Jewish And Irish

...screeched the matronly,
50-ish university feminist,
"How would YOU know
...you coddled little
high school brat
from lily-white Amerika ! ?"
(54 year-old man from Newark, NJ).

Well, for one thing,
I'm 100 percent Jewish.
I come from a very, very
rich and vibrant
multi-ethnic background.

I'm 100 percent Irish
by ancestry,
I'm 100 percent Italian
by birth
(born in Western Italy -
Newark),
and I'm 100 percent Jewish
by culture
(raised and educated
in the New York City area).

My homes in Newark
and South Orange
were closer to Manhattan
than much of Brooklyn is.

A few years ago,
I read "Citzen Koch",
an autobiography by Ed Koch
(Mayor of New York City,
1978 - 1990).

I was AMAZED
at the similarities
between his early life
and mine.

Hizzoner is about
25 or 30 years older than I am,
I surmise
from glancing back
through his book.
He was a young man
in World War II in 1944,
and I was born in 1951.

But, as I read his autobiography,
I remember being ASTOUNDED
by the similarities
of our upbringings.

He had a childhood in Newark,
military service,
lived near NYU,
and one of his earliest jobs
was at 70 Pine Street,
in the Wall Street district,
which, I believe, is exactly
the address where I worked
for Merrill, Lynch
(after high school).

I found particularly amusing
his story of the Irish cop
who stopped him from speaking,
temporarily,
on the corner of
Broad, Nassau, and Wall Sts...,
(Citizen Koch, pp. 54, 55)

" 'Listen, Bud...stop or I'm
gonna take you in'...

Now I know
this police officer was
just trying to do his job,
but what bothered me was that
he wasn't doing it well...
Surely, he should have known
the laws regulating
public speaking...

'Officer, look.  That guy is there
every single day, preaching about
the coming of the Messiah...'

'He's different', the cop said
with total sincerity,
'He's a fanatic.' "

(As I get older,
I find my interactions with police
more and more exasperating.
They seem to be just
rent-a-cops for the rich,
so it's refreshing
when I encounter
good organizations
like the Davis, CA, P.D.)

The Jewish cultural
and intellectual influences
in my development
were so pervasive
that I don't know
where to begin
to describe them.

In fact, it is only
in recent decades
that I have become aware
of the
Jewish Sunburst of Culture
that surrounded me
in the New York City area
throughout the 1900's.

*******

Some of my best friends
were Jewish. Honest !
Let's begin with
my brother-in-law,
Charles Weldon.
Charlie was very intelligent.

How smart was he ?
Charlie won the
U.S. Chess Open one year.
Lets' just say
that's probably the equivalent,
in mental athletics,
to being
an Olympic Gold Medalist.

He achieved the level of
Chess Master, I believe,
and once, in conversation,
he told me that
he knew Bobby Fischer
as well as he knew me.

How well did he know me ?
He was my mentor.

To him, I was the little brother
of his girl, and, as such,
we shared in the give and take
of familial affection.

One summer (1969, I believe)
I got a job working at
Joseph E. Levine's
Avco Embassy Pictures
on 6th Ave and 52nd St.,
working in the mailroom,
and I believe it was arranged
by my sister and brother-in-law.

If you want some
intellectual clarity,
Isaac Asimov and Nat Hentoff
would be good places to start.
Albert Shanker was a good writer,
too, but probably a better debater.
The last time I spoke
to that education giant
was about a decade and a half ago
at a Stanford debate.

Don't get me wrong -
not ALL good writers are Jewish.
There's D'nish D'souza,
and the French and English
writers of the Enlightenment.
I even read an article
by William F. Buckley,
once, that was
understandable and interesting.

And, also, there's
Dan Weintraub and Dan Walters
and Peter Schrag
at The Sacramento Bee,
and Ruben Navarette
and Tom Sowell
and Great Metropolitan
BLOGGERS such as
Charles Bustmont, Sally Ducvid,
and their editor...

*******