Are You Jewish? Poem by gershon hepner

“Are you Jewish? ” they are asking
some members of the tribe. It’s hard
to say when you are multitasking
in two worlds and no longer barred
from corridors of power, high
finance and groves of academe,
and can’t explain to people why
you might, although not “Jewish, ” seem
so different from the ethnic others
who now are more in fashion, like
Hispanics, Asians and black brothers.
Since you’re no longer called a kike
why should you call yourself a Jew
if you do not feel Jewish? Let’s
forget about the problem. Do
you care if I support the Mets
or Yankees? If it happens that
you’re Jewish and a Dodger fan,
you do not need a cap or hat
to be identified as man
or woman. Everyone’s the same
in our new world, home of the brave,
and since there’s now no badge of shame
for Jews what is there left to save?
Diaspora is good for Jews, unless
they are in France, or places where
jihad is popular. I guess
there’s really no need to go there.

Jamie Kastner has produced a movie, “Are You Jewish? ” which is being shown on the Sundance Channel tonight. Felicia Lee writes (“Vexing Questions of Jewish Identity, ” NYT, December 18,2007) :

“Are you Jewish? ” is a question often lobbed at Jamie Kastner, a Toronto filmmaker and writer. Why do you want to know? , he asks in a film that flings the question back as he moves around the globe — New York, London, Jerusalem, Paris, Berlin — to engage a widely varied cast of characters about the meanings of Jewishness. With the deliberately provocative and potentially offensive title “Kike Like Me, ” his documentary is to have its television premiere in this country Monday night at 10 on the Sundance Channel. The film, which Mr. Kastner wrote, directed and produced, is what he calls “a black comic road movie about identity.” On that road the curly-haired,35-year-old Mr. Kastner meets friendly Lubavitcher Jews in Brooklyn, who beam as he dons tefillin, boxes containing Scriptural passages, as well as young Arabs in the diverse Paris suburb of Sarcelles who say that if he is a Jew “we don’t like you.” Mr. Kastner asks the young men to consider him as an individual, but they resort to a series of insults. “It would be a good time to leave Sarcelles before I get a second circumcision, ” Mr. Kastner says in one of his frequently sarcastic voice-overs, leaving what had devolved into a shouting match on a sidewalk. Mr. Kastner also interviews the conservative pundit Patrick J. Buchanan (who abruptly ends the meeting) about his views on Jewish neo-conservatives and their ties to Israel. In Israel he chats with A. B. Yehoshua, the novelist and playwright, who rhapsodizes about life there, prompting this voice-over from Mr. Kastner: “I don’t know. I kind of like life in the Diaspora.”

12/17/07