Looks

Today’s bat mitzvah girl posed this question which our rabbi Toby addressed in her sermon: Why does society still insist on determining who’s Jewish by the way people look and by their last names? The girl herself was blond with blue eyes, hardly the Jewish stereotype. Most people would never know that her last name Korn derived from Cohen, one of the two names that originally could always be determined to be Jewish (along with Levi).

Toby mentioned the usual Jewish sterotype of short, big nose, and dark curly hair. But looking around the Temple Micah congregation today we saw people with Hispanic characteristics, Asian characteristics, and many others that hardly matched and yet they are all Jews.

Perhaps the best part of Toby’s sermon though was the lyrics from Vanessa Hidary’s recent performance of her rap poem “The Hebrew Mamita”:

THE HEBREW MAMITA
I meet a guy in a bar that's cute
He wears LL Bean duckboots and guards my bar stool when I have to go pee.
He asks me out to dinner for the following Tuesday.
I decline. Tuesday is Yom Kippur. I will be fasting.
"You’re Jewish?
“Wow! You don't look Jewish.
You don’t act Jewish."
And he says it in this tone that sounds like he's complimenting me.
And I say… And I say…
Nothing.
I say nothing, which when combined with a flirty smile translates to thank you.
I say nothing because I got a contact high off someone’s anti-Semitic crack pipe.
I say nothing because somewhere along my life’s graph I’d been swayed
to believe that being Jewish is not too cool, not too sexy.
I say nothing cause I’m in a deep sleep,
A Snow White coma,
Destined to meet my prince five years later.
In the form of stone, in Jerusalem, in the Wailing Wall.
I place a folded paper with written prayers for the dead, in a nook,
in a nook in the wall, next to a woman with concentration camp numbers
tattooed on her forearm. Surrounded by fervent praying, and bodies
swaying, I am far more awake than I ever thought possible.
I suddenly remember The Exodus of the Israelites,
And I walk barefoot from the wall in the desert to the bar,
And look for the guy with the duckboots.
He’s not there, but I have something to say to him.
He’s not there, so I make a soapbox, and reenact the scene.
Bartender, tell me I don’t look Jewish.
Tell me I don’t act Jewish.
Cause I am thinking, I’m saying,
What does Jewish look like to you?
Should I fiddle on a fuckin' roof for you?
Should I humor you with Oy-Veys, and refuse to pay,
Because you know how we like to Jew you down.
Jew you down? I'd like to throw you down
Cause I walked here, long miles on hot sand,
To publicly repent my sins,
Cause I…
Almost forgot 6 million died without having the option of giggling on bar stools,
Almost forgot that Concentration Camp survivors are now a dying generation,
that my children may never have the sensation
Of seeing in person.
And if you must see me as that blood-sucking Jew,
See me as that pesky mosquito that bites and sucks the prejudice right out of you,
Just feel the need to say I can't be the only exception to the rule,
Just the one right now using my poetry as a tool
To follow KRS-One I will use my gift to only uplift
And maybe change just one heart tonight.
I’m the Hebrew Mamita, long lost daughter of Abraham and Sarah
The sexy oy-veying chutzpa having non-cheaping, non-
conspiring, always questioning, hip-hop listening, Torah Scroll reading,
all people loving, pride filled Jewish girl!
Bigging up all people who are a little miffed,
Cause someone tells you don’t look like or act like your people.
Impossible cause you are your people.
You just tell them they don't look period!



Makes you think, huh? Maybe with a few more generations, we’ll put aside the worn-out stereotypes and just see people without trying to give them labels of Jew, Moslem, Arian, gay, lesbian, homeless, or any of the other unnecessary words like these.