Most of Woody Allen’s schlemiels are anxious, intellectual, and highly self conscious. But not all schlemiel’s are intellectual or hyper-self-conscious. Take, for instance, schlemiels in Shalom Aleichem, IB Singer, or Bernard Malamud’s stories and novels, or schlemiels played by Seth Rogen or Adam Sandler. While they may miss a beat or a social cue, their […]
I come from a few generations of New York Jews. My father went to Brooklyn Tech and Columbia University. He was born in the Bronx and raised in Manhattan. My mothers parents moved from the Lower East Side and Brooklyn, to Queens, and then to Long Island. But we were the first in the family […]
As a Jew raised in Upstate New York, St. Patricks Day meant a lot of drinking games, parties, and merrymaking. There is nothing Jewish about these activities. Nonetheless, writers like James Joyce made the main character of his epic novel, Ulysses, an Irish Jew. Bloom, the main character, demonstrates the flow of consciousness. In a […]
Today is the birthday of Jerry Lewis (Joseph Levich). Like Philip Roth and many other great Jewish writers and actors, he was born and grew up in Newark, NJ. Lewis passed away on August 20th 2017. While there are many arguments about who popularized the schlemiel in America (Hannah Arendt argues that it was Charlie […]
In the post-WWII era, the schlemiel played a pivotal role in a cultural revolution in America that most of us didn’t notice. Before WWII, Charlie Chaplin was seen as a schlemiel character by some of the worlds greatest thinkers (such as Walter Benjamin, Hannah Arendt, etc). They could see the powerful impact he had on […]
The Jewish-American family has almost always been depicted in a comical way in novels, films, and TV shows. In the Jewish-American family, the mother plays a powerful role and is the pit of many jokes. In the 60s and 70s, many novels (such as Philip Roth’s Portnoy’s Complaint or Bruce Jay Friedman’s A Mother’s Kisses, […]
In 2009, New York Magazine published a special issue on Larry David with a cover that featured Woody Allen and Larry David, entitled “Last of the Schlemiels: Notes on the end of Jewish Humor (may it rest in peace), and the beginning of something Nu.” The irony of this article and the cover title is […]
Cynthia Ozick argued that hidden inside of John Updike’s Bech trilogy there is a theological reading of Jews. In 1965, Updike, the award-winning American WASP (White Anglo Saxon Protestant) writer – Pulitzer Prizes in 1982 and 1991, National Book Award in 1964, PEN/Malamud Award 1988, etc – addressed what one could call his Jewish question: […]
It was with great sadness that I learned this morning of the passing of Aharon Appelfeld. He is one of my favorite Israeli novelists and some of his novels have, literally, changed the way I think about the novel and its relationship to history. It also changed the way I looked at the schlemiel character. […]
After learning that Jim Nabors died yesterday, a flood of impressions I held within me – from many years watching re-runs of The Andy Griffith Show – washed over me. Like many Americans, I used to come home and watch reruns of shows that had comic figures – ranging from Leave it to Beaver, Little […]
Schlemiel Theory 