The Commentator

For better or worse, the most recognizable Jewish figures in America are not rabbis, philosophers and intellectuals, but writers, actors and entertainers.  This has been the case for most of the last fifty years.  It’s undeniable that Jewish contributions to American popular culture inform many Jews’ self-perception (and how we are perceived by the rest of the country).  Let’s leave aside that more Jews have seen Exodus, or Gentleman’s Agreement than have read Iggros Moshe, Halakhic Man or for that matter, Man is Not Alone.  If we ask ourselves what themes, symbols and values are truly important to American Jews, the films would offer a very different answer than the books.  We should not presume to say that Halakhic Man‘s answer is more valuable or substantial, because many Jews will inevitably find the films to be the most resonant.  Why is this the case?  This is only the first of many questions we can ask about the relationship between Jewish popular culture and Orthodox thought.  Why do some important aspects of Orthodoxy, like Shavuot and Succot, simply fail to find representation in Jewish popular culture?  How is the mainstream Orthodox response to anti-Semitism and the Holocaust different from Hollywood’s?  Orthodox scholars could address these insightfully if they took a less timorous and distanced stance towards Jewish film, theatre, literature and music. 

To my knowledge, no Jewish artists’ bodies of work have been explored from a religious-philosophical perspective.  Even serious Orthodox and religious literature, when compared to the enormous volumes of modern Jewish fiction, music, and film in America is hopelessly scant.  There is certainly no lack of literature that addresses relevant scientific topics from an Orthodox perspective.  Is it unreasonable to expect a serious discussion of cultural topics, too?  It seems that a compounded series of misunderstandings is holding up the conversation.

Let us begin with the distancing label of “Cultural Judaism.”  It’s a sort of catchall for the works of these Jewish artists, sometimes the identities of the artists themselves. ⁱ  The immediate problem is that the image conjured up by “Cultural Jew” has very little to do with being a serious Jewish artist or devotee of Jewish cultural studies.  The term seems to be conflated in people’s minds with mere Jewish secularism.  In “Return of the King,“ a recent episode of the HBO series Entourage, Jewish talent agent Ari Gold must fidget and sweat through an entire Yom Kippur in Hollywood without using his mobile phone to broker a deal for his client.  He is aware in the most superficial sense of the importance of Yom Kippur (his wife will yell at him if he uses the phone).  Yet his pushiness, sarcasm and neurosis conform to Hollywood’s popular notions of Jewish behavior.  Culturally, Ari Gold fits the Jewish mold, but not religiously.  One should not mistake Ari for a “Cultural Jew,” because “Cultural Judaism” does not automatically fill the vacuum left by an absence of religiosity.  That, if anything, would be Jewish secularism, although in some cases, it can be chalked up to plain indifference.

It’s a mistake to think of the body of Jewish Culture as a cohesive, organized “movement.”  Yet, I have heard instances in which “Cultural Judaism” is used in the same sense as Modern-Orthodox Judaism, or Reform Judaism.  “Cultural Judaism” we should remember has no intellectual and spiritual leaders and no authoritative, widely accepted creeds.  Inventing such religious significance for Barry Levinson, Marc Chagall or Saul Bellow, and their respective works, from thin air doesn’t help the conversation either.  Belief in the ideas and creeds of Cultural Judaism, if such things exist, certainly doesn’t preclude belief in tenets of Orthodox, Conservative, or Reform Judaism.  Nobody forces Jewish screenwriters to affirm that Judaism is a culture and a lifestyle as much as it is a religion.  This means that “Cultural Judaism” does not seek to replace other religious movements, however frequently it seems to be the case.

If an interest in the cultural work of American Jews is treated as its own religious movement, it becomes easy to dismiss the phenomenon as a conflicting ideology.  But is “Cultural Judaism” really incompatible with mainstream Orthodoxy; more importantly, can it teach no lessons to Orthodox Jews?  There is a further double standard here that is problematic.  The Orthodox community has been quick to embrace literature and film that comes from within- Ushpizin comes to mind- while it remains neutral or ignorant of major developments in Jewish popular culture that come from without.  Halacha is part of the answer, but not all of it.  We no longer consider physics, biology or psychology to be halachically dangerous, except in extreme cases.  Jewish Cultural Studies should not be treated as guilty until proven innocent.  We risk forgetting that John Zorn’s jazz music, Leon Uris’ Exodus and the original version of The Jazz Singer (to name more obvious examples) overtly reference our ritual and liturgy- sometimes reverently.  The often debated connections to Jewish religiosity in science and social science are far more tenuous, The Camel, the Hare and the Hyrax notwithstanding.

The best way to approach important pieces of Jewish literature, film, and other media requires some intellectual discipline.  We must try to appreciate films, music, and literature and ignore any preconceptions we might bring to the work.  Questions regarding which Jews have read Saul Bellow’s Herzog and which Jews have seen Woody Allen’s Broadway Danny Rose should be irrelevant to us.  Just as we wouldn’t assume that a secular Jew couldn’t learn anything from Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik’s The Lonely Man of Faith, we shouldn’t presuppose that Orthodox Jews can gain nothing intellectually from Herzog.  Both books deal extensively with man’s inner mental states and his quest to find a meaningful role in society.  Both books begin with a confrontation of the pain of existence and end in redemption.  But Bellow and Malamud wrote more in the vernacular of the American experience- sex, regret, and divorce, while  Rabbi Soloveitchik’s discussion of a covenantal community of prayer and faith deals with the experience of belief and hope in a refined abstract.  There is merit in reading and discussing existential solitude in both broad and narrow terms.  That is the foundation of k’lal u’perat. 

Of course talking at length about the merits of Jewish-American culture won’t do any good if it doesn’t lead to more cultural literacy.  We shouldn’t wait for others to read books, see exhibits and films, or listen to albums and report to us.  *This is one of too many qualifications we are putting on engagement with our cultural heritage.  We also need to avoid other restricting mentalities like a binary “kosher or treif“ rating system.  Nothing good will come of Yeshiva University students watching Lost and The West Wing and reading Tom Clancy in their dorm rooms while duplicitously refusing to touch Philip Roth because of dodgy allegations that he is a self-hating Jew.  We don’t accept a mediocre involvement in the sciences, so why should it get a pass in the Jewish Arts? Some leadership and initiative on consuming and discussing Jewish cultural works and events will have to come from the Orthodox laity or its Rabbis, but continued apathy to both risks estranging us from the cultural life of our own people.

Paul Adam is a senior in YC, majoring in History

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