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the archive(s):
issue no. 2:
Keep Your Head Down / Ilya Zaychik
"Excuse me," she said, and I thought she would ask what was in the pizza, but she follows with, "are you Jewish?"
"Yeah," I answered with hesitation, surprised by the question on the one hand, and excited on the other to try out my ragged Śhow-to-deal-with-gentiles' manual, compiled through years of Jewish day school and integration into the secular world in which I spend a lot of time.
"I have a question. I'm the captain of the McGill cheerleading team and"--my heart and my shoulders
sank--"I was wondering about the upcoming Jewish holidays. Are they, like really important? Because there's a girl on the team who wants to miss practice."
I explained to her the significance of Rosh Hashanah, the new year, a fresh beginning with god, and if that doesn't matter to you, with your peers, and if that doesn't matter to you, with yourself. If that doesn't matter to you, might as well jump off a tall building. I then proceeded to discuss Yom Kippur, the day of atonement, the holiest day of the year, a day when you admit to whatever forces you deem important that you fucked up a good many times more than you didn't, and she seemed disappointed. Disappointed she would be forced to yield to entities greater than McGill cheerleading. And I seemed disappointed. Disappointed that my Judaism had just been equated, on some level, with McGill cheerleading.
Now I'm not one of those Jews who throws rocks at women who don't wear long skirts, or even one of those Jews who separates milk and meat, but I am one of those Jews. It's a sizable chunk of my identity right now. (Which is why I found myself wanting to stab that fucker who spends his days holding up a giant sign with anti-semitic messages on it in front of the main gates at McGill. Not hold his hand and make him understand that Jews are really not the cause of everyone's problems and shouldn't be converted to Protestantism en masse-- because he will never understand‹but stab him. It's not an impulse I'm proud of‹I thought I was better than that. But I'm not. Maybe this Yom Kippur I'll understand).
Her puzzled expression at my succinct summary of the religious implications of the Day of Atonement and the New Year told me all I needed to hear. I could tell she wanted me to get to the good parts.
"So, like, what do you do?" she cocked her head to one side, removing her freckled hand from the sweatshirt pocket and bringing it to her headband which held back bouncy, orange, Irish-Catholic hair.
I described, patiently, what Śwe' 'did', wanting all the while to just tell her that she damn well better give her cheerleader the time off if she had any respect for anything greater than her sweatpants. I resented her for implying that her player (if cheerleading is even a sport, which is quite debatable) was just trying to skip practice. Then I thought I should have lied, and told her I was a Christian missionary looking Jewish undercover and avoided this whole awkward mess. But I didn't, because I don't have that kind of composition.
I'm not mad at the girl for not caring what the high holidays are all about. Sometimes other people don't value the things you value, and you have to grant them that right (which puts my desire to stab the aforementioned fucker in a whole new light. Perhaps it would be more, say, just of me, to stand next to him with a sign saying Ścotton hasn't been the same since they freed those niggers'. If he gets a sign, why shouldn't I? While I would never hold up a sign like that, even if I truly believed it, he proudly and unabashedly stands there like a too-skinny, failed attempt as Shaft's bodyguard with his repugnantly ridiculous religious rhetoric for the world to see, and hopefully discard. With the exception of evangelists or Klan members, or both, everyone should be embarrassed that this man is 99.9% genetically identical to them). Besides, her pom-poms and routines might be her bible, and Sunday afternoon football games against Concordia her high holidays, and I don't give a shit about that. Then again, how many people have been killed for being cheerleaders?
She turned away, exclaiming to her co-captain, "he's Jewish" and proceeding to relate the details of the conversation to her. I could exclaim nothing to no one as I was working alone, so I sighed, as I so often do when outcomes are just beyond my reach. Tomorrow, I will walk by the man at the gates who thinks I should accept Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior and do the same.
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