By Danny Bloom
CHIAYI CITY, Taiwan — It’s a big world out there and it’s getting smaller all the time, thanks to the internet and free websites. I often surf the net not looking for anything in particular but always on the look-out for something that tickles my fancy and puts my waking brain into overdrive.
I’ve written about this story before, but it’s worth revisiting Daniel Ford’s book of lapsed Catholic humor titled The Lapsed Catholic Catechism: The Old Rules and How to Bend Them. There’s been a very interesting reaction in Boston. In a recent interview with a Jewish reporter in Boston, Ford, the New Yorker magazine writer and lapsed Catholic humorist who spends part of the year in Thailand, said something about Jews that I feel is worth noting and repeating. It might even become a new classic Jewish joke.
During the recent interview in Boston, in which Steve Nadis asked Ford a few questions about humor and his memories of growing up Catholic, and at one point near the end of the conversation, Nadis asked: “I suppose you could call me a lapsed Jew, though most of the Jews I know are lapsed, too. Somehow it just doesn’t seem to have the cachet of a lapsed Catholic. Why is that?”
Ford replied: “The Catholic Church is a much more authoritarian operation. It’s like the Communist Party; quitting it is a big deal. Whereas, Judaism is more like a family tradition. You really can’t quit it.”
Nadis writes the “Cambridge on My Mind” column for an online news site called in Boston. When I reached out to him by email for a comment on Ford’s perhaps soon-to-be-classic comment that “Judaism is more like a family tradition [and] you really can’t quit it,” he replied like the gentleman and Jewish humorist he is, noting: “I see my interview with Ford has struck a chord in some quarters. I’m glad that you as an overseas correspondent for the San Diego Jewish World loved my interview with Ford and the joke he told me. If this new joke is destined to become a new classic Jewish joke — and I hope it does! — then since I’m the one who wrote the column, I’m going to take some credit for that modern-day classic, too. Call me a late bloomer but Borscht Belt here I come!”
When I asked Ford himself if he had received any feedback about his statement about lapsed Jews being hard to find, a jocular afterthought that was part joke and part serious statement, he replied: “Your reaction to Steve’s interview with me is setting off waves. Nadis wrote a second column about it and noted the San Diego Jewish World’s interest in my little ‘joke’, too.”
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Bloom is Taiwan bureau chief for San Diego Jewish World as well as an inveterate web surfer. He may be contacted via dan.bloom@sdjewishworld.com