The Jew in You lyrics
The Jew in You lyrics
All you drunken chicks of sweethearts with your bloodshot eyes of blue
All you border-crossing faygelekh who’ve been quarantined for flu
All you lost exilic aliens, you migrant mongrel strew
You needn’t feel farloyren, you don’t have to be blue
Just climb aboard this ark of ours and join the soggy crew
It’s a diasporic politic, it’s a reconstructed you
With permeable borders in between the old and new
It’s a way to hide away what they would take away from you
Forget your god and country, and your revolution too
It’s possible for you to leave the many for the few
It don’t matter if your daddy was from Poland or Peru
Your blood might come from Turkey, Detroit or Timbuktu
Your language could be Farsi, Sanskrit, German or Zulu
Come on we’ve got some wandering to do
So bring out your Jew, bring out your Jew
You may have a Jew inside of you
A Jew, a Jew a secret little Jew
A secret Jew is buried inside you
My definition here could use some explanation, true
You have to ask yourself just what I mean when I say “Jew”
Well the Jewishness concerning us should not be misconstrued
Blood are land are things with which it doesn’t have to do
And religion is a matter most irrelevant here, too
So let’s try to look at this anew.
To find a category underneath the ones we knew
A mercurical identity for people who are strewn in countries far and wide
Who haven’t got a home in view
Who drag aronud like shackles on the roots from which they grew
While others have endured this “gulles,” too
And here I offer it all up to you
A kosher YIddish food for thoguht that goyim now can chew
It’s what they did with Jesus when they wrote the Bible new
Rebranded monotheism for wider public view
So learn to take the rootless cosmopolitan world view
And hidden interstices we all normally aschew
To schlup your gulles proudly you must learn to make do
And learn, learn, learn is what the wise men tell us to
So learn to be Jew
Learn to bae a Jew
Learn to be a Jew among the Jews
Among the Jews…
Well, so, what about us people who are actually Jews?
With problems all my deconstructed theories can’t subdue
Well, you know what I’m talking about. I don’t have to tell you.
Just ask a gentle German for a history review
She’ll tell you how they marked us with numerical tattoos
They turned us into ashes, hair, and lamps, and soap, and glue,
And no, it wasn’t something that I personally knew, but I mean,
they taught it to me at temple Sunday school,
And I guess it kind of left me with some hangups and some tabboos
But how can we wear the matnle of the martyred ghetto Jews?
We turned our backs on so many things that brought our people through
And did it really work to make a new Hebrew?
With the enemies we slew, the hatred grew and grew
But the things you hate in others, is the thing you hate in you
And where it all went wrong nobody knew
Now exile will return like deja vu
And we will have to learn it all anew
Not only as a victim, but maybe as a perpetrator, too?
To learn to take the rootless cosmopolitan world view?
To learn to be a Jew
Learn to be a Jew
Learn to be a Jew among the Jews
A Jew, a Jew, the problem isn’t new
A homeless Jew is buried inside you
Now the hour is getting late
Soon we’ll have to pay our dues
We’ll face our situations where we all will have to choose
And the world is turning colder
And the walls are high and true
And the cities are turning the skies a color black and blue
So when they ask you for your papers, and you don’t know what to do,
Remember in this moment what you’re carrying with you
Because the day will come when all your papers are refused
And then you’ll find yourself in exile, too
You’re living in a land and time that aren’t made for you
You’re refugees from wars between religious points of view
And you schlep around like shackles on the roots from which you grew
So I talk about the inner other hiding inside you
And, well, the name I give this other, is a Jew
But by a Jew I mean you can be an Arab, or a German, or a Druze,
So if you have a better name that you would like to use,
We’ll I’d love to read the testament of you.
The imaginary diasporic messianic you
Cause there’s only one messiah and he’s buried inside you
So bring him out and show the world what we all need to do
These aren’t just the dreams of us; these are the dreams of you
But forgive the self-indulgence that I spew
I mean, I mean it as a question, and not an answer to your blues
The question is the answer, and the question, it is you
Anyway, I just wrote this goddamn thing where every sentence just rhymes with Jew
So
Bring out your Jew, bring out your Jew
You may have a Jew inside of you…