The Day the Jews Disappeared

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.

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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