[Ed: That's ok, we've fixed it for you.]

I’ll admit I have never read any of Danny Katz’s material or know him or of him. Well perhaps I do now. Again I ask why?

Can someone please explain the following:
‘Jewed out’, ‘over Jewified’, ‘plotzing at the seams with Jewishness’ and something to do with ‘slumping on his stinking ass like an idiotic crazy person’. Now that’s just in the first sentence!

The entire article is full of hip parlance that is now standard in such publications such as Heeb Magazine, Websites such as Jewlicious and Jewcy. Their underlying theme is that being Jewish is now seen to cool – see article here by Jessica Ravitz, CNN.

Those and other media are aimed at 20+ something’s that have taken the new vocabulary as part of the new next gen of Jews.

Danny mashes up that with Yiddishisms from a bygone era that somehow don’t quite sit right with the new vogue.

But hey, I guess that could be open to artistic interpretation. I am no journo or writer.

But here is where it all sticks in my throat. Instead of maybe having a laugh and a poke at the pseudo Jewish ghetto/shtetl in Caulfield, Katz attempts to tear it apart describing its inhabitants in a gross, almost Nazi depiction of the “ugly Jew”.

Images such as:

‘Alma”, which sounds like the name of an old Jewish grandma, the kind who force-feeds her grandkids like she’s fattening foie gras ducks

Jews were in the park walking their Jewish dogs – little furry-faced ones with dangly forelock-ears and quizzical scholarly expressions

(the juxtaposition is inescapable)

Wherever there are Jews, there are usually dentists, because Jews and dentistry have always gone together

(all Jews are wealthy?)

The tone of the entire article is so disgusting that had a non-Jew written it I am sure many would have requested an apology etc.

It seems Katz attempts to mask his distaste of his own birth by trying to bury it in a comedic style reminiscent of a generation of Catskill (holiday area for many Jews in New York) comedians who made their living in lambasting their own, but they were clever and very good at pinpointing the vagaries of Jewish Life in America, especially New York.

However, they played to a mostly Jewish audience who were laughing at themselves. Those comedians were also mostly Jews or married to Jews, (some were not even Jewish), but they never denied their own Jewishness or sold it for a buck.

Katz’s answer or attempt is to write things such as

” It’s right across the road from Glicks”, because that’s how Jews give directions; everything’s in relation to bagel shops.”

Really ?? I never heard that one before.

Suffice to say Katz sounds as if he started typing and couldn’t stop. The verbal diarrhoea continues for most of the article.

Non Jews and Jews alike perhaps would surely wonder at
“Elsternwick, which is the epicentre of all Jewishness in the meta-universe” HMMMM

In case you’re wondering here is the definition of meta-universe

A multiverse (or meta-universe) is the hypothetical set of multiple possible universes (including our universe) that together comprise all of physical reality. The different universes within a multiverse are sometimes called parallel universes. The structure of the multiverse, the nature of each universe within it and the relationship between the various constituent universes, depend on the specific multiverse hypothesis considered.

Ahh yes off course! so if Elsternwick is the meta universe what does that make East St.Kilda.

And before i suffer the same inability to stop typing I will end it on this note

Katz made an absolute fool of himself and only added further evidence that more often than not the enemy is sometimes within.

To most Australian’s he is probably a self-depreciating try-hard Jew that makes absolutely no sense.

Thanks for your comment.

Eli, is your dislike of the article based on the same reason as ariel’s dislike? ie that the general population wouldn’t have understood it and assumed Katz was lampooning Jewish culture.

From your letter I can tell you were unimpressed with Danny Katz’s latest article. Could you explain why a little more?

Thanks.