On
December 22, 2023 I told you I was going to send you a long essay by Steve
Allen that was going to be so long many that of you would not take the time to read
it all the way through. I usually almost always sometimes keep my promises...
Anonymous
Introduction...
This
article was written years ago by the Great Humorist, Satirist, Musician, Author,
Clear Thinker and TV Host, Steve Allen. Those of you who do not know who Steve
Allen was, please take a moment to Google him. He was an master of “wit”. By that
I mean True Wit, Humor and Cleverness as opposed to what passes for Wit, Humor
or Cleverness in too many of today’s celebrities which often consists of Cuss Words.
Steve Allen and his very few peers set the bar for this art form to a height
which will probably not be reached again.
At
a party one evening where my wife and I (not Fella but the person who was
writing this anonymous introduction to Steve Allen’s writing) were talking to
Steve and his lovely wife Jayne Meadows, we spoke briefly about the newly
growing popularity of the Internet. I explained to Steve a little about what
the Internet represented, how it could allow people access to information
anywhere, anytime, and with just a mouse click. Steve asked me if I could put
one of his favorite social commentary essays online. I promised him that I
would put it on the Internet.
What’s
important to remember is that Steve Allen was not Jewish, and was not asked to
use his considerable talent to write this by anyone else whether Jewish or not.
It’s
been a long time, sir, but I am honored to finally keep my promise to you. This
essay is every bit as relevant, powerful, and true today as when you wrote it a
few years ago, or if it were fifty years ago. On behalf of the human race,
thank you for this.
************
This
is Fella. I said it was long and it
is 3,430 words long. Steve chose
each word very carefully. Please take the time to read each word carefully.
They are powerful words.
THE DAY THE JEWS
DISAPPEARED
By Steve Allen
It
was Dr. Billy James Harwood, of Dallas, Texas, who made the first official
announcement, although people all over the country had noticed the
disappearances. Oddly enough, those who sensed that something was
terribly wrong at first assumed that they had discovered a purely local
phenomenon. But it was Harwood who appeared on the morning CBS network
news and said to a suddenly slack-jawed world --or at least that part of it
that could see American television -- "The Jeeeews are gone. That's
right, my friends. The Jeeeews are gone. I discovered it just a few
hours ago when I went down to the Hilton hotel to welcome a visiting delegation
from the Holy Land. Israel, I mean. And they weren't there."
"Had
they checked in?" asked a stunned young woman with a hand mike.
"'Deed
they had," Harwood said. "Desk clerk said they'd come in about
11 o'clock the previous morning, right on schedule. Said he had a phone
call for 'em 'bout 9:30 the following mornin', and when he rang their rooms
there wasn't nobody in any of 'em. That's the first time I knew there was
any trouble."
"What
did you do?" the woman said, still staring and shaking her head, as
if she could not believe her own questions, much less Harwood's answers.
"Well,"
Harwood said. "I put in a call to Rabbi Goldman of Temple Emanuel to
ask if he'd heard from them, and there was no answer at the temple. At
first I figured there was maybe just some problem with the phones -- what with
another strike goin' on -- so I sent one of my people over there, and they said
the whole place had been cleared out."
"You
mean they'd locked up and gone away?"
"No,"
Harwood said. "They didn't lock anything up. Most doors and windows
was open. People's personal belongin's was lyin' around -- pocketbooks
and that sort of thing. Men's briefcases. Somebody told me they
found a real expensive gold watch on the sink in the men's room. Somebody was
washin' their hands when it happened."
"When
what happened?"
"Well,
that's what I don't know, exactly. It looks like all the Jews are
gone. All of them in Dallas, anyway. I called a lot of my friends the last
two or three hours, believe me, and not a one of them has seen hide nor hair of
a Jew since last night. Darndest thing I ever saw."
"And
what explanation can you offer?" the newswoman said.
"Well,"
said Harwood, "I think we're seein' the beginnin' of the last days.
I had been warning that this was comin' for quite some time. We know
there'll be early signs and wonders, strange things happening. And this
is about the strangest thing I ever saw. Don't you think so?"
"Well,
yes," the woman said. "That's all the information we have from
here, Tom. And now back to New York."
The
news show itself looked considerably more ragged and unprofessional than usual
-- wrong film clips were shown, some microphones that were supposed to be
turned on were soundless, and the few gentile newsmen and women who did appear
had a totally perplexed look, as though terribly distracted even when
discussing other items in the day's news. Correspondents from London,
Paris, Rome and Berlin were piped in. They confirmed that the sudden
disappearance of Jews was a worldwide phenomenon.
Transportation
officials of local state and federal governments were questioned to see if
perhaps separate parties of Jews had left town in buses, trains, airplanes,
trucks, private cars, or any other means of conveyance.
They
could shed no light on the peculiar state of affairs. However the Jews had
disappeared, it seemed the means of their traveling had not been
conventional. The national newscasts of the other two networks were also a
bit of a shambles. Charles Kuralt and Bryant Gumbel being gentiles, were on the
air, but chaos emerged around them every few seconds.
"An
anti-Semitic terrorist group has just called NBC news to take credit for the --
er -- disappearance, said an obviously shaken Gumbel, "but
authorities here give no credence to the claim. Incidentally, we would
like to apologize for problems we're having with both sound and picture -- not
to mention some of our remote pick-ups -- but it seems that a number of our technical
people were Jewish -- are Jewish, I mean -- and -- well -- we've had trouble
replacing them here.
"There
have been scattered reports of looting in Jewish neighborhoods which, having
been totally abandoned, were undefended. But early details are sketchy.
"Hospital
emergency wards the country over have become madhouses to far more than the
usual degree since a large percentage of the doctors that usually serve them
can not now be located."
On
ABC, a harried newswoman reported that every film studio in Los Angeles had
closed down and stopped production, due to the absence of leading writers,
directors, actors, actresses, agents, producers, and technical and secretarial
personnel.
Inquiries
into the thousand-and-one legal ramifications of the mysterious mass
disappearance went largely unanswered since a good many of the nation's law
firms reported that key members of their staffs were missing.
Mental
hospitals and clinics were particularly hard hit as thousands of patients who
had depended on meeting psychiatrists, analysts, and consultants had been
thrown into a panic at the discovery that their doctors were missing.
When
newsmen called nearby universities, think-tanks and scholarly societies to get
background information on the unprecedented event, they discovered that so many
key personnel were missing that the institutions could provide essentially no
services whatsoever.
In
Van Nuys, California, a distraught housewife begged police to find her
husband. No, there had been no problems. They'd just gone to sleep
together, and she'd awakened alone. Why, yes, he was Jewish; no, she
wasn't, but what did that have to do with it?"
Suddenly,
the face of the President of the United States appeared simultaneously on all
network and local newscasts. "My fellow Americans," he said,
"a disaster of major proportions has struck our nation. Well,
actually I should say the world, since, according to reports I've been
receiving, there are no Jews left anywhere -- or, if there are, we don't know
where they might be. I had expected to receive much fuller information
about this to share with you. Unfortunately, a number of my key advisors
are among the missing, and -- uh -- that has compounded the problem here at the
White House, I don't mind telling you.
"In
the face of this bizarre -- er -- catastrophe, I had planned to issue a call to
the commissioners of baseball, football, and other major sports, as well as the
managers and coaches of all teams, to cancel all athletic events during the
emergency, but I have now been advised that no such call was necessary since
the absence of key players, coaches, administrators, school and team officials
-- well, you see what the problem is there, too. I have tried to reach the
Kremlin by phone, but -- uh -- it seems that telephone circuits worldwide are
in disarray since important personnel are missing, and in some areas it appears
that no one else seems to know how to run the --er -- the equipment.
"I
had also planned to issue a formal Presidential request, to all theatrical and
entertainment enterprises, to suspend operations until further notice, but
that, too, has proved unnecessary since I have just been advised that not only
all the legitimate theaters in New York, but theaters in other parts of the
country, including many motion picture houses, have been closed down due to an
inability to function normally.
"I
have also been informed, within the hour, that Wall Street has suspended
operations totally. We do not want this announcement to cause Americans
concerned about their investments to panic. I have it on good authority
that most banks will be open tomorrow morning, although in many parts of the
country their services will be, quite understandably, seriously curtailed.
"That is all the information we have here at the White House at
present. Thank you."
From
Las Vegas, a newsman reported, on the CBS network, that all hotels and casinos
had closed since so many musicians, comedians, singers, dancers, technical
personnel, hotel managers, not to mention gambling executives and others, were
at the moment missing.
The
following morning almost all regular television and radio programming had been
canceled because a good part of it could not have been presented anyway.
Most stations carried endless newscasts, in keeping with the industry's
traditional response to major disasters or tragedies.
A
particularly strange turn of events occurred on the Today show, when Katie
Couric mentioned that in many cities there had been reports that gentiles were
also among the missing.
"Katie,"
Bryant Gumbel said, "you're right in that we had picked up such reports
earlier this morning, but I've just been advised that there are no gentiles
missing. The impression that some were gone has been explained by virtue
of the fact that a good many people had Jewish friends without realizing that
they were Jewish. Consequently, when they were missing--"
"I
see what you mean," Couric said.
"In
fact," Gumbel continued, "a number of prominent Americans are
unaccounted for who were not expected to be missing. I mean --
"I
know what you mean," Couric said.
"For
example, film actor Kirk Douglas is nowhere to be found today -- a fact which
has surprised millions of Americans who did not know that Douglas was Jewish
"Oh,"
said Gumbel, "we've just been told that the President is about to address
the nation once again. We take you now to Washington, D.C."
"Good
morning, my fellow Americans," the President said in a tired, raspy
voice. "I was up a good part of the night trying to make contact
with our embassy officials in Jerusalem. They have advised me -- although
I cannot say I was totally surprised to hear it -- that the nation of Israel is
almost a ghost country. The Arab population of the state is, of course,
still there. And in the streets, I am told, there are a few American and
other foreign tourists. But as of this moment, there are no Jews in
Israel. But then," he added, "it would seem there are no Jews
anywhere on earth."
A
few minutes later, from the NBC newsroom, there was a flurry of excitement at
reports that two actual Jews had been discovered walking down Rodeo Drive in
Beverly Hills, California. It was shortly revealed, however, that the two
were gentiles who had been passing as Jews for some time in the belief that it
would be helpful to them in the motion picture industry.
Newsman
Peter Jennings, commenting on the case, said, "I just started to say that
this bizarre incident would probably give Woody Allen an idea for his next
movie. But then I remembered that Woody Allen is among the missing.
In fact, it appears that there are very few comedians left in the United
States. A producer from the Entertainment Tonight show has called the NBC
newsroom to say that he had picked up a rumor that a number of long-inactive
gentile comedians such as Jack Paar, Alan Young, Garry Moore, and George Gobel
had tried to call their agents to tell them that they were available for work
but that they could not get through to their agents, for obvious reasons."
Within
another 24 hours, major industries in the United States had either closed down
or been effectively crippled. From Chicago came reports that a group of
uniformed Nazis has gathered in front of a Jewish temple, where they had been
interrupted in their demonstration and severely beaten by a crowd of Catholic
pacifists who had been making a survey of the neighborhood at the time and were
apparently driven mad by the sight of the Hitler-sympathizers.
The
world of nature, needless to say, not directly effected by the mass mystery,
continued its customary daily assault upon human lives and sensibilities.
But now every earthquake, every typhoon, hurricane, torrential downpour, mud
slide, tornado, forest fire, regional war, power blackout, drought, plague of
insects -- indeed, every natural calamity of the sort always common was greatly
complicated by the absence of Jews. Relief efforts --whether medical,
administrative, managerial, or economic were in disarray, and each new problem
compounded the spreading disaster.
A
good many newspapers stopped publication, though all used the word temporarily
in apologizing for this. Since the advertising industry had largely come
to a standstill, newspapers, radios and television all entered an immediate,
acute state of financial crisis.
From
the Middle East there were reports that Arab joy, which for several days had
been hysterical and unbounded at the news of the mysterious absence of Jews,
had now been replaced by rioting, unrest, and military action, inasmuch as the
various Muslim states and subfactions, no longer feeling in any sense united by
their antipathy for Israel and its sympathizers around the world, were falling
upon each other with remarkable ferocity, Iran and Iraq having already shown
the way.
In
parts of the Third World those peoples and parties that had depended upon
Israel for arms were suddenly thrown into a state of severe military
disadvantage.
Russia,
oddly enough, seemed to be functioning better than any other major nation,
largely because it had expelled so many of its Jews over the past century that
it was now fairly well able to maintain essential services, there no longer
having been any Jews in positions of authority.
Within
three more days, a number of radio and television around the U.S. -- not to
mention other parts of the world -- had thrown in the towel, since, without
advertising revenue, they could no longer continue their already crippled
operations. Although the three networks continued to provide services
they considered essential, they too were reported to be losing millions of
dollars daily.
Oriental
nations continued to function but were thrown into a condition of financial
panic when it became apparent that tens of thousands of separate foreign
business agreements and contracts could no longer be honored. The
repercussions were especially severe in China, which in recent years had been
painstakingly -- although somewhat unofficially -- adding free-market
components to its Marxist superstructure.
Back
in the United States, even the Mafia was thrown into turmoil at the sudden loss
of its handful of non-Italian financial advisors and lawyers, though leading
Mafioso were pleased that a number of the more aggressive district attorneys
and other prosecutors were also no longer at work.
The
following Sunday the already stupefying drama suddenly took what Christians at
once regarded as an even more ominous turn. Protestant and Catholic
houses of worship were opened to find that all representation of Jesus and his
immediate social circle were missing. Statues of Christ -- even the
traditional figure hanging on the cross -- graven images of Mary, Joseph, St.
Peter -- these and others had vanished.
It
took only one day for the realization to dawn that all the now-absent
representations were of Jews. The Pope immediately declared a worldwide
period of mourning -- "perhaps somewhat belatedly," as one American
Cardinal commented.
"Some
were saying only the other day," the Pontiff declared on a radio network,
"that the disappearance of the Jews was God's curse, that an entire people
had been done away with as punishment for their sins. We now realize that even
to harbor such suspicions was itself a grave sin. It is the rest of us
who are being punished."
There
now began a period of great fear, but also of that form of great comedy that
has always taken tragedy as its raw material. People bumped into each
other more. More stupid mistakes, of all kinds, were made. The President,
at a news conference, actually said, "This is the most unheard of thing
I've ever heard of."
But
by the following Sunday not even the anodyne of laughter was any longer
available to dull the pain occasioned by the loss of what was, after all, just
one of the earth's hundreds of tribes: On that day humanity began to be
deprived of the Jewish legacy to the world. The Old Testament -- the
actual pages of books -- disappeared. Christian and Muslim theologians and
preachers, bereft of much of the philosophical underpinnings of their faiths,
became at first confused, then largely incoherent.
Science
and technology -- and the million-and-one applications of them -- fell into
turmoil at the sudden loss of all knowledge and discovery contributed by Jews,
of whom Einstein was only one; the space program therefore ground to a halt, as
did the nuclear industry. Financial chaos at once ensued as bankruptcies,
bank closings and defaulted loans became the norm.
A
particularly savage stage quickly emerged, as people, driven to desperation,
began to attack each other even more brutally than they did in normal times,
which had always been horrible enough.
But
riots and fiery confrontations became even more common as the perception
gradually took hold that Jewish discoveries in the field of medicine, too, were
no longer available, the memory of their details having, overnight, been
expunged. Millions died of illnesses long curable or preventable,
naturally in addition to the vast armies that daily died as in times before the
eerie exodus. This swamped the already overburdened hospitals, many of which
now simply collapsed and went out of business.
Rumors,
inevitably, swept continents and leaped oceans. Sightings of Jews, encounters
with Jews were reported, though not supported by evidence. A multimillionaire
resident of Houston offered a $10 million fee -- no questions asked -- to
anyone who would bring him a Jew, alive. Of Semites, there was, of course, no
shortage, since Jews had been only one of the Semitic tribes. Indeed assorted
Palestinians and other Arabs now tried to pass themselves off as Jews, without
success. A young Iranian Muslim living in Berkeley, California claimed to have
undergone a sincere conversion to Judaism, changed his name from Pahri Bashtar
to Sol Schwartz and attempted to take possession of an abandoned temple on
Wilshire Boulevard in Los Angeles. For a brief time he attracted a small
following, which consisted entirely of right-wing evangelical Christians.
He was not taken seriously and soon retreated from public view.
The
plight of blacks, at all times unfortunate in American society, had become
acutely so. This was due, in part, to the general social disorganization,
a phenomenon that always falls most heavily on those least economically secure,
and in part because the various liberal organizations that had, for over half a
century, worked on behalf of American blacks, had now almost totally collapsed,
because of the absence of Jewish support -- financial and personal. There
never having been any conservative organizations whatever that were dedicated
to improving the lives of American blacks, they were now left largely to the
mercies of the marketplace; in other words, the very system that had for over
two centuries employed them as slaves, and which had, as a matter of historical
fact, bitterly resisted all efforts to bring them up out of that degraded
state. Certain governmental programs -- all created by liberals and uniformly
opposed by conservatives -- still attempted to offer a degree of help to the
poor (a category which consisted not only of blacks), but these programs, too,
were in a state of severe disorganization, with the result that delays and
errors were no longer the occasional exception but had become the daily norm.
It
was as if the lesson so long preached by environmentalists -- that the partial
or total destruction of any one species was likely to have unfortunate
repercussions in the balance of nature -- was now perceived to be operative in
the context of relations among human tribes as well.
A
state of martial law was declared. As an immediate consequence a number of
essential constitutional guarantees had to be suspended. Strange new religions,
never uncommon to American experience, now began to proliferate in even larger
numbers. Many of them -- such as the Tribe of Judah; the House of Israel; the
Sons of David; the Chosen People; the New Jerusalem; the First Church of
Christ, Jew -- took Jewish names.
And
then, in part by accident, a great war started, from which nuclear weapons were
not excluded.
And
then everybody disappeared
