My Mum and Dad had to console me twice before I turned eight years old, after neighborhood friends, first on the west coast, and, a few years later on the east coast, informed me that they could not play with me because I was a Jew. The first time I didn't even know what the word, "Jew," meant. The kid on the east coast also let me know that I killed Christ.

That explained it.

People were a lot more prejudiced back then. I now have three kids and a grandson of my own, and I have never had to console them like that.

In some ways, it's cool to be Jewish these days. My youngest two go to a high school where about a third of the kids are white and about two fifths of the white kids are Jewish. One of their black friends informed my daughter that he thought the Jews were the only cool white kids. So things must be getting better.

I have a friend who decided to go to a big southern university and all his Jewish friends thought he was crazy. He wasn't. He had gorgeous southern girlfriends who adored him, his curly hair his less than average height, everything about him, because he was smart and funny and had a way of gazing into their eyes and of touching them they had never known before. Even back then, he understood how cool it was to be a Jew.

I had another young Jewish friend whose contractor dad used to make extra money boxing maybe ten nights a year. The kid was skinny and small, and one day he was getting pushed around in gym class by a big new kid whose Dad was supposedly in the mob. My little friend pushed him back, and a fight ensued, and the gym coach who was also the football coach, allowed the fight to go on as my little friend broke his hand and finally had the big guy all bloody in the face, unwilling to get back up off the ground. Instead of taking him to the nurse, the coach marched my pal into his office and made him promise to try out for the football team. He only had a year left, but he starred at Safety for our team that fall.

My pal, Joey, might as well have been called "Israel." However, no one condemned him for over reacting because he listened well when his Dad taught him that the left hook is the deadliest punch because you never see it coming.

I was looking for my car registration and recently came across a letter of condolence when my Mother died from a distant cousin who tried to describe my Mum's vanishing side of the family. Her Mum, my Gram, was the oldest of 7. They were half Alsation with blonde hair and blue eyes. My Gram was the only one who went to college. She was bookish and shy, and was in the process of becoming an old maid when she answered an ad for a wife, and married my Polish Gramp who came to America to work for his oldest brother when he was 12. My distant cousin had this to say, "I got all of this in dribs and drabs because my Mother refused to discuss her family... and tried to hide being Jewish --tried very hard indeed."

Most people know that self hatred is a terrible thing, an ugly sickness for many minorities, who need to think they are better than their less educated or less assimilated brethren. There are blacks who use the N word and Jews who use the K word and Italians who use the W word, and so it goes. I bet maureen0dingle even has a word for the Irish she looks down on.

Why did they smash all those greenhouses the Jews left behind when they all left Gaza, in a gesture of peace? You can grow your own food, you know. Swamps can be drained, and, with the right kinds of drip irrigation, deserts can be turned into gardens.

The Jews could have dismantled them and taken all that precious glass and drip irrigation systems back to Israel, where they grow plenty of food and flowers in greenhouses, Senior.

I hear the best thing about Israeli cuisine is the fresh fruit and veggies along with the pita and hummus. I could be a vegetarian there, the food is so good.

And, I am glad that you have no major brain injuries you can remember, Dearthbag. You sure had me fooled. Back in the 70's, when I was zooming around N. California on a bike, the helmets were so big and horrible, I always had a stiff neck for days whenever I rode at highway speeds for over 30 minutes or so.

My other Bubbie had an interesting life too. She was born in Europe, and, lucky for the rest of us, came here with her family early in the last century.

Yes, he should write about how his mentor, a little pip squeak who used to finger homosexuals for LBJ and J. Edgar Hoover, went on to become one of the most celebrated sanctimonious pip squeaks of the left,

Will we all tire of m.0dingel's essays on Jewish genealogy which is much better than Paul Johnston's "A History of the Jews?" Will someone warn her she shouldn't just be boycotting Marks and Spencer, there's Teva Pharmaceutical too? Mind you, she might have to give up those inexpensive creams which keep her breakouts to a minimum.

Will we all tire of Der Looser's obsessive posting, trying to explain how he came to love his Jew-hating playmates as a wee lad, and grew up to be a failure, just like they did?

It is a bad case of the clueless worshiping the klueless.

He champions the porkulous bill whist our real champion, Rick Santelli, speaks up for most hard working, responsible citizens.