Ahead of a very Jewy Emmys, a short history of TV’s Jewification
MOT characters are de rigueur in Hollywood today, and unlike in days of yore, often with as much sincerity as hilarity
Since the Vaudeville days of Milton Berle and George Burns, pop culture’s love affair with Jewish content is legendary. But with today’s wide cast of characters and MOT references, has American television ever been Jew-ier?
The long list of Jews nominated for the upcoming Emmy Awards begs this question. On so many different types of programs, Jewish characters keep appearing, and unlike in days of yore, often with as much sincerity as hilarity. This seeming explosion of Jewish characters, themes, and discourse on American TV, especially comedy, is largely the product of the “Seinfeld” era, observers say. Its roots, however, lie much further in the past.
“The explosion of Jewishness on TV is to a large extent the culmination of what had begun in the 1960s with standup comedy and film,” says Jarrod Tanny, associate professor and Block Distinguished Scholar in Jewish History at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington. “It took changing TV demographics and a daring show like ‘Seinfeld’ to bring the revolution to television.”
As any “Seinfeld” fan knows, the show’s stolen babka, marble rye and shameful rabbi were layered with endless overthinking and neuroses exaggerated to comic effect. These variations on Jewish themes have proliferated on television since the legendary series began in late 1989 and continued through 1998.
And once it opened the door, co-creator (with Jerry Seinfeld), executive producer and head writer of “Seinfeld,” Larry David, took the shtick to a whole new level, from 2000 to 2011 as creator, star and writer of his hit HBO show, “Curb Your Enthusiasm.”
Echoing all the way back to the exalted Talmudic badranim — comedians rewarded with a special place in heaven for making others laugh — Jews in show biz are hardly new.
“Of course, Jewish entertainers, directors, producers, and writers played leading roles in popular culture — film, TV, stand-up comedy, theater, from the early 20th century onwards,” Tanny says.
“But until the post-World War II era they largely muted their Jewish identities. Part of it was self-censorship, as they believed that nobody really wanted to watch or hear about Jews. Part of it was the climate of anti-Semitism in nativism in America at the time,” says Tanny.
“To be sure, entertainers like the Marx Brothers and Jack Benny managed to slip in little bits of Jewishness into their work, a form of signaling to the Jews in the audiences. But most non-Jews would largely have been oblivious to this,” he says.
Contrast that to today’s gay party planner Pepper Saltzman, a flamboyant recurring Jewish character portrayed by Nathan Lane on ABC’s “Modern Family,” and credited with an inventive Passover “Seder-Night Fever.”
More significant is Max Greenfield starring as Schmidt in Fox’s “New Girl.” As the sole Jewish character in a diverse cast, Schmidt drops surprising cultural bombs on nearly every episode. When he learns his girlfriend Cece might be pregnant, he contemplates classic Jewish monikers, such as Mordechai and Menachem Mendel Schneerson, the name of the late Lubavitcher Rebbe. The show’s upcoming fifth season promises plenty of multicultural hijinx when Schmidt marries his Indian love, Cece, who grew up Hindu.
Meanwhile, ABC has renewed the comedy series about a largely assimilated (shrimp parm-loving) family, “The Goldbergs,” which introduced the term yenta as both noun and verb.
Even on daytime television, there have been many unexpected — even bizarre — TV Jewie moments of late. Last season, LaVerne Cox, Time magazine’s first transgender cover-girl and (non-Jewish) star of Netflix’s “Orange is the New Black” showed up on the Wendy Williams show teaching the host, and the audience, how to say, “How’s it going?” Hebrew.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FuZIp26WUKE
Meanwhile, Cox’s primetime series depicts Cindy, an African-American inmate who feels she finds “her people,” converts in prison and initiates her own ritual immersion, or mikveh, in a natural body of water.
And Amazon’s “Transparent” explores the lives of an entire Jewish family whose aging patriarch, played by Jeffrey Tabor, comes out as transgender.
It’s not the first time Jeffrey Tabor has given definition to a dysfunctional Jewish family. He played twin brothers in the hair-brained “Arrested Development,” which ran on Fox from 2003 to 2006 and has been a perennial Netflix fan-favorite since its 2013 re-release. Together with actors Lev Schreiber, Adrien Brody, and Mayim Bialik, Tabor is among the current 2015 Emmy nominees whose roster resembles the Actor’s Shul newsletter wish-list or perhaps a “Who’s Jew” of Hollywood.
‘These pop culture events suggest the question, “What will the goyim think?”‘
The debate over the impact of how Jewish actors and writers portray themselves to the general public has raged, Tanny says, ever since “Philip Roth published ‘Goodbye Columbus,’ Lenny Bruce became famous, Woody Allen made ‘Annie Hall.’”
It has continued with the on-screen antics of Sacha Baron Cohen, Sarah Silverman, and the fictional Seinfeld when he “had the nerve to make out with his girlfriend during ‘Schindler’s List’ or when the mohel on the show botched a circumcision.”
“These pop culture events suggest the question, ‘What will the goyim think?’ If we play with Jewish stereotypes in public, will it worsen anti-Semitism?” Tanny explains.
Whereas in previous decades, the exploration of such Jewish issues had predominantly occurred in literature, film, theater, and stand-up comedy, American television is now the address for what Tanny calls, “the negotiation of Jewish identity.”
And that sign of the times may deserve an Emmy all of its own.
The Times of Israel Community.