Entitlement

The duck and I had a very long debate this morning in the car. well, we have a long car ride, so the debates are always long.... anyway, back to the topic. the whole conversation started over an article in the local paper about an art exhibit going up at the local jewish community center. It's a series of photograps taken by an area college student portraying jewish life in upstate new york. The photos that they selected to go along with the article were a ribbon cutting at an Anne Frank exhibit, a rabbi typing on her lap top, a refrigerator lined with aluminum foil for passover, a glatt kosher chinese take-out and another rabbi at a shofar making workshop with a ram's head on a picnic table. The photos themselves are not what got to me. it was the article.

The article quotes the artist (remember, upstate NY college student) citing a similar photo essay taken during the 30's in Pre-Nazi Germany as her inspiration.

Here are my issues, which I tried (unsuccessfully) to lay out for the duck (who happens to be jewish) this morning.

1. Jews are regular people. These are photos of regular people doing mostly regular things. Maybe the ram's head and tinfoiled refrigerator are not so normal, but that's part of the issue. Every culture and religion has it's peculiarities. By taking a photo-journalistic approach, this appears to come off as this girl is Jane Goodall amongst the apes. These people are different, they should be studied, in pictures even.

2. If the jewish community is hip to this, they are highlighting their differences and in not such a positive way. I mean, this is basically a one-page ad for "why jews are different from you" complete with decapitated ram.

3. I can barely deal with the pre-nazi Germany reference. Germany in the 1930's was fully Nazi-ed. This other artist's photos are meaningful because it captured a rare moment in history. The jewish community in new york is in no way in danger of being herded off into camps and exterminated.

4. However, they clearly need a PR person as this is not the way to convince your friends and neighbors that you are just like them and we should all just get along.


So of course, the duck tells me that all of my anger over this is misplaced and really stems from the fact that I hate his mother, and that she thinks she is special because she is jewish and I am not.

But I think it's more than that. I think I actually have a problem with the whole issue of being special, or entitled, whatever that entitlement is.

I will use a different example since everyone gets so snippy about the holocaust. Let's look at american culture in general. We live in a society where everyone thinks they are owed something. We have students in public schools who believe they are entitled to high grades and excellent test scores. They hire private tutors to write their college entrance essays and then expect to get into top universities.

A disproportionate number of our population is obese and yet the weight loss systems that are the most popular are the ones that allow you to eat all your old favorites for a reduced calorie count. Instead of focusing on working hard to change your behavior and dietary preferances to include more whole grains, produce, and protein, we expect to eat a chocolate bar that will make us thin. Why? Because we deserve it.

Only a very small fraction of the populous cares about the amount of fossil fuels they consume or the affects that they might have on the environment. We won't be around, why should we care? and besides, we deserve ginormous SUV's and a fully climate-controlled universe.

Here's the news flash: You are not special. You are just like everyone else. You don't deserve anything different. You are not different. If you really want to be different, just give a thought to how easy it is to turn different into scary and then into threatening. Just like my jewish in-laws who peer through their front blinds at the agfani neighbors and speculate about all the things they do, eat and think...

Someone should do a photo essay on them.

AP