Sunday, April 24, 2011

Somebody made a comment to me yesterday...

that got me thinking....
They said something about ,
"Easter coming up"...
and I responded..."Oh, yeah....I forgot about Easter!"
and they said,
"YOU FORGOT ABOUT EASTER ?"
and I said,
"Well, please don't take offense....After all....I'm Jewish..."
and they said,
"YOU're a JEW?"
"You don't LOOK like a JEW!"
And I walked away thinking,
What exactly does a JEW look like ?
And I can tell you with a pretty hefty amount of confidence,
 that this person thought that  they were paying me a compliment...
And of course, duhhhh...
it got me thinking about ANTISEMITISM...
Shocker!!!
and of how we really don't know what's inside of people's hearts  and minds...
and how they are really feeling....
and exactly how far their PRE judgements extend..
And I remembered that Brendan Frasier movie..
where he's a kid who's great at playing football..
and so he gets a scholarship to an ivy league school...
and everybody loves him....
Even the WASP, gorgeous girl falls for him...
until they find out that he's a JEW...
and then they TURN on him...
and they leave him...
and the girl, amid tears,
says that SHE SIMPLY CANNOT disappoint her parents by bringing home a JEW...
and the story kind of GETS to YOU....
in its CLEAR message about ANTISEMITISM....
And I wonder if someone can tell me why this kind of HATRED
continues to gnaw at the COLLECTIVE UNCONSCIOUS....

IS IT ALL RELATIVE ?

What makes a traumatic situation real and not somehow sensationalized or exaggerated ? What constitutes real trauma ? Is it all relative ? I...