Of Jews and Bicycle-Riders
Comment of the week
March 25, 2011
(Ravi Joshi/Tablet Magazine)
Winner gets a free Nextbook Press book appropriate to his or her comment (provided he or she emails me at [email protected] with his or her mailing address).
This week’s winner is “Corey,” who brought Zen-level pondering to Lee Smith’s column on complicit Western intellectuals:
This anti-”intellectual” diatribe reminds me of that brilliant parable in which a Jew finds himself stuck on a crowded train next to an anti-Semite who rants on and on blaming every serious problem on “The Jews!” to which our hero, sitting next to him, adds, “And the bicycle-riders!”
“This terrible economy?” says the anti-Semite, “obviously a result of the secret machinations of the Jews.”
“And the bicycle-riders!” says the Jew.
“The war is also the Jews’ fault.”
“And the bicycle-riders!” says the Jew.
Finally, the anti-Semite has had enough.
“Bicycle-riders? Why the bicycle-rider?” he asks, exasperated.
The Jew answers, “Why the Jews?”
“Corey” will receive a copy of Elie Wiesel’s Rashi, about the great Talmudic commentator.
Marc Tracy is a staff writer at The New Republic, and was previously a staff writer at Tablet. He tweets @marcatracy.
