I finally decided to include something on postwar American synagogue architecture, using Susan G. Solomon’s Louis I. Kahn’s Jewish Architecture as a platform with which to juxtapose the philosophical-theological thought of Abraham Joshua Heschel and Joseph Soloveitchik. With the recent death of Sid Caesar, I decided to throw youtube clips of him and Bugs Bunny in order to represent the comedic impulse of popular Jewish culture.

My American Jewish Studies interest in Sid Casesar and Bugs Bunny has nothing to do with historical sociology, with the assimilation of this trickster figure, “the Jew” as canny outsider, the schlemiel and the troublemaker in tension with the indigenous WASP mores represented by, let’s say Elmer Fudd.  What interests me is not the social position of Sid or Bugs, but rather the rough and ribald humor and low popular culture.

While “theologians” like Heschel and Soloveitchik speak in more elevated patois, supernatural and…