The Simpsons have skeletons in their closet. And they’re shaped like menorahs... b y M a r k I. P in s k y The pink suburban house might well be the most recognizable American home in history, except maybe for the White House. It’s near Moe’s Bar and the Kwik-E-Mart and right next door to Ned, the nicest darn-diddelyest neighbor you could hope for. So many of us have spent 30 minutes there on Sun­ day nights over the past 18 years that a recent study found that 91 percent of American children and 84 percent of adults recognize its inhabitants-Homer, Marge, Bart, Lisa and baby Maggie. OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2007 / MOMENT 47 g | | | The Simpsons, which originated as a worthy path, albeit circuitous, through this series of one-minute animated shorts world is the Jewish one, which, like much of on the Tracey Ullman Show in 1987, is the show, holds surprises. One Sunday ■ B now in its 19th season, with more than evening, when a door to the cluttered storage 400 episodes broadcast; the show airs in closet in the Simpsons’ house swings open, it 70 countries and has been nominated reveals, for just a fleeting moment, a shiny for 34 Emmys, winning 23. This past summer object seemingly out of place amid the subur­ The Simpsons Movie raked in nearly half a bil­ ban detritus: a Hanukkah menorah. What is lion dollars. this ritual candelabrum doing in the home of There is no question about the impact of the a Gentile, lower-middle-class family in a small, series on North American and, arguably, world overwhelmingly Christian city? A home we culture. “The Simpsons is an inexhaustible repos­ thought we knew so w ell... itory of humor, invention and insight, an achievement without precedent or peer in the history of broadcast television, perhaps the C helm: S pringfield’s Sister C ity purest distillation of our glories and failings as Although it exists in a different time a nation ever conceived,” wrote New York Times and place, Springfield, population film critic AO. Scott in his review of the movie. 30,700, could easily be a sister city of “I have long been of the opinion that the entire Chelm. Long before The Simpsons history of American popular culture—maybe became a cultural phenomenon, Jew­ even of Western civilization—amounts to little ish folklore and literature had already more than a long prelude to The Simpsons.” mastered the art of making light of As fodder for satire, The Simpsons has taken village idiots. Many wrote stories of this sort, on modern life’s major institutions: schools, but» the finest were Isaac Bashevis Singer’s tales government and corporations. But the show of Chelm—the iconic Eastern European shtetl really began to break ground when religion was of Jewish fools, buffoons and simpletons, all of added to the list of targets. Considered too whom think they are as wise as scholars. divisive by sponsors and programmers alike, the “The oldest absurdist jokes are the ones subject was off limits during prime time net­ about Chelm, which date back to the 19th cen­ work television’s early years. Gradually and fit­ tury,” writes Rabbi Joseph Telushkin in Jewish fully, faith found its way onto the small screen Humor: What the Best Jewish Jokes Say About the in the late 1980s and into the ’90s with uplift­ Jews. “The citizens of Chelm, an actual city in ing, inspirational shows such as H ighway to Poland, were for unknown reasons stigmatized Heaven, 1th Heaven and Touched by an Angel. But as idiots. Most Chelm jokes are distasteful.... it wasn’t until The Simpsons took aim that reli­ However, the best Chelm jokes are not about gion was portrayed in a way that more closely stupidity, but rather about a naivete so extraor­ mirrored its complex presence in American life. dinary that the listeners are catapulted to a new The Simpsons are a typical Middle-Ameri- vision of reality.” can Protestant family in a typical city, Spring­ Excise the jokes and The Simpsons is a tragedy field (named after another famous television city of operatic proportions—repeated failures and from the 1954-1960 series, Fathers Knows Best). frustrations punctuated by the occasional, They say grace at meals, read and refer to the wacky, life-affirming reprieve that returns every­ Bible, pray out loud and, on Sundays, dutifully thing to the status quo. As is the case with the attend services at the First Church of Spring­ denizens of Chelm, the lives of the Simpson field, part of an invented denomination called family and their neighbors are an ongoing the Western Branch of American Reform Pres- chronicle of misfortune. No one in Springfield bylutheranism Church. ever really succeeds in changing human nature, But running beneath the Father Knows Best including his or her own. The characters are by veneer is a busy, ever-moving religious world turns stupid, ignorant, self-absorbed, lovelorn, in which there is much to explore. One note­ renal and good-hearted. 48 OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2007 The distinct sensibility of Chelm humor ^ T o u r of J ew ish S pringfield suffuses much of the program. “The show As in many a North American city, has a Jewish feel,” says Moshe Waldoks, a Springfield’s Jews first settled downtown Boston-area rabbi and co-editor of The B ig before fleeing to the suburbs, although Book of Jewish Humor. “One of the essential they still return to the “old neighbor­ characteristics of Jewish humor, historically, hood” to dine at restaurants like Tan- is parody—the characters on The Simpsons len’s Fatty Meats and Izzy’s Deli. Most seem to are an extension of that. Much of the show’s ittend Springfield’s Orthodox synagogue, Tem- content is poking fun at authority. The idea *>le Beth Springfield, just down the street from of parody, of peeling away things we think he First Church of Springfield. The two hous- are on the surface and getting to deeper :s of worship are so close, in fact, that the church things, is very Jewish.” narquee once carried a decidedly non-ecumeni- Other strands of Jewish humor run :al message: “No Synagogue Parking.” through the series. One comes direct from The town’s small Jewish community is The Harvard Lampoon—a publication where nisunderstood in ways that are still common Jews and Irish have traditionally congregated n small Protestant communities. Homer, for and from which many Simpsons writers hail: a nstance—our bald and sort of snarky iconoclasm. Another is the iverweight, “D’oh”-spout- dark, rapid-fire angst of tummlers like Lenny ng everyman—laughs when “The Simpsons Bruce and Don Rickies. “The Simpsons fits in le first hears Hebrew, with this kind of wisecracking comedic tradi­ hinking it’s a made-up lan­ tion, which stretches back to vaudeville, the guage. In another episode, fits in with Borscht Belt—the absolute nursery of Jewish vhen he needs $50,000 for comedy—and early radio and television,” says i heart bypass, he goes to this kind of Robert Thompson, director of the Bleier :he rabbi, pretending to be Center for Television and Popular Culture at lewish in the only way he wisecracking Syracuse University. aiows how. “Now, I know I Walter Podrazik, co-author of W atching laven’t been the best Jew, comedic tradition, TV: Six Decades o f American Television, muses :>ut I have rented Fiddler on that the humor of The Simpons is, in many '-.he R oof and I will watch it.” which stretches respects, analogous to that of Your Show of All he gets from the rabbi Shows, which featured Jewish comedians Sid s a dreidel.) And at the ele­ back to vaudeville, Caesar, Mel Brooks and Carl Reiner in the mentary school, Principal early 1950s and where “the characters were Skinner fields an angry the Borscht Belt— not the ones in charge. They had to deal :all from Superintendent with life and whatever turns it imposed on Chalmers. “I know Wein­ the absolute nursery them.” The Simpsons, adds Podrazik, takes this stein's parents were upset,” of Jewish comedy.” same approach to life—“where it’s you fie stammers. “But, but, ah, against the world and, mostly, the world [ was sure it was a phony wins. But you do have victories, and they excuse. I mean, it sounds so always come in humor.” made up: ‘Yom Kip-pur.’” Mel Brooks (who has “appeared” as him­ Then there is Bart, the ever-scheming son, self on The Simpsons), perhaps best articu­ who in one Simpsons comic book is drawn to lated what lies beneath so many Jewish Judaism, like a moth to a menorah, for the eight jokes, and so many Simpsons jokes, when he nights of Hannukah presents. He visits a rabbi said: “Humor is just another defense and argues that if he became Jewish, he’d be a against the universe.” “trash-talkin’ spiky-haired Seinfeld with a Fox attitude.” But the rabbi predicts the boy won’t Continued on page 66 OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2007 / MOMENT 4 9 Continued from page 49 S pr in g field ’s M od el J e w revealed in this third-season episode like the religion because “so much Hershel Krustofski, better when he is asked to say grace before din­ Judaism is like opera, the Lincoln-Dou- known as Krusty the Clown, ner at the Simpsons and recites the glas debates and the Atkins Diet, all rolled hosts Lisa and Bart’s favorite Hebrew blessing over bread, the motzi.