Look Who’s Jewish!

A redneck walks into a bar in the deep South. He grabs a few beers and guzzles them down. Looking for a fight, he yells: “All right now, who’s a Jew?!!!!!!!”

Dead silence.

The redneck yells a little louder. “I just asked y’all – who’s a Jew?!!!!!!”

Still dead silence.

The redneck raises his voice several more decibels: “I’m gonna ask y’all one last time. I want to know! Who’s a Jew?!!!!!!”

An old man in the back of the bar stands up, clears his throat, and says: “You know, dot’s a very interesting qvestion…..”

So, who’s a Jew?

First, there’s Cardinal John O’Connor of New York, one of the Church’s most beloved senior statesmen. It turns out that his grandfather, Gustave Gumpel, was a ritual slaughterer and rabbi in Bridgeport, Connecticut, and that his mother converted to Catholicism. This makes the prince of the Church, at least halachically, Jewish. (Six hundred years ago in Spain, that knowledge would have been very dangerous).