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a traditional Icelandic food from the Westfjords: fermented skata (stingray) with melted tallow and boiled potatoes. The spread was authentic but grim. Nathan tried the skata and thought it tasted like spoiled bologna. But the liquor was good, and thus Herb Townsend’s second adage should have applied, particularly given that Nathan ate nothing other than the sliver of stingray and lost count of the glasses of nog.
    The trouble began when Nathan got roped into a conversation with Potter Everson. Nathan hated Potter Everson. Potter taught the advanced placement course in the history of cynicism and three years running had been voted the senior class’ most coveted superlative, Least Likely to Inspire. He paraded around the school like a big man on campus, wearing suede moccasins, Madras shorts, and cardigan sweaters, a combination he described as “postmodern hip.” At any normal school, the students would have mercilessly teased Potter Everson into an insane asylum, but the students at the Feuerbach School were, by persistent training, tolerant of almost everything (with one notable exception). They embraced Potter Everson. Nathan, however, avoided him at all costs.
    But thanks to the rum or the brandy or the whisky—he couldn’t be sure—Nathan’s guard was down, and when Joe Kafka, a grizzled veteran of the science department, grabbed him by the arm and said, “You’ve got to hear this one,” Nathan hardly had time to protest. Before he knew it, he was standing with Joe in a large circle that included, among others, Ellen Nordberg, the principal’s secretary, and Flip Anderson, the custodian who regulated the pool’s chlorine content, listening to Potter Everson tell a hilarious story.
    “So I’m standing on the corner of Seventy-second Street and Broadway waiting for the bus, and the Lubavitchers are out in force. The Mitzvah-mobile is parked on the corner and they’re scouring the intersection, in full regalia, sloughing off menorahs on unsuspecting pedestrians. They approach the bus line and ask, one person after another, ‘Are you Jewish? Are you Jewish?’ Everyone ignores them until they come to this man at the end of the line. He’s wearing a derby and a gray raincoat and looking generally meek and vulnerable. ‘Are you Jewish?’ they ask. He looks at his shoes and sheepishly says, ‘I’m an agnostic.’ ”
    The group howled with laughter. In any other environment the story would not have been regarded as especially funny. It wouldn’t even have qualified as a joke. But at the School of Moral and Ethical Culture, agnostics were regarded with the same derision reserved in the general population for the Polish, hillbillies, and congressmen. As with these comically disfavored minorities, agnostic jokes had become something of an art form. Thus the favorable reaction.
    Potter went on. “ ‘In that case,’ the Lubavitcher said, ‘you might want to take a menorah—just to be safe.’ ” Within the circle, chortles and smirks were suppressed, as the faculty and staff eagerly anticipated the punch line.
    “So what does the guy in the gray raincoat do?” The group was ready to burst. Wait for it.
    “He takes the menorah!”
    Hereupon followed even more voluble howls of laughter, shortness of breath, and general glee. Ellen Nordberg grabbed her stomach to keep from keeling over. Flip Anderson wiped tears from his eyes. Doris Keeling, the third-grade teacher, suffered a paroxysm. The wave of euphoria infected everyone except for Nathan, who did not find the story amusing at all. To the contrary, he found it decidedly annoying.
    In retrospect, Nathan would find it difficult to explain why he had such a negative reaction to the joke. He had heard agnostics made fun of many times. While, for a variety of reasons, he didn’t find the jokes particularly funny, he didn’t regard them as offensive, since religion, unlike race or ethnicity, was a matter of personal choice. Thus, within the precise