Esther Kustanowitz: November 2006 Archives

Ever dreamed of spending Saturday night with two rabbis? Who hasn’t? Rabbi Irwin Kula and Rabbi Brad Hirschfield of the National Center for Jewish Learning and Leadership are launching "Intelligent Talk Radio," in Portland, Oregon this week The rabbis will spend a midnight hour each week tackling compelling and engaging topics about the American spiritual, cultural, and political landscape.

Going beyond religion, the radio rabbis use their own unique perspectives to provide an alternative to the medium’s usual banter between the left- and the right-wing population. The rabbis, both seasoned media personalities who have appeared on everything from our own Beliefnet.com to Bridges TV to Frontline and The Today Show, will try and uncover the hidden agendas buried deep on both sides of the right/left divide. Topics are said to span from reinstating the draft, to God on the political ropes, to the shootings over PlayStation 3.

Perhaps one of their future shows will be broadcast from a pub, just so Idol Chatter can use the line: "Two rabbis and a radio walk into a bar…"

In the beginning, there was TLC's Shalom in the Home, starring well-known rabbi Shmuley Boteach. Now, prepare for television to bring another rabbi into your home--in this case, Rabbi Irwin Kula, whose new national public television special, "The Hidden Wisdom of Our Yearnings with Irwin Kula," represents an attempt to help people use Jewish wisdom to "cope, find purpose, and discover growth," as a press release claims.

Rabbi Kula is president of CLAL - The National Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership, a leadership training institute, think tank, and resource center, and is a much sought-after speaker and commentator on public culture and religion in the public square. The show is based on Rabbi Kula's new book, "Yearnings: Embracing the Sacred Messiness of Life," and will be available in almost every major city nationwide.

If Rabbi Kula's name sounds familiar, it might be your active "Today" show memory kicking in: He was recently featured in an interview by Matt Lauer about the concept of forgiveness in the wake of October's shootings at an Amish schoolhouse. Unlike Rabbi Boteach, Rabbi Kula does not seem to be courting celebrity endorsement, although his book has received accolades from such leading authors as Harold Kushner, Wayne Dyer, Deepak Chopra, and Mitch Albom, and Rabbi Kula himself was named by both Fast Company magazine and PBS' Religion and Ethics Newsweekly as one of the new leaders shaping the American spiritual landscape.

When facing a movie like "The Ten Commandments: The Musical"--based on a recent stage production and set for DVD release this week--I always approach it from two angles: (1) Is the product a good/entertaining one?; and (2) Is it true to the text?

The first good sign for this production is its enormously talented cast. The amazing Alisan Porter plays Miriam (you can also catch her in the Broadway revival of "A Chorus Line"); Aharon Ipale stars for his second time as the Pharaoh Seti (first time was in"The Mummy"). Michelle Pereira ("Yokebed," Moses' mother, or as I was taught to pronounce it, Yokheved) and Kevin Earley (Ramses) also turn in passionate performances. Some voices are so phenomenal that they can even make cheesy lyrics (Joshua, a slave, rebels with "you can't tie a rock to my soul") forgivable.

I admit, I snickered when I read the words "Val Kilmer IS Moses in 'The Ten Commandments.'" But the truth is that Kilmer wasn't all that bad--perhaps because he's played Moses once before (in 1998, for Dreamworks' "Prince of Egypt"). Kilmer does a lot of the "talky singing" that's usually assigned to characters tasked with major plot exposition, wherein each musical phrase is packed with more words than human lung capacity should be able to handle. Thankfully, "Top Gun's" Iceman is not expected to perform complicated musical arrangements and choreography.

But the production suffers because its heart, its Moses, mostly reacts to the musical going on around him. The quality of his voice is certainly not at the same level as the highly trained cast that surrounds him, but it was fine. But is 'fine' enough for a musical? I mean, I have a fine voice, but I'm not auditioning for Broadway shows where the marquee would boast: "'Queen Esther: The Musical' featuring Celine Dion, Mariah Carey, Kelly Clarkson, Josh Groban, and Esther Kustanowitz."

Textual accuracy is more complicated. Bible stories represent the bedrock of contemporary Judeo-Christian faith; and biblical purists will just have to make some spiritual concessions when watching this musical. The dramatized story, both in the DeMille epic and here, tacks on a love triangle (Ramses is to marry a woman who's in love with Moses; she sings about it in "A Love that Never Was.") The brotherhood storyline is also a major hook for promotion: "Two men. Raised as brothers. Divided by history."

But the story has never needed this Hollywood touch, nor does it need a post-Red Sea crossing reconciliation between the brothers, who proclaim their love forever. Pharaoh even proclaims, "Moses, your God is God." (Never happened in the Bible.)

When Moses is banished after slaying the Egyptian taskmaster, the entire cast drifts into a musical number, one at a time, wondering "What about us, what will we be without him?" While, this is a very effective song of loss, it's not terribly biblical. Similarly, I watched the plague sequence three times, and I'm not sure all 10 are included. Some story elements that are not in the straight text in Exodus do exist in biblical legend--for instance, the possibility that Bithia/Batya, the daughter of Pharaoh who draws the infant Moses from the water, exited Egypt with the Hebrew slaves and was present at Mount Sinai to receive the Torah. On the other hand, I doubt any of the Midianites, Moses' in-laws, were Asian or blonde, which may make me a racist, a biblical Purist, or both.

Were Egyptian slaves really dressed so scantily? With wardrobe by BCBG Max Azria, never has slavery looked so abtastic. With all those exposed midriffs, it's no wonder that when the Children of Israel engage in nostalgic yearning for the Egypt they'd left behind ("Where is the land of milk and honey?"), their primal moan quickly enables the sheer libido of the people to physically manifest as a golden calf.

There will be those who decide, after hearing a voice of God that sounds not wholly unlike a vocoder-infused staccato rap, to call it a day. But then again, the music successfully highlights how remarkably layered the Exodus story is, both in terms of the human pathos involved and the faith themes. Moses is not just a man threatening the economic system of Egypt by trying to free its slaves, he was raised in the Egyptian palace as the son of Pharaoh's daughter, which ups the stakes. Whether or not the actual story sets up Pharaoh and Moses as literal brothers, the story is still about freedom and about the men who represent Gods.

Plus, Val Kilmer in a tallit (prayer shawl)? To a Jewish girl with "Top Gun" memories, that's totally hot.

I guess every discussion of Borat--the character brought to life by Jewish comedian Sacha Baron Cohen and the film featuring that character--has to begin with that pivotal moment in country-western anti-Semitism, "Throw the Jew Down the Well." We could discuss, as has been discussed over and over again, whether such a song--and such a character--encourages anti-Semitism, is in poor taste, or is one of the most nuanced, brilliant characters to grace the comedy scene.

Or, as is clearly possible from this weekend's box office take--$26.4 million in only 837 theaters--perhaps all of the above are true.

This film will never be confused with the quiet lushness and tragic silent tones of an Ang Lee production. But anyone expecting that probably won't see the movie to begin with. This film is mean to appeal to a certain kind of sense of humor and to personalities who find the balls-out, in your face humor as hilarious as they find it shocking. From the "running of the Jew" to a Pentecostal service, from a humor coach--who illustrates that identifying humor and being funny are not the same--to a cringeworthily hilarious dinner party scene that would have killed Miss Manners with shock, from drunken frat boys to rodeo riders, no one is safe from the ridicule of the purportedly Kazakh journalist who is known as Borat. And in the opinion of this reviewer, that's a good thing.

In some ways, the film is a fish-out-of-water exercise, wrapped up in a road movie, and sprinkled with improv and with multiple real languages (like Hebrew and, according to one viewer, a mix of Hungarian and Romanian) playing the role of the "Kazakh" language. With a foreigner holding a mirror up to reflect our own culture and behavior, we see that we are not always viewed in the most flattering light. Seeing the world through Borat's eyes gives us all a window into what we look like to people of other cultures, and what people of other cultures see when they see us. We see him brave the NYC subway and think that the hotel elevator is his hotel room; we witness the seductive powers of television as Borat discovers "Baywatch," to journey-altering results.

Borat's ignorance of the world at large also illustrates the relativity of what is culturally acceptable--while in Kazakhstan, he might be proud that his sister is "#4 prostitute in all the land," in America he learns that it is not considered in line with dinner etiquette to invite a prostitute to dinner or to [spoiler alert] try to bridenap Pamela Anderson at an Orange County memorabilia signing.

That Borat got the patrons at the bar to sing his anti-Semitic song (a scene which is not in the movie) or that he views an elderly Jewish couple as a terrifying threat to his existence is more of a reflection of what ignorance brings than it is of hatred and bigotry. For instance, Borat visits a gun store and asks which gun is best for shooting Jews. The store owner only hesitates a moment before answering "a 9 mm or a .45." In another example that doesn't have to do with Jews, when Borat tries to kiss a guy at the rodeo, the guy explains that only the gays do that. Borat responds that in his country they round up the gays and put them in prison. Rodeo Guy says, "That's what we're trying to do here, too."

I often wonder if, as a Jew, I feel better or worse about the fact that such things are coming from a comedian who has been heralded, pre-Borat, as a proud Jew. I think that I'd feel worse if such a character were played by a non-Jew, even if he said the same thing. This leads to a whole other discussion about the line between what's funny and what's offensive, between what's lampooning and what's hatemongering. Can I laugh at anti-Semitic or homophobic comments, even if they are offered within a framework of satire?

I saw the movie on Manhattan's Upper West Side, during the first show available after the Jewish Sabbath. The theater was filled with Jews who booed the "Apocalypto" trailer as soon as the words "a film by Mel Gibson" flashed onscreen. (Borat would have been very nervous.) But another friend of mine saw it in a different neighborhood, and he reports having been one of only a few Jews in the audience. He loved the movie, too, but before entering the theater, he came across a group of non-Jewish kids sitting outside playing guitar, and singing all the words to "Throw the Jew Down the Well"--and all of a sudden, he wasn't so sure how he felt about whether putting a character like Borat out there was a good idea after all.

Even though it was clearly meant as satire, there's always someone who's going to reappropriate or reinterpret it in the opposite manner from which it was intended. And if such catchphrases are popularized in the youth culture without any context or explanation, it might lay a foundation for believing that the song is legitimate not just as comedic entertainment, but as a personal philosophy.

These issues are disturbing, but what's disturbing us is not Borat or Sacha Baron Cohen. It is the fact that there are people around us who hate and fear what they do not know personally, and that the bigotry and intolerance is closer than we think.

People who find Borat or Jewtopia offensive are also likely to rail against the new release from Reboot Stereophonic Records for its title alone. "Jewface," like other neo-cultural Jewish efforts, is named to provoke even before anyone actually listens to the music. But without previewing the music on the CD, amateur cultural historians will note that this marks another attempt to re-spark--or, as the record company itself phrases it, reboot--the connection between today's Jews and their culture.

According to Sunday's NY Times article:

["Jewface"] contains 16 songs salvaged from wax cylinder recordings and scratchy 78s, from a century-old genre that is essentially Jewish minstrelsy. Often known as Jewish dialect music, it was performed in vaudeville houses by singers in hooked putty noses, oversize derbies and tattered overcoats. Highly popular, if controversial, in its day, it has been largely lost to history--perhaps justifiably.

Consider song titles like "Under the Matzos Tree," and "When Mose With His Nose Leads the Band." Or, as the Times points out, "My Yiddisha Mammy," a 1922 riff on Al Jolson's "Mammy," written by Eddie Cantor and others, wherein lyrics run like this: "I've got a mammy / But she don't come from Alabammy / Her heart is filled with love and real sentiment / Her cabin door is in a Bronx tenement."

The Anti-Defamation League, usually the first to react to news items that may be anti-Semitic, was unsure what to do with "Jewface." The Times reports that the ADL acknowledged that this release was "complicated." While clearly comedic and most often performed by Jews, it couldn't be counted as anti-Semitic. But there's still a fear, the deputy director said, that "our experience in this kind of thing is that inevitably somebody will probably use this for not such good purposes."

But this release is part of a larger trend, an unofficial project of rediscovery or reclamation of old culture and the reframing of it in a contemporary context--a project that is being conducted by Jews in their 20s and 30s. (Look at the ages of the men cited in the article; they're all 35-37.) Finding old methods of connection (mostly the synagogue and Jewish organizational structure) boring or unmeaningful, they are actively inventing ways of engaging with their religious and cultural heritage through the musical or literary frameworks that hold personal meaning.

Take a Hasidic guy, add a love of reggae, hip-hop, and rap and you have Matisyahu, whose videos I can watch on the TVs at the gym. Take cultural reclamation and add a provocative edge and you have Heeb Magazine, which presents a "Food Issue" with a pig on its cover. JDub Records, which originally repped Matisyahu, signs eclectic acts, holds huge concerts, and shows no signs of slowing down. Or check the blogosphere for the varied, snarky, and sometimes controversial perspectives of Jewish bloggers, like those over at Jewlicious and Jewschool, the social action-centered JSpot, or other Jewish magazines of thought and culture, like Zeek, PresenTense, and American Jewish Life--each initiative representing a group of different (but often overlapping) Jewish 20- and 30-somethings struggling with issues surrounding Jewish life and identity.

For example (and with this sentence also functioning as full disclosure), I contribute to Jewlicious, PresenTense and American Jewish Life, and have attended events sponsored by JDub, Heeb, Zeek, and Jewschool. We're all doing slightly different things, but it's all in the name of connecting to our tradition, and thanks to the internet, we've created connections to each other as well.

I admit, I don't have many non-Jewish friends who are involved in their faiths to the extent that my Jewish friends are involved in theirs. But I would assume that faith in general may represent more of a challenge to my generation than it did for generations past. From "Jewface" to Heeb, the fact that there are so many of these innovative cultural efforts indicates a basic dissatisfaction with the way things are, and a hope that involvement, even if the point of engagement is self-created, will allow Generations X and Y to make meaningful connections to Jewish life.