The case of a beloved Quaker Jewish teacher being fired from a NYC Friends School for making a Nazi salute as a joke is bringing us some interesting commentary. Mark Oppenheimer writes in Tablet:
One might call this whole episode the triumph of Waspy good intentions over Jewish common sense… But of course Quaker schools — and Quaker camps, like the one I once attended, and Quaker meetinghouses — are, these days, pretty Jewish places. The Times article has a burlesque feel, with a bunch of Jewish students and alumni performing in Quaker-face.
He also makes interesting points about the cultures of Jewish humor (“We Jews survive because of Hitler jokes”) and that of Friends:
The Quaker practice of silent worship can disposes its practitioners against the loud, bawdy, contentious discourse that infuses Jewish culture. I’m not making claims about individual Quakers — I can introduce you to perfectly hilarious Quakers, some of whom interrupt even more than I do — but at their institutions, the values that come to the fore are Gene Sharp not Gene Wilder. In their earnestness, Quaker schools are David Brooks not Mel Brooks. You get the idea.
I’m always a bit unsure how seriously to take cultural Quaker stereotypes as motivating forces in pieces like these. I wonder how many Friends actually work or study at a Manhattan Quaker school. A more generic headmaster fear-of-conflict seems as likely a cause as anything to do with silent worship. Then too, we don’t know what other issues might be at play below the surface of privacy and confidentiality. But the Friends Seminary incident seems as good a marker as anything else of the complicated dynamics within Friends schools today.
http://www.tabletmag.com/scroll/258394/jewish-teacher-fired-from-quaker-school-for-making-nazi-joke