Too Jewish?

[eveningblue]

Something that has always interested me (and that came up in this discussion of Jewish characters played by non-Jewish seeming actors) is this notion of a tv show seeming "too Jewish" by Hollywood standards. rydra_wrong explains this phenomenon here:

Neal Gabler's An Empire Of Their Own: How The Jews Invented Hollywood argues that this is precisely why

Comments

Chocolate is Jewish, Fudge is Goyish

[executrix]

as Lenny Bruce said, all New Yorkers are Jewish, even if they're Catholic.

I was going to post about the incredible influence that writers coming out of the adult summer camps in the Poconos have had on TV--e.g., first the Your Show of Shows people, then those they worked with. In effect, a lot of TV reflects Jewish comedy coming out of the Borscht Belt, whether or not the third generation of writers are Jewish, and this inflects the speech and actions of characters whether or not they're described as Jewish.

Re: Chocolate is Jewish, Fudge is Goyish

[eveningblue]

Yeah, that's a really good point. A lot of what we are calling Jewish has to do with inflection, timing, etc.

(By Poconos I'm guessing you mean Catskills? Unless there was another Borscht Belt in Pennsylvania.)

Re: Chocolate is Jewish, Fudge is Goyish

[executrix]

I should look up my Broadway history, but I think Tamiment and the other one whose name I can't remember were in the Poconos. It's like, after you worked there for a season you got a job in the Borscht Belt.

Re: Chocolate is Jewish, Fudge is Goyish

[eveningblue]

Oh, I'd never heard of this! Interesting...

Re: Chocolate is Jewish, Fudge is Goyish

[eveningblue]

Someone posted this info, and then deleted her post (I'm not sure why), but I thought others might be interested in this so I am reposting it. I hope that's not against etiquette rules:

Just suggesting a source that talks about New York characters, New York
Jews, and their depiction on TV (with specific mention of "crypto-Jewish"
characters in Seinfeld, including George Costanza) --

"At Home on the Small Screen: Television's New York Jews," by Jeffrey
Shandler (from Entertaining America: Jews, Movies, and
Broadcasting, by J. Hoberman and Shandler, 2003).

Re: Chocolate is Jewish, Fudge is Goyish

[shayheyred]

Yes, my mom could tell you stories about when she spent summers at Tamiment looking for a husband. She lived in Allentown, by the way, and the idea was that the Poconos were the Catskills for non New Yorkers.

Re: Chocolate is Jewish, Fudge is Goyish

[kindkit]

all New Yorkers are Jewish, even if they're Catholic

I was extremely surprised a few years back to learn that Nathan Lane is not Jewish. Mind you, I'm not Jewish myself so maybe I was misreading all the cues.

Re: Chocolate is Jewish, Fudge is Goyish

[aecamadi]

He's NYC/NJ Irish, but he's got the nebbish thing happening, which is often read as a Jewish trait, not necessarily very kindly, IMO. (Also as a gay trait, which is what he is, also not so kindly.) But that's a whole other discussion, isn't it?