Jewish Identity

In Professor Jonathan Sarna's "American Judaism" course at Brandeis, we would often be asked to look at advertisements, bar mitzvah invitations, and other "artifacts" to see what we could learn about Jewish identity during that time period. One of the most interesting papers I ever wrote for college came out of being asked to write about a comedy routine by Lenny Bruce. The piece looked at things that one thinks of as Jewish or goyish - so rye bread is Jewish, white bread is goyish, etc. (There are links to this routine online but since some of it is a bit raunchy I'm not linking.) For my paper, I compared this routine to Adam Sandler's Chanukah song. (Side note: the "new" live version that they play on the radio was recorded at Brandeis while I was a student there!) I lost the paper when my computer crashed, so here's the basic idea (and yes, I turned this into a 3 page paper):

The earlier comedy routine is looking at Jewish identity through qualities. There are certain people, items, foods, ideas that are "Jewish." There's just something about them - and same for things that are "goyish."

Adam Sandler looks at Jewish identity as something you are born with. In fact, part of the fun of the song is being surprised to hear that someone is Jewish because you never would have guessed. There's also the idea of being proud that someone famous is Jewish, or glad that people in the news that you hate are not.

Something that has bothered me a lot recently is people who don't feel good about meeting someone Jewish. Here's what I mean: when I started my previous job, I was introduced to someone with a Jewish last name. I thought, "Cool, she's Jewish!" Or when you see an Orthodox family at Disneyland or on the same plane flight. Or you're watching TV and a character is Jewish. There's just a certain feeling you should get of "That's my fellow Jew." I think that innate feeling is an essential part of the mitzvah to love your fellow Jew.

What frustrates me is people who, upon seeing other Jews, immediately label why the person is different from them. And usually, along with this, they only feel positively if the person is in their "group." Otherwise they actually feel negatively toward the person without even knowing anything about them. And when it comes to celebrities, they are more interested in pointing out why they are horrible people than in feeling any connection to them at all as a Jewish person.

P.S. The latest post from Orthonomics looks at people labelling retirement as "goyish."