The Laundromat and the Drunk Antisemite

It was pretty late and I was tired, but laundry is laundry and I had to get it done. So there I was, on Main Street in Waltham Massachusetts, stuffing my clothes into a machine and hoping the place would stay open long enough for me to get everything done, when the door swung open and a man walked in. The first sign that something was wrong was that he didn’t have any laundry. The second sign was that he was obviously drunk.

“Hi,” I said, as politely as I could manage. “What’s wrong with you people?” he demanded. He wasn’t there for laundry; he was there to fight. And my kippah was a dead giveaway that I was a Jew.

I considered my options. He wasn’t a very big guy and he was drunk. I could get past him, although I’d be sacrificing my laundry in the process.

“My buddies and I were in the bar next door and then we saw you…”

Buddies, I thought. Getting past him wouldn’t be enough. I had a concealed carry permit, unusual in Massachusetts, but my pistol was in the car – as per the terms of my permit. Plus, I knew drawing it would cause all sorts of problems.

He went on, “I’ve been studying Eastern Philosophy, and harmony, and Plato, and how wonderful the world would be if we all worked together. But you people refuse to get with the program.”

I realized my only option was to talk with the educated, peace-loving harmonizer who wanted to see my people disappear.

I challenged his vision of the ultimate harmonious world where nobody wanted to upset the apple cart. I showed him that it would be a stagnant place, with little change, no learning and barely any culture. Like a corporation with perfectly calibrated processes, Plato’s Republic would be a dystopia. It would be doomed by the absence of chaotic life within it.

Then I shared another vision with him, that of an ecosystem. In an ecosystem, there is no overarching plan. Instead, change, driven by evolution and mutation, brings health to the system as a whole.

It is the single invasive species, the overwhelming species with a single blueprint for life, that destroys ecosystems and robs them of life.

Unlike others who seek global conformity, Jews are not trying to remake the entire world in their image.

With those contrasts in mind, I brought him back to the Jewish people. I showed him how the Jews are not an invasive species. Unlike others who seek global conformity, whether religious or ideological, we are not trying to remake the entire world in our image. We are happy for the vast majority of people not to be Jews – and to remain distinct from our people. We are not even a parasite, as we need the cultures that host us to flourish for our own people to flourish. In more recent years, we might describe Jews as a symbiotic species in the bacteria of the gut – critical to health and life but not quite a part of the broader organism.

Jews are ultimately non-conformists. Like one of the myriad species of the forest floor, we bring a critical dynamism to the societies that surround us. As Mark Steyn once said, when Vienna was the center of the Jewish world, it was also the cultural center of the world. After World War II, with its Jews gone, it became a cultural backwater more regarded for museums and buildings that celebrated what was more than what is and what will. The new centers of culture shifted to places like New York and Los Angeles.

We didn’t talk about Israel. It had not yet realized the outsized technological and cultural footprint it has today. But we did talk about the Jewish people, praying for the peace of their host cultures. After all, our peace can only be realized with theirs.

We spoke for just under an hour; my laundry wasn’t yet done when he shook my hand.

“You’re a good guy,” he said, “but I’m still not sure about the rest of you people.”

He headed back to his friends. I finished my laundry and headed home.

I didn’t change that man’s mind that night but I opened it. The years that have followed have only made my case stronger. Even our enemies recognize that Israel is font of technology and culture; BDS exists only because of our success. At the same time, our neighbors serve as a cautionary tale of the dangers of monocultures who erase their Jewish populations.

A few years later, someone called me a “F----ng Jew,” for the first time. I was shocked.

The second time someone called me that, just months later, I had a comeback: “And damned proud of it.”

We don’t have to get with the program. We shouldn’t get with the program.

And the world should be grateful that we walk a path all our own.