Word: jew
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...scene, a Jew sees a former neighbor, and the neighbor says to him, "You're still alive? I thought you would be a bar of soap...
Edith Stein was born a Jew, became a Catholic and a Carmelite nun and died in Auschwitz [RELIGION, Oct. 19]. You noted that Stein's canonization by Pope John Paul II "strikes some as the hijacking of a martyr, the usurping of Jewish tragedy for Catholic purposes." But the flap over "who gets the martyr" is demeaning and embarrassing to the participants, and probably would appall Stein herself. There is no reason that Jews and Catholics alike cannot honor her life and achievements. In fact, it would be a golden opportunity to celebrate the new understanding between the two groups...
...taking offense. He proceeds along similar lines for most of the show: "There are no Jewish athletes. All we had was Mark Spitz. He took one swim, got nauseous and quit." Sometimes he probes deeper, managing to combine laughter and the uncomfortable (arguing, for instance, that Jews find solace in the medical field because they can't be persecuted). Generally, however, Jackie's comedy depends on praising or humiliating the Jew--in comparison, of course, to other races...
Jackie is thus at his best when he lets loose. Many of his jokes find the perfect balance between quirkiness and truth: "Jews have their professions marked out for them. But so do Gentiles. Gentiles are great in certain fields--like coal-mining. Ever seen a Jew coal-miner? With a little light on his yarmulke?" He also manages to take stale issues and still make them mildly amusing. The O.J. Simpson trial for instance, "proved that the innocent until proven guilty rule no longer applies. Now, you're innocent until proven guilty and even after you're proven guilty...
There was a power there that is missing from Roth's latest big book, I Married a Communist. For a book with a scarlet cover, I Married a Communist ends up feeling more like an emergency room than a bloody battlefield. It has, like its predecessors, an angry Jew from Newark, but his passion never really climaxes, and his understanding of the world never really evokes sympathy. This man, irate Ira Ringold, is a 1950s radio star who has never given up the Communist passions he picked up as an uneducated GI and whose marriage to a Hollywood actress...