DAVID: Hath not a Jew hands? And nice ones? Gershwin, Benny Goodman, Kafka, especially his left…
ZACH: Let’s not forget the Jews pickpocketing Black artists…
DAVID: The Jews joining hands with Black activists across the South…
ZACH: The Hasidic slumlords turning the water off…
DAVID: Listen, man: I’m not denying there are cases. But for every one like that, I’ll give you ten who are doing the opposite. I’ll show you ten Jewish social workers and fighters for affordable housing.
ZACH: And most of all: the Jews expelling the Palestinians, bombing civilians, starving them…
DAVID: Ah, now we get to it…
Robin, half-Jewish, enters.
ROBIN: You know what you two have in common?
BOTH: What?
ROBIN (to Zach): Your great-grandfather witnessed the death of his great-grandfather. In Kishinev, in 1903. Dead child, blood libel, crowd in a frenzy. Your great-grandfather, Gavril Badoni, was there in the courtyard when Chaim Rosenfeld was stabbed by his neighbor.
ZACH: But he wasn’t in on the killing?
ROBIN: No, he didn’t do any killing during those two days.
ZACH: Thank God.
ROBIN: And he also didn’t help the Jews.
She leaves. Silence.
ZACH: Well, you can never know what you’d do in a situation till it actually happens…
Silence.
ZACH: I’m sorry. The blood libel is stupid. You wonder how people could believe something like that…
Silence.
ZACH: But you have to admit, you grow up in a culture that teaches it’s okay to fuck goyim over for money. It passes to you in your mother’s milk.
DAVID: I’m not trying to be a wise-ass, but I was bottle-fed. My mother had me later in life…
ZACH: In your father’s whispered songs to you, dancing you around on his shoulder. At the dinner table: Be clever, and harden your heart. God is good with it. Look at all the examples of deception in the Bible…
DAVID: You believe this?
A vision of a thousand Jews as Shylock.
Another vision of a thousand Jews as Netanyahu.
DAVID: I—
ZACH: But it’s not about you! It’s about your people! I could think you’re great. That’s not the point.
DAVID: No? My great-grandfather was killed by someone he’d known for decades; as the knife came toward him, he thought, ‘Yup, Mitya is a lefty.’
Zach imagines this.
DAVID: So back to me: when I was born, they planted a tree for me in Ukraine. And under that tree they buried my foreskin. (Pause.) And now it’s missing.
ZACH: How do you know?
DAVID: I just know.
Silence. Finally Zach brings out a transparent refrigerated pouch, holds it tightly on the table.
ZACH: Did it look something like this?
DAVID: Yes! My flesh! Why did you take it?!
Silence.
DAVID: I gave that to God, you asshole, not to you!
ZACH: Stop the bombing, let in the food trucks, put all your influence behind a Palestinian state. Then I’ll give it back.
DAVID: I’m not Netanyahu!
ZACH: Stop seeing the Palestinians as sub-human.
DAVID: I don’t!
ZACH: But your friends do.
DAVID (after thinking): Yes, one or two of them probably do. But I would bet that the majority of Jews, in Israel and around the world, want a Palestinian state. I know a Rebecca Silverman who does art with Palestinian and Jewish kids traumatized by war. We are still a mixed multitude.
Zach thinks about this.
DAVID: You know, my foreskin fertilized the whole field around it—the whole rich carpet of nasturtium and buttercups…
ZACH: The field did wither as I walked away.
DAVID: You did a bad thing.
Zach slides the pouch over. After another moment, he rubs something out on the table with his sleeve.
ZACH: I made a small swastika here with my fingernail. I’m sorry.
DAVID: Please call off the dogs.
ZACH: I’m just one guy too.
DAVID: Right. At least visualize differently.
ZACH: I can’t guarantee. I’ll try.
A vision of a thousand Jews lining the street in Jerusalem as Christ passes, bent under the weight of the cross, surrounded by Roman soldiers scanning the crowd. The Jews are looking at Christ with compassion (except for a few sadists and collaborators). They clench their fists in anger and frustration, or raise subtle fists to wish him strength.
