Monday, November 27, 2006

Jewry of muscle

What happens when a Tel Aviv soccer team beats a French one?

a) The French, impressed with this show of athleticism from the Jewish state, discover a newfound respect for Jews. Anti-Semitism the world over disappears forever.

b) The French give up soccer entirely, in favor of petanque.

c) Paris team fans discover their inner Nazis, yell epithets against Jews and blacks, and one ends up getting shot by a black French undercover cop.

This story reminds me of how a panelist at a talk I went to recently, a French Jew, noted that he was raised believing the Dreyfus Affair was a positive, uplifting story for his people, since there's the happy ending, Dreyfus's exoneration, the triumph of the Republic, and all that. Sometimes, a happy ending says a bit less than the unhappy story itself...

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