Yiddishkeit:

Stereotypes, American Media, and the

Construction of Modern Jewish American Identity

Caity Rose Campana

REL 3101: Religion and Popular Culture

Professor Julie Ingersoll

20 April 2017

1

Barry B. Benson, the witty, ambitious protagonist of Simon Smith’s and Steve Hickner’s

2007 animated comedy Bee Movie, is Jewish. But how, after watching a film entirely devoid of tallitot (prayer shawls), tefillin (phylacteries), kippot (yarmulkes), and anything else associated with traditional Jewish religious practice, are audiences able to conjure up such a straightforward impression of the main character’s cultural background—especially when, it is important to mention, that character is not human at all, but rather a literal bee? This question speaks to a much larger phenomenon within American media and, consequently, American society as a whole: the invention of a modern Jewish identity that is almost wholly divorced from the customs and religious piety associated with Judaism. One of the main vehicles of this observed cultural shift is the embedding of pictorial Jewish stereotypes into various media, most notably film and television. In the case of Bee Movie, then, viewers—at times subconsciously— recognize Barry as a Jewish individual not because his religious identity is ever explicitly stated, but rather because his tendencies and the actions of other bees in the film align with the images of Jewish people that American media presents and continually reinforces. Indeed, as Barry buzzes his way through the movie’s plot, he is cosseted by an overbearing mother and scolded by his meek, bespectacled best friend, Adam Flayman, for possibly harboring romantic interest in a non-“Beeish” wasp (a clever, insect-themed play on “white Anglo-Saxon Protestant”). What’s more, the overarching theme of Bee Movie centers on the exploitation of a marginalized group who are delivered only when a hero determines to confront the enemy—through a lawsuit.1 So solidly constructed and rooted in history are these stereotypes that assumed generalizations surrounding real people who comprise real ethnoreligious groups may be successfully transferred to small, fuzzy, non-human entities.

1 Bee Movie, directed by Steve Hickner and Simon J. Smith, 2007. 2

With that said, the goal of this research project is to examine the manifold links between

American media stereotypes and Jewish American identity. Ultimately, I argue that the aforementioned stereotypes have ensured that American culture regards Jewishness, or the secular state of being Jewish, as an entity distinct from religious Judaism. Beginning with a discussion of the theoretical and methodological framework against which this assertion is set, this essay then sets out to define stereotypes, provide a condensed history of Jewish stereotypes within media, and outline a handful of the Jewish stereotypes most prevalent in modern

American films and television shows. Finally, an analysis of the previously mentioned dichotomy between Jewishness and Judaism is provided, accompanied by a study of the many ways in which Jewish people have responded to the promulgation of stereotypes in media.

Berger and Luckmann

As this analysis overwhelmingly deals within the realm of social processes—and, in turn, examines how such processes impact human lives—it is more than appropriate to apply the work of Peter L. Berger and Thomas Luckmann to my thesis. Before delving into a brief summary of the theoretical framework provided by these renowned sociologists in their 1966 book The Social

Construction of Reality, it is necessary to outline a few assumptions to which we adhere for the remainder of this study—all of which run parallel to the notions introduced by Berger and

Luckmann. In order to best contextualize the rather broad subject matter with which this paper is concerned, we must assume that everything within society is socially constructed, that socialization is responsible for laying the groundwork for identity, that society lives within people just as people live within society, and, finally, that the construction of society is a catalyst for the enactment of hegemonic social control. Additionally, for the purposes of this study, 3

Berger and Luckmann’s work on the three “moments” of socialization will be magnified.

The first of these moments is externalization. With the aforementioned basic assumptions in mind, externalization refers to the meaning—of sorts—that humans create through interaction with one another. This occurs in a world where an existing social order (or, as Berger and

Luckmann put it, an institution) is already present: “Human being is impossible in a closed sphere of quiescent interiority.”2 Next in the process is objectification, or the moment at which, through habitualization and the presence of social patterns, the new meaning created during externalization becomes fact. As the authors write, “Habitualized actions…retain their meaningful character for the individual although the meanings involved become embedded as routines in his general stock of knowledge, taken for granted by him…”3 The final step discussed by Berger and Luckmann is internalization, which denotes the time during which behaviors in response to and assumptions about the objectified facts are learned so thoroughly that individuals—and society as a whole—no longer question them.

With those central ideas about socialization considered, one realizes it is certainly not a mistake that Berger and Luckmann devote a large portion of their book to exploring roles, identity, and how the two fit into externalization, objectification, and internalization. Here, “fit into” implies that roles and identities are the phenomena that result from the three-step socialization process—a notion that is, the authors assert, overwhelmingly evident. In reference to the origins of roles, Berger and Luckmann write, “[They] lie in the same fundamental process of habitualization and objectification as the origins of institutions. Roles appear as soon as a common stock of knowledge containing reciprocal typifications of conduct is in process of

2 Peter L. Berger and Thomas Luckmann, The Social Construction of Reality (Penguin Books, 1966), 70.

3 Ibid., 71. 4 formation...”4 The authors go on to argue that, quite simply, “roles represent the institutional order.”5 The construction of identity, as one could guess, is very similar to the construction of roles. In actuality, the two are inextricably linked: a person or group of people must either possess an identity or have an identity imposed upon them in order to properly fulfill the roles associated with said identity. As Berger and Luckmann posit, “Identity is formed by social processes. Once crystallized, it is maintained, modified, or even reshaped by social relations. The social processes involved in both the formation and the maintenance of identity are determined by the social structure.”6

Berger, Luckmann, and Jewish Identity

So, how does the cultural formation of a dichotomy between Judaism and Jewishness relate to Berger and Luckmann’s theory? As it turns out, nearly every aspect of the topic with which this paper is concerned fits neatly into the notions of externalization, objectification, internalization, roles, and identity detailed in The Social Construction of Reality.

In keeping with the traits exhibited by externalization, over time, Jewish stereotypes having little to nothing to do with piety or basic religious ritual developed. Objectification occurred as these stereotypes were enforced by many means throughout history, but most notably and most accessibly so in modern media; in many ways they became the primary vein through which people viewed—and still view—Jews. Finally, internalization: this has shaped not only how non-Jewish Americans and gentiles worldwide view Jewish people, but also how Jewish

Americans have come to view themselves. In short, it has resulted in American culture divorcing

4 Ibid., 92.

5 Ibid., 92.

6 Ibid., 194. 5

Judaism from Jewishness. As Berger and Luckmann rather beautifully summarize, “Man is biologically predestined to construct and to inhabit a world with others...In the dialectic between nature and the socially constructed world the human organism itself is transformed. In this same dialectic man produces reality and thereby produces himself.”7 It is salient to note here that the

American aspect of this paper’s thesis does not fully come into view until internalization comes about, as Jewish American identity in and of itself is a rather modern concept. Most of Jewish history has not occurred in North America, but rather in Europe and Western Asia.

Roles and identity are closely tied to this discussion, of course, and manifest in rather obvious ways once the groundwork of socialization is established. Media stereotypes and the habitualization of these stereotypes have worked to establish a Jewish American identity based not in religion as the hegemonic society understands it, but rather in emphasized, caricatured, and often harmful cultural assumptions. With this identity come roles that society expects Jewish

Americans to fulfill; some of these include the nice Jewish boy, the doting Jewish mother, the

Jewish American princess, the passive Jewish father, and various other stereotypes—many of which are associated with the outright antisemitic themes of Jewish clannishness, greed, and untrustworthiness.

Methodology

The culturally constructed division between Judaism and Jewishness that this paper seeks to explore paints for readers a fascinating picture of the nature of religion. Not only does it insist that religion is highly malleable; it takes issue with the definition of religion as a whole. Indeed, what else other than Jewishness may we call any given person’s individual expression of

7 Ibid., 204. 6

Judaism? Most importantly, this uniquely American dichotomy demonstrates to readers the relationship that links religion to culture; one may even go so far as to say that the two are one and the same. Of course, this affirms past theories about the nature of religion and society in general: Berger and Luckmann are perfect examples, as is Émile Durkheim, who emphasized the social aspect of religion in his The Elementary Forms of Religious Life.8

Data was collected to support this study’s thesis in two primary ways: research and ethnographic interviews. The subjects of the latter comprised a small portion of the University of

North Florida’s Jewish community (it should be noted that the interviews conducted—and the responses recorded in this paper—are limited by age group, nationality, gender, sexual orientation, language, and location). The questions that are brought to the primary sources in this essay are as follows: which Jewish stereotypes are most prevalent in American media and why?

What is the history of Jewish stereotypes in the media and for what purposes have these stereotypes been used in the past? How have Jewish Americans throughout time responded to such stereotypes?

Background: Stereotypes

One would be hard pressed to not find some form of a stereotype within the first few minutes of switching on the television or cozying up with the newest Netflix release. Stereotypes permeate nearly every corner of media—even those forms of news media that are purportedly dedicated to providing audiences with truth and transparency. And while it is relatively easy for one to identify a stereotype, for many—including social scientists—actually defining what a stereotype is often proves to be a more daunting task. In The Psychology of Stereotyping, David

8 Émile Durkheim, The Elementary Forms of Religious Life (Free Press, 1995). 7

Schneider offers that stereotypes are “qualities perceived to be associated with particular groups or categories of people.”9 Yet the author acknowledges that the true meaning of “stereotypes” extends much further beyond this baseline definition; aptly, the introduction to his book is partly dominated by his analysis of fourteen different definitions for the complex term suggested by other scholars. John C. Brigham, in his discussion of ethnic stereotypes, manages to narrow the concept’s definition down to “generalizations, concerning trait attributions, made about the members of an ethnic group,” while also acknowledging that ethnic stereotypes are associated with undesirability is some form or another.10 He and Schneider concur that stereotypes are altogether different from simple generalizations because they more often than not possess negative content; even when they appear to put forth positive content, the flip side of that positive content is also evident. For example, in response to the popular stereotype of elevated intelligence among Asian Americans, Schneider writes, “Saying that someone is smart may be an indirect way of saying that this person isn’t sociable or athletic. So even positive generalizations can impose straightjackets.”11 Stereotypes are different from simple generalizations because they often go hand in hand with prejudice and discrimination. That is, they incite people to look at massive swaths of humanity as exhibiting certain fixed traits, in turn causing the individual to evanesce. As Willard F. Enteman critically summarizes in Images That

Injure, “Stereotyping converts real persons into artificial persons. In our stereotypical acts, we treat people as proxies for a group we have decided they should represent. In short, we deny

9 David J. Schneider, The Psychology of Stereotyping (New York: Guilford Press, 2004), 24.

10 John C. Brigham, “Ethnic Stereotypes and Attitudes: A Different Mode of Analysis,” Journal of Personality 41, no. 2 (1973): 206.

11 Schneider, The Psychology of Stereotyping, 22. 8 them their humanity.”12 With all of the aforementioned perspectives considered, this paper regards stereotypes as social phenomena in which generalizations—nearly all of which are harmful to varying degrees—are made about groups of people based upon perceived attributes.

As one could guess, the act of stereotyping is deeply rooted in the human propensity for categorization. As humans, we categorize things for the purpose of better understanding and contextualizing the very complicated world around us. This “gives us [humans] predictive control over the environment, a leg up in deciding on appropriate behavior.”13 Moreover, stereotypes are related to schemas, or “theories we have about categories.”14 Of course, the inclusion of this information in no way is meant to explain away or justify the existence of stereotypes, but rather to situate stereotypes within a larger psychological and sociological narrative. Schneider goes on to present the theory that media, as opposed to individual people, includes stereotypes because of the perceived harmlessness of those stereotypes, the primacy of communication, professional obligations to audiences, and history. Regardless of the reason stereotypes pervade film, television, and like outlets, one must acknowledge that such generalizations—especially when they are presented visually—have very tangible effects on the people groups around whom they revolve. This sentiment is echoed by Enteman, who very candidly asserts, “The combination of stereotyping and prejudice becomes even more virulent in the context of pictorial imagery. The hackneyed phrase holds that a picture is worth a thousand words. We might suggest a new one to the effect that even a million words may not be able to

12 Willard F. Enteman, “Stereotyping, Prejudice, and Discrimination,” in Images That Injure: Pictorial Stereotypes in the Media, eds. Lester and Ross (London: Greenwood Publishing Group, 2004), 16.

13 Schneider, The Psychology of Stereotyping, 64.

14 Ibid., 120. 9 undo the negative impact of a single bad picture.”15

The myriad Jewish stereotypes that arose throughout history surely help comprise the

“bad pictures” Enteman references. The roots of these stereotypes stretch far back in time, most notably to the Middle Ages. Jews faced persecution and oppression before this time, at the hands of multiple empires and governments of antiquity. But with the establishment of Christianity as a dominant conversion-based belief system in the Mediterranean Basin came the continual uprooting and attempted destruction of Jewish communities. Marsha Woodbury notes in “Jewish

Images that Injure” that, “The Jews were called a stubborn people for refusing to convert to the religion of their hosts and instead maintaining their own beliefs, rituals, and customs, often at great personal sacrifice…Medieval Christianity portrayed Jews as grotesque individuals, ever ready to steal consecrated wafers, murder innocent children, and mock the rituals and the beliefs of the true faith.”16 From the fifth century onward, Jewish populations in the diaspora were marginalized, faced with pogroms (riots organized with the intention of exterminating Jewish people and their communities), and forced into certain professions and living situations. Indeed, the stereotypes surrounding Jewish clannishness and greed are products of the regulations imposed upon Jews by various European governments. As Woodbury continues, “…In medieval

Europe many governments restricted money handling and money lending to Jews and Arabs, believing finance to be morally wrong for Christians…competent financiers succeeded in a society where they could do little else.”17 These caricatures plagued Jewish people well into the twentieth century and still do today, with images of Jews as “usurious embezzlers, blasphemers

15 Enteman, Images That Injure, 17.

16 Marsha Woodbury, “Jewish Images That Injure,” in Images That Injure: Pictorial Stereotypes in the Media, eds. Lester and Ross (London: Greenwood Publishing Group, 2004), 123.

17 Ibid., 124. 10 in league with the devil, clandestine consumers of roast pork, and seducers of Christian virgins”18 circulating among white supremacist, alt-right, and neo-Nazi spheres in the United

States and abroad. Even a brief examination of the history of Jewish stereotypes leads one to realize that representations—such as the now notorious “Star of David tweet” made in July of

2016 by U.S. president Donald Trump (see Figure 1)—speak to inherent antisemitism, whether acknowledged or not. Such representations are created with the intention of othering and oppressing human beings on the basis of ethnicity and religion.

The proliferation of antisemitic stereotypes and depictions of Jews was unquestionably reached during World War II. Through film, news, advertisements, music, literature, and a litany of other media, the Nazi regime—specifically the Reich Ministry of Public Enlightenment and

Propaganda, headed by Joseph Goebbels—set out to “restore a true consciousness to a people so corrupted by non-Aryans that they were no longer aware of what traditional German values were.”19 An integral component of this “restoration” was, of course, the portrayal of Jewish people as not only lesser than, but as dangerous. While Nazi propaganda echoed this “Völkisch tradition of the primacy of the people and abhorrence of the Jew, which had embedded itself firmly into German life and thought for over a century,”20 it also gave credence to the myth of a worldwide Jewish conspiracy in which “an international clique of Jewish conspirators were preparing to assume total domination over all nations of the world.”21

Three notable films to arise in this era were Die Rothschilds, Jud Süss, and Der ewige

Jude, all methodically released in 1940 for the purpose of justifying the imminent genocide of

18 Ibid., 124.

19 David Welch, Propaganda and the German Cinema, 1933-45 (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2001), 33.

20 Ibid., 237.

21 Ibid., 238. 11 the Jewish people to the German public.22 The first two, set during the Napoleonic wars and the mid-eighteenth century, respectively, recycle typical depictions of Jewish people as insular, perverted swindlers. The latter film, whose title translates into “The Eternal Jew,” utilizes footage from Polish ghettos to illustrate for German audiences the squalor in which Jewish people purportedly “chose to live,” likening them to rats while simultaneously using video of

Jewish ritual slaughter to paint Jews as cold, calculating, unsympathetic, and violent sub- humans.23 Pictorial stereotypes are evident in the release posters for these films as well as other

Nazi propaganda, which highlighted “grotesque caricatures of Jews, featuring protruding noses and mouths salivating at the sight of money.”24 One advertisement for Jud Süss includes an image of the main character, a Jewish man, sporting sickly green skin (see Figure 2). In his

Propaganda and the German Cinema, 1933-1945, David Welch asserts that while Germans were already receptive to the virulent antisemitism doled out by propaganda, the constant stereotyping of Jewish people through all forms of media in Nazi Germany helped to “rationalize the measures that would have to be taken for the genocide that was to follow.”25 That is, the systematic use of negative pictorial stereotypes by the Nazi regime helped numb an entire populace to the humanity and suffering of millions of people.

Jewish stereotypes often considered different from the malevolent images discussed earlier, such as the nice Jewish boy stereotype, are similarly rooted in a complex history. What sets these stereotypes apart, aside from their presumed harmlessness, is the fact that they are still very much in circulation today—and, consequently, they still play a massive role in shaping

22 Ibid., 238.

23 Ibid., 246.

24 Woodbury, Images That Injure, 124.

25 Welch, Propaganda and the German Cinema, 238. 12

Jewish American identity. The concept of the nice Jewish boy, for example, is widespread within

American media yet is also the product of ancient cultural values; as Daniel Boyarin explains in

Unheroic Conduct, “The East European Jewish ideal of a gentle, timid, studious male—

Edelkayt—moreover, does have origins that are very deeply rooted in traditional Jewish culture, going back at least in part to the Babylonian Talmud.”26 Indeed, Jewish men—and Jewish women, who sought marriage partners believed to embody edelkayt—considered this feminization a “positive aspect of cultural identity.”27 However, the perceived sensitivity among

Jewish men was, and still is, frequently conflated with outright girlishness or homosexuality, and the norms of the “Christian Europe” about which Boyarin writes held that both of these traits not only classified someone as lesser than, but as deserving of punishment on the grounds of sexual deficiency. Thus, a cultural norm with no hints of “internalized contempt or self-hatred” that intended to assert Jewish identity “over-against its surroundings”28 began to take on a new, harsher meaning to European and American gentiles; to some, Jewish men were considered effeminate and weak. In a world where perhaps the worst thing a person could be was feminine,

Jewish women and men were considered akin to just that. Over time, this notion of gentleness as a dominant trait among Jewish men translated into both the nice Jewish boy stereotype and the passive Jewish father stereotype—images which to this day are easy to identify within the context of American film and television. A prime example of this stereotype exists in the extensive work of Jewish American director and actor Woody Allen, whose “movie persona is a true stereotype, a male with morose introspection, a fixation upon persecution and the Holocaust,

26 Daniel Boyarin, Unheroic Conduct: The Rise of Heterosexuality and the Invention of the Jewish Man (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997), 2.

27 Ibid., 12.

28 Ibid., 4-5. 13 with a restless, questing Jewish intellectuality.”29 The height of Allen’s stereotyping is arguably reached in the 1977 romance film Annie Hall, in which Allen portrays the titular character’s nebbish love interest, Alvy Singer, with seemingly abundant neuroticism, vulnerability, and awkwardness.30 The negative aspects of the nice Jewish boy and passive Jewish father stereotypes, when said stereotypes are taken out of their sociohistorical contexts, are manifold.

First, they operate under the assumption that Jewish men are somehow less manly (read: less human) simply because they do not adhere to patriarchal Anglo-Saxon definitions and depictions of manhood. Second, because they are frequently associated with another stereotype: the shiksa goddess, who, with her false lashes, gleaming blue eyes, lustrous blonde hair, and hourglass figure, serves to entice her Jewish partner into throwing off the imagined manacles of his cultural identity. Such tropes are so common that one may recognize them even when reproduced in silent, unmoving renderings (see Figure 3). Moreover, as Marsha Woodbury elaborates, “The popular TV formula in which male Jews are married to or romantically involved with shiksas

(gentile women) denigrates Jewish women because it makes them appear undesirable and because almost never is the reverse true.”31 Finally, the stereotypes surrounding Jewish men are harmful when they go hand in hand, as they so commonly do, with fetishization. When used in this manner, they other and commodify Jewish men, subsequently denying such individuals their humanity. Too often, Woodbury argues, American media ensures that “the Jew is the fat kid, the one at the bar mitzvah, the boy who finishes last at the footrace. The Jew is the indulging, nouveau riche father, telling people what to buy wholesale. He is ‘my son the doctor’ or the smart kid in the film Broadcast News, the kid the other students beat up after his graduation

29 Woodbury, Images That Injure, 125.

30 Annie Hall, directed by Woody Allen, 1977.

31 Woodbury, Images That Injure, 125. 14 speech.”32

Prevalent stereotypes of Jewish women, too, tell a story of cultural construction and assimilation. Of these, the two most neatly defined are the Jewish mother stereotype and the

Jewish American princess stereotype. As might be expected, the former refers to the idea that

Jewish mothers are overbearing, dramatic, gossipy, and all too invested in the lives of their children. The latter refers to the idea that young Jewish American women are spoiled, materialistic brats represented by fashion-forward characters such as Cher Horowitz, the protagonist of Amy Heckerling’s 1995 classic Clueless.33 According to Joyce Antler in her You

Never Call! You Never Write!, such images (with the exception of the Jewish American princess) reflect a fate similar to that suffered by the nice Jewish boy: over time, cultural norms intended to distinguish Jewish communities and people as different from their gentile neighbors were converted into negative, yet somehow mild, stereotypes. Antler continues, “Excessive, overprotective, neurotically anxious, and ever present, the Jewish mother became a scapegoat for ambivalent and hostile sentiments regarding assimilation in a new society, changing family dynamics, and shifting gender roles. At times, she also was an emblem of unstinting love and devotion.”34 Thus, actress Estelle Harris’s portrayal of George Costanza’s mother in the renowned 90s sitcom Seinfeld,35 with her whiny Brooklyn accent, coiffed hair, and constant governing of George’s every move, nearly altogether ignores its own historical foundation. As

Marsha Woodbury explains, “Part of the stereotype comes from the historical roots of Judaism,

32 Ibid., 125.

33 Clueless, directed by Amy Heckerling, 1995.

34 Joyce Antler, You Never Call! You Never Write!: A History of the Jewish Mother (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), 2.

35 Seinfeld, NBC, created by Jerry Seinfeld and Larry David. 15 the closeness of the family, and the struggle for survival in a new country. The Jewish woman had to manage the family while her husband pursued religion, and she consequently developed the strong personality and business skills that are her stereotype.”36 Just as is the case with

Jewish male stereotypes, the Jewish mother stereotype misses “the complexity and diversity of real Jewish mothers.”37 Indeed, every stereotype, being that they are generalizations by definition, tends to slight the endless variations that characterize humanity. The results of this process are perhaps no more clearly illustrated than in the media-nurtured creation of a dichotomy between Judaism and American Jewishness.

Analysis: Judaism and Jewishness

How does one explain the division between Judaism and Jewishness that American culture appears to cultivate? The discussion should begin, perhaps, with the acknowledgement of one glaring fact: ethnicity, culture, language, and assimilation are at the heart of the split. The final trend in Jewish stereotypes left to analyze may be the most important one. All of the generalizations, stereotypes, and categorizations regarding Jewish people and culture examined thus far have applied only to Ashkenazim, or Jewish people of Eastern European and Western

European descent. So, not only do representations of Jews in American media tend to ignore the rest of the world’s Jewish populations—Mizrahim, Sephardim, Ethiopian Jews, the Bene Israel,

Chinese Jews, and many others—they foster narrow stereotypes that nonetheless have a very real impact upon Jewish Americans. As noted before, stereotypes in American media are only one of the vehicles through which the Judaism-Jewishness dichotomy has formed, and we see this illustrated clearly in the way American society views Jewish people it has not been conditioned

36 Woodbury, Images That Injure, 126.

37 Antler, You Never Call! You Never Write!, 3. 16 to view as Jewish. That is, other Jewish groups may be regarded as having an affiliation with

Judaism the religion, but not as “Jewish” in the true, American sense. Images of Chinese people laying tefillin and Ethiopian people donning tallitot disrupt the careful act of categorization that has occurred within the American psyche—and been transferred to the screen—since Jewish populations first began to immigrate to the United States en masse.

This information leads us to ask three essential questions. First, is it indicative of the birth of a new, secular Jewish American identity? Second, are religious American Jews threatened by the genesis of this new identity? And, finally, can the simplified world constructed by Jewish stereotypes in the media eventually become a reality—a world where people may identify as wholly Jewish while religious Judaism, at least for the most part, dissolves into the past? Two perspectives attempt to answer these questions. The first is represented by Jewish scholars

Robert Amyot, Lee Sigelman, and Elliott Abrams, who argue that not only is secular Jewish identity very real, it also poses tangible threats to the American Jewish community. The second perspective is represented by a handful of Jewish-identifying interview subjects who currently attend university as well as journalist Gene Demby, all of whom argue that while secular Jewish identity is real, it is not detrimental to American Jews, religious or otherwise.

From the outset, Amyot and Sigelman, in their article “Jews without Judaism?

Assimilation and Jewish Identity in the United States,” are forward with their assertions about the construction of Jewish American identity. The authors insist that “Judaism plays the central role in defining and maintaining Jewish identity; although close interpersonal relations with other

Jews play an important role, religious devotion is the main pillar of Jewish identity in the United

States.”38 And while this may very well be the case for some American Jews, Amyot and

38 Robert P. Amyot and Lee Sigelman, “Jews without Judaism? Assimilation and Jewish Identity in the United States,” Social Science Quarterly 77, no. 1 (1996): 177. 17

Sigelman recognize that not only is the basis of Jewish identity migrating from religiosity to ethnicity, but “…even Jews who do not practice Judaism as a religion and who do not participate in Jewish communal life may nonetheless engage in ‘strong and prideful assertions of Jewish identification.’”39 This element of self-identification in particular is apparent in the interview excerpts to come. While Amyot and Sigelman concede that “Judaism and Jewishness are no longer as intertwined as they once were,”40 both authors maintain that religious devotion—or, less broadly, the observance of rituals, myths, and traditions associated with Judaism—is ultimately the only cement that American Jews may rely on to hold their community together.

Next, the notion that the American Jewish community is in danger of disappearing (a concept especially evident when phrases such as “internal erosion and corruption,” “spiritual Jewish genocide,” and “the end of American Jewish history” are used)41 is very clearly illustrated in

Elliott Abrams’ book Faith or Fear. Here, Abrams argues that in order to survive as a community, Jews can—and should—overcome their own prejudices surrounding Christian

Americans and subsequently take a lesson of religiosity and faith from those Christians. As the author writes, “Religious fervor is being associated with ignorance and lack of education.

Christians whose faithfulness to their religion, and ability to keep their children faithful to it, should be a model for Jews, are instead seen as bumpkins and bigots.”42

Gene Demby’s National Public Radio article, the substance of which is based upon an

October 2013 Pew Research Center study titled “A Portrait of Jewish Americans,” stands in stark

39 Ibid., 178.

40 Ibid., 187.

41 Ibid., 177.

42 Elliott Abrams, Faith or Fear: How Jews Can Survive in a Christian America (New York: Free Press, 1997), 97. 18 contrast to the bleak outlook provided by Amyot, Sigelman, and Abrams. Despite the fact that

“nine in 10 American Jews born before World War II identify themselves as Jewish by religion, but nearly a third of Jewish millennials—that is, people born after 1980—identify as having no religion at all,”43 Demby’s writing paints a decidedly hopeful image of modern American

Jewishness. He notes that the aforementioned move away from religion—which all four authors appear to agree is and/or has occurred—“shouldn’t be construed with not wanting to be

Jewish…94 percent of the people Pew surveyed said they were proud to be Jewish.”44 Where

Amyot, Sigelman, and Abrams concern themselves with how today’s Jewish Americans can possibly identify as Jews without religious affiliation, Demby appears to offer up a simple answer: in addition to sharing innate ethnic bonds with one another, respondents in the Pew study held that “Jewishness was both about history and about the way folks orient themselves around certain ideals…Large majorities thought that remembering the Holocaust and living ethically were central to their sense of Jewishness.”45 The words of Kayla Short, a sophomore at the University of North Florida, and Samantha Shepard, a junior at the University of North

Florida, reflect this sentiment. Shepard, who identifies as Jewish but not as religious, notes that,

“I do not agree with all the beliefs held by the Jewish religion nor am I very religious, but being

Jewish is a culture as well and I am very much a part of that culture.”46 Short, who identifies as

Jewish and as religious, responded that, “My parents believe that any person of any religion who goes to worship once a week but is a malicious person otherwise doesn’t make a good Jew…It is

43 Gene Demby, “A Rapid Shift for Jews Away from Religion, but Not Jewishness,” NPR.org, last modified October 1, 2013.

44 Ibid.

45 Ibid.

46 Samantha Shepard in discussion with the author, March 2017. 19 definitely possible to be Jewish without being explicitly religious. ‘Jewish’ is, a lot of the time, a feeling from within about your own beliefs. I always make the joke that I am Jew-ISH.”47

Interestingly, when asked about the Jewish stereotypes with which each had been faced while growing up Jewish, both Shepard and Short answered with examples that had practically nothing to do with religion. Shepard, referencing stereotypes discussed earlier in this paper, including Jewish miserliness and corruption, said that, “Growing up, kids asked if I was going to pick up coins on the ground. I haven’t experienced it [antisemitism] in a while. I think the last instance was when I overheard people saying they weren’t sure if they could trust Bernie Sanders since he was Jewish.”48 Short’s response illustrated the impact of a stereotype not discussed in this paper, but that nonetheless is tied into the concept of edelkayt and presumed Jewish acquiescence: “In high school, I experienced antisemitism in the form of ignorance. Peers in my

English class would make jokes; what really got to me was when we’d be watching stacks of dead bodies from the concentration camps and people in my class would accuse Jews of passivity.”49

Now to answer the three questions posed earlier: according to each source addressed, a new, secular Jewish American identity has emerged within the past few decades and, yes, many religious Jews—but specifically leaders in religious Jewish communities and Jewish scholars— are threatened by this apparent migration away from Jewish piety and Judaism the religion.

Finally, while stereotypes may help to distinguish American Jews from the rest of the U.S. population, the oversimplified, kitschy, and often harmful world represented by them is simply not realistic. Where there are humans, there is complexity. Where there is society, there is

47 Kayla Short in discussion with the author, March 2017.

48 Shepard, interview.

49 Short, interview. 20 complexity.

Conclusion

This exploration of American Jewishness reveals two truths about the nature of religion.

First, religion is inherently cultural; it shapes who we are, how we see ourselves, how we understand the world around us, and how the world sees us. Second, religion is pliable; through varying cultural norms, it can mean almost anything to anyone. Moreover, the images we use to contextualize our surroundings matter a great deal. The rudimentary bits of categorization that have seeped their way into the American psyche in the form of Jewish stereotypes may not be responsible for the rift between Judaism and Jewishness, but they have undoubtedly served to reinforce it. Nevertheless, modern Jewish American artists—who author Nathan Abrams affectionately refers to as “New Jews”—appear increasingly unafraid to express different understandings of yiddishkeit through their work, in which the stereotypes of antiquity may be both done away with and reclaimed. As Abrams mentions, “…We have witnessed New Jews who are nasty, brutish, solitary…spaced-out, criminals, porn stars, assassins…cops, rebellious, in outer space, cowboys, skinheads, gay, lesbian, transsexual, superheroes…immigrants, refugees, survivors, and so on.”50 So, perhaps Israeli novelist Sami Michael was onto something when he claimed that “there is more than one way to be Jewish.”51 And maybe—just maybe—the religion of Barry B. Benson, the Bee Movie protagonist mentioned in the introduction, is not Judaism at all, but rather his Jewishness: his own unique yiddishkeit.

50 Nathan Abrams, The New Jew in Film: Exploring Jewishness and Judaism in Contemporary Cinema (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2012), 207.

51 Ibid., 207. 21

Bibliography

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Annie Hall. Directed by Woody Allen. 1977.

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Clueless. Directed by Amy Heckerling. 1995.

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Seinfeld. NBC. Created by Jerry Seinfeld and Larry David.

Shepard, Samantha. Interview by the author. Orlando, FL. March 31, 2017. 22

Short, Kayla. Interview by the author. Jacksonville, FL. March 27, 2017.

Welch, David. Propaganda and the German Cinema, 1933-1945. New York: St. Martin's Press, 2001.

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References

(Left) Fig. 1. Screenshot of the image and message tweeted by Donald Trump on 2 July 2016, accusing his opponent in the 2016 U.S. presidential race, Hillary Clinton, of corruption. From: PolitiFact, http://www.politifact.com/truth-o- meter/article/2016/jul/05/donald-trumps-star-david-tweet-recap/.

(Right) Fig. 2. Release poster for the 1940 Nazi propaganda film Jud Süss. From: The Warfare History Network, http://warfarehistorynetwork.com/daily /wwii/jud-suss-the-film-that-fueled-the-holocaust/.

(Left) Fig. 3. Shiksa Goddess by William Deutsch. Scanned art print.