Free Thursday the Rabbi Walked Out by Harry Kemelman Page A

them.”
    “The United States doesn’t do much better there.” Jason Walters pointed out. “And if you come right down to it, most countries hate us, too.”
    Jordon chortled. “Sure they do, and it’s for the same reason, we’re a little that way: ourselves.”
    “Hogwash! They hate us because we’re rich and powerful,” said Megrim.
    “No, that’s not it.” Jordon asserted. “When you’re powerful, you’re feared. Sure you may be hated, but only as long as there’s reason for being afraid of you. In World War II we hated the Japs and the Germans because we were afraid of them, we didn’t hate the Italians because we weren’t, and as soon as the war was over, we also stopped hating the Japs and the Germans. You want to know why America is hated today? Why all this ‘Yankee. Go Home’ propaganda? It’s because we were guilty of perpetrating a terrible act of charity, the Marshall Plan. Never before in the history of the world had a conquering country set out to rebuild the countries it had defeated, we gave away millions, with no strings attached, and we’ve been hated for it ever since, and they’ll go on hating us until the memory of that tremendous moral act is dimmed or forgotten.”
    “That’s pure hogwash, Ellsworth,” Megrim drawled. “The reason they dislike us is because we’re brash and pushy when we’re in their countries, maybe it’s because we’re away from home, or because we don’t know their language or their customs, so we feel a little uncertain and we cover up by being, well, assertive, and that’s why we tend to dislike Jews – because they’re pushy.”
    “I wouldn’t say they were pushy:” said Burkhardt. Now that the conversation was on a philosophical level, he could speak calmly. “I think they’re a little more intense than we are, that’s all. My partner, for instance, when he gets involved in a project, it’s as though the whole world depended on it, the same when he tries to relax and play golf, he races through the course. It’s as though everything he does is a little bit more, as though he’s operating on a higher body temperature, if you see what I mean, and I’ve noticed it in others, too. It may be something in their genes. Stands to reason, with all the trouble they’ve been through, pogroms and what not, those living today must be the result of a special selection process.”
    “Not at all. It’s their religion,” Jordon declared flatly.
    “They don’t have any religion,” said Dr. Springhurst, his interest stirred for the first time.
    “Cummon, Padre, they invented it, the modern kind, I mean,” said Jordon.
    “They did, and for a while, they were a religious people, the Lord was close to them in those days and proved Himself with miracles.” The old man shook his head lugubriously. “But the more He proved Himself, the more they moved away from Him. Imagine, after a miracle like the parting of the Red Sea, they constructed the golden calf. Nevertheless they remained a religious people. It was during the life of our Lord Jesus that the great change came, he saw it and tried to prevent it, that was His mission, to prevent the Scribes and the Pharisees from turning the true religion into a kind of practical ethical culture society, they don’t have a God, not one they can look to for salvation, their God can’t be known, by definition, if you please, he can’t be seen, he can’t even be imagined, he’s like X in algebra. It enables them to justify any regulation or code of rules they wanted to set up: ‘Do it because it is commanded by the Lord.’ They don’t demand faith, they have no hope of heaven, no fear of hell, merely a code of behavior justified only with ‘Thus saith the Lord.’ See, that way they don’t have to prove anything, they don’t have to convince their people that it’s right or worthwhile or intelligent or practical, there’s no argument about a different way or a better way by the opposition. Merely,