Riddles

I’m going to tell you all about a party I went to on Saturday and you can all guess what the celebration was for:

The party took place at a fancy art space in Brooklyn, but it had been refitted to host a gaggle of young Top 40 listeners and their plus ones. There was a makeshift dance floor that had been constructed from laminated pieces of “wood.” The lights had been turned low and since there was no disco ball; there were three revolving pink and yellow disco lights from Spencer’s Gifts spotting the sidelines of the dancefloor. The deejay was a 38-year-old dude in a suit who played a lot of Village People. The girls danced with each other and the boys stood around and talked about various ways of sneaking alcohol from the cash bar.

Gift bags were distributed, but there were not enough for everyone. In fact, there were only about 20 bags despite the hosts knowing fully well that there would be 200 guests at party. In the bags, guests found glow sticks, noisemakers, decorative hats to wear on the dancefloor, and a snack (so no one went hungry).

Guests were instructed to pose for a cameraman against a glossy scenic background for photos that would document the night’s good times. People were encouraged to make silly faces and put up fun but not obscene hand gestures in their formal wear. In the pictures, it is apparent that many of the female guests have removed their shoes as they’d been dancing.

And most importantly and probably the most revealing of all clues: The free booze at this party was only for an hour and it was Colt 45. After that it was 3 bucks for a tall-boy of the malt liquor, which is pricey when it comes to this elixir even for Manhattan standards. A homeless man was probably already 80 liters deep in the stuff and still had spare change when I was shelling out more bones for another can of what is literally the cheapest liquor in the world.

I also noticed that several people in the smoking patio were using the space to call their mothers rather than ingest some nicotine. There were conversations about going to law school that I overheard.

I can only assume what your guess is for the answer to my riddle, but no, I wasn’t at my cousin’s Bar Mitzvah, I was at a party for a magazine. And yes, because they were selling very cheap liquor at a 90% profit, it comes as no surprise that the magazine was a Jewish magazine. The soiree was celebrating the sacred holiday (and my all time favorite Jewish fable) of Purim. It was called the Pour ‘Em Party.

This was a media industry event and let’s be real; the only reason anyone joins the media industry is to get stuff for free (hello, Jews in Hollywood), so I couldn’t help but be disappointed that I wasn’t receiving a collector’s edition DVD of “Inglorious Basterds” and a bakers dozen of bagels in my gift bag. And you better believe I fought my way to be one of the 20 people getting a gift bag.

Though I thoroughly enjoyed myself at this party and managed to get sloshed on only $10 (yes, I only tipped a dollar, despite my past bartending career I’m still, well, a Jew), I couldn’t think of a more uncomfortable place for me to be. As I looked around at the Tiffany jewelry and short, balding males, I kind of wanted to throw up from all of the frizzy hair and greasy beards. They all reminded and continue to remind me of pubic hair. I can’t help but look at a Jew and imagine him or her as a giant genitalia, framed by oily brown curls, skin pulsating with sweat and grease. Now you want to throw up too.

I love talking about being Jewish with friends and family but I hate being in rooms full of them or using our shared religion as a conversation starter with strangers. JDate is my worst nightmare. I prefer to find out that others are Jewish through drunken confession, and keeping it a secret after the fact.

Whoever we are and whatever nationality we are, we all experience some sort of self-loathing based on where we came from. My friend Suzie has extreme racism towards gardeners and Mcdonald’s cooks despite being Mexican, and my friend Mike has terribly nasty things to say about people from Jersey despite having the privilege of being born and raised in Bruce Springsteen’s hometown.

But Jews take it above and beyond. Though we have given ourselves the very exclusive club name of “the chosen people,” we love to separate ourselves from our own kind when we show our nagging, obnoxious colors. We make fun of those of us who went to “Jew camp,” hastily claim to be “half” when we have a non Jewish parent, and we all hate, and I mean HATE those nasty, dirty Hasids.

In 2007 I went on “Birthright,” the free trip to Israel for young Jews. This was years before Bernie Madoff sullied our sarcasm-loving race with his fraudulent money laundering and completely wiped out the Birthright funds. Ruining Birthright was the one thing Madoff did that didn’t really bother me because I hated my own Birthright experience and didn’t want anyone I knew, siblings or friends, to have to go on such a trip.  Imagine a bus full of insecure, curly haired brunettes who were desperately trying to get the last laugh. No one was even listening to my jokes. It was a nightmare.

Plus, the organizers of Birthright will do anything to get you to hook up with your fellow travelers. I don’t care if you give me a free trip to a foreign country; I’m not going to get schtupped by someone who looks like Ethan Coen.

I understand that Birthright has changed the lives of many of its participants, but I had no such experience. I have since cut all my ties with Birthright, but on Saturday I was standing on Broadway under an awning to avoid the rain, waiting for my now broom-like umbrella to magically fix itself, when I saw Sahali, the Israeli guard that followed my Birthright group around Israel with a giant shotgun slung on his shoulder and machete attached to his belt. He protected us as we traveled throughout the country having earned his cred by fighting on the Gaza front and liberating hostages in Bethlehem. Though he spoke almost no English, he was very kind and quick to rub aromatic mud on all of us when we visited the Dead Sea. And here he was, almost three years later, walking in the rain in New York City sans gun, sans yarmulke, but of course, sesame seed bagel in hand.

This is Sahali leaning up against a ruin like a badass.

Sahali told me that he was in town for a huge party going on that night for all Birthright alumni. “How do you not know about it? You must have gotten an email, or at least an invitation?” he asked. I vaguely remembered marking all of my Birthright mail as spam, but I played dumb. He begged for me to come to the party, claiming there were already 250 people RSVP’d on Facebook. I blatantly lied and promised I would see him there, knowing fully well I would never show my face to those people who didn’t laugh at my jokes so many years ago.  The event sounded like hell, and as a Jew, I don’t even believe in hell.

When I got home I had a second thought. Perhaps I should go to this party. There would probably be free booze, and free snacks were almost a guarantee. I should get over my loathe of my fellow tribesmen and women, and experience camaraderie with other young people of my creed. As Jews, we share a rich history of one of the oldest religions in the world and one of the most interesting cultures of our time; a culture that includes amazing soups and really funny comedians. Self-loathing is not only unattractive, but it’s immature and fuel for anti-Semites to run their dirty mouths at us. We Jews need to stick together; argue the existence of the holocaust with Mel Gibson followers and defend the genius of “Fiddler on the Roof.” We may nag and have unfortunate beast-like features, but we are who we are and that is all we have.

I then found the invitation online and saw that beers were $6 at this thing. Fuck that.