Like almost all of you, I also came from somewhere else entirely. In my case, my father immigrated from a small shtetl-like Greek village in the heart of Asia-minor; my mother’s family from Sparta, the only town in Greece to resist 400 years of Ottoman domination, primarily because it was so hard to get to and nothing grew there anyway.
I grew up bi-cultural in Cleveland. I had more friends in the Greek-American community spread throughout the greater Cleveland area than I had in my own neighborhood. It was a different time in a bygone era.
We held these truths to be self-evident:
·
that the world is divided into Greeks and xeni, a Greek word that comes from the
English word ‘xenophobia’. ‘Xeni’ means ‘foreigner’;
·
that the ancient Greek culture was the highest
form of civilization achievable by mere humans;
·
that, in warfare, one Greek is worth ten (fill
in the blank), Turks, Italians, Albanians;
·
that Americans, of all races, creeds, colors and
hyphenations were xeni and could not
be trusted; and
·
that marrying, dating or even having a serious
conversation with a female xeni was cause
for great mourning within the entire community.
As soon as I was old enough, I joined the GOYA, the Greek
Orthodox Youth Association. My fellow
goyim and I delighted in using the word ‘scata’
in the presence of xeni. ‘Scata’
comes from the English word ‘scatological’, referring to a bodily function
usually spelled with a double ‘doo’.In my teen years I joined the ‘Sons of Pericles’ a fraternity that operated much like the youth movement within the mafia. We had monthly dances with the ‘Maids of Athens’, our sister sorority. It was there that I became a member, like my brother before me, of the Hasapicats, an informal dance group within the Sons that specialized in an athletic dance called the ‘hasapiko’, a Greek circle dance much like the hora, except in the opposite direction. The leader of the circle was entitled, in fact required, to leap about and perform feats of great cunning and difficulty, designed to attract the amorous attention of members of the Maids, usually without success.
A few years later, I found myself sitting in a fairly disreputable outdoor nightclub in the Pireaus, the port of Athens, watching real Greek men dance the hasapiko with great joy and abandon. This was a time before the generals, when it was still permissible to hurl crockery onto the dance floor so the dancers could demonstrate their shard-avoidance techniques.
I wondered, then, if the Sons was still a viable fraternity and if the Hasapicats had attracted new membership. Probably not. I wonder now if that bar in the Pireaus still stands or if it has been replaced by a McDonalds or a Starbucks. Probably.
On the old diversity-ometer, I fear that the needle has swung so much toward national and global uniformity that the spices we each bring to the human stew are being relegated to the just-out-of-reach back shelf.