The Rembis Report and Other Fascinating Topics - Volume LXXVII

In my last two reports I touched on the subject of antisemitism. Today I want to fully address it because it is important to me.

How we all decide how important something is to us is subjective. How something makes us feel is generally the main factor in a subjects importance, and for me it is not only that, but how it stays at the forefront of my thoughts. This is how I come up with what I write about. When I can't stop thinking about something, I write about it. That is just what happens.

Lately, I see hate crimes and antisemitism being reported in the news more than I can ever recall. That is my perception. It makes me concerned, sad, and angry. I don't like being sad or angry. As much as I may fantasize about trucking over a band of Nazis, I also don't want to go to jail because they made me hate them enough to do so. That would not be cool. It would only perpetuate hate and serve no other purpose. It would not teach them anything.

I was raised to be Catholic. I went to St. Cunegunda's grade school, and then spent two years at St. Andrew's high school, before going to Detroit's public Charles E. Chadsey high school. As a child I was indoctrinated as a Catholic; baptized as a baby, got into the communion thing, and took Nicholas as my confirmation name because I equated it with Santa Claus. Plus, Nick is a pretty cool name. If they were going to force a nickname on me, I could not go wrong with Nick.

But I never bought into Christianity. From a young age, second or third grade, I think, I questioned everything; the mystery of the Holy Trinity, virgin birth, and the resurrection. Everything they told me, I demanded proof. The nun said I was a doubting Thomas, like the apostle who questioned Jesus when he met him on the road after his death. I told her maybe Thomas made a good point. Maybe he never died, and somebody made all this up, so my question was, why do you want me to believe this? They actually brought in the archbishop of the diocese to interview me. Maybe they wanted to make sure I was not possessed by a demon. I don't remember the whole discussion, but I recall firmly holding my ground and citing my American right to question authority, a concept I was taught at home. If you want to know something, ask questions, and do not apologize. You have a right to know. I think my dad may have made that point clear to me in case I was ever stopped by a stranger or a police officer, or a stranger who may be posing as a police officer, for my own safety. I really took it to heart.

My mother was not upset, she had not been raised Catholic. My father did everything he could to get me to believe, but nothing took. I went to church until I was eighteen to make him happy and never went again except for weddings, funerals, and this one time where I was hitchhiking past a tent revival, and I thought it was a food stand. That was a fun time. Tent revivals are awesome, and it makes Christians happy to see another smiling face singing along and praying before they pour on the barbecue sauce.

I was not taught about Judaism at all as a child, let alone other religions. All I knew was that when we went to church, we were there to worship a Jewish rabbi who taught his flock by telling morality tales that were so good, some authority figures thought he should be censured, because his concepts of spiritualism were so dynamic for their time. Maybe Jewish authorities had a poor grasp of metaphorical speech, or Jesus was not being clear enough that he was speaking figuratively, because they arrested him for blaspheming God. Then, he was railroaded into a court that sounds a lot like the Dominion of Justice and was sentenced to death by Roman state authority. All this for being outspoken and charismatic. Then three days later, he rose from the dead and turned out to be the son of God. So, who got the last laugh? That was the way I interpreted it.

Other than that, all I knew about Jews was that a lot of them lived in New York and they invented bagels. What I was taught about World War II and the holocaust was infused with the soft parade of TV shows and movies where Hogan's Heros and the Blues Brothers were fighting off Nazis. Sure, we heard that millions of people got killed, and that a lot of them were Jews, but I can't recall teachers being able to tell us why the Nazis hated Jews, just that they did. Looking back, I am not impressed with my parochial education. In public school they at least told us a lot about slavery and the destruction of native Americans, but when it came to Jews and WWII, nobody really said why it happened, just that it did.

After I graduated high school and left Detroit I got out into the world on my own and once in a while, I would hear somebody say something negative about Jews, and I never understood why. Nobody ever explained it to me. I worked a summer job at Tiny Totland in Manchester New Hampshire, a maternity store where we built and sold a lot of cribs and baby furniture. When I got the job, Henry, the manager told me "Rule number one. No Jew jokes." 

The Resnick family, who owned the store and worked there daily, were Jewish. I was just nineteen years old, and did not know what he meant, so I seriously asked him, "What is a Jew joke?" Henry politely gave me my first real lesson in antisemitism when he saw that I honestly did not understand. He told me more about what was wrong with Nazis, fascism, and racists, than anyone else had done so up to that point. I absolutely loved the Resnicks and could not see why anybody would hate them. They were fine people who gave me a great job and treated me with respect. They never asked about my religion.

I also never asked anybody about their religion either. It never mattered to me. You go to church, you go to temple, you got to mosque, you stay home and watch football, no matter what, you're all the same to me. For me, religion was a non-issue. I had enough of it growing up, so I felt like I was done, but if anyone else wanted to stick with it, okay fine, that's your thing, that's cool. It isn't hurting anybody.

So, when I got another summer job in Yellowstone a few years later, I lived in a dorm where the company set me up with a roommate, my pal Bennett Kotz. When he introduced himself, he made it clear to let me know he was Jewish and asked if I had a problem with that. Of course, I did not, and was surprised he would ask that. He drank beer, just like me, and we got along great. I had no reason to judge him.

Over the years since then I ran into blatant antisemitism. I worked for Weissman's Hardware in Libby Montana. Yes, Mr. Weissman was a Jew. I didn't even think that was important. I was an outside sales representative traveling northwest Montana and Idaho selling tools and steel. I even sold to the lovely Amish and Hutterite communities, some of my best customers, who I also would not judge for their religion. But right down the road from them, close to the Idaho border, I found myself coming up against neo-Nazis in my sales territory, who told me they would not buy anything from me because I worked for a Jew.

How ridiculous and stupid is that?

Once I got a face-first taste of real Nazis, I finally had somebody to hate based on their beliefs. I stepped back and left those idiots alone. I wanted nothing to do with anybody like that. That is what is bothering me now. Antisemitic attacks are more frequent now than they have been in decades. 

It bothers me because it does not make sense. Judaism is the second oldest functioning religion on Earth behind Hinduism. The only reason anybody hates Jews is the same reason they would hate any other minority. Belief in misinformation that breeds disrespect. If you watch this video from the US Holocaust Memorial Museum, you will get a quick history lesson on antisemitism that I wish I had gotten earlier in my formative years. 

The antisemites spin theories about Jews controlling the world's money and many other untruths. Nazis and Klansmen and holocaust deniers gain traction through lies that they want to believe for no good reason, other than they need somebody to blame for their own inequities. So, they attack, they deface, and they debase. They are not good people. I don't like hearing this stuff on the news, and I thought you should know. Because if it does not bother you, it should. Antisemitism and racism are terrorism, pure and simple, and when you let it go, you get a step closer letting terrorists run your world.

When I hear somebody say, "He is a Jew." The first thing I think is A: You are racist for pointing that out, and B: Good for him, he is lucky he has a heritage to be proud of. When I hear a crowd chanting "Jews will not replace us," the first thing I want to do is find out where those guy work, get them all fired, and replace them with Jews. And when I say, "Happy Hanukkah," even though I am not a Jew and practice no religion at all, I want everyone who hears me to know that I genuinely mean it with the utmost respect.

Happy Hanukkah to all of my Jewish friends. To those not lucky enough to have Jewish friends, I hope you may find some.

Thanks for reading.

This newsletter was built with Beehiiv.com. The delivery platform I was using, Revue (by Twitter), is being shut down, probably due to Elon Musk's recent business directives there. You probably heard about a lot of new stuff happening at Twitter including giving a voice to racists and others who were once banned. A lot of well-intentioned users who do not encourage hate speech are leaving that site because they don't want to see the racist posts that may start showing up their feed. I am not leaving Twitter because I am not going to let myself get bullied out of existence. I am going to stay and block every one of those morons I see.

If you are new to the Rembis Report and would like to read any of the previous issues, PLEASE CLICK HERE to access the archives before Elon trashes them all. But don't worry, if that happens, I will transfer them all to a new archive sometime soon. To read it from the beginning, PLEASE GET A COPY of The Rembis Report: An Observation.