Hidden gems

In the Gawker comments, of all places, is perhaps the best retort to an anti-Semite... ever? Huh!

Backstory: it's in a thread responding to a post about swastika earrings that aren't technically swastika earrings but that sure look like swastika earrings, that are being sold in the traditionally-Polish-now-spillover-from-neighboring-Williamsburg-hipster Greenpoint neighborhood of Brooklyn.

So. First we have: "That's an ancient Indian symbol, you dummies. The swastika looks similar to that unfortunately. History and the world does not revolve around Jews, sorry."

The retort: "I suspect that your inner life does, however."

Flawless. The "however" is necessary to make it clear that there is agreement that not everything revolves around Jews. That no one was making this claim. Yes, the "backwards swastika" has significance in various cultures, with zilch to do with Germans, Jews, or the 1930s. But in Brooklyn, which is not some randomly-selected spot on the globe, which is not some part of Asia where Modern Ashkenazi Jewish history is remote, but rather a place with a significant Jewish presence and history including but not limited to Holocaust survivors, something that looks like a slightly off swastika poses a problem.

It's awkward being a member of a group that has a long history of being thought to be at the center of everything. While Jews themselves are not especially interesting (not more or less so than anyone else), the Jews have been all kinds of significant, even in settings where actual Jews were few, far between, and powerless. It's bound to give some Jews a sense - unearned, but understandable - of being born into something important and special and chosen if you will. It's bound to be off-putting to others (the majority, I'd bet, and this is where I fall), who find that in being disproportionately interested in Jewish matters, in the same way that gay people are disproportionately interested in gay matters, Jamaicans in Jamaican matters, etc., we are viewed as not merely parochial, but some twisted kind of parochial that's about wanting to be at the center of the universe. And then the only way to refute this becomes to claim that one has no particular interest in things Jewish, or to apologize for having such an interest. Jews are blamed for the fact that others have long been disproportionately interested in them. Jews are held responsible for somehow canceling out that interest by being less interested in their own story than any other subset of humanity might be. And when Jews falter, when Jews reveal themselves to have parochial concerns, they are interpreted as being narcissistic beyond reason.