15/11/02

Forgotten Moments in European-Jewish Relations

They're always persecuting Jews in Europe, but on the other hand, the cheese is great.

 

65,526,544 BCE - Dinosaurs become extinct. The Jews are blamed, thus marking the dawn of European civilization.

3760 BCE - The Paleolithic period ends in southern Europe, it is the year 1 in the Jewish calendar, and the Neolithic era starts; the following week the Bronze Age gets rolling in Bohemia, and the Mayans decide to start a calendar. Yentl the Gentl, a matchmaker in Crete, cashes in on the current craze by inventing what she calls "dating" (now known to archeologists as "carbon dating").

3407 BCE - Egypt introduces the numeral. An itinerant lyre salesman named Gamliel of Giza immediately sees an opportunity, and takes a cartload of last year's models to Scandinavia, where they're still hunting dinosaurs. Everybody wants one. First, he patiently explains the concept of numbers, and then sells off his entire stock at 49.99 each.

2114 BCE - Abraham, the first Jew, leaves Ur. Sarah, his wife, begs him to settle on the Riviera, "since we're moving anyway." They go. There is nothing but one tent, and a sign, "No Jews Allowed."

1759 BCE - Residents of Salisbury, England, watch as an immense new structure is built. Speculation is rife, until the gala opening of the Stonehenge Bagel Shoppe.

934 BCE - In a century marked by creative writing, as it were, the Greeks evolve a script using vowels and capital letters, the Chinese fully develop their own weird up-down language, and the Hebrews figure, hey, let's be different too, and establish a right-to-left alphabet. The Age of Befuddlement dawns, continuing until the advent of e-mail.

753 BCE - Rome is founded. The following day, the first Israelite tourists arrive, asking to see the ancient sites.

159 BCE - The clepsydra (water clock) is invented in Rome. Solly The Late, a Jewish watchmaker in Switzerland, is inspired. He invents the miniportaclepsydra (pocket water watch), which tends to leak or spill when it's not freezing over. Solly is run out of business, and blames European anti-Semitism.

114 BCE - Europe celebrates 2,000 years of anti-Semitism with a conference, "Ye Firste United Naytions Colloquium Blameing Ye Jews For Everything."

873 - Jewish merchants establish trade routes between Europe and the Old World. You'd think everybody would be grateful, but a new intellectual phenomenon, traveling-salesman jokes, begins to flourish in anti-Semitic circles.

1000 - Rabbi Gershon of Mainz publishes a ban on bigamy. His wives are furious, because what are they going to tell people in shul?

1027 - Shmuel Hanagid, the first poet of the Golden Age of Spain, becomes vizier of Granada. To celebrate his appointment, he writes a lyrical poem titled "It Could Be Worse": "My life is busier / Since I became vizier / But Spain / Is a pain / If you wish / To be Jewish. / I'm not embittered / but all things considered / I'd rather be in Philadelphia / (And be wealthia) / Or even Canadian / Than Granadian." The deeper meaning of the poem became clear only several centuries later.

1084 - The Jews of Speyer, Germany, are welcomed with a charter of protection. Recognizing that a Jewish presence enhances the local economy, some European cities anxiously seek Jewish immigrants. The Jews are appreciated. This makes the Jews very nervous. (Things return to normal 12 years later, when mobs attack Jews during the First Crusade.)

1100 - German Jews begin migrating to Poland, which is seen as the "land of opportunity." No, really!

1144 - The first blood libel occurs in Norwich, England. A group of priests are sitting in a pub, shooting the breeze, just before Easter. The ecumenical talk gets around to the Jewish Seder ceremony, and after a few drinks too many, they confuse the Pascal lamb sacrifice with the "Had Gadya" ("One Kid") story. By morning, it's all over town: the Jews sacrifice kids to make matza with the blood. This makes perfect sense to European Christians in the 12th century. Europe's first blood libel against the Jews becomes a noble tradition over the next 800 years (still making perfect sense to European Christians into the 20th century), during which, apparently, no one actually tasted matza, because they'd feel pretty stupid believing it's made with blood.

1182 - Jews expelled from France. The French economy slumps.

1290 - Jews expelled from England. The English economy slumps.

1492 - Jews expelled from Spain. The Spanish economy slumps.

1496 - Jews expelled from Portugal. The Portuguese economy slumps.

1516 - Jews not expelled from Italy. Instead, the Italians set up the first ghetto. The idea is to keep Jews and Christians apart. The Jews say, "What could be bad about this?"

1654 - Jews, expelled from everywhere, go to America. America, which never expelled Jews, would become the richest country in world history. Hah.

1658 - The Cossacks and Ukrainians rampage, killing thousands of Polish Jews. The Poles are upset, because killing Polish Jews is their job. They kill some more, just to make the point.

1740 - The Ba'al Shem Tov, founder of hassidism, moves to Medzibezh. It was either there, or New York. "New York, Medzibezh, what's the difference?" he points out. The only real difference is that in Europe he could keep his name, but in America, he couldn't call himself The Owner Of A Good Name, because he'd sound like a used-car salesman.

1791 - France says it wants its Jews back. Debates erupt throughout the shtetls of Europe: on the one hand, the cheese is great, but on the other, we'll probably get killed off or kicked out again before the cheese can ripen. Compared to Jewish prospects elsewhere in Europe, that's not bad.

1804 - The first yeshiva is built, in Lithuania. Orthodox politicians do not coerce the Lithuanian government to use enormous sums of tax money to build it.

1840 - The first postage stamp is issued, in England. The next day, the first bar mitzva invitations are mailed out.

1921 - Palestinian sources have no one to talk to, so the BBC is founded. The first broadcast is a special report, "Those Bloody Jews."

1933 - The Holocaust begins, two centuries after the Age of Enlightenment.

1945 - With the end of the Holocaust, European scholars agree that anti-Semitism is finally dead. Days later, Holocaust survivors are massacred in Poland. European scholars agree that this is not really anti-Semitism, but human nature.

1948 - The Jews of Europe finally say the hell with it, and create their own country, where they can be persecuted by fellow Jews and know it's not anti-Semitism.

1955 - The European Union is formed. Panic spreads among Jews, who see it as a union against them.

1967 - Worried that Israel might win the war, France, Israel's main arms supplier, calously imposes an embargo. OK, it's France, nobody's surprised. Israel demands delivery of a fleet of gunboats, which it already paid for. Screwez vous, the French say. So Israeli frogmen sneak into heavily-guarded Cherbourg harbor, where the gunboats are docked, and steal them. France is humiliated in front of the whole world. Nobody minds.

1988 - The BBC publicly admits, for the first time, the existence of a Jewish state. It is a grievous error, and the news reader is fired.

1999 - European journalists accompanying the pope on a visit to Israel are surprised to learn that the Bible is Jewish. "But everyone knows it's Palestinian," they argue.

2001 - Newspapers report that a French ambassador, Daniel Bernard, called Israel "that shitty little country" and blamed the Jews for all the world's problems. European diplomats are aghast, because this was supposed to be just among themselves.

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