c. 1998 Religion News Service
(Rabbi Rudin is the National Interreligious Affairs Director of the American Jewish Committee.)
UNDATED _ Two of America’s most famous comedians, Jerry Seinfeld and Woody Allen, have recently been in the news. After nearly 10 years on network television, Seinfeld is ending the popular and highly lucrative weekly show that bears his name. Allen finally married his longtime lover, Soon-Yi, and his current film,”Deconstructing Harry,”has stirred differing critical reactions.
Although Seinfeld and Allen are both American Jews who were born and raised in the greater New York City area, and even though both use Manhattan as a setting for their work, their humor and attitudes about Jews and Judaism are totally different. These differences represent two distinct approaches to being Jewish in contemporary America.
Sixty-two-year-old Allen Konigsberg, the child of Orthodox Jews, was raised in Brooklyn. By his own account he hated Hebrew school, and by age 15 he began selling jokes to newspaper columnists under the pseudonym”Woody Allen.”In time he became a performing comic on television and in nightclubs as well as a successful playwright. For the last 30 years, Allen is best known for writing, directing, and starring in a host of films, including”Annie Hall,”which won 1977 Academy Awards for best picture, screenplay, and direction. Allen’s co-star, Diane Keaton in the film’s title role, won an Oscar for best actress.
But critics have consistently pointed out Allen’s highly negative, even toxic, relationship to his fellow Jews and Judaism. Eighteen years ago the film critic Pauline Kael, in reviewing”Stardust Memories,”noted that”in Woody Allen’s films Jews have no dignity . . . he’s humiliated by them . . . The Jewish self-hatred that spills out in this movie could be a great subject, but all it does is spill out.” It is to Allen’s credit he has addressed themes like death, the Holocaust, illness, and war in his films. Unfortunately, whether it is the blind rabbi in”Crimes and Misdemeanors,”the outlandish Hasidic character in”Annie Hall,”the cartoon-like sister and brother-in-law in”Deconstructing Harry,”or a host of other stereotypic film portrayals of Jews, it is clear Allen remains extraordinarily uneasy in dealing with Jews and Judaism. His Jewish hang-up is sad and destructive because Allen’s comedic talents as an intellectual misfit and perennial”schlemiel”rival those of Charlie Chaplin.
Jerry Seinfeld, about 20 years younger than Allen, was raised in Massapequa, Long Island. On the TV program, Seinfeld uses his real name, and is the genial ringmaster who observes the selfish, highly neurotic behavior of his three closest friends with bemusement.”Seinfeld”has attracted enormous audiences precisely because it is a show”about nothing.”Seinfeld and his not-so-merry band of self-indulgent friends focus on the mundane, even trivial aspects of modern life.
The vexing problems that often occur when going to the movies, waiting in line at a restaurant, or, above all, making permanent social/sexual commitments is the stuff of which”Seinfeld”is made. A goofy rabbi appears from time to time on the show, along with a zany ritual circumciser. But both characters are well-intentioned if a bit overdrawn. Seinfeld’s Jewish TV family along with his pal’s Italian-American parents are loopy folks with whom millions of people can readily identify.
When a clearly Christian character announces he wishes to convert to Judaism in order to tell Jewish jokes without being called an anti-Semite, Seinfeld is extremely irritated but slyly says,”Welcome to the club.” Even references to such traumatic themes as Nazis and the Holocaust receive a light Seinfeldian touch. The bullying owner of a food takeout shop is labeled”the soup Nazi.”And one of the show’s characters is chastised for reportedly kissing his date in a darkened movie theater while watching”Schindler’s List.” Of course,”Seinfeld”is strongly anti-Nazi. One of the show’s most famous programs involves Jerry and his sidekick, George, trapped in a limousine with two gun-toting American devotees of Hitler’s anti-Semitism. The absurdity and dangers of Nazi ideology are made manifest in this hilarious, but powerful episode.
Seinfeld does not use Jewishness as a leitmotif in his show, but it is clearly part of his TV character’s identity. He seems at ease, even sure-footed, with his religious and ethnic identity. This is in sharp contrast to Allen’s angst-ridden Jewish screen character.
Perhaps the striking difference between these two master comedians reveals the distance the American Jewish community has traveled from being a frequently insecure group to one that can comfortably laugh at inept circumcisers, pompous rabbis, neo-Nazis, and ultimately at itself.
DEA END RUDIN