Jew Stuff

Phoebe Maltz is upset to see Kristina Grish, author of Boy Vey! The Shiksa's Guide for Dating Jewish Men, trafficking in outdated stereotypes. I'm more intrigued by the metric system's apparently growing popularity in the United States:

"The truth is, I think there's something to it. I was once interviewed by a Jewish woman journalist, and during the conversation she asked me to introduce her to one of my exes. I agreed. I sent her an e-mail with his details. She replied: 'How tall is he?' When I wrote 1.75 meters, she replied immediately: 'Too short.' About another guy, when I wrote her that he's 31 years old, she replied briefly: 'Too young.' And all that without knowing them at all! Their checklist is very specific. And when you live in New York, Jewish men have a tremendous variety of girls from a wide variety of cultures to choose from."

Can you imagine two New Yorkers actually having that email exchange? I can't. According to my handy Unit Conversion Dashboard Widget, 1.75 meters turns out to be about 5'9" which is slightly below average for a white dude. Black guys, as per stereotype, are taller, and for some reason have a rather different height-age distribution. This advice is amusing:

Be careful, she warns, not to talk about Middle Eastern politics in bed. It's such a sensitive subject, with such a variety of opinions, that there is no chance of a peaceful conclusion. You are liable to say something that will be considered anti-Semitic, she writes, and he will lose the hard-on that you nurtured so diligently.

I dunno. Something about the security fence just turns me on. In all seriousness, though, I think it's usually best to avoid discussions of Middle Eastern politics with all people at all times under all circumstances. Near as I can tell, the odds of such a discussion leading to anything positive are minimal. Operation Shylock is the exception. The article claims that "In Israel, American Jewish men are considered nerds," which seems reasonable. To this Jewish American man, Israelis seem like goyim. The older Ashkenazis, often born abroad, still have some connection to the tradition, but your average Israeli makes a mockery of Jewishness. The idea of a Jewish fireman or a Jewish sailing instructor is ridiculous, and everyone knows it. Of course to many American Jews the very outlandishness of the notion that you could not only have an entire army filled with Jews but that it could actually win wars is much of the appeal of the Zionist enterprise. Still, not the sort of thing real Jews do. One wonders how they find enough non-nearsighted fighter pilots.