Today, I got a fantastic e-mail from a reader named David, who addressed the Navajo Moose controversy that we featured on The Scroll back in August.
For those who don’t remember, the story revolved around an eBay seller, who was hawking a Hebrew chai pendant as a “Navajo Moose.” Following the article, the seller (AlwaysBeListing) even tweeted at me to thank me for directing buyers to him/her. Apparently, sales have been robust following the Tablet bump.
But apparently, the Navajo Moose incident isn’t isolated. As David writes:
I tend to be highly suspicious of my retired mother’s “isn’t THAT something!” emails, and thus rolled my eyes when she forwarded the forward of the forwarded forward of your Tablet item about the “Navajo Moose pendant” for sale on E-Bay.
Until, that is, I mentioned it to my wife… and she revealed that two weeks ago our son Eitan spotted a heavyset, African-American classmate wearing a “Chai” pendant.
We belong to a Sephardi synagogue and are plenty familiar with black Jews, but they typically don’t play football for large public high schools in the suburbs of Houston.
So Eitan asked him about it, and sure enough–“It’s a Navajo Moose.”
I cannot confirm that this particular pendant is the actual and now famous “E-Bay Navajo Moose.” My gut tells me one of the Israelis working at a kiosk in our local mall has stumbled upon a clever way to off-load a surplus-shipment of Chai pendants.
Anybody else out there hearing about the Navajo Moose trend? Be in touch!
Earlier: Navajo Moose: Jewish Spirit Animal
Adam Chandler was previously a staff writer at Tablet. His work has appeared in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Atlantic, Slate, Esquire, New York, and elsewhere. He tweets @allmychandler.