The fourth issue of Guilt & Pleasure is now out, and at first glance, it seems as good (and good-looking) as the first three. That is, unless you’re Shalom Auslander’s mother.
The journal has a hilarious — but fundamentally serious — essay by Auslander that explores a predicament many of us are in: struggling with the Jewish community’s paranoia about anti-Semitism, while also struggling with the rise in actual anti-Semitic incidents (the latest example being the recent report on the Canadian situation).
Auslander navigates these issues with his signature edgy, personal voice. His specific problem: If anti-Semitism really is ubiquitous, then his mother was right.
For Auslander, nothing could be worse, so he ends the article with a plea to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Mel Gibson, and Hassan Nasrallah .
Think about that the next time, fellas — the next time you organize a “Did the Holocaust Really Happen?� conference, the next time you deface the Holocaust Memorial in Brussels, the next time you throw a Molotov cocktail at the Jewish center in Baltimore — think about my mother, at home, reading about it in the newspaper, tutting and shaking her head and veyzmeering and saying I told you so.
Does anyone really want to live in a world where my mother was right? I know I don’t. More importantly, I couldn’t, because you’d kill me. You’d kill all of us. And then who would run Hollywood?
Just kidding.
Please help.
A PDF of the complete essay is available here.
