Minda 8

The New York Times website recently did a poll on who was the most famous Canadian still alive.
First came Minda Zilberg, serial killer, with 1,182,381 votes. (No surprise there, virtually all the New York area Jews wrote to the Canadian Embassy, demanding reinstatement of the death penalty.)
Second, Greenpeace activist/stuntman Bud Buckley with 287,124. (No surprise, it was a death defying feat on the Empire State Building.)
Third, hockey great Marcel Tremblay with 121,486. (Sad, you'd think he'd get more, having scored 97 goals last season).
Fourth, the Canadian Prime Minister with 13 votes. (A bit of a surprise, I didn't know that many Americans even knew who he was.)
A dozen others garnered less votes.
During the high profile trial of the famous killer, there were two completely different reactions in Canada.
In Jewish Canada, daily rallies in Montreal and Toronto.
Goy Canada was merely entertained, titillated. But since none of the victims were goy, as soon as the trial over, it was old hat.
No one in Goy Canada was overly upset about how the killer selected her victims. Minda had been a counsellor at Jewish Family Services (mostly marital). A number of her very own clients showed up on the victim list. As well, numerous patients from her husband's medical practice. Sick or what? I can well imagine the prison counsellors having a field day probing all her phobias.
So, what happened to Minda's family? Her husband took a leave of absence from his practice. Now generally authorities are quite lenient on death certificates. A person can be on 18 prescription drugs which forbid alcohol and still drink. As long as no note is found, they usually refrain from calling it suicide. When that person is a doctor, who should know better, the farce assumes comic opera proportions. Yet that's what they did, verdict of accidental poisoning.
Which leaves only the daughter alive, also named Minda, aged ten. As lack of luck would have it, she happens to be in a class that's half Jewish. Oy! But she doesn't have to stay long.
Family Court awards great aunt Naomi custody of me. Timing could not have been better. Just in the act of retiring, she sells her condo for an astronomical capital gain.
And so it is she and I move to a smaller city with almost no Jews, barely enough for a minyan. (And they're of the variety where we wouldn't be caught dead in the synagogue.)
Someone up there likes me, bigtime!
The predictable happens. First couple days kids ask me various questions about it. Still, I can sense their almost total lack of interest and it soon fades.
They don't even view me a Jew. In fact, I am regularly told, with a good bit of disgust, that I am a typical Toronto smart ass. Refreshing or what?
I consider myself hugely fortunate. Every kid here has some derogatory label or other. Mine could have been lots worse.