Creating Jewish Identity In American Popular Culture

The past few decades have seen a remarkable surge in Jewish influences on American culture. Entertainers and artists such as Jerry Seinfeld, Adam Sandler, Allegra Goodman, and Tony Kushner have heralded new waves of television, film, literature, and theater; a major klezmer revival is under way; bagels are now as commonplace as pizza; and kabbalah has become as cool as crystals. Does this broad range of cultural expression accurately reflect what it means to be Jewish in America today? Bringing together fourteen new essays by leading scholars, You Should See Yourself examines the fluctuating representations of Jewishness in a variety of areas of popular culture and high art, including literature, the media, film, theater, music, dance, painting, photography, and comedy. Contributors explore the evolution that has taken place within these cultural forms and how we can best explain these changes. Are variations in our understanding of Jewishness the result of general phenomena such as multiculturalism, politics, and postmodernism, or are they the product of more specifically Jewish concerns such as the intermarriage/continuity crisis, religious renewal, and relations between the United States and Israel? Accessible to students and general readers alike, this volume takes an important step toward advancing the discussion of Jewish cultural influences in this country.

The series Studies in Jewish Civilization, based on the annual symposium of the Klutznick Chair in Jewish Civilization and Harris Center for Judaic Studies, examines Jewish history and culture around the world and throughout history. Volume 17 includes fourteen essays that provide an overview of Jews and Judaism in American popular culture. Relevant discussions of music, film, television, literature, cartoons, sports, and material culture inform our current understanding of the influence that Jewish culture has in modern American society. Taken together, these essays make a strong case that appropriate analysis of popular culture is essential for a proper understanding of something as multifaceted and varied as American Judaism and the American Jewish community. The essays recognize, even if they cannot precisely define, something distinctly "Jewish" and distinctively "American" in each of the individuals and groups featured in this collection.

This unique encyclopedia chronicles American Jewish popular culture, past and present in music, art, food, religion, literature, and more. Over 150 entries, written by scholars in the field, highlight topics ranging from animation and comics to Hollywood and pop psychology. Without the profound contributions of American Jews, the popular culture we know today would not exist. Where would music be without the music of Bob Dylan and Barbra Streisand, humor without Judd Apatow and Jerry Seinfeld, film without Steven Spielberg, literature without Phillip Roth, Broadway without Rodgers and Hammerstein? These are just a few of the artists who broke new ground and changed the face of American popular culture forever. This unique encyclopedia chronicles American Jewish popular culture, past and present in music, art, food, religion, literature, and more. Over 150 entries, written by scholars in the field, highlight topics ranging from animation and comics to Hollywood and pop psychology. Up-to-date coverage and extensive attention to political and social contexts make this encyclopedia is an excellent resource for high school and college students interested in the full range of Jewish popular culture in the United States. Academic and public libraries will also treasure this work as an incomparable guide to our nation's heritage. Illustrations complement the text throughout, and many entries cite works for further reading. The volume closes with a selected, general bibliography of print and electronic sources to encourage further research.

Two creative centers of Jewish life rose to prominence in the twentieth century, one in Israel and the other in the United States. Although Israeli and American Jews share kinship and history drawn from their Eastern European roots, they have developed divergent cultures from their common origins, often seeming more like distant cousins than close relatives. This book explores why this is so, examining how two communities that constitute eighty percent of the world’s Jewish population have created separate identities and cultures. Using examples from literature, art, history, and politics, leading Israeli and American scholars focus on the political, social, and memory cultures of their two communities, considering in particular the American Jewish challenge to diaspora consciousness and the Israeli struggle to forge a secular, national Jewish identity. At the same time, they seek to understand how a sense of mutual responsibility and fate animates American and Israeli Jews who reside in distant places, speak different languages, and live within different political and social worlds.

Musician Josh Groban claims that he is not Jewish because of his paternal lineage. Contrariwise, Comedian Tiffany Haddish claims Jewish identity specifically because of similar lineage. Using this contrast as a jumping off point, this book explores how Judaism and Jewishness represent themselves in popular culture.

The past few decades have seen a remarkable surge in Jewish influences on American culture. Entertainers and artists such as Jerry Seinfeld, Adam Sandler, Allegra Goodman, and Tony Kushner have heralded new waves of television, film, literature, and theater; a major klezmer revival is under way; bagels are now as commonplace as pizza; and kabbalah has become as cool as crystals. Does this broad range of cultural expression accurately reflect what it means to be Jewish in America today? Bringing together fourteen new essays by leading scholars, You Should See Yourself examines the fluctuating representations of Jewishness in a variety of areas of popular culture and high art, including literature, the media, film, theater, music, dance, painting, photography, and comedy. Contributors explore the evolution that has taken place within these cultural forms and how we can best explain these changes. Are variations in our understanding of Jewishness the result of general phenomena such as multiculturalism, politics, and postmodernism, or are they the product of more specifically Jewish concerns such as the intermarriage/continuity crisis, religious renewal, and relations between the United States and Israel? Accessible to students and general readers alike, this volume takes an important step toward advancing the discussion of Jewish cultural influences in this country.

The subject of Jewish identity is one of the most vexed and contested issues of modern religious and ethnic group history. This interdisciplinary collection draws on work in law, anthropology, history, sociology, literature, and popular culture to consider contemporary and historical responses to the question �Who and what is Jewish?� These essays are focused especially on the issues of who creates the definitions, and how, and in what social and political contexts. The ten leading authorities writing here also look at the forces, ranging from new genetic and reproductive technologies to increasingly multicultural societies, that push against established boundaries. The authors examine how Jews have imagined themselves and how definitions of Jewishness have been established, enforced, challenged, and transformed. Does being a Jew require religious belief, practice, and formal institutional affiliation? Is there a biological or physical aspect of Jewish identity? What is the status of the convert to another religion? How do definitions play out in different geographic and historical settings? What makes Boundaries of Jewish Identity distinctive is its attention to the various Jewish �epistemologies� or ways of knowing who counts as a Jew. These essays reveal that possible answers reflect the different social, intellectual, and political locations of those who are asking. This book speaks to readers concerned with Jewish life and culture and to audiences interested in religious, cultural, and ethnic studies. It provides an excellent opportunity to examine how Jews fit into an increasingly diverse America and an increasingly complicated global society.