The Krewes and the Jews Tablet Magazine
John Fitzpatrick was about to be crowned King of the Jieuxs. He had put on a tuxedo for the occasion, and his silvery hair was impeccably gelled into position. Standing by the door at Donna’s Bar & Grill, on the edge of New Orleans’ French Quarter, he looked like an errant groomsman who had wandered away from the wedding party.
“I’m so excited, I could just plotz,” Fitzpatrick declared. Fitzpatrick, a middle-aged Irish-Catholic who works as a cook at the Ritz-Carlton, just might have rehearsed this line a few times during the day.
Each year, a new King of the Jieuxs is selected to reign over the Krewe du Jieux, a Mardi Gras parading outfit. Most of the Jieuxs are also Jews, though some of them are only Jew-ish—“you know, with a dash in the middle,” said the krewe’s captain, Renée Heinlein. They were gathered at Donna’s to witness the changing of the guard and to behold the crowning of the new king and his consort, the Jieuxish-American Princess. This year’s princess is Robin White, a half-Jewish French professor and Fitzpatrick’s girlfriend. She wore a gray sweatsuit embroidered in strategic areas with the word “Jieucy” in glittering letters.
As a klezmer-jazz fusion quartet played, krewe members drank cocktails and mingled. They wore giant-nose-and-eyebrow Groucho Marx eyeglasses and plastic blue horns on their heads. “I can’t get my Jew horns to stay on,” one young woman complained, fussing with her hair.
L.J. Goldstein, a photographer and lawyer who founded the Krewe du Jieux in 1996, leaned against the bar and surveyed the scene. He explained that the selection process for Jieuxish royalty relied on a complex algorithm. “I can’t give you the exact ratio,” he said. “But it’s part meritocracy, part seniority, and part nepotism.”
