A FOLK TALE

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THE YEAR IS 2050….Back in time, there was a word known as anti-Semitism, which essentially described a mind-set where a person was hostile toward Jews and found them annoying, to say the least. But all this started to change when two 10-year-boys were playing a game. One was an Israeli boy playing on one side of a fence and the other a Palestinian boy was, playing on the other side and the two started talking in English, which in 2050 had become the Universal Second Language.

They started rolling small Hot Wheels cars back and forth to each other through holes in the fence and while they played, they complained about their parents. “My mother won’t let me eat bacon,” said the Jewish boy. “I’d really like to try it.” “That’s weird,” said the Palestinian boy. “My mother won’t let me eat bacon either!”

Well, those two boys realized that they had a lot in common and grew up to be great friends and eventually, in 2050, they became the leaders of their people. United by a desire to try bacon at least once, plus the realization that their two clans had a great deal in common, these two leaders hired the world’s greatest genealogist, Olaf Grtznjkg, from the historically neutral country of Iceland, and this genealogist discovered that all Palestinians and Israelis were actually third cousins.

Now, this might not sound like a profound connection, but for Jewish and Muslim people, family is very important. Certain retired Jewish people in Florida have been known to go to great lengths to find fourth cousins to send joke e-mails to.

Anyway, once it was discovered that Palestinians and Israelis were cousins, relations between those people became absolutely joyous. Their happiness at realizing they didn’t have to fight anymore was wonderfully infectious and spread throughout the whole world. The two states, Palestine and Israel, started to live side by side, and they were as happy together as Connecticut and Massachusetts.

The Palestinians let everyone know that Jews were okay and that they had a wonderful sense of humor. The films of Woody Allen began to be broadcast on the Al-Jazeera network; Egyptians, Jordanians, and Lebanese started vacationing in the Catskills. Furthermore, the word Shylock became a compliment for someone who was manly, an allusion to the famous line: “Am I not a man?” Thus, it was often said of Hollywood hunks: “What a Shylock!”

So it happily came to pass that everyone liked Jews. Everyone also liked Muslims. The domino effect, with people liking each other, took over. Things were really good. The only people who still got under everyone’s skin were the English, because of their nutty devotion to a powerless, dysfunctional Royal Family, but it was just a minor irritation and nobody went to war about it; they just told the English to get over it and engage in some hurtful teasing, which wasn’t nice, but no death camps were built or anything like that.


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