While I have given up any interest in attending formal religious services—unless I want to somehow disrupt the event—I do enjoy the Passover Seder at the “X” family’s house. The food is good, the kids are usually somewhat cute and in between daydreaming, I get to test out some of my stand-up material during the service. “I hear when God dumped frogs on the Egyptians as part of the ten plagues that PETA was there protesting Him for cruelty to animals. What a terrific audience thank you very much.” Food, family and usually a discussion on how the Jews can succeed in their plan to take over the world—the only thing missing was masturbating with money and it would be a Jew’s dream evening.
My family considers themselves Reform Jews, which means that after being raised in Jewish Prison for enough years they have “reformed” themselves and, like Mao’s reeducation camps, they now proudly call themselves a Communist, er, Jew. The benefit of being in this least religious sect of the cult of Judaism is that the Seder service is basically the following:
The Jews were slaves in Egypt. Pharaoh oppressed the Jews. Moses said, “Let my people go.” Pharaoh didn’t. Plagues. Pharaoh let them go.
Not too much of that “Hebrew” stuff and those “Blessed are the Lords” repetitiveness—down to brass tacks, baby, like ripping a Band-Aid off—quick and painless. Well painful but just for a split-second.
The Hagadah, known as the “Hag” among the hipsters, is the service booklet you follow. The one we currently use has some more modern comments such as, “Even though the Egyptians were pricks and God drowned them in the sea of Reeds, we don’t think anyone dying is a nice thing, except for maybe Hitler and any other S.S. Nazi bastard or sympathizer. Death to the infidels!”
I was looking forward to this evening because I was bringing my Belarusian girl and it was going to be her first Seder, let alone the first time she was to be surrounded by so many Jews not trying to sell her electronics equipment. By the fifth time she innocently asked, me, “So wait, no one is going to try and sell me a digital camera,” I was ready to try to sell her one myself!
There was one time when I saw her reading along with all the other Jews in the room some Israeli propaganda such as, “And may God bless the people of Israel and always provide protection to them from the stone-throwing Palestinian savages” that my mind wandered, transporting me to Mother Russia where I was sharing a Christmas dinner with her family and as I joined the others in reciting, “We all bow down to our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, whose great sacrifice has removed all of our sins and now we no longer need to feel guilty for being born,” I either burst into laughter resulting in the KGB kicking down the door and dragging me off to the Gulag in Siberia or I burst into song from “Jesus Christ Superstar,” resulting in the KGB kicking down the door and doing that kind of kneeling-down-and-kicking Russian dance made famous from the musical “Fiddler on the Roof.” I think my Belarusian beauty elbowed me when I started to snore. She was clearly more Jew than I’d ever be and I started to fear that if I didn’t watch her carefully, when we got home she would unload her bag showing me two digital cameras that Uncle Heime had sold her telling me in a lilting I-bought-it-on-sale sing-song, “At these prices, how could I resist?”
There is one part of the Seder where the “Hag” gives you advice on how to tell the Passover story to different types of children. There is “The Wicked Child” who is like, “This service is a bunch of crap.” There is the Simple Child who is somewhat like a retard who keeps banging the silverware despite you very patiently yelling at him to “Stop fucking doing that!” There is the Wise Child who is the Dudley Do-Right of the family that needs to be given a Swirly, which entails having one’s head held down in a toilet as it’s flushed. Then there is the Child That Is Too Stupid To Inquire. That child always seems to be taken into the other room by Uncle Ernie and when they both come back Uncle Ernie is innocently zipping up his fly.
I had to interrupt, not with comedy this time but with commentary. “That is a terrible choice of words: The ‘Wicked’ Child. Just because he doesn’t give a shit about the service that doesn’t make him ‘wicked’, per se.” Alright, maybe I was a little sensitive, being somewhat of a “Wicked Child” myself, not so much because I thought labeling a child “wicked” was a potentially scarring event for a young impressionable mind but because I had earned my “wicked” stripes by lighting shit on fire and causing havoc in school and I didn’t want just any “bored with the Seder” Goth kid knocking on my club house door and expecting entrance.
My Mom responded something very teacherly like, “It is probably a poor translation and missing the original essence of what is meant.” I mumbled, “Fuck the Jews,” under my breath, not so much because I hate Jews but because I thought it was just such the “wicked” thing to say and I have a reputation to keep alive.
Somehow we got into a discussion on which child was “better” than the others, putting the “This sucks!” kid versus the “DING!” retard in a death match and thinking that we weren’t the savages. My sister said that clearly The Wise Child was the best. Ivy League, perfect score on the LSATS, Harvard Law School—would it be in “wicked” character to say that she was a stupid bitch and just didn’t get it and then to follow this with an hour dissertation on how our educational system is creating a lot of brilliant morons? Awesome!
The point of that section is to acknowledge that each child (or adult for that matter) is unique and has to be dealt with in his or her own unique way. No child is better or worse than another. Sure the child who is lighting the drapes on fire or the child who is constantly stabbing his fork into his eye may fry your nerves a little more than the goody two-shoes sitting up straight and suggesting, “Mummy, you sit down and take my piece of matzo, as you have been running around all evening. I’ll handle the dishes.” But that doesn’t make that fag dishwashing pussy any better than the other kids. Just someone who if I get alone I will Swirly, that is, if I’m not busy getting blown by the deaf mute idiot who is “Too Stupid To Inquire.”
When you punish and reward children by their behavior you create a type of child who behaves like a robot because he has developed a self-esteem that is dependent on performance and how others view him. This results in the type of adult like my client who makes over a million dollars a year and becomes clinically depressed when business is slow. If your kid comes in 6th out of six kids in the race, as long as he had a good time why wouldn’t you be happy? He’ll probably be miserable because you and his teachers have taught him that his self-worth is based on his performance and how he COMPARES.
How many of us have heard a story about a jerk father who coaches his kids basketball team and trounces the other team by 100 points, leaving all the members of the other team in tears. I will bet you that almost 100% of the time that “coach” was a shitty player himself as a kid and now he is trying to reclaim his glory thirty years later with his own son. You already blew your life, jackass; leave your son to live his own.
This is also the crime that religions commit when they teach that are ultimate goal in life—well, most actually teach our ultimate goal in life is to die—is to be a cookie-cutter replica of some person who may or may not be mostly fiction. To be another Jesus is A CRIME AGAINST HUMANITY. To be an original you is a blessing not only to yourself but to the whole world. Just like no two snowflakes are identical, no two children are identical either. Stop friggin’ sucking their individual spirits dry with your poison, you good-meaning but stupid parents, you evil, perverted, fear-mongering religions.
My Mom once told me that one of her big goals with us kids was to have us be able to walk into any room and feel comfortable, having a strong enough self-confidence that we didn’t feel the need to apologize for Who We Are. She said with a smile that I definitely lived that way. I attribute this NOT to how I was raised but IN SPITE OF IT. My parents did the best they knew how to do but it was still mostly based on, “Oh, what a pretty drawing, Sally. You’re a good artist!” and “Little X, how many times do I have to tell you to not to urinate in the car’s gas tank! That’s a bad boy!” To this day I hold a grudge for being called “Sally.”
And really, who the fuck is the “Hag” to start telling us how to talk to our children anyway? Unlike Elijah, I didn’t invite you into my house, bitch! Stick with telling the story of the oppressed Jews so they can feel a common bond in misery but don’t tell me how to talk to my child, you prick. If my child tells me, “This service is a bunch of crap,” I’ll tell him, “That’s your opinion, X Jr., and I won’t ever try and change you for being you.” Of course I will be in agreement with the little bastard.
“To be a Christian is ugly; to be a Christ is beautiful. To be a Buddhist is ugly; to be a Buddha is beautiful.”
–Osho
It’s Belarussian, kiddo. Double SS!..
I should have figured an Anti-Semite like yourself would be shouting “SS”! Couldn’t you just leave the Jews one minute of peace to enjoy their Seder without rubbing the Holocaust in their faces?? I did two years of research on Belarus in preparation for this article. And what, may I ask, makes you an expert on Belarus?