Free Thursday the Rabbi Walked Out by Harry Kemelman

earnestly. “Look, my daughters go to the dances here, well, naturally; I want them to meet their own kind of people, that doesn’t mean I’m prejudiced.”
    “Sure,” said Burkhardt scornfully, “everybody denies being anti-Semitic, but –”
    “I don’t,” said Ellsworth Jordon.
    “You don’t?” The young man stared at him. “You mean you are anti-Semitic?”
    “Certainly, all of us are, and you are, too, Burkhardt. You’re ashamed to admit it because you have a lot of crackpot liberal ideas about how only the ignorant are prejudiced. But you are just the same. Having one as a business partner, or as a family physician whom you think the world of, or as a best friend proves nothing. Or, rather, to a Jew it proves you are anti-Semitic, that’s a kind of inside joke among them, anytime anyone says his best friends are Jews, they know it’s an anti-Semite talking.” He smiled broadly. “I know, because at one time some of my best friends were Jewish.”
    “But you just said –” Don Burkhardt was nonplussed.
    “Oh, I can admit it because I know why we’re anti-Semitic.”
    “You do? Why?”
    “Because they make us feel uncomfortable.”
    “Why should they make you feel uncomfortable?”
    “Because they’re better than we are.” said Jordon simply.
    They stared at him.
    “Hogwash! How do you mean, better?” demanded Megrim.
    “Morally; ethically;” said Jordon. “I guess they’re just more civilized than we are, that’s what makes us feel uncomfortable, and that’s why we dislike them.” He laughed aloud. “And the joke is that the buggers don’t have any idea why they’re disliked, not a clue, they just don’t understand the psychology of it, they point out that they’re good and loyal citizens with a low divorce rate and a low crime rate, that they’re sober and industrious and ambitious, they’re active in all kinds of worthwhile movements and reforms and are usually on the side of the underdog. But that doesn’t get you liked, you know. Quite the contrary, they were the first to help the Blacks, for instance, and the result is that they are the ones the Blacks resent most.”
    “Yeah, but they helped the Blacks because they’re both minority peoples,” Megrim pointed out. “But you take in Israel, where they are in the majority –”
    “They’re making the same mistake.” said Jordon promptly.
    “They set up a two-bit country on a two by four piece of land, and the first thing they do is to take in all their kinfolk from all the Arab countries, the old and the sick, and not a dime among the lot of them, and they feed them when they themselves haven’t got a pot to pee in, and there were almost as many of these refugees as the total population of the country at the time.”
    Jordon took a sip of his drink and continued, “On the other hand, the entire Arab world, about eighty million of them with Lord knows how many millions of square miles of territory, could not find room for a couple of thousand of their own kinfolk and left them in refugee camps to rot, and everybody like Jason Walters here says the Israelis have got to do something about their Palestinian refugees, the Israelis, mind you, not the Arabs.”
    “Yeah, they take care of their own.” said Megrim. “Everybody knows that. But today –”
    “Today they have the Good Fence over at the Lebanon border.” said Burkhardt. “And those aren’t their own they’re giving free medical treatment, any Arab who comes to the fence. Christian or Moslem, who needs help, gets it.”
    “Yeah, how about that. Padre?” Jordon jeered. “Those are Christians that are being slaughtered, and nobody in the Christian world lifts a finger or even protests, not the Pope, not your World Council of Churches, not the Christian countries. Only the damn Jews. It’s downright embarrassing. No wonder that no one supports them in the UN, that’s the point I was making, they make everybody uncomfortable, so everybody votes against