Of the countless factors that explain my early dissociation from any sort of Jewish identity—from being one of three-and-a-half Jews in my high school, to the constantly weird goings-on with my congregation’s rabbis (everything from megalomania, to sex scandal to one of the temporary rabbis engaging in fisticuffs with a student), to forced viewings of Molly’s Pilgrim during Sunday School, to congregational “retreats” to a dismal camp area in northern Minnesota where my peers would disquiet the night with racist jokes and gay innuendo, to a Hebrew school teacher who once accused me from cheating on a test of the Hebrew alphabet(!)—one of the most underrated issues was my lack of exposure to extrafamilial positive Jewish role models.
Sure I was aware of crumpled old males like Elie Wiesel and Victor Frankl, as well as obligatory syllabus inclusion, Anne Frank. But it wasn’t until college that I started to realize that pretty much everyone I gave a shit about was Jewish: Daniel Kahneman, the Coen Brothers, Red Auerbach, Mel Brooks, MC Serch. It was unbelievable. I felt like I had stumbled on a gold mine of self-affirmation. The feeling of surprise I experienced at this awakening I believe stems directly from my previous exposure only to the stereotype of the American Jew: physically Woody Allen, mentally Harold Ramis’ Egon, and, in terms of sexual magnetism, Ben Stein teacher from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. The archetypal American Jew to me was—and still is—paradigmatically uncool.
Imagine my surprise when I found out about James Caan, Henry Winkler, and Gene Simmons. Imagine when I found out that we are essentially the Rahm Emanuels of LIFE. That our sandwiches and our guns kill people. That, as my close friend once told me, stuff-white-people-like doesn’t apply to us. These days I am [culturally] proud as hell. Learning of those great semitic icons later in life and all of the perks that come with being Jewish, however, does nothing to change the fact that entering the world as a Jew means entering it as a nerd.
Now I ask you this. What is a ying supposed to do, but seek out its yang? And if the American Jew is the paradigmatic nerd, then the obvious question with an even more obvious answer is what constitutes paradigmatic cool: Miles Davis slam dunking the ball on a Klansmember’s head of course! I’m sure there are one thousand some odd dissertations written on this very notion, so I need not go into depth like I did on the Jewish side of things, but—and I want to remind everyone that we’re dealing strictly with the stereotype here—American blackness is as close to unmistakable cool as you can get this side of age 18. And to a certain degree I personally sought to attain that cool.
By age 11, I had completely connected to Motown and hip-hop (which I would have done regardless of my religion). In my tweener years, I wore a Cuban X Giants baseball school, rented every Blaxploitation movie in Blockbuster, and read Soul on Ice. I should stop you right there and note that this type of cultural consumption was done rather tastefully and as privately as I could. I was attracted to non-Black signifiers of cool (e.g. Kurt Cobain, an Armani shirt) to an equal degree and in no way was some caricatured wannabe. In fact, my entire ‘attentiveness’ to black culture only reinforced the notion that I was not black, and should therefore not attempt to ‘act black.’ Point being, I think what I went through around puberty is a fairly typical process for the Young Jew to go through: seeking “coolness” through at least one ethnic identity primarily responsible for the “cool pose” in the first place.
Think about all the major white hip-hop figures, from 3rd Bass, to the Beastie Boys, to Lyor Cohen, to Rick Rubin, to El-P and Aesop Rock, to Mark Ronson. And those are just some of the few who have operated tactfully in this sphere. Now think of all the Adam Mansbach-looking white guiltified schmos who keep trying with embarrassing results. Now think about the curious case of Andy Samberg, who amazingly has made the only humorous parody rap video in the history of parody rap videos…
When I watch “Lazy Sunday,” as when watching the videos from Samberg’s previous comedy trio, The Lonely Island, it seems apparent that at one time Samberg possibly entertained the thought of rapping for real. He probably has some discarded notebooks somewhere with some halfway decent rhymes written on them. And one day, he decided, you know what, I can’t do this, this isn’t me. While I appreciate Samberg’s self-honesty, it is this stunted attempt at achieving cool that allows the Jew-geek stereotype to persist. Another thought for another day…
Now, having never been an African American myself, I’m asking you to brace for some serious armchair sociology, as I postulate that the Jew/Black exchange is bidirectional. We have something they want as well. Of course it’s easy to cherrypick examples, from Sammy Davis Jr. to Rod Carew to Shyne and Boyz II Men, to Rastafarianism’s reappropriation of the old testament, to Raekwon shouting out Meyer Lansky, Ghostface criminally implicating “Big hatted Jews out in Crown Heights,” and Chris Rock paying homage to Don Rickles. But I think I can hone in on something specific that African Americans seek: Anti-Cool. The exact attribute I referenced earlier signifies some odd sort of appealing status and makes the Jewish-Black relationship truly symbiotic.
Consider former legendary coked-out Knicks star and CBA coach Micheal Ray Richardson who bragged that he had some “big time Jewish lawyers” working for him and observed, “If you look at a lot of most successful corporations and stuff, more businesses, they're run by Jewish. It's not a knock, but they are some crafty people.”
Consider The Wire’s Maurice Levy who was the only character universally respected by the Barksdales, Stringer Bell, and Marlo Stanfield.
Consider Cam’ron’s decision to title his DVD, “Here’s Cam’ron (You Little Yentas), accompanied by a warning cry of “Killa Season again, you little yentas!!!…Cam’ron is anonymous. Dipset!” When Cam’ron was asked if he knew what a yenta was, he responded, “Hahaha, of course! You know my lawyers are Jewish, they be saying that all the time. So then I was watching Curb Your Enthusiasm, and Larry David—I fucks with Larry—he called Ted Danson a ‘yenta.’ Yo, I fell out laughing. That shit was crazy. I said, that’s exactly what all these folks are doin’, gossiping about me. Yentas. That’s where the ‘Cam’ron is anonymous’ came from too. Did you see that episode? That’s my shit. You have HBO On Demand? Its episode 52….”
Consider Mars Blackmon/Mookie’s debt to Woody Allen’s charismatic New York geekwad characters who always get the girl.
Consider Nas’ claim that “Halle Berry blew [him] a kiss at the Barbara Streisand concert. It’s almost as if Streisand’s massive lameness that signifies status.
[pause as I go in for the last paragraph which owes a lot to a conversation with Shoals]
And it is this specific lameness (as well as the unawareness of this lameness), the anti-cool that Judaism affords, that African Americans may in fact prize. The mucosal phonics of Yiddish, the “craftiness” of kibbitzing laywers, and the balding scalp of Larry David, these are somehow sought-after attributes that at once reject WASPiness, and relieve one from the obligation of ‘holding it down’ for one’s eternally swag-ful race. For as much press as Obama’s “cool” got him (41 million more Google hits than searching for: ‘McCain’ ‘angry’), it had to be relieving seeing those photos of him with the bike helmet and too-high dad jeans. It had to be calming to read about his comic book lust and his Blackberry obsession. I guess in the end we both embrace outsider status, and can only truly attain it—if we don’t try too hard—through a little culture-swapping.
8 comments:
I can't remember the name of it, but not long ago VH1 had a documentary special about the exchanges between the black and jewish communities, and how that interaction played out in forming the hip-hop aesthetic. One of the most hilarious, yet insightful, parts of the show was that young hip-hop artists in the 1980s dressed in a very similar fashion to old jewish men. Hard to believe as it was, it was true. It wasn't just that the beastie boys were trying to look and dress "urban," they were just drawing from similar influences as their black peers. Even today, where I work I see jewish women in their 60s who dress a lot like the really black hip hop artists I see on television today.
I think what a lot of the discussion on this thread is that for a very long, blacks and jews both predominantly resided in urban areas. The blacks, like the jews, were entrenched in cities and didn't necessary have a lot of money. They were outsiders, but lived in creatively inspiring places. In fact, drawing another parallel, before the black community starting dominating the game of basketball, it was the jewish leagues that really populated the strongest inter city leagues. So I'm not sure that the connection is just that these two groups have some kind of natural affinity for each other as social outcasts in American society. At least part of it is the fact that both groups inhabited inter city areas and drew from some of the same influences. I don't think cool black people like jews because they yearn to be nerds. Is it so farfetched that perhaps these cool black people find jewish people, and their aesthetic cool, in and of themselves?
So now I understand why black people love me. Also:
"to the constantly weird goings-on with my congregation’s rabbis (everything from megalomania, to sex scandal to one of the temporary rabbis engaging in fisticuffs with a student)"
I think we may have belonged to the same synagogue. Or maybe all aging rabbis lewdly proposition their young cute administrators/Hebrew school teachers.
I don't want to throw a monkey wrench in this beautiful argument/case study, but I'm an Asian-Jew. Unlike the case of the nerdy jew professional finding his mail order bride in Malaysia, My father is in fact the Asian one. My early experiences with racism/discrimination all manifested in the form of anti-asian talk; phenotype wins out most of the time with kids.
That being said, basketball really is a great link between these two tribes of Israel (Palestine?).
Also, with all this black nerd talk, can we talk about the sophistication of southern figures such as André Benjamin? Especially when considering the "non-urban jew phenomenon"; those on the fringes of society have every right to mingle (how else can we explain rock and roll's whiteness, in juxtaposition to the 'jewness' of NY Hip Hop.
shnon-The Prince Klezmer ep that never was...
I am trying to see these particular black folks’ appropriation of Jewish culture as a harmless bit of cross-cultural exchange, but I just can’t. First, I think it’s kind of offensive to Jewish people: Cam’ron’s depiction of Jews is analogous to the “Lost In Translation” treatment of Japanese people (to move away from the fetishization of black ghetto residents example).
Furthermore, I see Jewish anti-blackness, not their anti-coolness as the point of attraction. Commending Jews for their “craftiness” and business acumen may be a way to laud Jewish success (however stereotypical that may be), but it’s also a way to slight ordinary black people. Jay Z’s “black bar mitzvahs” and “Jewish lawyers” are supposed to suggest a lifestyle and, more importantly, a refinement beyond the grasp of average black people.
I would certainly group the Jewish appropriation with such statements of new money faux-sophistication as “I’ve traveled the world while staying in luxury resorts and eating lobster and scrimps,” but I’d also have to lump them with “there’s Indian in my family,” which is a more problematic category for a respectable negro.
By the way, over at straightbangin Joey sparked a great discussion along these lines a little over a year ago.
It's interesting that Gordon mentions Jewish "refinement," since from a WASP perspective, Jews are stereotypically associated with vulgarity and avarice. The same gold necklace and fur coat is seen by blacks as living large and by WASPs as tacky and nouveau rich. Jewish people are more present in the inner city, but Jewish success must also seem somehow more accessible or relatable to blacks.
First, there were many great non-Black jazz musicians, just not Miles Davis great, secondly the idea of "American blackness" being cool is, to me, very simply explained.
My father once asked me why I liked hip hop so much. I reminded him that the man with no name trilogy(the Good the Bad and the Ugly, a Fistful of Dollars and a Few Dollars more) were some of his favorite movies. In it, an outsider, a loner who has rejected society to some degree goes about his business accumulating wealth without any thoughts to society. I then played the song, "Shoot Outs" by Nas for my dad and broke down the lyrics. The idea of a man ignoring laws and cultural mores is powerful and seductive to any teenage male. This was my in to hip hop, rebellion, rejection of middle class morality, etc. etc. Crude? Yes, but so is the mind of a teenage male.
I love hip hop and jazz. I also love South American literature and Silver Age Marvel comics. I also enjoy playing lacrosse. I don't think my love for hip hop makes me any more enamored with black American culture than my love for Borges makes me enamored of Argentine culture, or my love for lacrosse makes me beholden to wealthy white culture(or native american culture). Quality is quality, no?
I think there's a far tighter nexus, as we wannabe lawyers say, between hip-hop and black American culture than there is between Borges and Argentinean culture. Though what you say is right; I'm very interested in black music but not interested whatsoever in black film, black television, black comedy, black dance, black art, black literature, or black churches.
I thought I was the only one who cringed every time Adam Mansbach opened his mouth. This post is strangely reaffirming.
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