Meet the Fockers, Larry David and the Jewish Archetype

by Josh Tobias
Brown University
KOACH-on-Campus Assistant Editor

"Our starting point is to take the typical Yid of today…the Yid is ugly, sickly, lacks decorum…the Yid is trodden upon and easily frightened…the Yid is despised by all…the Yid has accepted submission….the Yid wants to conceal his identity from strangers."

Who would you guess is the author of this passage? A Nazi party member? An angry White Supremacist? An Israel-hating jihadist?

In fact, the writer of the passage is Ze’ev (Vladimir) Jabotinsky, an early Zionist. Jabotinsky created the right-wing "revisionist" school of Zionism that advocated for the "Whole Land" of Israel—including parts east of the Jordan River. Clearly Jabotinsky was no Anti-Semite, but many of his characterizations of European Jews were quite similar to those of contemporary Anti-Semites. Jabotinsky despised what he saw as the servile, weak character of European Jewry. He wanted to create a new Jew, the "Hebrew," who would be the exact opposite of the European Jew: strong, athletic, beautiful, and powerful. In fact many early Zionists shared his vision imagining a new race of Jews---Nietzsche’s Supermen, planting watermelon on a kibbutz.

Today, Jabotinsky’s "Yid" has been denigrated to the waste heap of isolated white supremacists. But it would be foolish to argue that this image has completely disappeared. Just turn on the TV—despite years of integration and assimilation into American culture, American Jews are still portrayed unmistakably as "other." Whether it’s Dustin Hoffman and Barbra Streisand waxing poetically about their son’s circumcision in Meet the Fockers, or Larry David playing himself as self-deprecating, neurotic Hollywood Jew in Curb Your Enthusiasm, Jews continue to be depicted in mass media as fundamentally different from mainstream American society.

And in nearly all of these cases, it is Jews who promote this image. Up until the middle of the 20^th century, Jews often felt pressure to "Anglicize" their names and act "American"—assimilation was the name of the game. But today the situation has completely reversed itself and Jews are increasingly proud of their ethnic origin. Big noses, curly hair, bar mitzvahs, and overbearing mothers have become symbols of Jewish pride. Where once Jews tried to "blend in" to American culture, today Jews celebrate their distinctiveness in an ethnic feast of brisket, matzo ball soup and diamond encrusted Jewish stars.

But in many ways, this celebration of Jewish culture conforms to older stereotypes about Jews. For example, Ben Stiller’s character in the Meet the Fockers is effeminate and weak. His attempts to integrate himself into the "manly" gentile culture end in ridicule. He’s a modern version of the "weak, sickly" Jew that Jabotinsky derided in the beginning of the 20^th century. The way Jews are depicted in Hollywood often embodies all the traits of 19^th century anti-Semitism—sickly, penny-pinching, neurotic, uncomfortable, sexually perverse, overly intellectual, and un-athletic,

Part of what makes Seinfeld and Meet the Fockers and other similar portrayals of American Jews so funny is that they abound in stereotypes. They portray a particular archetype of the Jew—a character that has distinctively "Jewish" characteristics. But the archetype Jew does not reflect reality. We can laugh at these characters without equating them with the real thing. Jews are a range of personalities and types. Yes, some Jews act like Woody Allen, but there are also Jews who act like Brad Pitt.

Hollywood stereotypes about Jews don’t tell us anything about what Jews are like in the real world. American Jews reflect the range of American society — there are urban Jews and rural Jews, Harvard-bound Jews and drop-out-of-high-school Jews, Jews who own businesses and Jews who work at McDonalds, Jews from the shetl and Jews from Ghana. There’s no archetypal American Jew that is representative for Jews as a whole. As Jews, we need to go beyond the standard ethnic typecasting and accept and celebrate the diversity of Jewish ethnicity.

Anything less would be like corned beef on white bread.

[Posted 10/24/06]