Acting Jewish


Book Description

Publisher Description




Millennial Jewish Stars


Book Description

Highlights how millennial Jewish stars symbolize national politics in US media Jewish stars have longed faced pressure to downplay Jewish identity for fear of alienating wider audiences. But unexpectedly, since the 2000s, many millennial Jewish stars have won stellar success while spotlighting (rather than muting) Jewish identity. In Millennial Jewish Stars, Jonathan Branfman asks: what makes these explicitly Jewish stars so unexpectedly appealing? And what can their surprising success tell us about race, gender, and antisemitism in America? To answer these questions, Branfman offers case studies on six top millennial Jewish stars: the biracial rap superstar Drake, comedic rapper Lil Dicky, TV comedy duo Abbi Jacobson and Ilana Glazer, “man-baby” film star Seth Rogen, and chiseled film star Zac Efron. Branfman argues that despite their differences, each star’s success depends on how they navigate racial antisemitism: the historical notion that Jews are physically inferior to Christians. Each star especially navigates racial stigmas about Jewish masculinity—stigmas that depict Jewish men as emasculated, Jewish women as masculinized, and both as sexually perverse. By embracing, deflecting, or satirizing these stigmas, each star comes to symbolize national hopes and fears about all kinds of hot-button issues. For instance, by putting a cuter twist on stereotypes of Jewish emasculation, Seth Rogen plays soft man-babies who dramatize (and then resolve) popular anxieties about modern fatherhood. This knack for channeling national dreams and doubts is what makes each star so unexpectedly marketable. In turn, examining how each star navigates racial antisemitism onscreen makes it easier to pinpoint how antisemitism, white privilege, and color-based racism interact in the real world. Likewise, this insight can aid readers to better notice and challenge racial antisemitism in everyday life.




Armenian and Jewish Experience between Expulsion and Destruction


Book Description

Jews and Armenians are often perceived as peoples with similar tragic historical experiences. Not only were both groups forced into statelessness and a life outside their homelands for centuries, in the 20th century, in the shadow of war, they were threatened with collective annihilation. Thus far, academic approaches to these two "classical" diasporas have been quite different. Moreover, Armenian and Jewish questions posed during the 19th and 20th centuries have usually been treated separately. The conference “We Will Live After Babylon” that took place in Hanover in February 2019, addressed this gap in research and was one of the first initiatives to deal directly with Jewish and Armenian historical experiences, between expulsion, exile and annihilation, in a comparative framework. The contributions in this volume take on multidisciplinary approaches relating to the conference’s central themes: diaspora, minority issues and genocide.




Jews and Gender


Book Description

Jews and Gender features sixteen authors exploring the history and culture of the intersection of Judaism and gender from the biblical world to today. Topics include subversive readings of biblical texts; reappraisal of rabbinic theory and practice; women in mysticism, Chasidism, and Yiddish literature; and women in contemporary culture and politics. Accessible and comprehensive, this volume will appeal to the general reader in addition to engaging with contemporary academic scholarship.




Encyclopedia of Jewish American Popular Culture


Book Description

This unique encyclopedia chronicles American Jewish popular culture, past and present in music, art, food, religion, literature, and more. Over 150 entries, written by scholars in the field, highlight topics ranging from animation and comics to Hollywood and pop psychology. Without the profound contributions of American Jews, the popular culture we know today would not exist. Where would music be without the music of Bob Dylan and Barbra Streisand, humor without Judd Apatow and Jerry Seinfeld, film without Steven Spielberg, literature without Phillip Roth, Broadway without Rodgers and Hammerstein? These are just a few of the artists who broke new ground and changed the face of American popular culture forever. This unique encyclopedia chronicles American Jewish popular culture, past and present in music, art, food, religion, literature, and more. Over 150 entries, written by scholars in the field, highlight topics ranging from animation and comics to Hollywood and pop psychology. Up-to-date coverage and extensive attention to political and social contexts make this encyclopedia is an excellent resource for high school and college students interested in the full range of Jewish popular culture in the United States. Academic and public libraries will also treasure this work as an incomparable guide to our nation's heritage. Illustrations complement the text throughout, and many entries cite works for further reading. The volume closes with a selected, general bibliography of print and electronic sources to encourage further research.




Reading the Way, Paul, and “The Jews” in Acts within Judaism


Book Description

Jason F. Moraff challenges the contention that Acts' sharp rhetoric and portrayal of “the Jews” reflects anti-Judaism and supersessionism. He argues that, rather than constructing Christian identity in contrast to Judaism, Acts binds the Way, Paul, and “the Jews” together into a shared identity as Israel, and that together they embark on a journey of repentance with common Jewishness providing the foundation. Acts leverages Jewish kinship, language, cult, and custom to portray the Way, Paul, and “the Jews” as one family debating the direction of their ancestral tradition. Using a historically situated narrative approach, Moraff frames Acts' portrayal of the Way and Paul in relation to the Jewish people as participating in internecine conflict regarding the Jewish tradition-in-crisis, after the destruction of the temple. By exploring ancient ethnicity, Jewish identity and Lukan characterization, images of the Jews, the Way, and Paul, violence in Acts and the theme of blindness in Luke's gospel, the Pauline writings and Acts, Moraff stresses that Acts speaks from “among my own nation,” meaning “the Jews”, and makes it possible to understand Acts' critical characterization of “the Jews” within Second Temple Judaism.




Jewish Women on Stage, Film, and Television


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This book exposes and traces a previously unrecognized performance tradition of extraordinary Jewish women in the Diaspora, from Rachel and Sarah Bernhardt in Nineteenth Century France to Roseanne and Sandra Bernhard in late Twentieth Century America.




Dancing Jewish


Book Description

Jewish choreographers have not only been vital contributors to American modern and postmodern dance, but they have also played a critical and unacknowledged role in American Jewish culture. This book delineates this rich history, demonstrating how, over the twentieth century, dance enabled American Jews to grapple with identity, difference, cultural belonging, and pride.