I read this on Jay Nordlinger's weekly or so column,
Impromptus. He is an author and was writing about requested book inscriptions.
I thought it was very funny in the way kids can take "2," add it to "2," and come to a sum of "22."
http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=MDA4NzgwOWQ4MmI5NWFkNGNhOGQyN2M1OWY4Y2E1NzA=&w=MQ==And there was a reader who requested, “Next year in Israel!” In an e-mail exchange, I asked him why he wanted that inscription. The usual expression is “Next year in Jerusalem!” He wrote,
Dear Jay,
I’ve read your articles long enough to know that you like a good yarn, so I hope this qualifies. My mother divorced my father when I was five and I grew up in our small, neighborhood grocery store in upstate New York. I was about seven or eight and the Korean War was under way — the guys who were there tell me it was a war [and not a “police action”] and I believe them — when a customer I hadn’t seen before came into the store. He started talking about the war and politics, and my mother, being the most gregarious person you can imagine, engaged him in banter.
Then he started talking about the Jews, and not in a positive tone: how they all sent their kids to college and owned businesses and apartment houses. I had one uncle who was already a doctor, two other uncles and an aunt who were in or on their way to med school, and another uncle who was studying to be an engineer. My mother owned the store, and my grandparents had apartment houses. I was about to open my mouth when my mother gave me one of those looks that said, “One word, and I’ll wring your neck.”
Then my mother backed away from the counter and stopped talking except for one-word responses. I had never seen this before with a customer and mistakenly thought she was scared. I knew a war was going on and had heard from my grandmother about the forced march she endured in Armenia in 1918, where she lost two sons, and I knew about the Holocaust of WWII. On the spot I put this all together and decided my mother was frightened for me because Armenians must be some kind of Jew and this guy didn’t like Jews.
Before long, the anti-Semite left the store. I never said anything to my mother. I was after all the man of the family (although she had other ideas) and I was there to protect her. After a few months, I figured out that Armenians and Jews were not the same, but for a while I was Jewish.
For years now at our Thanksgiving and Christmas parties I’ve made a toast as an inside joke to myself: “Next year in Israel!” My friends who have never heard my story look at me quizzically. This is my small Jewish toast during the holidays; my show of solidarity, if you will.Nice.
