The Box of Ducks

Finding the Vibe after October 7th

(Appeared in Progressive Populist)

“You want to do mankind a real service? Tell funnier jokes.”

That’s from Woody Allen’s “Stardust Memories.” Yeah, I know. But it’s fabulous advice in times like these. Do what you do, whatever you do, but try to do it better and maybe it makes things — some things, ONE other thing — better.

On Oct. 22, I hosted “Tel Aviv Nights—A Street Party!”, the annual celebration of the Sherwin Miller Museum of Jewish Art (SMMJA) here in Tulsa, Oklahoma. The night was also an opportunity to raise awareness and money for Holocaust education in the state, which is a good thing because Oklahoma currently has a superintendent of education who believes there’s a WOKE agenda in our public schools, including in mathematics textbooks.

The event had been scheduled months before 1,400 Israelis were murdered. To put that number in perspective, America has 36 times the population of Israel, meaning on Sept. 11th, instead of 2,977 being killed at the Pentagon, the World Trade Center, and in a field in Pennsylvania that morning, 50,400 Americans would have been murdered.

Jewish leaders in town were bolstered and encouraged by the larger Tulsa community to do the event — not to cancel or postpone. Having it, and maybe this is just me, was a cathartic way to tell those who want you dead, even those thousands of miles away who want you dead, you didn’t win. We’re still here. In my opening remarks, I repeated a line I had heard years ago — “Every Jewish baby born spits on Hitler’s grave” — and then added — “So, tonight, perhaps every hors d’oeuvre eaten, every laugh heard spits on Hamas and those who want us dead.” Nobody seemed to know what to do with that — and in retrospect the bit wasn’t that good — so I decided not to do the tag I had written moments before walking on stage: “Hamas did the unthinkable: made it possible for someone in the region to be hated more than Benjamin Netanyahu.”

A woman then brought a car on stage and sang Hatikvah (“The Hope”), the Jewish National Anthem.

The Star-Spangled Banner was not performed.

We are Jews, we are Americans. We … Israelis.

(What verb do we use? What verb shows the right amount of loyalty to both countries without prioritizing one over the other?)

A rabbi then said a prayer.

The shliach, the Tulsa Jewish Federation’s Israeli emissary, gave an update on the situation in Israel. He had just heard of a distant cousin who had been killed. If you’re a Jew, you don’t have to know anyone who was to know everyone who was.

He then apologized repeatedly for affecting the vibe in the room, a vibe looking for a vibe. There was an auction of art work from Tulsa artists; there was music; there were tchotchkes and postcards from Tel Aviv for sale in the lobby that was made up to look like a bazaar; there were local restaurateurs who were making and handing out snacks.

And there was death in a country whose flag was also there.

Some people got drunk, some danced, some took goofy pictures. There was a box of different colored rubber ducks near the podium and I was asked by the organizer to toss them to the crowd at the end of evening.

Why were there ducks?

“People in Israel love ducks,” she told me.

“What are you talking about?”

“They have stores that sell ducks. It’s a huge thing. It’s in travel brochures. Anyway, throw them to the people in the front row [that’s where the high-dollar people were sitting] and then ask for a donation for getting a duck.”

“Will that work?”

She laughed. I laughed.

The potatoes were cold, the waitress took away the bread too soon, the hummus was good but spicy, and one of the women at the table stole appetizers — put them in her purse.

The red snapper wasn’t great but it was a big piece of fish.

“Who eats snapper?” the woman with the purse full of food asked.

Dessert was on a buffet. People attacked it like they hadn’t eaten in years.

“A waiter walks up to four Jewish women and asks, ‘Ladies, is anything OK?’”

That joke got a laugh.

The vibe was still elusive.

If you didn’t know what was on the minds of the more than 200 who attended, you wouldn’t know about the carnage at the Kerem Shalom border crossing, or the ear plugs that Israeli first responders had to put in their noses to ward off the smell of the dead, or the Israeli retribution planned, or the palpable fear these days of being a Jew, or, or, or …

There’s a joke that sums up every Jewish holiday — maybe even the long history of the Jewish people — “They tried to kill us, they didn’t, let’s eat.”

That makes you smile — until it doesn’t.

Until they do.

At the end of the evening, on the way out of the building, I heard someone say, “I’m glad we did this.”

I saw the organizer.

“Oh, damn. I forgot to toss the ducks. I’m sorry.”

“That’s OK. It was probably too much for the evening.”