholic school. Considering I grew up in New York, I didn’t really know a Jewish person until Glen Gruder and his family moved onto East 4th Street. Thus began the education of a gentile in the ways of the sons of Abraham. Glen, 8th grade at the time, hung out with the older kids on our block. He was a curiosity to my friends and I for his newness and his Jewness. Come on that’s funny. We found him intriguing, we taunted him and he gave it right back to us. We’d pull a sneak attack with snowballs and he’d track us down and pummel one of us, usually me. Over the next few years, through the gauntlet of athletics and the verbal sparring of the street we began to learn about each other and respect each other. I often think, on our block, Glen was a Jewish Jackie Robinson.

As our lifelong friendship grew, Glen dispelled some of the myths about the Jewish people and confirmed a few of the stereotypes I suppose. First, he was a great athlete, something we found hard to believe. How can he be that good at football, he’s Jewish? I remember one of our jokes at I.H.M. was, “What’s the shortest book in the library?”Answer: Great Jewish Athletes. Glen was smart, we knew he was in “SP” classes at Ditmas Junior High School. Those classes were reserved for the brightest kids. Glen was hard-working, argumentative and had a boisterous personality. To top it off his father owned his own “candy company.” This confirmed for us New York City kids, the malicious rumor that Jewish people just might control a lot of really important things.

I don’t know how to tiptoe around this one, the elephant in the room. I have to address the scuttlebutt on the streets of Brooklyn and in the hallways of our Catholic school about Jewish people being “careful with money.” Starting with Glen Gruder, I have never found this to be the case. Three years older than me, Glen carried me financially until I was old enough to get a job. While I can say that all of my Jewish friends are very successful in their careers, and I suppose that they manage their money adeptly, I have found my Jewish friends, like my Irish friends, to be very generous. Maybe I’ve just been lucky in my friendships?

As I headed to John Dewey High School, my education about all kinds of people continued. Taking the F train out of our neighborhood, suddenly we weren’t in the majority anymore. At some point the boys from Windsor Terrace met Dave Gordon. Like Jason and Glen, Gordo was the only Jewish guy in our clique. This was my first exposure to class differences. Dave came to Dewey on the bus from Mill Basin, dubbed by most Deweyites as the J.A.P bus. Of course Neil O’Callaghan, one of my older buddies had to tell me what a Jewish American Princess was. In my Enriched Algebra class I was surrounded by Allison Mann, Tina Hoffman and Stacy Rheinhardt. These girls were a lot different from the girls in my neighborhood; starting with the Izod shirts, perfectly straight teeth and Stan Smith sneakers. Dave’s father, like Mr. Gruder, started his own company. The Coffee Holding Company, a family owned business that buys, ships, roasts, packages and sells coffee. I think of his father, Mr. Gordon, driving us all home from a Sweet 16 party around 1979 or so. In the car we had Vin and Dave Tomasi, Andrew O’Callaghan, Jimmy Dario, Dave Gordon and myself. The boys and I were duly impressed with the Gordon family station wagon. Maniacally clicking the power windows and door locks I shout from the back seat, “Wow Gordo, you must be rich!” I think about how far out of the way it was for Dave’s dad to drive us all home.

1986, as a recent college graduate I was having trouble finding a job on Wall Street. The Gordons were instrumental during the search, letting me use the office equipment at Coffee Holding to do my resumes and cover letters. As my search stretched from weeks to months, Mr. Gordon could see I was getting disheartened. So one day Dave gets all serious on me and tells me that his father advised him to offer me a job. I get vechlempt just thinking about that gesture. Sterling Gordon built this company by himself. He knew I didn’t know anything about the coffee business. But Mr. Gordon was willing to take a chance on me. He was willing to bring me into the fold of his family company. I will never forget that as long as I live. The funny thing about that is the reason I didn’t take the job. I thought about it overnight and told David that I appreciated the gesture but that I valued our friendship too much. I was sure we would all work well together but the slightest chance that it wouldn’t work out and alter the friendship was not worth the risk. Dave and I are still friends.

My buddy Steve Stemmer jokes that I am an honorary Jew. When I hear that I can feel his mom, Shelley, pinching my cheeks and calling me bubeleh. I suppose my honorary status really can be traced to…sophomore year in high school. I got a job at a kosher deli just outside of my neighborhood. Simon Althaus hired me to be a bus boy, waiter, delivery boy, porter, stock boy….While I was there I learned a lot about life. I learned words like shmate (rag), landsman (someone from your country) and schmuck. I hate to say this but for the owner of the Cortelyou Deli, that was my nickname. For the two years I worked there Sy called me, “Schmuck.” To my face! If he wanted me to refill the napkins or deliver an order he’d grunt, “Schmuck, put down the shmate, we’ve got a dewivery.” It was a few years before I realized what schmuck really meant; boy was I pissed.

What an interesting place to work. Can’t you see it, an aging Jewish counterman, a black cook from Harlem and a couple of Irish/Italian kids from the neighborhood as the cast for a new sitcom? Sy was a Holocaust survivor. I only knew this because he had a faded number tattooed on his forearm. I knew enough not to ask about the tattoo, and Sy never talked about it. That faded blue number probably explained his penchant for scotch and water. Every night around 7:30 I’d make Sy a scotch and water. Some nights he’d have more than one. And like my Irish/German father, that’s when Sy would get emotional. He’d slur his words and tear up and tell me that he wanted to take me up to the family vacation house in the Catskills. In a nod to my ethnicity he’d say, “Ach, Jeemy, vee gott awl kinds up dere, Irish, Italian, Polish. Jews and Gentiles. Ach, awl dah pretty girls, you have to come spend the weekend wit my family.”

Every day at the deli I was allowed a sandwich, soup and a soda. For the first three months I ate roast beef or corned beef. One afternoon the restaurant is empty, Sy and I are sitting at the back table and he says “Schmuck, why is it that all you eat is roast beef? Why don’t you try sompteeng else? Pastrami? Chopped liver? How 'bout I make you a nice tongue sandwich?” My answer to that was, “Sy, I’m not tasting anything that might taste me back.” Sy thought that was hysterical. He turns to Henry, “Henry, did you hear what the Schmuck said?” What a pair those two were.

It’s funny that Stemmer would dub me an honorary jew. I mean with all of the really close friends I have, who happen to light the menorah; at times in the gentile world I feel like an ambassador. When the jokes start flying in the locker room, “Did you hear the one about the priest, the minister, and the rabbi?” I always feel like an interloper. If the jokes are harmless, I laugh and say nothing. If they are mean spirited, if I can tell the person telling the joke really dislikes the people he is making fun of my response is usually different.

I recall a few years ago we were talking current events with my 8th grade history class and I mentioned the fact that this world leader was Jewish. I distinctly heard a handful of snickers in the room. So I jump in, “Why is that funny? I mention that this guy is Jewish and you laugh?” I get indignant, as I should, I get protective. A discussion ensues, and one of my students, sensing my anger asks, “Why Mr. Spinner are you Jewish?” I hesitate, I don’t know how to answer that. Should it matter? I want to say yes, but that would be lying but lying to make a point. In trying to answer my students I want to say, “I am not Jewish but I have many Jewish friends.” And how lame does that sound?

I feel bad for my students at these times, sequestered in their Connecticut world, snickering about somebody being Jewish. I know that before I met Gruder and Gordo, Sy and Stemmer, Kaplan and Woody that I was the snickerer. And the teacher in me recognizes that I was a product of my seclusion, that through exposure to all kinds of people I have benefited. Well, considering this is Hannukah, and thinking of how my life has been enriched by my Jewish friends, I’d have to say, I couldn’t have asked for a better gift.