Personally, I was always impressed by the Jewish tagline “The Chosen People,” truly a marketing gem. Bored to death in the synagogue I would re-imagined that first encounter between God and Moses: God’s voice popping out of thin air, ‘Hey Moses, how are you going? It’s Me, Jehovah. I was wondering, do you want to make a covenant? If all y’all do exactly what I say I’ll make you my people, The Chosen People. Everyone will be jelly-jealous because you’re My Chosen People. And guess what? They should be jelly-jealous because I protect my people. But there’s something you need to do for me, Moses. To get this convent going I need all y’all men to chop the end of your wieners off. No-no I know this sounds extreme but the ladies prefer a snipped dick – no joke. It also helps me to identify you, My Chosen People, so I don’t mistakenly kill you when I am protecting all y’all. And guess what, in return for your love, I’ll buy you a home. Pretty sweet deal, no?”

It wasn’t until I received an all-expense-paid-propaganda-love-your-inner-Jewish-identity-trip to the Promised Land that I really understood the Jew in Jared the Jew. Shabbat in Jerusalem was spectacular. The massive scale of the giant bricks that constitute the Western Wall were clearly designed to elicit the epic scale and grandeur of the most powerful God for when Jewish pilgrims made their ritual trips to the temple mount, complete with ritual baths and all the swag peddlers could peddle. Sound like a trip to Disneyland? Upon their arrival pilgrims started with a pleasure bath to wash the soot away from their long trip. Once dressed in their finest attire, they bought a sacrificial lamb they carried down a long dark tunnel, strategically long enough to dilate their pupils. Like the haunted house at a carnival, they emerged at the end of the very long tunnel and boom a burst of sunlight strained their eyes creating a disorientating experience compounded by a stairway to climb on their wobbly legs. At the top of the stairs rabbis waited to collect their sacrificial lamb. And just like a great ride at an amusement park, off pilgrims leapt, running back home to tell their friends about their amazing experience, which in turn excited their friends who followed suit and made the pilgrimage themselves.

After my all-expense-paid trip to Israel, the obnoxious white Western folks in my uninspiring Alberta hometown, who repeatedly informed me that I was a cheap, thieving, fucking little Jew, were considerably more irritating. How many “don’t Jew me, Jew” or “The Jews should get over the holocaust already,” would I need to eat before indigestion set in?

When I arrived in 🀫🀫🀫🀫🀫 I was truly appreciated for my Jewish heritage. “You are great at saving money, right? You got a lot of money, you Jews, lots of money, right-right?” as the locals put it. Some of my most cinematic memories of 🀫🀫🀫🀫🀫🀫🀫🀫 were formed at Rabbi Shalom Greenberg’s Jewish Center, the epicenter for mainland schmatta networking (most of the congregation bought and sold clothing; an industry long dominated by Jewish folks). There were heaps of characters who frequented Shabbat services that made for lively fine wine fuelled evenings. The second craziest recollection I retained from Rabbi Shalom Greenberg’s Jewish Center was Fight-Night when a Moroccan French Canadian started pummelling a Frenchman over an apparent business dispute during Shabbat prayer services. The whole congregation was consumed with people pulling these scrappy, grown, bloody men apart. It was terribly cinematic, indeed. The craziest of crazy recollections I retained from Rabbi Shalom Greenberg’s Jewish Center was when I attempted to enroll my beloved offspring in the shul’s early childhood day-care and Rabbi Greenberg informed me that the child bearing my last name, Goldberg, wasn’t Jewish because her mother was Chinese, to which I retorted, “I think the Third Reich would think differently.”