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By the time study group rolled around, Annie was in despair. "He can't do this!" she raged. "It's discrimination! Anti-Semitism!"
"To be fair to Senor Chang," Abed said thoughtfully, "I don't think it has anything to do with you being Jewish."
"Yeah, that dude would probably cancel Christmas if he could," Troy agreed. There came a tiny gasp of horror from Shirley's side of the table.
Abed went on. "Chang is the paradigm of the embittered authority figure. He's lashing out for the sake of lashing out."
"Agreed." Jeff nodded. "He doesn't hate Jews. He hates joy and freedom, unbound by race, color, or creed. The only anti-Semite here is Pierce."
"What?" Pierce looked up. "I resent that, Jeffrey."
Britta reeled the discussion back in. "What are you going to do, Annie?"
"I don't know." Annie bit her lip. "My parents will be furious with me if I skip temple on the High Holidays! Not to mention… you know." She pointed towards the ceiling.
"Professor Whitman?" asked Pierce.
"No," Annie snapped. "You know. God!"
"Oh." Pierce looked surprised. "I always thought you people worshipped Satan."
"Those are Satanists, Pierce."
Annie had hit her breaking point for the day. Crumpling up a sheet of paper, she chucked it at Pierce's head and got to her feet with a pointed slam of her books. "I need to go think about this," she announced. "By myself."
"Annie, calm down," Troy said in an infuriatingly calm tone. "Look, why don't you just skip it? It's only one class."
Annie stared at him. "It's like you don't even know me," she gasped, suddenly feeling choked up. Gathering her books, she swept out of the room. Behind her, she heard footsteps, and glanced back to see Shirley and Britta hurrying out after her.
"Annie, wait," Britta called. Annie was tempted to keep walking, but loyalty got the best of her and she stopped, sniffling.
"Oh, sweetie." Shirley swept forward, putting an arm around her. Britta took the other arm. "Don't let it get to you. He's just a silly old fool."
"But he's still in charge of my grade," Annie sighed.
"Oh. I meant Pierce." Shirley shrugged. "But don't worry, honey. We'll think of something to do about that angry monster of a man too."
Annie let herself smile a little, wiping the tears from the corners of her eyes. "We?"
Britta squeezed her arm. "We," she agreed firmly.
"I didn't even think you'd really approve of me going to temple," Annie confessed shyly.
"Well…" Britta hesitated. "I can't say that any display of organized religion doesn't give me the heebie jeebies a little bit," she said, trying not to look at the determined lack of expression on Shirley's face. "But I object to tyranny much more. Let's take him down."
Shirley cleared her throat and pretended she hadn't heard any of that. "All right, ladies. Let's put our heads together."
Annie beamed at the both of them. At least one good thing was coming out of this, she supposed: it was reminding her just what kind of a family she'd picked up here at Greendale (even if it was one full of, as her mother would say, the goyim).
Relaxing, she let Shirley hustle her into the ladies' room so they could get to work on a plan.
