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Abraham & Sons, LLP
by Adam Engel
www.dissidentvoice.org
January 12, 2004

Okay, see I'm trying to figure out why half the world's population still believes in angry sky gods who HATE PEOPLE (especially women).

I'd say they're on equal footing.

Truly, I can't tell the damn difference between Judaism and Islam and I'm Jewish, or so they tell me, that is, my parents were Jewish so that makes me Jewish?  But what if my parents were hockey fans, would that make me too a hockey fan?  No, the Germans came up with that one, the ethnicity of Judaism. In essence they're saying Moses didn't make you Jewish, Hitler did, and both the Zionists and the Nazis agree on this as they do on so many things such as "racial" purity by virtue of intra-marriage.

"What's the greatest gift, I mean the GREATEST gift god gave to the Jewish people?" A rabbi once asked me with a smug smile.  "The Catskills?" I replied. "NO! Idiot. The gift of marriage. That Jews may marry other Jews and the race may prosper." "But I didn't marry a Jew. I'm not even a Jew myself if believing in Yahweh and all his nasty works -- beating on those poor desert folks to get his kicks -- means being Jewish. Why didn't he pick on someone his own size?"  "There was nobody his size. Anyway, you married a shiksa? Then you're completing the work that Hitler started."  "Whoa. Now hold on there, mein yiddisher hombre. You mean that me, little ol' me with my diddly little human life expectancy of three score and ten plus or minus a few for smoking cigars -- I don't inhale -- should be compared to Hitler, a man responsible for murdering eleven million people in concentration camps, six million of them Jewish, and causing a world war that resulted in a body count of about forty million, simply because I chose to spend the rest of my life, such as it is, with the one person on this planet I truly love?"  "Darn tootin'," said the rabbi.  He proceeded to go on about the sins of assimilation by celebrity Jews such as the Woody Allen (still a "good guy" at the time; playing Mr. Bumble to Mia Farrow's Mother Teresa) etc. That's where I caught him. "But," I said, "What was Woody Allen's greatest gift to the Jews?"   The Chief rabbi and his fellow lesser rabbis scratched their beards, then shrugged their shoulders.  "He didn't marry a Shiksa! He only lives with one." 

The women in the kitchen, doing the dishes, laughed at this, and that was the end of my welcome because women, among all these fundamentalist types, Jewish, Christian, Muslim or Hare Krishna, are not permitted to laugh, especially not at the joke of a wise-ass stranger.

I could spend a lifetime going on about the Jews, but that would offend the Christians, who are equally ridiculous.  It's kind of funny we have the most illiterate "industrialized" nation on the one hand, but also the most religious.  I mean, isn't all religion just literary criticism?  Bad literary criticism, but Lit-Crit nonetheless.  Don't they call both Fundamentalist Christians and Jews "people of the book?"  I mean the Fundamentalist Christians are always going around thumping their bibles (it's a bit of a schlep to carry around a Torah, much less pound one, so Jews don't get much thumping done) and talking about "Chronicles verse 4 word six letter 3" or some shit like that?  Who knows? Maybe they just memorize that stuff from church on Sundays. Maybe they don't actually read their bibles -- all that sex and violence might freak them out of their polyester garb -- just thump them.   Now the Old Testament was relentlessly long and boring, and the New Testament was just boring, but mercifully short (probably the reason there're so many more Christians than Jews) so I just haven't yet been able to bring myself to read the Koran.  I can't say much about Islam other than it looks to me a whole lot like Orthodox Judaism, what with the praying several times a day to a single super pissed off god who hates women even though, technically, by creating men, women created Him and the women's gods were around for about 200,000 years of human evolution and Allah and his buddies Christ and Yahweh have only been around for a few millennia and LOOK AT THE DAMAGE THEY'VE DONE.

Not only has the Christian world gone through Crusades, Inquisitions and two world wars during the course of one of which they murdered nearly all of Europe's Jews, but then the Jews themselves went out and kicked the Palestinians off their land (allegedly promised to them by Yahweh, but only after they got rid of the Canaanites. Find me a Canaanite and I'll show you the Mother Of All Lawsuits), but the Muslims weren't much better, spreading their religion, like the Christians, by the sword (the Jews didn't spread their religion because people have enough problems with their own religions, the last thing they need is kosher wine and heavy black cassocks in the summer; but also it's supposed to be like a special club, the "Chosen People," sort of like the Skull and Bones among the Big three Abrahamic hustles).

So now we have the Israelis or Zionists -- not a religion really, then again, neither am I, yet we both fall under the category of "Jews"-- torturing and murdering the Palestinians for the OTHER half of the land they took but didn't officially get until they did what any other Nation among Nations would do: stole it by force.

The Moslems are pissed off at this, but more pissed off at the West in general for exploiting them for their oil, but unfortunately for them (and fortunately for us?) their leaders are either super fundamentalists whackos, corrupt Military Dictators, Billionaire Monarchs, or merely Whichever-Way-The-Sirocco-Blows politicians who just don't have the firepower to take on the West, so they have to wheel and deal with Washington and hope their people don't rise up and storm the palace, like in Iran.

And finally we have the West itself, or more specifically the "last Super Power" which is -- and let's cut that Judeo-Christian crap -- a Christian nation run by Fundamentalist Christians who want all the Jews to gather in Palestine so Christ can come and either convert or kill them (but what's he gonna convert them to, Reform Judaism?) and the whacko Zionist court Jews, lobbyists and AIPACers who'll gladly go along with their Armageddon trip so long as they "restructure" the Mid-East (you know, minor alterations, like erasing Afghanistan and Iraq) to make the world "safe" for Israel which seems pretty safe considering its obviously well-equipped army and "secret" stash of Nukes. But then, those Palestinian kids sure have good aim with rocks and plenty of suicide bombers to blow themselves up in pizza parlors as gifts to the IDF who can then ask for even more weapons from the United States and receive them (kinda like the 9/11 tragedy was such a boon to Bush Inc. because all clods have silver lined spoons in there mouths or some old cliché).

But what has this to do with life and death in the cosmos?  Not much. Religion is just literary criticism, like I said, and anyone who's suffered through a PH.D. in English knows there ain't no spirituality in that.  In fact, no matter who wins, it seems women are the losers cause all these religions are merely patriarchal reactions to tens if not hundreds of thousands of years of peace and harmony and human evolution under matriarchal societies who worshipped Goddesses and ate of the Tree and thought sex was celebratory, not sinful, without being TOO literal: they knew what they were really worshipping was Life and Earth's power to generate more life, but that don't mean bupkis if you're a Jew or Christian or Muslim waiting for your pie in the sky from your version of an ancient Sumerian sky god (and a pie in the face for the "infidels"). 

So relax, enjoy. Like all schools of criticism, these dusty old turkeys are gonna end soon. Not with a whimper, but a BIG BANG. Hey! Isn't that how it all began? That is, according to Science, the newest "religion".

Adam Engel writes and lives in NYC. He has published essays, poems, and fiction in numerous magazines, online and off, and has just completed his first full-length book, Topiary, which he hopes to publish by the spring. He can be reached at bartleby.samsa@verizon.net

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