No Joke

by Phyllis Chesler

A friend who recently published a book about the UK had this to say:

“A man posted the following online: ‘I once was a mammal but now I’m a bird.”’

When he told me this I could not stop laughing.

But I stopped laughing when he followed it up with this:

“And so Scotland Yard came to visit him, to warn him. ‘We know what you had in mind and that’s a crime. Remove it.’”

Laugher no longer became me when he said: “People in bars all over the UK are screaming: ‘Hitler didn’t finish the job, the Jews are a scourge and a menace to the nations.’”

This elicited no visit from the Yard. Not a single demonstration.

My dear friend is the great Tuvia Tenenbom who has just spent four months in Russia and written up a storm about it. Contrary to myth, he found it a place of High Culture and of flourishing Jewish life. People were warm and friendly.

Someone should publish his piece, which first appeared in German in Die Zeit but which now exists in English. It’s a wonderful read that deserves a large audience.