One of the fun features of the New York subway system is that you still buy train tickets from a vending machine that returns coins. Not just any coins, but also golden dollar coins. These days, that’s rare.
I love how when purchasing a MetroCard or a SingleRide I slip in a paper money bill, only to receive change back in the form of coins. Immediately, the clink and clang of coins, as they start dropping into the dispenser, provide a sense of excitement, as if you’ve won the jackpot. I retrieve the coins with a minor but extra sense of pleasure.
On this particular ride, perhaps this past March, among the coins I received were a few golden Sacagawea dollars, engraved with her high cheek-boned silhouette, carrying her infant son. These coins are larger in circumference and thicker in heft than your average coin. It feels so Old School.
I slip them into my coat pocket and wait at the platform for my train. The train arrives and upon its sliding doors opening, I step into the subway car.
I choose to stand — it will be a short ride. I’m on the express from Columbus Circle to 96th Street.
Just as the doors slide shut and the subway begins to move, the rhythm of a rap bursts forth from a young teenage African American boy. Here goes another subway rapper, was the look on most riders faces.
Now that’s a whole n’other ball of wax — the fascinating underground world of the New York subway, including, for example, famous stations such as Times Square and Columbus Circle, and the accompanying storytelling, musicality and vibe. The New York subway system is a lively sepulchral world all its own. For those of us who navigate the subway system, it seems that there is a special art to traveling by rote; weary New Yorkers reflexively continue with whatever it is they need to do, ignoring the many unexpected and colorful stimuli that might appear out of nowhere, often including various types of rappers or other entertainers who flit between stop and stop and between various subway cars on various subway lines. It’s what might be called the New York “Art of Ignoring.”
An acknowledged nod here, a bobbing head there, a pressed coin or dollar into the hand of that particular performer . . . but overall — unless it’s out of the ordinary, no reaction. These street performers who pop on and off the subway cars carry on with their gig with the confidence and flair as though they were Tony Award-winning actors. The subway car can be packed to the gills or practically desolate, they’ll belt out their act as though they were performing to a captive audience at a stadium with bleachers filled to the brim.
This is how the New York subway system is the great equalizer. The hipsters, the homeless, the yuppies, the affluent financiers, the broke students and the academics; the venerable and the decrepit, the flamboyant and the conservative, the old and the young, the faithful and the faithless — we are all there on those subway cars; riders, apart, but together.
So this young kid starts with his rap. It’s pretty extensive. The lyrics are OK but the tempo, the beat and the flow are catchy. I feel like tapping my foot. He’s young and can use encouragement. I slip my hand into my coat pocket and hold the golden dollar coins in my palm, reaching out to give them to him when suddenly I’m jolted by the words that he musically says so nonchalantly as part of his rap: “[Expletive deleted] the Jews,” casually continuing on with his ta ta ta ta ta etc.
Excuse me?? My cheeks flush with anger! In my life, only once before had I encountered an act of anti-Semitism; it was overt and intentional toward me and my father, who was wearing his prominent yarmulke. And, in my life, until this point, I’ve rarely said a word on the subway.
But how can I remain quiet? Here we are. A subway car-full of people. No one says a word. It’s just “[Expletive deleted] the Jews,” sure no problem. I was so upset. But as out of character as it was for me, I heard myself say pointedly, asking the lad: did you just say?” Ta ta ta ta ta ta ta — he goes on rapping as if nothing happened. “Did you just say — . . . the Jews?” I ask, my voice rising a bit more now. I show him my filled palm with the golden dollars. “You know, I was about to give you these — no one here gave you a second look — I wanted to show you support . . . I’m Jewish and you just cursed my people!” Ta ta ta ta ta ta ta. No pause from him whatsoever.
Meanwhile, this middle-aged black lady on my left gets up and, approaching me, says, “he didn’t mean it like that, he just . . . ” I didn’t let her complete her sentence. “He meant it exactly as he said it! What he is saying” — by this time there was a round two of “[expletive deleted] the Jews” — “is crystal clear. What if he had said [expletive] the blacks?? Somehow that’s not OK, that’s racist, but for the Jews it’s an acceptable form of hate??”
I was just finishing my sentence when a black man among those seated to my left locks eyes with me, in support and affirmation of what I am saying. “She’s right!” he suddenly shouts to the woman on my left.
I’m in the crosshairs when the train starts pulling into 96th street, my stop. I am shaking from the experience, taking tentative steps to get off the train, the golden coins still pressed into my palm, when the car bursts out in cheers and some even applaud, just as I step through the sliding doors back onto the train platform.
Copyright © 2019 by the Intermountain Jewish News
