9/6/95

Forgotten Moments in Jewish History

March 13, 160715392 BCE: Feivel Ben-Flintstone is the first Jew to see a dinosaur. He runs to shul and tells Rabbi Og. Rabbi Og tells him there is no such thing as a dinosaur, it must have been somebody in a Purim costume.

August 24, 126820492 BCE: Carbon-test dating pinpoints the creation of the first No. 2 chicken.

June 30, 3988 BCE: The Paleolithic period ends. The Jews are blamed.

April 11, 3856 BCE: Oy of Ur develops the prototype for guilt.

November 16, 3760 BCE: According to biblical literature, marriage is invented by gouging out a pound of flesh from some poor fellow to create the archetype of a Jewish wife.

March 31, 3738 BCE: God asks Cain where his brother Abel is. Cain responds: "Am I my brother's keeper?" It is the first time in recorded history that a question is answered with a question.

September 28, 3661 BCE: Gary the Snot-Nose, the world's first antisemite, dies after being struck by lightning.

May 4, 2877 BCE: Boimel, a Sumerian junk dealer, travels to Bohemia to attend the opening of the Bronze Age. He is buying bric-a-brac when the merchant asks where he's from; turns out the merchant has a cousin in Accad who goes to the same barber as Boimel's brother. They both agree it's a small world, and Jewish geography is born.

November 27, 2440 BCE: A Mesopotamian fisherman, trawling in the South Gefilte Sea, pulls out a strange boneless fish characterized by a carrot slice on its head. (This event is further noteworthy because it occurred on the ninth day of Av, the only time in history that a good thing happened to the Jews on this date.)

October 10, 2109 BCE: Yidl the Addleheaded, unheralded Mesopotamian astronomer, discovers the moon.

January 20, 2093: Isaac demands that Ishmael be banished; Abraham, their father, begins the Middle East peace process.

July 8, 1633 BCE: First recorded use of the word "nu?" in an allegorical ode.

February 7, 694 BCE: The world's first synagogue opens, in Wurzburg. On the first Shabbat, Yankele the Yekke gets to read maftir, which infuriates Avrumele the Visigoth.

February 14, 694 BCE: The Visigother Shteibel, the world's second synagogue, opens in Wurzburg.

August 8, 92 BCE: The first paved road opens in the Holy Land. The next day it is ripped up by a crew installing new sewage pipes.

January 1, 1: Yoshke the Elder inadvertently sparks a philosophical crisis when he asks a Roman tax official: "What was yesterday's date?"

April 16, 31: The foreign minister of Judea, in Rome for consultations, ridicules the notion that Jews were plotting to overthrow the emperor and rule the world. "Yeah, right," the minister responds sarcastically, "And the Jews killed Christ." He is widely quoted out of context.

December 10, 239: Gala opening of the first kosher Chinese restaurant, in the Galilee village of Pekiin. It is to become famous for its specialty, Pekiin Duck.  

July 1, 851: Ya'acov "Yuk-Yuk" bar Mordechai, the first Jewish comedian, flees Swabia after staging a skit on the woes of King Charles the Bald, ending up in England. In London he raises eyebrows with his depiction of Ethelwulf as a lisper. He is deported to Algeciras, where he develops a following for his campy anti-Viking knock-knock jokes, which prompts the Vikings to invade. He winds up in Germany where Yiddish has just begun to evolve. He struggles for 20 years while developing the principles of shtick, and finally wins widespread fame for his persecutionist cabaret, "You Think It's Easy Being Jewish?"

December 10, 1029: Hurricane Yentl sweeps through southeast Japan. The Jews are blamed.

November 11, 1111: The principles of gematria are laid down by the great Bologna thinker, Luigi the Iffy, who, by designating numerical values for Hebrew letters, proves that God existed at least as recently as the eighth century.

March 23, 1128: Shmuel "Schmaltzy" Schnitzel, the greatest kosher chef of his time, is born in Frankfurt, where he invents the frankfurter. Later he moves to Hamburg, where he invents the hamburger. At the height of his career he moves to Worms, where, inexplicably, he can't get a job.

February 17, 1200: Sydney, A Jewish aborigine living in what is today southeastern Australia, postulates that the world is not only round but has a top side too.

October 22, 1425: Lemuel van den Boornstein of Haarlem, the first Jewish explorer, sets sail on the Pinta Miriam to  find the New World. Braving typhus, typhoid, typhoons, tsunamis and tsuris he finally discovers land. He rows ashore, plants a flag in the name of his city and is mugged. Disgusted, he gets the hell out of there and sets out to discover the suburbs.

January 29, 1490: Yerachmiel Columbovitch of Genoa attempts to become the second Jewish explorer. He pleads for support from the king and queen of Spain, promising to bring back from the New World a vast fortune in smoked salmon. He is turned down. Certain that he was refused because he is a Jew, he changes his name to Christopher Columbus, promises to bring back a vast fortune in jewels, and promptly wins royal support. (He would set sail two years later with a crew that included Luis de Torres, a Jewish interpreter, who was necessary because Columbus did not speak any Yiddish and thus would not be able to communicate with the natives.)

January 21, 1503: Italian housewife Mona Lisa Mandelbaum is wandering through the marketplace, pondering what to cook for Shabbes. An artist named Leonardo da Vinci, who happens to be shopping for a new brush, notices her expression and lures her to his studio. His working title for the painting is "Mrs. Mandelbaum Reflecting on Cholent."

May 18, 1626: Peter Minuit buys the island of Manhattan for $24 from Indian chiefs. The next day, Jewish chiefs inform him they could have got it for him for $19.95.

March 23, 1680: The dodo becomes extinct. The Jews are blamed.

April 24, 1734: The first working model of a sandwich is unveiled. It consists of bacon, lettuce and tomato between two slices of matza. It is unsuccessful. 

June 13, 1741: Reb Sholem "Chi-Chi" Kochleffel, the first (and last) hasidic fashion designer, unveils the shtreimel in Volhynia. Later the same year, he creates a daring new style he calls Humble Chic -- layered black-on-black with a matte sheen -- after experimenting for a time with green pantaloons, a khaki-tartan half-zoot and floral socks, topped by a crocheted kipa. His twin brother, hair-stylist Koko L'Effel, devotes the next dozen years to completing the hasidic look. His proposed Litvak Afro with handlebar mustache is a flop (turns out he was 230 years ahead of his time). Also unpopular is his choirboy cut with muttonchop sideburns. Pigtails, powdered wig and a Van Dyke is rejected as too goyish. Finally, inspired by neoclassicism and specifically Hogarth's 1753 essay "The Analysis of Beauty," L'Effel comes up with the quintessential shaven head, straggly beard and bobbing tubular sidecurls that goes on to become history's most enduring coif.

June 25, 1832: Britain occupies the Falkland Islands, planning to turn it into a Jewish homeland.

May 12, 1885: Van Gogh paints "The Potato Kugel Eaters."

December 28, 1891: An anthropologist discovers Pithecanthropus erectus, better known as "Java Man," but actually Boimel's brother's barber, proving that it really is a small world.

January 21, 1897: Theodor Herzl, preparing for the Zionist Congress in Basel, writes a proposal for mass aliya based on a model of the Klondike gold rush. His housekeeper convinces him it's a terrible idea.

August 17, 1968: William Shatner, the Jewish star of Star Trek, is ostracized in the Jewish Press for an episode in which he is depicted eating a meat meal while traveling through the Milky Way.

October 17, 1987: China's population hits the one billion mark. The Jews are blamed.

March 12, 1988: David Cohen, a Los Angeles lawyer, traces his family tree all the way back to the guy who invented the wheel, and Cohen wants royalties.