The Only Jew in Egypt

“I am, it finally occurs to me, doing the most typical thing a Jew could do. I've come back to Egypt the way only Jews yearn to go back to places they couldn't wait to flee.” - False Papers

Andre Aciman would not be surprised that I've recently booked tickets to Spain and Germany. Where does this impulse come from? I'll be spending this fall traveling in three places that live in Jewish history as places where we were rejected; places where we were exiled en masse, politicized and racialized.
Yesterday, a young woman in my class who grew up in Venezuela, her family directly connected to Spain, asked me nervously, “I saw on your facebook, you went to Israel?”
“Yeah, I did a tourist trip in Israel and then traveled with friends in Palestine afterwards.”
She recently married an Egyptian man she met on facebook, and she's been living in Alexandria for about a year. She hates living in Egypt and she is generally intolerant of the culture and resentful towards the religion.
“So you are a... a Jew?” She asked me.
“I am.”
“Your last name- it is a Jewish last name?”
“Uhh, not especially, but sure.”
“You know the Holocaust?”
“Yeah--”
“Many of the Jews came to Argentina and Venezuela after the Holocaust, so I know many Jews. They are very nice people. In school, I was friends with some Jewish girls – They're very nice.”
“Okay.” - There was a slight pause.
“But they don't spend any fucking money. They're fucking cheap and they only help each other. They have a very strong and tight community.” She's nearly slapping her thigh, so amused telling me this part.
I told this story to my Dutch roommate among a group of people last night, finding her blatant anti-semitism funny at first, and he quickly started laughing and shouted, “She so fucking right!” Another person in the room, an older guy from Texas, chimed in, “I've had the exact opposite experience: All the Jews I've ever met had plenty of money and they spent it too!”

I am the only Jew here, except for a halfsy from Colorado who has an Arabic name, studied Arabic in college and has spent time in Morocco, Lebanon and a semester in Jordan. Obviously interested in seeing Palestine, he asked me how Jewish you really need to be to get into the Birthright program. I proceeded to recite to him my oft told story of having been interrogated by Dr. Muli – the organization's international program director. For the few who've not heard it, here is the quick version:

After being subjected to a bullshit lecture by an Aaliyah-making, hate-mongering, rotund, British, Zionist-ideologue named Neil Lazarus (yes, I'm calling you out, motherfucker, I dare you to google yourself today, you self-righteous fuck), we were asked to play so-called “devil's advocate” and ask provocative questions about his rant – which could be summarized with a sentiment along the lines of, “if your country doesn't bomb Iran first, we'll have to.” I asked a question about the right to return for Palestinian refugees. He shirked off my question by addressing only the number of refugees, and not the issue itself. Two days later we were joined in our hike of the Masada by two representatives from Birthright. After the hike and before our luxurious swim in the Dead Sea, Dr. Muli called me by name and asked if he could ask me some questions. Already wondering why he knew my name, I sat with him and told him, with my cheeriest disposition, how much I'd enjoyed the trip. He responded by telling me about the dissonance between my response and my recent postings and group memberships on my facebook page – which he had spent the previous day examining. He proceeded to ask me if I planned to work in journalism, politics or worse, humanitarian aid – three professions that could produce a skewering of Birthright that could potentially be bad for business. Gotta keep Sheldon Ackerman's dirty money flowing so the Jews can see their homeland, nu? Finally, after telling him I'd rather be a teacher, he asked me the following question: “If I gave you all the money in the world, would you rather teach the children of Gaza, or the children of Sderot who are pissing in their beds every night wondering if the Al-Qassam rockets will hit them tonight?” Those were his exact words. Realizing that there may be consequences to giving the “wrong” answer, I thought for a moment before swallowing my pride and responded: “Well, obviously I'm a Jew so... I would teach the Jews.”

I find that I tell this story quite often here, usually as a post-script to revealing that I'm Jewish – a fact I withheld from most people intentionally for the last two weeks. Though most of these folks are not especially interested in the conflict in the Holy Land, everyone's got an opinion and only one person I've met is even vaguely supportive of Israel. I was quite glad to learn this over the course of several conversations – the color of which ebbed and flowed surrounding my revealing my religion/ethnicity. Most recently, I told stories of traveling in Palestine, being herded through the checkpoints like imprisoned livestock, while walking back to class from our regular lunchtime spot. The walls I pass on the way to and from that spot nearly every day are covered in spray painted swastikas – mostly backwards, appearing more like the Hindi peace symbol, but searing my vision nonetheless, when I remember to acknowledge them.

I spent months of this past year rejecting entirely the Jewish narrative about Israel. I became passionate about claiming a Jewish identity that is built around intellectualism and writing, working, fighting for social justice – specifically in Palestine. I learned two important things about Jewish people on the Birthright program: Our successes throughout history are two-fold: education and assimilation. I realize more and more that the assimilation heavily outweighs the education. In Egypt, in Spain and in Germany, Jews were more committed to their assimilated identities than they were to education, to intellectualism, to social justice. These traditions did persist though, and remain in the U.S. still today. In fact, the more startling culture shock I experienced on Birthright was among the other American Jews – lummoxes from Long Island, nincompoops from New Jersey, and various fuckwits from the outer boroughs. Dunderheads from Queens who couldn't let five minutes pass between the following two statements:
1.“Arabs have a lesser value of humanity – they're willing to blow themselves up because they'll be met by virgins in heaven”
2.“If I was a medic in an Israeli combat unit I wouldn't hesitate for a second before going into fire to save a fellow Jew.”

Regardless, coming from New York, from the community and the environment where I was raised, I hold out ongoing hope to meet the other Jews for justice. I think of my grandfather – a survivor of Buchenwald – who told a video archivist, whom he'd never met, that when he saw starving children in Ethiopia and Biafra, he saw himself. I think of my mother, and Jonah's mother, and Judy, and Viet, and Gary, and the other people in my life who have helped to shape my vision of the world; my interest in the lives of others; my sometimes foolish and egotistical assumption that I can truly sympathize and understand.

And I wonder: AM I THE ONLY FUCKING JEW IN EGYPT?