The tension between Eastern European and Western European Jews (before the Holocaust and not long after) can be understood in many different ways. One of the most interesting ways to approach this tension can be found in their approach to life itself. Growing up I bore constant witness to a good friend of my father […]
When it comes to quizzes on facebook, I often pass them by. But I’ll have to admit that I came across a recent facebook quiz that drew my attention. While I’m not interested in what philosopher, artist, or actor I most resemble, I am interested in a kind of quiz that would let me know […]
Very few scholars have addressed the appropriation of the schlemiel by Zionist thinkers and critics. Daniel Boyarin has suggested the contrast between the less masculine, Medieval model for the Jew (which, to be sure, is a humble simpleton who bears many of the more feminine qualities that are associated with the schlemiel) and the more […]
I often do my utmost to stay away from contemporary politics in my blog, but I had to write something in response to a sound byte I recently heard in the media. In a recent radio show, Sean Hannity – the well known TV host for Fox – claimed that “The Russian media keep showing […]
Woody Allen’s Zelig traces the path of a character (of the same name) that, Irving Howe suggests (in one segment of Allen’s film), is based on the passionate drive of American Jews in the early 20th century to assimilate into American society. Zelig, to be sure, is a schlemiel. But he is what I would […]
When I woke up this morning I noticed an article by Politico (which is not a right-wing publication) that registered a high frequency on my schlemiel radar. The words that caught my attention were in its headline: “Pajama Boy, An Insufferable Man-Child.” The article was written in response to an ad tweeted by “Organizing for […]
I recently stumbled across a trailer for Gary Shteyngart’s new book – Little Failure – which will hit the streets on January 2014. I came across the trailer by way of an article in Slate. The title of the piece, “Gary Shteyngart’s Homophobic Little Failure of a Book Trailer,” suggests that the trailer, because it […]
Now and then we all like a little mischief. Growing up, I always associated this with breaking the law. If mischief was going on, it was behind people’s backs. And if it was going on, I never imagined it was something that Jews did. It wasn’t – as professor Daniel Boyarin notes in speaking about […]
These are the words of Jack Benny – whose real name was Benjamin Kubelsky. And they are – more or less – an affirmation of ethnic humor. He thought of such humor as – in the words of Lawrence Epstein – “socially redemptive.” They were spoken in relation to racist and anti-Semitic claims made against […]
In his book Unheroic Conduct: The Rise of Hetrosexuality and the Invention of the Jewish Man, Daniel Boyarin has a chapter where he looks into how some of the stories of the Baal Shem Tov, the father of Hasidism, evince a new approach to Jewish masculinity. Boyarin prefaces this reading by arguing that Jews, traditionally, […]
Schlemiel Theory 