Casual

There were certain things for which I was prepared when we converted to Judaism over the summer.

I was prepared to give up bacon and shellfish and shellfish wrapped in bacon.

I was completely on board with Temple on Friday nights instead of religious observance on Sunday mornings.

I was ready to be saddened when some neo-nazi high school social misfits spray paint swastikas on everything they can reach and outraged when organized zealots try to push the Jews out of Israel -- These last two are nothing new at all, really.

I was totally unprepared for casual bigotry.  

So I quit my new guild in World of Warcraft, right?  The schedule was killing me and, one time, my group got actually cursed at over the Ventrilo voice server by a guy from New Zealand for just doing our freaking jobs, though his accent was cool.

Finding a new guild was pretty easy, really. I followed some friends into the one they chose. I was almost instantly in my first major dungeon raid with them, typing away on the raid chat channel and talking to them using their own Ventrilo server.

After one particularly harrowing epic boss fight, the conversation drifted towards another character in the guild, a priest, who did not heal the party as often as he could have. He was referred to as a "Jewish Healer".

Immediately, I typed "Jewish Healer? WTF?" in the raid chat channel. I got no response. Not that I expected one, really, since the group had moved on to a chaotic melee-fest with some glowing flying worm things. Evil glowing flying worm things.

I thought I caught a reference to Jew-Looting some 1337 lewts, but I was actually uncertain that I had heard it correctly and by that time it was getting pretty late so my judgement was in question.

But I let it fester anyway. That is what I do.

On Tuesday the big raid started before I got home from work, so there was no room for me to participate. I contented myself with running around one of the outdoor areas killing everything that moved and running little solo quests.

Occasionally someone in the big raid would speak out from the raid channel into the general guild chat channel and post an update.

"We just killed so-and-so and this is the loot he had . . ." type stuff.

Then, just as I was getting ready to log off Aldy the Warrior presumably did something which caused everyone to die. Another player chimed into the general guild chat with, "I demand that someone Jew-Kick Aldy or at least subtract 50,000 loot points."

I considered issuing a noble /gquit (for "Guild Quit" to voluntarily resign from a guild with the opposite /gkick for a forced resignation by another higher-ranking player) to end my association with these people. But then I decided I would first press the issue, to find out exactly what they meant and to make sure that they needed to express their bigotry openly.

"What does that mean?" I asked into the general channel. There was no response again, so I clarified.

"Please define "Jew-Kick". I've never heard that before."

Again, there was an uncomfortable silence.

I waited.

Eventually, the silence was broken when the same player replied, "A long time ago, a suggestion to /gkick a player was garbled by voice chat into something which sounded like "Jew Kick" and it kind of stuck as an inside joke."

Okay then.

Apparently, I need to be prepared for casual bigotry while simultaneously remembering that not everything should be taken personally.

That's turning out to be a lot harder than finding a decent Kosher pizza.