(Jewish Group) When I heard Dave Chappelle's monologue, all I could think about were my classmates'

[Behind the Aegis]

When I heard Dave Chappelle’s monologue, all I could think about were my classmates’ Holocaust jokes

I don’t find Dave Chapelle’s “Saturday Night Live” monologue funny, unlike my classmates who draw inspiration from him.

About a year ago, in my eighth-grade English class, I was listening to my classmates talk about Holocaust denial. Some of them were joking, sure, but that didn’t make it any better.

We’d been reading “Maus,” Art Speigelman’s autobiographical graphic novel about the Holocaust, whose characters are depicted as mice. Because of this, people began saying how it was fictitious. And then, it devolved into how the Holocaust didn’t happen. I am 50% of the Jewish population in my grade at my school in Nashville; the other 50% sat a few desks away. We were both frozen solid. We couldn’t move.

Once I collected my bearings, all I could think was, “It’s not their pain to joke about.” And it’s not. I might joke with another Jewish student about silly Jewish stereotypes like bagels and lox or tell stupid jokes like “Two Jews walk into a synagogue…,” but when I hear someone else make a joke about my heritage, I am offended. I do understand that this is a bit of a double standard, but why should they get to joke about my ancestors? It’s certainly not their own blood family that died in Auschwitz and ghettos across Europe.

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