Six New Ground Rules for Firing the Jewish Laser
With the House set to vote on whether to strip Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of her committee assignments, it’s been a big week of reckoning for the tenor of political rhetoric in the United States. It’s also been a big week for the Jewish space laser, which Greene cited as the cause of the California wildfires in 2018. While Congress does its thing, I think it’s important for the rest of us to talk about the laser.
Like many men and women of my generation, I was about to be bar-mitzvahed when I first learned about the existence of the Jewish laser. And honestly, it didn’t surprise me all that much. After all, stories from the Hebrew Bible are filled with supernatural details that seem right out of science fiction: Pillars of clouds and fire, seas parting, women dissolving into salt, skies raining frogs, and wayward rebels being swallowed up whole by the earth. How far-fetched is a space laser after a talking donkey?
My introduction to the laser was more carrot than stick. I had hit a wall in memorizing my Torah portion—the part of Numbers where Moses gets banned from the Promised Land for striking a rock with his staff instead of asking it for water. I was quickly losing faith that I would be ready for my bar mitzvah and would be a disappointment to the community. That’s when my rabbi stepped in. With a conspiratorial air, he told me something that I wasn’t technically supposed to know about until I was officially an adult: As soon as I got through reading the Torah, a Jewish laser would await me on the other side. Like the sage he was, however, he put it in eminently more mystical terms. “Nu,” he said, “finish and you get to fire the laser.”
One of the first things that Jewish youths learn about the laser is that, like many of the spiritually encoded Jewish texts, it’s actually an acronym. Historically, “laser” stood for the official Jewish adult starter kit—Lox, Acetaminophen, Seltzer, Entenmann’s, and Rye—but with the emergence of new technologies, the custom (like so many others) had adapted to the times. To inspire a new generation of Jews to stay observant, laser now meant "light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation."
When my bar mitzvah day arrived, the rabbi explained that there was one stipulation about firing the laser: I could never tell my mother about it. That’s because, as everyone knows, you might put someone’s eye out with that thing!
And so, we Jews generally try our best to use the laser for good. In many ways, the laser is the first test of adulthood. If you’re a tzadik—a righteous person—you’ll use the laser to sequence some DNA or help print something for your uncle. Occasionally, however, there are mishaps and deviations. This is how we got the California wildfires, the Maroon 5 Super Bowl halftime show, and the iPod Nano. My sister was grounded for a week after word got out that she used the laser to zap the bike tires of a rival.
Now that it’s back in the discourse, it’s critical that we lay out some new ground rules to make sure that the laser doesn’t become ballast for conspiracy theories and anti-Semitic canards.
If you’re not going to use it to repair the world, the best use of the Jewish space laser is to do battle with the Illuminati lizard people over control of the banking system.
The laser is great for re-heating leftover soup.
A good globalist knows that they can still use the laser to benefit their immediate community.
Although you cannot tell your mother about the laser, you should tell your grandparents. They’d love to hear from you.
The laser will be hot, but it’s very important that you also bring a sweater.
The Rothschilds have their own laser. Sure, it’s gaudy and they paid too much for it, but still it’s a lesson that hard work pays off.