There seems to be some confusion around these parts concerning a few of the details of Judaism. This was brought to my attention recently when my son had a falling out with one of his best friends. Sensing Zack's pain, and panicked at the prospect of losing a perfectly good sleep-over venue, I asked what had caused the rift.
"His mom said we can't be friends anymore because their religion doesn't like our religion."Reaching for my heart pills, I gasped, "Did he say exactly what she dislikes about our religion?"
"Something about a Ouija board."
As I came to, I remembered what had happened a few weeks earlier. The boy's mother, X, flipped out over a Ouija board that my son had received as a birthday gift and brought over to show his pal. When I went to fetch Zack, I arrived in time to hear X shrieking that she would "have none of that devil stuff" in her home. At the time, I had shrugged it off as simply a bad mood, since in her agitated state X had broken a nail, complaining that her manicure was only two days old.
Many of you may (or may not) remember the Ouija board from the 15-minute period during pre-adolescence when it held some appeal. It involves moving a "plastic message indicator" around a game board imprinted with the letters of the alphabet, seeking answers to profound questions like, "Does Tommy know I like him? Who told him?" or "Will I ever be tall enough to slam dunk? How tall will I be?" Obviously this has nothing to do with my religion, a fact I wanted X to fully comprehend.
I called to straighten things out, and it's a good thing I did! Some things were said that led me to see that X had confused "Jews from New York" with "gypsies from Transylvania." I was finally able to untangle the confusion by assuring her that tarot and Torah are two entirely different things.
This experience reminded me of something when I was a teenager, for which I have always felt remorse. As a camp counselor, I was responsible for a group of 10-year-olds. One of them, a naive child who had never before been out of her small town, asked me, "Do Jews really have horns?" Mistaking sarcasm for humor (a recurring problem of mine), I answered, "Yes, but we have them removed at birth." Then I let her feel a tiny bump on my head, confiding that it was the site of a former horn.
What haunts me is the likelihood that somewhere in Gary, Ind., a 45-year-old woman named Marion thinks all Jews are born with horns. I'd like to clarify this right now: We most definitely do not have horns, although many of us play horns in orchestras around the world. I'd also like to take this opportunity to de-mystify a few other aspects of Judaism:
1. To be a bona fide Jew, your parents or grandparents must live, die or spend half the year in Florida, preferably in a condo community with the word "Boca" in the name. There should be at least one relative named Pesha, Peska, Itcha or Ben residing at the same ad-dress.
2. While no adult Jewish males are in the NFL or NBA, many of them are in the AMA. Plastic surgery is a popular specialty, with the increase in liposuction directly traceable to chicken fat, a core ingredient in Jewish cooking.
3. While you certainly may convert to Judaism as an adult, you can never become what is called "a real Jew," since that status requires years of eating in Chinese restaurants during your formative years, possibly having a nose job during adolescence and attending no less than 20 bar mitzvahs before the onset of puberty.
I hope I've cleared up some confusion here. Rest assured, Jews have never looked to the Ouija board for answers to spiritual questions. For those, we go directly to a psychiatrist, except on weekends and during the month of August, when we are forced to rely solely on Chinese fortune cookies.