Jewish Christmas in San Diego

I sat in between Brian and Jason. Jason is an engineer and Brian's cousin by marriage. Brian was a lawyer but quit and started a bar trivia company in Southern California. I met Brian at a hostel in Colombia. He was Jewish, an ex-wrestler and from San Diego. We bonded quickly, and the fact that I kept him safe as an angry drug dealer looked for him after he tried translating a botched deal for a crazy Australian made us pretty close.
    We were celebrating Christmas Jewish style. I worked all day in a near empty building and went for a quick and also near empty meditation session run by a BuJu Jeff Zlotnik.
  I left meditation early and arrived at Jimmy Wong's Golden Dragon restaurant expecting a packed Hilcrest with anti-christian gays and Chinese food. Instead, I found out that gays are a lot more Christian than I expected and that Mr. Wong's was packed with Jews but it was Thai and not Chinese.
   Three sake bombs later, we were relaxed and hitting on the waitresses. I say waitresses because all four girls ran to service us anytime we were low on drinks or low on food. For that I blame Brian's sculpted by Volleyball triceps, showing clearly through the shirt. The girls could barely speak English and every time we flirted they laughed, nodded and ran off, knocking into the swinging doors and dropping the white porcelain dishes onto the floor and sending shards of porcelain into the kitchen.

   Jason converts cars from gas to electric when he isn't chasing corporate accounts at the public utility company. He is also getting married to a very non-Jewish and very pretty girl from Tennessee. Brian can't wait to sell his business and travel around Latin America where he can pick girls like girls pick flowers.

   As we chugged another Sake bomb, Jason tells Brian how Brian should sell his business in a way that only a Jew can, with conviction of knowing everything about something that one can't possibly know anything about. Another sake bomb and we discuss Christmas. Jason has mixed feelings about Christmas because of the whole presents thing and the capitalism that drives us to buy.
To me, it's not a big deal. All that buying ensures I have a job and getting gifts doesn't seem like a bad thing anyway, people spending money on each other and showing that they care through a physical manifestation.

    We head out and I walk past an ex who is sitting across from someone who could certainly be her sugar daddy. I get a thought to text her to invite her to my place, but I'm only three beers in so I don't. Instead we walk around empty Hilcrest past Jewish girls who are also looking for something to do and no open bars to do it at.

     Having found nothing but no desire to call it a night yet, we caravan it Swingers style to North Park, the closest densest bar area. Everything is quiet there, mice were stirring but all the cats sat at home near warm fireplaces. The only place that was open was a wood paneled and Jew owned Beer Bar, Toronado. Behind the bar was a lumberjack looking hipster with a long red beard and a giant pacific islander whose man tits seem to grow every time I see him. His glasses are propped up by his cheeks rather than his nose and wisps of facial hair curled off his lip and chin. He walked  with his entire body rotating and pivoting on each giant leg. He somehow managed to be giant without a gut. His massive frame seemed to be solely located in his head, shoulders and chest.
He's a happy guy and Brian working his magic scored beer taste after beer taste.
We soon found out that an awkward woman near us is half Jewish, the awkward part must be Jewish and that Nate, the giant Pacific Islander bar tender was adopted by Jewish parents.
"I went to Hebrew school until fourth grade."
"You're way more Jewish than us man." Brian said.
We cheered to our most famous Jew and shot the shit as our beers slowly disappeared.
"This is what it's been like for the past year and a half." I tell Brian. "Talking to random people and finding out that they are Jewish."
It has been difficult to explain to friends what I do, they really have to see it to understand it.
Jason wanted to smoke and Brian had been texting his ex all night and I saw a cute blond down the bar all by herself. We slapped hands and did the one arm hug as Brian and Jason left me to my devices.
I walked over by the girl and ordered another beer.
"It's on the house, you're one of the tribe." Nate said.
My first Christmas present I thought.
"You want anything?" Nate asked the girl.
"No I'm just waiting for my boyfriend."
"You could have played off being Jewish and scored a beer." I said as Nate walked off.
"I'm blond, I can't be Jewish." She said briefly looking away from her phone.
"I've met blond Jews."
"I was Joking, I went to a High School that was almost all Jewish." My ears perked up.
"Where?"
"New York."
"That makes sense, so you know more about Jews than I."
"Yeah, we had all the days off for Jewish holidays."  
    I imagine she felt like a Jew feels in San Diego with all the Christian holidays off and glee while not actually caring.
"Lots of bar-mitzvas too?"
"Not really, that was middle school. After middle school Christians went to Catholic private schools and the poor and the Jews went to public."
    Her hipster boyfriend showed up with his greased up mustache waxed to a curly point and they took off with a good-bye.
    I still had half a beer left and I chugged half of that, shook hands with the giant Samoan Jew and awkward half-Jewish Carol and went home to have a quiet, Jewish Christmas.

Homophobia Explained

The day we are born the world is a huge unknown. As children, the world becomes a scary place with dangers all around us. As we get older and older, we begin to figure out the world, grasp control over it and begin to see it a a place for us to create and not fear. We begin to understand other people, who they are with respect to us and how we interplay. We begin to understand our roles which we have defined over generations in order to make this world an easier place to manage. We create constructs, models and tools to simplify the world into something that we can comprehend. But these models only work as long as we choose to remain ignorant of the overall complexity of the world and these models rely on the world and nature to play along with us. Because the truth is, the world is far more unknown than we could ever imagine.
   
   The world and nature exist outside of us and we exist inside of it. Thus as we push to progress technologically and as a society, we hit our model and it crashes into the reality of the world requiring our reformulation of our model. Multiple responses happen in such situations. They follow the usual responses to a catastrophic change. They begin with denial, then change to anger which requires stubbornness and a direct competition with nature. But nature doesn't care, it is not competing it just is. Just because we try to fly, gravity does not change its effect on us and so we finally must accept that nature will win and we either change our models and play with nature or loose to it in our stubborn attempts to hold on to our made-up notions of nature and the world.

    Humans, as they left the arduous jobs of tending fields have come to utilize their full mental potential. With that came rest and self-awareness and full realization of who they are. To use these mental powers requires the bigger truth of the world and the selves and with that came the problem of biodiversity, sexual diversity and gender diversity.
   
   So it occurred with science when our society reached theoretical limits after Renaissance and so it happened with the end to slavery, so it is happening with racism and finally with homosexuality and our concept of gender. To have an advanced society, we have to allow people to be themselves. We have encountered the ambiguity of nature. Our one man and one woman relationship construct created by Christianity is at odds with our nature and our concept of what it is to be man, woman or human has collided with the complexity of sex and biological variation.

    In the next decades we will find the walls breaking down in our minds as we face the issue that to succeed as a human race, divisions on base of race and sexual preference are distractions, that we must come together and with that, accept one another. Religious tensions, racial tensions, ideological tensions will melt away because progress short of global calamity, is a necessary condition and regression in the age of globalization is impossible.

America, You're Funny-Communism, Civil Rights Nelson Mandela

United States fought authoritarian Communism for six decades, building up its military, telling USSR to free its people. Today under capitalism, seven of the ex-Soviet states are dictatorship and yet in America there is no desire to free the poor countries so long as they produce profit. It appears that lack of profit was the largest moral crisis, not lack of human rights. Where is the desire for freedom for Turkmenistan? Ukraine? Belarus? Azerbaijan? Kazachstan? Uzbekistan? Ukraine? Russia? At the same time, I see so many people post stories supporting Arab spring but where are those shares for Ukraine, Georgia or even China and Tibet. If anything facebook shows is that what America seems to truly care for is not democracy and the human conditions but our ability to live more comfortably by pumping out natural resources out of a country and  it was USSR resistance to join our economy that was the biggest problem with USSR, not its human rights record.

So let's look at at our vitriol and who we condemn. We condemn the Sharia law of Iran who refuse to sell us oil while being perfectly fine with Saudi Arabia who sell us lots of oil.

We condemn Cuba's socialism who refuse to trade with us while are perfectly fine with socialism of Sweden and Canada.

We were upset over China's one child policy and their human rights before Tienanmen square when they were not our trade partners and now we are their major supplier of surveillance equipment and largest trading partner.

We were calling for people to observe the genocide in Ethiopia during pro-soviet economy on grounds of Communism and we have ignored it since the country turned to western economy.

We pride freedom in United States but what kind of freedom are we really for? Are we for the type of freedom that allows people speech, gives women respect, allows kids to be kids and citizens to vote? Or are we simply in favor of a countries desire to do business with us for our own economic gain?


Today the news is full of fanfare for a freedom fighter who only twenty years earlier was called a terrorist. His organization was on the terror list but today is the party of the free. It was a grassroots movement that forced divestment that ended the Apartheid which went on until 1994 mainly because of American support and the billions of dollars America was making from the mines of near slave labor in South Africa which could not happen without Apartheid and our support of it.

South Africa repressed all, black and white with secret police, torture, imprisonment. There was no free press and black lives were not just cheap, they were worthless. Police opened fire on a student protest, children were not children, they were less than human and United States did nothing so long as money flowed and those who stood up for this injustice were moved to terror list.

So what is different today? How would we think of South Africa had it reacted to behavior by United States with boycott of American goods? Would Obama be there for Mandela's funeral, or would we call the new government racist, terrorist, and inhumane.

America, your love of money freedom is very very funny. 

In Defense of Christmas

Terri Beth Mitchel's Christmas Brothers.

So I want to make a confession. I love Christmas! Yes, that is right, I'm Jewish and I love Christmas. No, I am not a messianic Jew or as most people know: a Jew for Jesus. I am your run of the mill, Ukrainian emigre, left-wing non-denominational, viral Zionist Jew. And yet.... I LOVE CHRISTMAS.

Why? Well thank you for asking. First reason is obvious, Jesus! Jesus is our most famous Jew and you don't know Jews if you don't know how much we love famous Jews. Why they don't even have to be Jewish on their mother's side, why they may have had a Jewish nanny, that is enough. Mention a name and you will know if they are Jewish, because a Jew will make sure you know.

So naturally, I love that the world celebrates the birth of our biggest communist, of our original BuJu (Buddhist Jew) our original Kippot wearing Yogi, the man that is responsible for the giant crushes that every Catholic girl has had on me, my man Jeshua of Nazareth, or as you may call him, God.

Now the dude is cool I have to give you that, I can't say he's a god. I mean I've seen Tony Hawk pull off bigger stunts. And making wine out of water seems silly, your water the vines and up comes the wine. But he was a righteous man, going against all those Rabbis who took money and really going back to the original Judaism, the good parts you know like give to the others, turn the cheek and not keeping secrets. I mean he is the original dude man. He is the young mother-fucking Santa, before grey hair and a few extra pounds. I mean who else would give out free Chalah, Wine and Gifilte Fish back in those days? Why that's like giving away Playstation 4s for crying out loud!!! If it wasn't for my man J to the s-u-s, there would be no Jewish Lite, or as you call it, Christianity. Of course if not for Jew-lites there would be no Jew-Core or as my cousins via Ishmael call it Islam. I mean Jews submit to God too but we're allowed to bullshit with him too here and there. Jewish God is a bit lenient with our argumentative lot. But without my Muslim brothers, my Christian bros would have really sent us back with their love for faith and hate for books.

So really I love Jesus because before him, people were jerks. They still are, but at least now they know it.

The second reason is gifts. Some people call it “commercialism” but I say come on! That's lame, I mean we all love having money, and if we don't shop, people don't work. If you don't buy the ipod, the engineer can't go to work to make you one. But that is not the biggest reason, the biggest reason is the reason, people shop to give! The reason everyone runs to the stores is because they were going to go after all because Christmas is a time of selflessness, it is a time of showing how much you care and buying things for people that they are not selfish enough to buy themselves. And companies know this and so they give them sales. How good is that? You have a holiday to buy your friends and family gifts and the stores where your friends and family work actually give you deals instead of charging more when they know you will shop anyway.

I was born in Ukraine and we gave presents on New Year. It was an all inclusive, non-denominational holiday. It was fun but it blew because it didn't force us to celebrate our differences and it didn't influence us. Christmas does this. Why I would get no presents at all on Hannukah if not for Christmas. I probably wouldn't even celebrate Chanukah if not for Christmas. Even my Hindu and Buddhist friends love Christmas, I'm pretty sure they wouldn't get presents either if there was no Christmas.

So see! What's the deal with Christmas haters, the commercial and noncommercial part?

It's win win! And that is why I, Sam the Jewish Guy, Love Christmas!

And if it upsets you, that a Jew likes Christmas and so you decide to ban it because someone makes a buck.. then stop spending money on bars and spend a few of those bucks on your loved ones, do like Jesus… otherwise, who's the Grinch now Mr. Scrooge?

Christmas in Little Italy.