I don’t care whether Lena Dunham’s jokes are funny or not. But I do think that if you’re going to say that she doesn’t have the right to tell Jewish jokes in this day and age because “in the U.S. today, most Jews are just white people” and “to most millennial-and-younger Americans, Jews are regular old boring white people” then you should stop and consider what this means.
For starters, it would help explain why American Jews and Israeli Jews are not viewing Benjamin Netanyahu the same way. At least, if Jewish Americans feel that they are basically boring white people, then it follows that they don’t feel besieged. And for my purposes here, all that really matters is how American Jews feel. I think most of the country (geographically, at least) still sees Jews as exotic, different, and suspect. But where most American Jews actually choose to live, they are blending in a little more each day.
Maybe this is why some folks are emphasizing the anti-Semitism in Europe. It’s an attempt to maintain that sense of besiegement so that American Jews don’t get so comfortable that they forget why Israel exists.
You might think it’s a sign of progress that people don’t laugh knowingly when Lena Dunham says that her Jewish boyfriend doesn’t tip. And it is.
But, for some supporters of Israel, the lack of laughs is seen as a dangerous signal that American Jews are forgetting their past.
Both assimilation and acceptance are creating a wedge between American Jews and Israel.
You do like this Zionist bs of Jeffrey Goldberg … I don’t think he speaks for European Jews but is more a mouthpiece of Bibi Netanyahu.
○ Jeffrey Goldberg: Is Peace Likely? Offensive charm by Iran
○ Aliyah debate exposes French Jewry’s fault lines
Do we need a reminder Dutch right-wing fascist and Islamophobe Geert Wilders is funded by American Zionists and is actively supporting Palestinian transfer across the Jordan river to their own “Palestine.”
I couldn’t make myself finish that New Republic piece, but I think she’s overanalyzing things.
for most of the 20th century, Jewish comedians made their living telling Jewish jokes. Oversensitive bloggers who label Dunham’s innocuous stuff anti-Semitic need to go listen to some Jackie Mason.
Was once dating a man who said something disparaging about Jews. Disparaging enough that I said, “That sounds anti-Semitic.” He responded with, “I’m entitled. I’m a Jew.”
Lena Dunham is Jewish. So, I guess we goyim should STFU.
Just so you know: Goyim is actually not a polite word, even when used in a self-deprecating way.
Checked on it and it’s considered equivalent to gentile. Plus, as a goy, I’m entitled.
“Goyim” is not really an impolite word. It means, literally, “nations” and in common usage, “non-Jews”. In certain contexts I it can be used impolitely, but it’s not inherent to the word.
But this brings up an interesting point. Traditionally, Jews do not divide all humans into “black” and “white”, but rather into Jews and everybody else. Jews who seriously consider themselves “white” are by definition, quite assimilated. Yes they are white, but the concept white is not a major demarcation in Jewish thought.
Next time I’ll simply use “non-Jew” instead. That’s all I meant and thought it was clear. But …
One of my Jewish friends told me goyim translates as “those who are against us”
It doesn’t.
Isaiah 2.4: “Lo yisa goy el goy cherev, lo yil’m’du od milchomo” — “Nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.”
That’s where the line “ain’t gonna study war no more” — in Down by the Riverside, comes from.
Problem is that bringing up Jackie Mason rather aggressively misses the whole point.
The premise here is that the reason Lena Dunham shouldn’t make Jewish jokes and the reason that they aren’t funny is that Jews are basically white people now and so they aren’t a persecuted or oppressed group. Basically, it’s a little like telling Polish or Irish or Italian jokes, rather than black or gay jokes.
I’m not saying that I agree with this analysis, but the idea is that Jackie Mason’s brand of humor is not only in bad taste but it’s not even funny anymore because Jews have been assimilated.
To whatever degree this is true, and there is at least some truth in it, it places American Jews in a different universe from Israeli Jews. Israelis are not just surrounded by hostile enemies and a restive Palestinian population, they are increasingly loathed and reviled by the international community and it certainly isn’t safe for them to travel abroad in much of the world. There’s no sense in which an Israeli feels secure, safe, accepted, or “basically white” in the sense that we mean that term in America.
So, it’s not just that Israelis are drifting away from American Jews politically, they are drifting away in their entire experience of the world and their place in it. And these two things are clearly related.
So, on the one hand, American Jews have the luxury of not worrying about terrorism or attacks on their country (at least, not beyond the worry that all Americans feel), and on the other hand, they don’t see the need to oppress Palestinians, take more of their land, and arouse the hatred of the whole world. There actually is no need to do these things, but tell that to an Israeli politician who is trying to win an election or manage a coalition government.
So, without sharing the same fear and not having to navigate the same political realities, American Jews are increasingly alienated by and unsympathetic to Israeli’s policies, and this is exacerbated by the left/right ideological split and Israel’s taking sides with the GOP against the Democratic president.
It’s a series of wedges that are being split wide open.
In my view, a lot of Israeli Jews are more assimilated than a lot of American Jews, though of course to different cultures. Both American and Israeli cultures have put great pressure on immigrants to adopt new cultural values, but I believe there has been more flexibility, in this respect, in America, than in Israel, and that the Israeli experience has been one of relentless pressure to forge a “new Jew” that is nothing like the old Jew.
Even the Haredi are not as much like the old Haredi as they would like to think, as they too have adapted to these extremely different conditions. You don’t think there was ever anything like the Uzi-toting settler Haredi in the many centuries of European Jewish experience, do you? In America, the Yiddish language was forgotten by most; in Israel, it was actively suppressed.
Interesting points.
This topic is probably richer than I anticipated.
While the things you are focusing on are splits that developed or began at the very outset of the split and are therefore more cumulative than recent, they’re still contributing.
Israel had to craft a national identity from scratch, and the decisions they made were kind of efforts to create a new people with new attitudes, a new/old language, a new ideology. This was definitely a much more intense experience than the average post-war Jewish kid in New York suburbs was subjected to.
A lot to think about on this subject.
Very rich, and very little discussed. Among Jews, taboo, and among non-Jews, not on the radar screen. Thanks for bringing it up.
I personally would never want to be in the same corner as the ADL!
○ The Misery and Tribulations of Abe Foxman
○ Abe Foxman’s ‘Anti-Semitic Pandemic’ – 2007
○ In footsteps of Ronald Reagan … Benjamin Netanyahu, the New Republican Hero
I have never found Lena Dunham funny under any conditions.
Anti Semitism in Europe? Remember that speech Bibi gave in France after the terror attack. The speech ended up inviting French Jews to come to Israel and when Bibi was done….the audience response was to start singing the French national anthem. This moment is on Utube. You should take the time to go see it and pay close attention to the look on Bibi’s face.
There is hardly a day where I don’t, at some point, feel apart from the mainstream of America. It will definitely take a bit more time until saying one is Jewish is the same as saying one has brown eyes. But you did make statements to that effect, BooMan.
I’m not sure if I understand you correctly.
Maybe I should be clearer myself.
I don’t agree that Lena Dunham can’t tell Jewish jokes nor that her jokes all fell flat. I didn’t think it was all that funny, but I got the point.
I also don’t agree that Jewish Americans are either totally assimilated or totally accepted in American society. I’ve lived in western Michigan, and I can tell you that people don’t have a clue there what your average New Jersey Jew is like. They think all Jews are ultra-orthodox despite Jews being all over their televisions, in their movies, and in some cases actually serving as their senators. It’s kind of amazing that this disconnect can exist, but when you live somewhere with almost no Jews and the only time you think about them is in the context of Bible study, these disconnects can exist.
Negative stereotypes about Jews are very commonplace in the Midwest, although in my experience people actually spend almost no energy thinking about Jews one way or the other. It’s more like people in Alabama talk about Catholics or people who aren’t Baptists. It’s kind of gossipy, mildly disapproving, with a touch of mistrust.
Yet, in New Jersey, where I grew up in the 1970’s and 1980’s, being Jewish wasn’t particularly noteworthy. The majority of my closest friends were at least half-Jewish and they neither talked about nor expressed any feelings of oppression. No one ever questioned my choice of friends or made me feel like they were less than fully American normal kids like any other.
So, I think it’s easy for Jews to experience a normal American life in some parts of the country, and those areas dominate our media and therefore our culture. In New York, Philly, DC, Boston, LA, and San Francisco, Jews might as well be white so long as they don’t make a deliberate effort to be identifiable as Jews.
Maybe when it comes to intermarriage or dating the issue gets a little more testy, depending on the attitudes of the respective parents, but even here things are pretty relaxed where I live.
In any case, even though I don’t agree with the article I linked to, I do see more and more acceptance and assimilation, and do think it is causing a chasm to open between the lived experiences of American and Israeli Jews.
As for comedy, the break was probably Seinfeld. You could watch that show and not really realize that Jerry was Jewish or figure out whether Constanza was or wasn’t. He went mainstream and it worked for him. And I think it was a sign that things were changing. A Jewish comedian could be just a comedian and be loved for it.
I love Mel Brooks but I saw him the other day and he opened with like three Jewish Catskill jokes in a row. And it did seem a little dated, like maybe time has passed him by.
No, I was not clear. What I meant was that you did acknowledge that Jews are not assimilated. Hence my poorly worded 3rd sentence. Sorry for the misunderstanding. I understood what you were saying and made a rather vague post.
Yep, borscht belt shtick is for niche audiences at this point.
Newsweek: Bush Gets Intelligence Group Award
Did they hold a silent auction for paintings by the GOP’s new artist who’s just like Picasso ?
The Intercept SPOT
TSA “Spotters” would have like nabbed that Germanwings co-pilot. Or maybe not:
Hey — a billion on “complete bullshit” is bullshit chump change to the USG.
OT:
This doesn’t look good at all:
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/29/us/politics/to-avert-repeat-of-2008-clinton-team-hopes-to-keep-bil
l-at-his-best.html
Jesus, why do special mythologies garner special privileges?
And when I said Jesus above, I wasn’t trying to garner special privileges for Christianity, I was trying to make a point.
When does self-identified specialness according to some super-ultra-mega-Deity stop meaning that you’re above everyone else?
Holy fuck. At this point, am I really supposed to get a raging hard-on about the term “jew”, “muslim” or “christian”?
How come as an agnostic I can’t cry and complain and boohoo really fucking loudly that someone called me an “atheist” and get all sorts of special attention?
As a species, we’re fucked. Because this is even a god damn topic. Pun god damn intended.
So the piece was amusing, but I didn’t finish it…
As to the greater topic of American Jews. While not Jewish myself (though I’ve participated around the edges), I am married into a family with ties to the US, Israel, Brazil, and parts of Europe and North Africa. In short, a microcosm of both Israel and the Diaspora including both the nominally religious and the truly devout.
I think you can pin most of the differing views between American Jews and Israeli Jews of this on the Haredim.
Israel at it’s founding– whether or not one agrees with the justifications for it– was a rather leftist state. But, given the decimation of the worldwide Jewish population prior to its founding, early Israeli leaders felt an obligation to preserve that which was inherently Jewish. Torah Study. Even if many of the founders were not particularly religious, they felt a need to subsidize religious study. Those who wanted to do such studying received a complete state welfare program for as long as they were living.
Note this wasn’t “for the best and brightest Talmudic scholars”– but rather those who wanted to. If I recall (and I’m too lazy to check facts now) it started in early days with the hundreds of men and nowadays its 5 figures. Not just these guys though. Their whole families. G-d wants you to have big families… Haredim average at 5 kids per household They are now 10% of the population, projected to be 20% in 2030.
Israel has mandatory military service. Torah studiers are exempted. So you have a big and getting bigger group with a vested interest in making Israel a more religious state. And they rather like the idea of a greater Israel, even though (or is it “especially if”?) they aren’t the ones defending it. Coincidentally in Netanyahu they have a well-spoken Dick Cheney who actually has combat credentials, plays to the religous nuts and the fearful, all the while dismantling the national/secular welfare state and enlarging the religious one.
Yes, Netanyahu was in a coalition with Yair Lapid, but that was a forced marriage that he left as soon as he could (this past election) and yes there are very religious Israelis and supporters of Israel who don’t support Netanyahu (including my extended family). But the fact remains that Netanyahu is a Republican in every way shape and form. He is a representative of militaristic and predatorial capitalism, using the religious to manipulate his nation. Many Israelis can’t stand him either. But there he has the benefit of demographics and a parliamentary system that allows him mastery over potential coalitions that would oppose his policies.
The fact that two thirds of American Jews are Democrats explains pretty easily explains the wedge. Less so I think than American Jews forgetting their identity.
I have believed, since an encounter in the 90s, that THE seminal event in the current political makeup of Israel was the opening of the Russian curtain, and the subsequent emigration of Jews from Russia to Israel, the US, anywhere but Russia. This event coincided with the hardening, darkening, and sharpening of the Israeli right. Any thoughts on that?
I have a soft spot in my heart for Jackie Mason, rightwing tool as he is, or at least for the tradition he represents, of the great Henny Youngman (“Why are Jewish divorces so expensive?–Because they’re worth it!”). It’s out of date because good comedians don’t do those one-liners any more, of any ethnicity, and there’ve been too many bad comedians using the style.
Dunham’s piece sounded shocking to me, as I read about it through the TNR link, because I didn’t get the essential fact that she is-or-identifies-as Jewish, and it’s not OK for white people to make jokes about Jewish restaurant customers not tipping. The TNR article was very coyly written. And when I read it carefully enough, I thought, oh, so she’s Jewish, so that’s fine, and looked at the New Yorker piece, and the problem with it is that it’s just not that well done, as often happens when they turn over the Shouts&Murmurs to a celebrity. You have to reread and analyze it to get that it’s a joke, and by the time you do it’s no funnier than the TNR article. I’m not sure if the idea could be made to work, but it would take some really exquisite timing. And then a lot of the particular gags are weak, and the sequence is disorderly so you don’t get a sense of growing understanding of what’s going on. Maybe it should have been a dialogue with a person who thinks she’s talking about a boyfriend and gets angry, while the reader knows it’s a dog all along; as it is just asks too much of the reader, and doesn’t give much in return.
Boo’s right that there’s something going on here with a larger significance in the context of Israeli Jews vs. American Jews, but I think assimilation is really not the right hook to hang this discussion on. What it’s really about is the safety of Jews in the US, to assimilate or not as they choose, to be or not be white people, whereas to be in Israel nowadays is to be in a state of constant terrorized mobilization against threats that are occasionally even real. Israel was meant to be the haven where Jews would at last be free to lead ordinary, banal lives, and it isn’t; turns out that Blue America, New York in particular, is still the Goldene Medine and the Promised Land.
And it is the land of Jewish jokes, too. It’s safe in America for Jews to play with stereotype. Though Dunham herself is apparently too assimilated to do it well (see comment in Time by Mark Oppenheimer)–she’s no Sarah Silverman. But it may be that some Zionists don’t like the persistence of New York comedy, because it points at how unsafe and not-Zion Israel is.
Hello! Thank you for your article. I’d like to try to compare it to my previous experience of learning Ukrainian through Skype on online classes. I did around ten conversations over Skype with a native speaker from http://preply.com/en/ukrainian-by-skype. And I was pretty satisfied with their Quality. I think they have a strong teaching quality, practicing their course curriculum now I can speak Ukrainian easily like a native they also provide personal tutors, but I Want to try another option.