I’ve noticed there is a type of what I call Jewish cultural revisionism (not to be confused with Holocaust revisionism, chas v’halilah–God forbid) gaining popularity. That is, a rebellion by alienated, mostly secular Jews against “their father’s” Judaism–a religion and culture full of certainties and platitudes about Jewish identity. Those certainties almost always focus on Israel as the center of the Jewish universe. These folks are willing to question these sacred cows. They’re looking for their Jewishness perhaps in “all the wrong places,” at least according to their parents or grandparents, but what they’re finding is arresting, sometimes disturbing, but always challenging to our notion of who we are and what it means to be a Jew.
One example of this was the Israeli Anti-Semitic Cartoon Contest. It was hosted by one of these avant-garde Israeli cartoonists and graphical novelist who wished to challenge the notion that a Jew should not make fun of his fellow Jews. I thought some of the cartoons were repulsive in their anti-Semitic stereotypes. But I thought others were dead on in their critique of Jewish identity and our sometimes too-tight bond with Israel, especially when it violates norms that many of us were brought up to believe that Jews adhered to.
Today’s NY Times features a similar project called Jewface. That is, a recording of turn of the century American Jewish popular music that poked fun at Jewish customs and attitudes of the period:
The album…contains 16 songs salvaged from wax cylinder recordings and scratchy 78s, from a century-old genre that is essentially Jewish minstrelsy. Often known as Jewish dialect music, it was performed in vaudeville houses by singers in hooked putty noses, oversize derbies and tattered overcoats. Highly popular, if controversial, in its day, it has been largely lost to history — perhaps justifiably.
“It’s like Hitler’s playlist, but it’s not, because it was actually Fanny Brice’s playlist,” said Jody Rosen, 37, a music critic for the online magazine Slate, who has spent more than a decade researching the genre…“It’s a more complicated and nuanced vision of Jewish history than what you absorb at Hebrew school.”
…Coarse, yes. Consider the very title “When Mose With His Nose Leads the Band,” from 1906. The four collaborators acknowledge that these playful vaudeville ditties could function as hate speech in the wrong context, and they carry particular power in a politicized climate where newspaper cartoons can cause riots
So some of it ain’t purdy. If we really want to plumb our identity should we only examine the high and noble within us? Or should we examine our identity warts and all? Many Jews would prefer the former articulation. I know I prefer the latter.
Here’s how one of the producers addressed this question for the Times:
…This forgotten genre serves as a window into American Jewish heritage for people just like them [the producers]: young secular Jews weaned on kitschy pop culture, abrasive rock and irony, as much as on the Torah.
“We’re all kind of disaffected American Jews, who aren’t particularly religious, don’t really practice and don’t really lead very Jewish lives at all,” said Mr. Kun, 35. “Digging up these recordings was really about figuring out who we were in this world.”
When I first read the term, Jewface, I naturally thought it was a play on Scarface (though that didn’t make much sense). Rather, it is a play on the term Blackface, since the cultural attitudes and expressions in these recordings exaggerate Jewish stereotypes in order to poke fun, much as Blackface did to African-Americans during roughly the same period (though starting earlier). But one crucial distinction that the Times writer doesn’t mention is that while Blackface featured white performers mocking Blacks, Jewface featured Jewish performers aping and mocking their own.
The genesis of the project is a fascinating story in its own right which I’m proud to say involves our own Seattle Experience Music Project playing a supporting role:
Mr. Rosen discovered the genre in the mid-’90s, while working on a master’s degree in Jewish history at University College London. One day, while doing research at the British Library, he ran across the sheet music for a song called “I Want to Be an Oy, Oy, Oyviator” — a comedy song about a Jewish aviator. Digging deeper, he found sheet music for hundreds of such songs, usually decorated with insulting caricatures of Jews as Shylocks, nebbishy immigrant greenhorns or schlemiels (like Levi, the Jewish wrangler in “I’m a Yiddisher Cowboy,” from 1908, who falls for an Indian maiden, then runs afoul of her father, the Chief).
Fascinated, Mr. Rosen set off on a quest to track down actual recordings of this music. He trolled dusty junk shops, record-collector conventions and, inevitably, eBay, looking for wax cylinders, which cost $10 to more than $100, and 78s. His search, he said, “took roughly 10 years on and off.”
Mr. Kun heard Mr. Rosen speak about the genre at the Experience Music Project conference in Seattle last year. Within weeks, they said, they were planning an album.
The article’s closing paragraph places Jewface in a broader American context that seems apt to me:
But to him [Rosen], Jewish dialect music played a role similar to that which gangsta rap plays among African-Americans today. Vulgar and, to some, culturally debasing, it nevertheless managed to smuggle a subculture’s distinct idiom into mainstream popular culture, while creating jobs for entertainers, managers, theater owners and music publishing houses from the same culture.
In other words, in its day the music and cultural assumptions represented in Jewface were genuine, raw expressions of what it meant to be an American. These were assumptions that shocked many Americans surely. But their sheer vitality and largeness of emotion could not be ignored just as rap music, no matter what we think of it, represents a raw and powerful artistic expression of what it means to young African-Americans to live here now. They cannot be ignored and cannot be denied. As such, Jewface too can be a movement of which American Jews are rightfully proud even if they may not always be comfortable with everything it represented.
For more of the background of the project go to the Jewface site.
Most Jews and most decent people are asleep at the wheel.
A Holocaust prevention must be the common goal for humanity.
We have to bring together an alliance of all decent people.
Decency trumps JUDAISM.
Most Jews are in love with Judaism, which is a dangerous aphrodisiac, and we forget to act responsibly for our children.
I wish, we forget Judaism for a second and act as responsible humans. In a human chain.
Muslism and Christians must understand this message.
People of some reason can act together fruitfully.
I am ready to brainstorm for it.
Steven
Steve, I was raised Methodist which basically was “love your neighbor as yourself”. I do not recognize the Christianity of the fundamentalists and cringe at their message and sense of superiority.
I like the way you put it — a human chain of all of us.
Well Steve, in a PERFECT world I would say, wow! that’s a great idea. But with the jewish population shrinking through disuse and assiimilation, and Israel in danger of being decimated, I just don’t think we, as jews, have the luxury of too much self-deprication. As far as our relationship to Israel is concerned, ponder this. You are probably too young, as I am, to remember a time that there was no Israel for jews. You also don’t remember a time in these United States, when there was much discrimination against jews in social and business situations. Please understand, that if jews have that “special relationship to Israel” it is because we have a powerful Israel that we are respected in THIS country. Don’t fool yourself into thinking that you get respect just because you live here. Talk to people who lived in the US before Israel’s independance and you’ll see.
I don’t accept Steve’s perspective on this matter which involves the renunciation of all religions including Judaism. But I reserve a special objection to Stacy’s prescription for Jewish normalcy. Israel will never bring Jews acceptance or respect in the eyes of the world especially given the policies it has adopted over the past 40 yrs. No, Jews must make their mark on their societies on the strength of their religion & their contributions to them. An Israel that oppresses Palestinians & treats its Arab minority as 2nd class citizens is not a recipe for instilling respect for Jews among the world’s citizens.
If Israel can ever return to normality and become a stable, peaceful part of the Mideast, then Jews can be proud of it & the rest of the world will follow suit. That would be a wonderful day. But as it is, Israel is a millstone around the neck of Diaspora Jews. I say this with great sadness & as a progressive Zionist who cares for Israel’s welfare.
In my humble short life, I have lived in four cultures, Eastern and Western Europe, Israel and USA, and I came to the conclusion to say good bye to Jewish faith, as Spinoza has suggested.
I learned from my parents and from my rabbis the love, the respect and the rules of the Judaism.
They gave me tools to live and survive. But when I have started my independent jurney, I voted for atheism.
The decency of most religious people is undeniable. I strongly recommend to all people of all faiths, to look around and see the decency on the other side.
I am for a human chain and human bridge among humans, without the numerous landmines of the Holy Scriptures.
The Scriptures were all noble endeavours, but they became a fortress and prison for the believers. The arguments are leading to wars, and it is time to shake hands with each others without the burden of studying the text.
Let us be free people and not law students of the Halacha and Hadith and Cathecism and the Gospels.
There is beauty in life beyond our Tanach as many of us has found it.
I am sure, there is beauty in your life, too, with the Tanach, but you may explore new shores too.
Just for the record, Israel is a fun country, but there have been tragic turns inside and outside of Israel following Rabin’s death. I thought he was greater than most leaders of Israel. Natanyahu had such a bad concept. He and his team are responsible for lots of our current problems even beyond the Middle East.
While the safe harbour called Israel is a great gift for persecuted and free Jews, the Balfour Declaration has to be remembered. It had proposed a concept for a peaceful coexistence.
It is not deniable that the poor and desolate Jewish immigrants scared the Palestinians, in the early pre-WWI times. Imagine a slum, invading your country. Beggars and thieves are roaming your cities.
It has changed, the Jews who came later brought education and civility, but the memory of the clashes were not repaired.
We can talk about the truth of the Israeli new and old history. The solution must be found for the people who live there now, and will be born there. And let us stop Iranian search for a nuclear bomb.
Steve…I see your view upon organized religion, but there is no need to depart from the Jewish Community…It is resonable to make this choice for yourself, but if you do not raise your kids through the temple and Jewish experiences…you are defeating the Jewish population…Individuals CAN make a huge difference when dealing with a small population. I urge you to do as you please, but keep in mind the future of the Jewish people when you decide to raise children, or influence others. thanks