Preface and Acknowledgements
This book began as a fifty-to-seventy-word paper on Judaism, toward completion of my master’s degree. Over time it grew and was nourished by several sources, including the tutelage of my master’s degree advisor, Professor Kenneth Green, and in discussion with others. While Judaism and Jewishness are not currently the focus of my academic work, I have always been interested in my own Jewishness and the manner in which it manifests itself, and also in the way that others understand Jewishness. So many times, I have encountered possibly good natured or even possibly micro-aggressive misunderstandings of what Judaism is, such as: “So Kosher means blessed by a Rabbi?” or, “Is this the holiday when you fast or the one with the latkes?” or, “Why do you cut your children?” or even, “My other Jewish friend doesn’t keep the Sabbath so why do you?” While exhausting, these are examples from the outside, from outsiders looking into Judaism and Jewishness. Due to these misunderstandings, a book about Judaism, written for non-Jews makes sense.
So, why write another book about Jews in popular culture? Why popular culture at all? We know that Jews have seemingly dominated the entertainment industry. Furthermore, as the title of Alan Zweig’s documentary, When Jews Were Funny (2013) takes for granted, not too long ago, there was a time that Jews seemingly dominated the world of professional comedy. This stereotype that Jews were somehow synonymous with entertainment and culture has been studied and continues to be studied. The lens used in most of these works is from the point of view of the general culture in which we live, and these studies are both important and valid and deserves understanding. So, understanding the place of Jews, as Jews, in popular culture, is not what this book is about.
I was fortunate, while pursuing my master’s degree in Religion with a collaborative specialization in Jewish studies, to have had the leeway to examine Judaism itself, as a culture. Judaism, as its own culture, interacts with the surrounding culture. I chose to consider the fact that, from the point of view of Judaism, that the Jew, Judaism, and Jewish culture are not synonymous or congruent with the cultures in which we exist, that instead, there is a complex interaction of some sort going on. It is this interaction between Jewishness and the surrounding culture that is the subject matter of this work. It was my desire to understand that perhaps the goal of Jews within the surrounding culture is not to assimilate, completely, to become swallowed by the culture that surrounds us, and that instead, perhaps Judaism, rather than being merely a religion, a nation,1 or a culture, is a completely different thing or an amalgam of these things. This book is an attempt to understand what kind of thing Judaism is, using popular culture as an example.
The question you may now ask is why popular culture? There are a lot of good answers, but the best answer, I think, is just that, that it is popular. If we agree that Judaism is not merely theological, that is has a cultural and national component, then Jewish culture must stand in relief to something. In this case, that thing is the surrounding culture. Over the centuries, the fact is that Jews and Judaisms have appeared in the Christian and Muslim scriptures, in Shakespeare, in poetry, in prose. The issue here is that these depictions are popular depictions of Jews from an outsider point of view. I was interested in understanding Jewishness from a non-Hegemonic viewpoint, and one that was as comprehensive across time.
In terms of age and seemingly paradoxically, Judaism is simultaneously 3500 years old and 350 years old, depending on what one means by the word Judaism. If one wishes to understand Judaism as an ancient nation and as the antecedent of both Christianity and Islam, with roots in Samaria, Babylonia, Phoenicia, Greece, Egypt, Rome, and that Jews who are alive today are the descendants of this people, then Judaism is 3500 years old. If, instead, one wishes to understand that Judaism is a modern religion, then Judaism is merely 350 years old. Furthermore, there are those Jews who disclaim Judaism as a religion but insist that they are Jewish by culture and others who’s claim to Jewishness may be fraught. I examine these claims to Jewish identity, not just from a popular cultural point of view, but also from the point of view of Judaism. This idea of identity, and specifically of “Jewishness” is complicated, especially when the modern idea of identity as intersectional comes into play, and I explore some of these complications, specifically the idea of being “partly Jewish,” “half-Jewish” and the idea of Jewish typology as reflected in modern denominations.
Of necessity, then, I will need to tread on matters historical, cultural and what would appear to be theological, but all of which are in truth “mere” Judaism.2 The truth is that, arguably, Judaism can exist without theology, that one rabbinical definition of an apostate Jew is a person who follows all of Jewish and Judaic law including all traditions and yet still denies that there is a G-d. In this sense, Judaism, at least historically has required certain tenets of orthopraxy, that Judaism requires ‘proper action,’ as opposed to orthodoxy, or proper belief.3 Just as European colonialists named all of the disparate religions that they encountered on the Indian subcontinent as a single monolithic thing, ‘Hinduism,’ which legacy has left us with a historical mess to untangle, Christian and so called ‘mainstream’ cultural encounters with the various expressions of Judaism throughout the world and their attempts to understand it from an outsider point of view, have left us with the problem of understanding that Judaism is a nation, or Judaism is a religion, or Judaism is a culture, or that Judaism is a collection of traditions, or Judaism is an amalgam of some sort.
A religious studies professor of mine stated, years ago and somewhat acerbically, that where academic philosophy departments had funding, then Buddhism was studied as philosophy and where religion departments had the funding, then Buddhism was studied as religion. I would argue that both of these categories, religion and philosophy, are based in a certain kind of Victorian epistemology, because Buddhists in China are certainly different than Buddhists in California. So too, understanding Judaism as a theology is unfair to both Judaism and to theology, which is a Christian category. In many ways, as an ancient cultural practice that has evolved over millennia, Judaism does not fit into modern categories, however since Judaism exists in the modern world, and is adapting to modern conditions, it is indeed proper that we understand how it represents itself and how it signifies. I am using popular culture as my case study to understand how it is that Jewishness and Judaism signify, given that Jews represent approximately one percent of the world population (Pew Research Centre, 2015).
Sill, belief in something is belief. It is by choice that I neglect the term ‘spirituality’ in this book, since the definition of ‘spiritual’ is “relating to religious matters.” I know that many consider themselves to be spiritual, rather than religious, but really, by definition, this argument is tautological. Instead, I am including all spiritual phenomenological beliefs under a single umbrella, that if one has phenomenological beliefs, one is, in some sense, religious. Belief is belief.
I need to acknowledge the funding support of Joseph-Armand Bombardier Canada Graduate Scholarship (SSHRC) and also the moral support of the Anne Tannenbaum Centre for Jewish studies at the University of Toronto. I need to thank several people without whom I could not have written this work. Kenneth Green, a man who has encouraged me in my work and is still, in many ways, a mentor to me. Doris Bergen of the Anne Tannenbaum Centre for Jewish Studies. Marcel Danesi my mentor during my undergraduate studies and Brian Baigrie, my current supervisor. Elana Goldfried, Cindy Do and Bianca Grier read the manuscript and offered suggestions. My great appreciation also to Rob Nagus and Rabbi Ariella Rosen of Hillel at University of Toronto and to Rabbi Zalman Oster the Rosh Yeshiva of Mesivta Lubavitch Toronto. Most of all. I dedicate this book to my mom, Elsie West, who passed last December and who I still miss terribly.
While I do understand that many, especially white supremacists, want to racialize Jews, to construct a Jewish race, we Jews do not construct ourselves in this way.
In my usage ‘Mere Judaism’ I am obviously recalling theologian C. S. Lewis’ book Mere Christianity (1954).
Contract with Christianity, which, in a very general sense, only requires proper belief and with Islam, which requires both proper belief and proper action.