Occasionally, I stumble across a performance of the schlemiel that makes me realize that the schlemiel has a great future. Mayim Bialik – the star of Big Bang Theory and a darling of millennial culture – has taken a swing at the schlemiel in a recent mini-film-ad for Soda Stream. The series is delightful and […]
Woody Allen’s Zelig character showed American audiences that schlemiels come in all sizes, shapes, and colors. The schlemiel is a chamelon. His Jewishness – argues Daniel Itzkovitz – demonstrates the fact that the essence of the schlemiel character is non-essence. The schlemiel is constantly adapting and changing. And this – argues Itzkovitz, drawing on […]
Joseph Chaim Brenner’s writings on Zionism in the early 20th century are of great interest to scholars of early Zionist ideology. As I have noted elsewhere, Brenner took a strong stance against the schlemiel character. In his essay entitled “Self-Criticism” he takes the Yiddish writer Mendel Mocher Sforim and the schlemiel character to task. He […]
An important and often neglected subject of schlemiel theory is the female schlemiel who, since she hasn’t been discussed as much as the male schlemiel, needs a discourse. The already existing discourse on her has found its beginnings not in the work of Ruth Wisse or Sanford Pinsker (the two most important schlemiel theorists in […]
Near the middle of V, the main character of Thomas Pynchon’s first novel, Benny Profane, enters into a dialogue with a character named Mafia. Profane, throughout the novel, is dubbed a schlemiel by the narrator (Pynchon spells it “schlemihl”). And as the novel unfolds we see how that is the case. Mafia is astonished that he […]
SNL has been making great use out of the schlemiel character. Larry David’s portrayal of Bernie Sanders as a schlemiel was wildly popular and just recently, Kate McKinnon has portrayed Jeff Sessions as a variation of the Forrest Gump character. While David’s interpretation of Sanders is more steeped in the Jewish-American version of the schlemiel […]
Ruth Wisse argues that the schlemiel character is situated between hope and skepticism. Since Wisse is a scholar of Yiddish folklore and literature and not a philosophy scholar, I have taken it upon myself to look into this distinction from a philosophical perspective. To this end, one of my current research interests is in how […]
Dear Schlemiel Lovers, On February 18th, Schlemiel Theory turned four years old! I am happy to report that Schlemiel Theory is – today – the most popular blog not only on the Schlemiel but also in the genre of Jewish Philosophy and Literature. With over 6,000 followers, Schlemiel Theory continues to grow and reach people […]
In his book, Unheroic Conduct: The Rise of Heterosexuality and the Invention of the Jewish Male Daniel Boyarin argues that the Jewish male, throughout the Middle Ages, was more effeminate than masculine. In contrast to the its masculine gentile counterpart (which Boyarin finds in Rashi’s description of the “knight” and in figurations of the “evil […]
At the outset of Sholem Aleichem’s Tevye the Dairyman, there is a letter – dated 1895 – addressed from Tevye to Sholem Aleichem, the author. At the top of the page is an expression that is used by Jacob to describe himself: “Kotonti – I am Unworthy.” The English translation of the word, Kotonti as […]
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