Ear­li­er this week, Boaz Yakin wrote about his father’s sto­ries grow­ing up in British Man­date Pales­tine and empa­thy and con­flict. He has been blog­ging here all week for JBC and MJL. Edi­tor’s Note: The views expressed by Vis­it­ing Scribes are their own.

How weird is it that here in Amer­i­ca the very peo­ple who used to hate on the Jews some­thing fierce now love us the way PETA loves ani­mals? And that even more than Jews in gen­er­al, they love them some Israel? How fast did it go from you can’t get into the coun­try club — or in my case, head­ing home from school past the tough goy boys on the Upper West Side of Man­hat­tan (it was the 70’s, there were still tough goys out there) and hav­ing a rock whipped at me along with an accom­pa­ny­ing snort of ​“Jew­boy” if I had some­how for­got­ten to take off my yarmul­ka — to turn­ing on the news every day to the spec­ta­cle of some good ol’ boy politi­cian on his knees des­per­ate­ly fel­lat­ing any­thing cir­cum­cised that might fall with­in his purview? It’s been a strange con­flu­ence of events and ide­ol­o­gy and who knows what else. Like, what exact­ly was it?

First the Chris­t­ian Mil­len­ni­al­ists can’t get over the fact that there are Jews run­ning the show in Judea again, which means the bat­tle of Armaged­don is approach­ing, and their Boy (ours orig­i­nal­ly, but what­ev­er) will soon be rid­ing down from the clouds with a flam­ing sword in his mouth and all that spe­cial effects meshugas that they can hard­ly wait for for a sin­gle minute longer. It also means as a result of those hopes that they are even more opposed to a two-state solu­tion in Israel, or Judea, or Pales­tine, or what­ev­er you want to call it, than the most rabid Zion­ist, as it runs con­trary to Bib­li­cal prophe­cy and will cock-block the whole thing. Mean­while the Cold War ends, and we get dragged into the Gulf War by our fear­less lead­ers, and the Twin Tow­ers are destroyed, and more war in the Mid­dle East and a new aware­ness amongst our gen­er­al­ly myopic pop­u­lace of Islam spread­ing like a thought-virus all over the world, and — BANG — Mus­lims, who since the rise of the Israeli State tend to hate Jews almost as much (but not quite as much) as the Chris­tians used to, are sud­den­ly Pub­lic Ene­my Num­ber One; so it fol­lows that the Jews they hat­ed must now be America’s new best Pals. And let’s not for­get all the old Yids who have been migrat­ing to the Deep South­ern state of Flori­da for the warmth and the waters, and now find them­selves in the envi­able posi­tion of being able to swing a nation­al elec­tion this way or that…

So, the atti­tude shift kind of makes sense when you break it down, con­nect the dots and all that, but to a Jew with some years on him and some sense of his­to­ry it still feels weird, is all I can say. And so many Jews both in Amer­i­ca and Israel are like — what­ev­er — I don’t give a shit why they’re kiss­ing my ass all day all of a sud­den, I just know it feels good, bet­ter than, say, being shoved into a ghet­to or flee­ing a pogrom or a Holo­caust or what­ev­er oth­er fun we’ve been sub­ject­ed to for the last 2000 years, so don’t ask too many ques­tions, lean back and enjoy the lap dance. And I under­stand that sen­ti­ment well, and sym­pa­thize with it — I mean, we live in the moment, not in ​“his­to­ry” — and the moment feels nice.

But for those inclined to think about the future, what­ev­er that means, you know, the kind of peo­ple who wor­ry about a rainy day com­ing, what they’re leav­ing their kids and all that kind of thing, it might be a good idea to remem­ber that Jesus ain’t nev­er com­ing back, ever, and that at some point our new pals are going to start get­ting antsy about it, and then the term ​“fair weath­er friend” will take on a whole new mean­ing. Or not. Who knows? Cer­tain­ly not me.

Boaz Yakin is a screen­writer and film direc­tor based in New York City. Yakin stud­ied film­mak­ing at New York City Col­lege and New York University.