By COREY LEVITAN<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Of all the reasons someone turns down a ride I offer them, none will be more memorable than \u201cI\u2019m sorry, but I can\u2019t ride in a car with a Jew.\u201d Jimmy and I were shelf-stackers at the Foodtown in Oceanside, Long Island. After the grocery store closed for the night, we and three others neatened the aisles, either \u201cdummying\u201d (bringing items forward) or \u201cleveling\u201d the decimated shelves. The job paid minimum wage and I was thrilled to earn it. Jimmy, who was Irish Catholic, seemed like a solid dude. He was funny, polite and \u2013 the most important thing to me at the time \u2013 not a virgin at age 16. And boy, would he regale me with stories of how not a virgin he was.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
On that night, just before punching out at 11 p.m., I heard the pay phone receiver slam \u2013 this was before cell phones \u2013 followed by Jimmy\u2019s voice cursing. I walked over to ask him the problem. His car wouldn\u2019t start and no one was home to answer his call.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
My dad would be there in 10 minutes, so I offered Jimmy a ride home with us. I was sure my dad would be cool with it. \u201cI\u2019m sorry,\u201d Jimmy said. \u201cI can\u2019t.\u201d He stared at me with dread. Then came those words, unfolding out of his mouth in slow motion, the way they continue to rattle inside my head to this day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I. CAN\u2019T. RIDE. IN. A. CAR. WITH. A. JEW.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Did Jimmy look at my nose and see Nazi caricatures? I\u2019m a secular Jew. I identify culturally and ethnically but was raised Reform and have been agnostic since before my Bar Mitzvah. None of this mattered to Jimmy. After all that time we spent getting to know one another, the sum total of all I was to him \u2013 all my unique thoughts, my dreams, my wit \u2013 was a shylock. How is it that someone who acted so friendly to me could actually be so anti Semitic?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I reacted quite intensely, screaming at Jimmy that he was out of line and that I couldn\u2019t be his friend anymore. But that was only in my head, like when you drive away from the cop who pulled you over and only then work out what you should have said. In reality, I just stood there in shock, asking, still only to myself, \u201cDid I really just hear that?\u201d During a recent San Diego business conference, all those emotions flooded back. The conference organizer introduced me to a fellow member of the local media. Since I\u2019m new to town and know virtually no one, I appreciated the contact. We hit it off immediately, even discovering a mutual friend. He and I discussed the \u201cjoys\u201d of freelance work, particularly having to pester editors about unpaid invoices and new assignment pitches simultaneously.
\u201cAnd then,\u201d my new friend said, choking back a laugh, \u201cthen they try to Jew you down on the amount!\u201d
It wasn\u2019t nearly as bad as what Jimmy said. And it wasn\u2019t directed at me personally. Nevertheless, it hit me just as hard. This is someone in the media, not some 16-year-old ignoramus but a grown-ass man charged with informing the public of current events through an impartial lens.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
If he harbors this prejudice, is it safe to assume that a large percentage of the rest of San Diego\u2019s gentiles do too?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Anti-Defamation League\u2019s latest \u201cAudit of Anti-Semitic Incidents\u201d report shows anti Semitic incidents in San Diego tracking pretty much in line with the rest of the country \u2013 jumping an alarming 34 percent from 2015 to 2016 and four-fold from the first quarter of 2016 to the first quarter of 2017.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWhen I started at ADL 10 years ago, nobody in San Diego wanted to talk much about anti Semitism,\u201d said San Diego ADL Regional Director Tammy Gillies. \u201cThe community felt it was a very welcoming place.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The uglier elements of San Diego\u2019s history also track similarly to that of most U.S. cities. For many decades, housing sales contracts in La Jolla \u2013 which self-identified as a Christian neighborhood via the Mount Soledad Easter Cross \u2013 excluded Jews, according to myriad San Diego Union-Tribune and La Jolla Light reports dating back to the early 2000s. Housing discrimination was outlawed in 1948 by a Supreme Court decision, but La Jolla just drove it underground. Not selling to Jews became a \u201cgentlemen\u2019s agreement.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The anti-Semitic covenants crumbled officially in the 1960s with the establishment of UC San Diego and the Salk Institute, whose founding scientists were mostly Jewish. But a fresh new take on the same old bullshit is back.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cOver this past year or two, as it\u2019s been on the rise across the country, people in San Diego have become concerned,\u201d Gillies said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
When I got home from the business conference, I sought Facebook\u2019s reaction to my first taste of San Diego Jew hatred.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cSomeone who did that to me in a professional setting, I would say, \u2018Excuse me?\u2019\u201d commented one Jewish friend, an editor I used to work for in New York. \u201cThen I would smash them across the face and say, \u2018Our business here is terminated. Are we clear?\u2019\u201d Violent confrontation is never first on my list \u2013 even if the guy wasn\u2019t six inches taller than me and an important connection to my media network in this smallish town. I could imagine that just politely objecting to his remark, \u201cJew you down,\u201d wouldn\u2019t have been a positive step for my career here. I have a reputation to build from the ground up, starting with the need for trusted friends in a mostly non-Jewish industry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI\u2019m sure there were many Austrian and German Jews who echoed the same sentiments,\u201d wrote another Jewish Facebook friend. (Isn\u2019t social media always so much fun?) She\u2019s an animal-rescue worker who lives in rural Arizona.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Maybe we should all lighten up. That\u2019s the advice I got from Susan Olsen, the former child actress who played Cindy on \u201cThe Brady Bunch.\u201d (I forgot how we became Facebook friends, but I love tagging her in threads where know-it-alls try to challenge my \u201cBrady Bunch\u201d trivia.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cLet it go,\u201d Olsen commented. \u201cEveryone is so obsessed with being offended. It hasn\u2019t done anyone any good.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Of course Olsen is going to think that. She lost her L.A. radio job last December after a personal Facebook message came to light in which she called someone a homophobic slur.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Gillies said I should have responded by saying, politely but assertively, \u201cTell me what you mean by that.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThen, they have to stop and think about it and they may not know what they mean,\u201d she said. \u201cMost times, when I hear an expression like that, it\u2019s really made out of ignorance and not out of anti-Semitism.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The phrase \u201cJewing down\u201d is based on the offensive stereotype of the Jewish people as cheap and greedy. It traces back to the Middle Ages, when Jews were excluded from professional guilds and denied the right to own land. Since the Catholic Church forbade Christians from charging interest on loans, Jews went into one of the only industries they could and dominated moneylending.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cPeople don\u2019t necessarily know the origins of some things they\u2019re saying, and don\u2019t know that they\u2019re offensive,\u201d Gillies said. \u201cPeople also say, \u2018I feel really Gypped,\u2019 or \u2018don\u2019t Welsh on a bet.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I\u2019ve said both things before \u2013 probably even once or twice after being informed that they were slurs against Gypsies and the Welsh. And I\u2019ll admit, \u201cIndian-giver\u201d was a staple of my playground lexicon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Rabbi Abraham Cooper, associate dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles, not only agrees that my new media friend probably isn\u2019t an anti-Semite, he also gives a pass to Jimmy, the grocery-store kid who wouldn\u2019t ride in cars with Jews.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
W.T.F???<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Cooper asked me if Jimmy continued working with me after the incident as though nothing ever happened. (Yes, for several months.) He also asked whether Jimmy ever said anything remotely anti-Semitic again. (No, never.) \u201cLook, I\u2019m not excusing the guy\u2019s behavior,\u201d Cooper said. \u201cIt\u2019s shocking \u2013 especially since you guys got along well. But that incident reflected more on anti-Semitism at home than on the kid, who would like to get home but is too afraid to be seen by his father, his family and\/or neighbors in the presence of a Jew. When he said to you, \u2018I\u2019m sorry, I can\u2019t,\u2019 there was probably a threat at the other end of it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So all of those alternate scenarios where I yelled or lashed out at Jimmy were unnecessary anyway. Jimmy was most likely on my side already, trying to warn me about an irrational situation at home.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
W.O.W.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
My case, the rabbi said, brings into focus what he considers probably the best weapon for combating anti-Semitism: personal contact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThis kid Jimmy came to the workplace fully loaded with negative stereotypes about Jews, and he was already having a different life experience,\u201d Rabbi Cooper said. \u201cHe had a buddy who was Jewish and thought he was a nice guy, he didn\u2019t look like a Christ-killer, and he never dared tell his father or he\u2019d get a smack.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThere\u2019s no single rule about what action to take,\u201d Cooper said. \u201cYou have to measure what the nature of the incident is.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Cooper did agree with Gillies, though, that I probably should have responded to the \u201cJew you down\u201d comment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThere are two things you gain in responding in the appropriate situation,\u201d he said. \u201cIf they are an anti-Semite, it\u2019s important to stand up as a Jew because part of the stereotype is that Jews won\u2019t stand up for themselves. Secondly, if they\u2019re not anti-Semitic, you just had a teaching moment.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Well, it\u2019s too late for that, obviously, but times like this make me happy to still be a journalist. Because I know one member of the San Diego media who\u2019s about to receive a link to an article in the latest issue of the San Diego Jewish Journal.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
By COREY LEVITAN Of all the reasons someone turns down a ride I offer them, none will be more memorable than \u201cI\u2019m sorry, but I can\u2019t ride in a car with a Jew.\u201d Jimmy and I were shelf-stackers at the Foodtown in Oceanside, Long Island. After the grocery store closed for the night, we and … <\/p>\n