The Good Samaritans

Yesterday was Purim and the child and I were delivering Misloach Manot for the synagogue. When we were done. (and it was a long afternoon, I tell you) the kid said, “We’re such good Samaritans!”

I had an extremely viseral reaction to that. I said, “No, we are definitely not!” I explained that the idea of the “Good Samaritan” is a Christian concept. Kid said “I thought it meant a good citizen.” I did not tell the child the story of the Good Samaritan, although I did say I would (I wanted to refresh my memory first as it’s been many years since I’ve heard it), but I did say that popular culture steals a lot of concepts from different places and if you didn’t know the origin, then you wouldn’t find anything suspect about the terms.

Like plenty of people don’t know that “kosher” has a specific technical dietary meaning because they’ve only heard it used in slang to indicate that something is or is not “right.” Not kosher as a synonym for “suspect.” My examples to the child were things like “If you didn’t know the pagan origins of Halloween, then you wouldn’t understand why some people don’t celebrate it.” and “If you didn’t know chutzpah was Yiddish and had only ever heard it used it used, you wouldn’t know what language or culture it came from.”

I was relaying this to my husband this morning and he was (apparently) very bothered by me being upset about good Samaritan parable because he, like the child, thinks of the good Samaritan as being a parable about helping people and if anyone should be upset, it’s the Samaritan as this one is called out as good and the others as evil by inference. I said, “I’d rather be called an atheist than a good Samaritan.” And went on to say that the people who didn’t help the guy were a Priest and Levite, specifically Jewish, and the Samaritan did help them and the point is that Jews are jerks who don’t help and this random Samaritan, who you’d think wouldn’t help did help. He argued with me about that for a bit. And I said, “Look, why don’t you tell me what you remember of the parable.”

“A man had fallen into a ditch and was stuck and couldn’t get out. A bunch of people went past and didn’t help him, even though he called out for help. Then this Samaritan came by and helped, even though you’d think he wouldn’t. “

“So you don’t know anything about the people who went past?”

“No, I don’t remember anything about them.”

“Well, that’s why you don’t think it’s antisemitic then. The man in need of help was explicitly Jewish. The people who didn’t help were explicitly a Cohain and a Levite. The priest and temple functionary. And you wouldn’t think the Samaritan would help because the Samaritans and Jews were at odds over religious beliefs.”

He then went on say that it’s like the moneylenders in the Temple and this further illustrates the corruption and degradation of the established Jewish religion in Jesus’ time and how this parable was meant to point out the hypocrisy of the Temple and whatnot.

“And that doesn’t strike you in these days as buying into antisemitic tropes? And maybe not the best model for a Jewish kid?”

We then got into a discussion of goblin origins as an antisemitic trope. And he argued with me about that. And then I had to show him source material. Then he argued with me again when I said that’s why the Harry Potter books have had to deal with antisemitism accusations because of the goblin banks and bankers and the greediness of the goblins in their putative ownership of the sold metalworks. Then he tried to say those weren’t goblins, they were gnomes.

Like really? You have to argue with me about everything? I’ve been right all day so far, keep digging.

Anyway, I’m not a good Samaritan. I’m barely a good anything, but if I were to be good, it would not be a good that. Happy Purim.