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12/16/2007

Ollie into Heaven: Brooklyn

Brothers and Sisters,
Let us not kid ourselves, no wait, let us kid ourselves but for the time being let us ignore systematic logic and go with my gut on this one, we ain’t moving to Israel, just not happening. Its far away, hot, has a large population of African Jews which we will feel obligated to except but never feel truly comfortable around, and constant Arab aggression which forces us to question our commitment to our ideals and convictions, lets face it, those Jews are survivors, the solid unbreakable core of Jewish scrappiness that Hitler Yamach Shamo was talking about, while we are more the kind to line up for a train ride to the east for an ambiguous labor seminar, but fear not Rabbi X has got your back.

We have something better, closer, easier, and more ethnically divided, we have Brooklyn. That glorious city on the river, that urban expression of our psyche, that center of purely esoteric knowledge and culture where even the poor and ignorant are pretentious, a city were nobodies and nothings can make something of themselves… Brooklyn... Say it softly and it is a song, loudly and it is a prayer. Halls of study so grand one never has to suffer the light of day, and a dogmatically clannish attitude towards the world, a social cocoon so warm and intentionally judgmental that the outside world becomes an illusion from which our sustenance comes to us like manna from heaven, but whose angels and demons are to be loathed and shunned. Here at the center for Jewish Guilt and Persecution we know who the true Jews are, Brooklyn Jews, everyone else is pitiably misguided by these goyim, with their reasonable guiltless lifestyles, tempting us with their existence, and their faux attempts at spirituality.

In Brooklyn we can be our political, quarrelsome, divisive selves without fear of judgment, there are always more communities, more chances to game the system, more chances to destroy those we profess to love, it is a world with infinite Jews made for no one. In Brooklyn we are the Chosen people not because of what we do, what we remember, how we present ourselves to the world, but because we say so, and isn’t that a more realistic/comfortable attitude?

So remember, we are no longer wandering Jews, there is no exile, we are already home, we are in Brooklyn.