Here's an update to a piece I wrote sometime during the 1970s

When I was a lad, my mom used to say to me something that all Yiddish mamas were telling their kids: SHVER TSU ZAYN A YID. It's hard to be a Jew
Occasionally I would have minor philosophical discussions with my then-boss, an almost Roman Catholic priest, who left the seminary before he even got near the initial vows. Once I quoted the aphorism to him that it's hard to be a Jew. "No", he said "I can't see that it is really so hard to be a Jew in this day and age, although," he continued, "it may be hard to be a religious Jew, but then it's probably no harder being a religious Jew than being the son of an Irishman."

Now I was wondering what being a Jew had in common with being the son of an Irishman. Did he mean that two immigrant groups, Jews and Irish, had already made it in America, and therefore had no real hardships to face in this country? As a probe, I asked him if he thought it is hard to be a Puerto Rican. He thought for a second and then nodded his head. "I do think that it is hard to be a Puerto Rican so far," he said. "What I meant before however", he continued, "is that the children of some old-time strict Irish don't have it so easy. I know that when I was a kid, my friends who went to parochial school had to eat fish on Friday whether they liked it or not."

Ah, so that's it. I got the connection. Sure, it's simple. It's hard to be the son of an Irishman because you have to eat fish on Friday and you have to go to confession, etc., and on top of that, the nuns beat the crap out of you in parochial school. That's the connection, because after all, what is Catholicism in America but imported Irish Catholicism?

A Jew has to eat a certain type of food and put little boxes on his head and his arm, and wear funny little undershirts with strings on them, and on top of that, the MELAMED [teacher] in the KHEYDER [afternoon Hebrew school] will give you a real good smack in the head if you don't pay attention. If only you knew, I'm thinking.
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Then I'm thinking: maybe it is hard to be a Puerto Rican or a Black, or the son of an Irishman. In today's world, I wouldn't be surprised. In today's world, it's just hard! Certainly hard to be a Cambodian or a Vietnamese. Hard to be a Catholic in Northern Ireland, or a Kurd in Iraq, or a Greek Christian in Egypt, or a Muslim in India. And isn't it hard to be a WOMAN anywhere?

They say it's hard to be a landlord today, hard to be a tenant, hard to be a businessman or consumer, hard to be a teacher, and hard to be a student. What does it all mean?

It's hard to be a GOY [gentile] just as it's hard to be a Jew. I mean, it's hard to be a MENTSH [decent human being]! It's hard to be a person: Nobody ever said it wasn't. Every person and every group has hardships. Let me give you an example. My ex-mother-in-law would come over to visit and she would want to have an ice cream soda, and we would be eating meat. Its hard to be an explainer: to make her understand why we can't eat ice cream now. It's hard because I really don't understand the full reason myself, and who could understand the full reason for a ritual law? What do I tell her? You aint allowed to boil a kid in his mother's milk? So what's that got to do with anything, least of all with the ice cream soda she wants? In the final analysis, it's just one of those things that you do - obedience. Its hard not to be able to have ice cream when you want to, or a Big Mac if you want to. An ice cream soda? It's just one of the difficulties of life which, when added to the other 612 difficulties of life, gives meaning to a certain type of lifestyle which, when we look around today, seems to lack meaning. The meaning is that the boundaries of a meaningful existence are carefully delimited so that you don't go over the edge so that you don't go MESHUGE [BAT-SHIT CRAZY], so that you don't suffer from the inability to distinguish the difference between sacred and ordinary, between light and darkness, between rest and toil, perhaps between a Jew and the son of an Irishman. Because maybe it is hard to be Irish or Puerto Rican or Black. It probably is. I say "probably" because not being any of these I can't say "certainly". I do know that it is hard to be a JEWISH Jew but after all - it certainly is good to be one.

And to my friends who are GOYIM, believe me. I sympathize.