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Encyclopedic Idiosyncracies: A Review of the Encyclopedia of Jewish American Popular Culture

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Fanny Brice, Aaron Copland, Allen Ginsberg, Mark Spitz and Henny Youngman, but also Rabbi Roland Gittelsohn, Cantor Josef Rosenblatt and Alice B. Toklas? You’ll find them all in the Encyclopedia of Jewish American Popular Culture. Edited by Jack R. Fischel with Susan M. Ortman.

An encyclopedia of Jewish participation in American popular culture is, in more than one sense, a daunting if not improbable task. This encyclopedia, like similar volumes, has its delights and defaults, even when particular choices (call it idiosyncratic) will likely at times elude casual readers.

A brief Introduction to this work does not seem to engage the nagging difficulties long familiar to writers in the field: why is so much of the scholarship (apart from journalism) on Jews and popular culture so recent, and why does the “why” of Jews and the subject at hand still seem so difficult even to ask?

Editor Jack Fischel is a history emeritus at Millersville University and frequent contributor to Jewish publications including the Forward but also notably the neoconservative Weekly Standard. Not very surprisingly, then, the politically and spiritually conservative topics and those firmly linked to Israel come off rather well here, the secular liberal-or-radical less so, although exceptions aplenty could be found in each direction.

Still, every reference book, especially those edited by a few hands rather than the vast staffs of the Encyclopedia Brittannica, depends to a large degree upon the writers and upon the subjects that writers themselves may propose, agree to do, and/or not manage to do on deadline. Some hearty contributors, as a rule, ending up writing a whole bunch; an editor without a vast budget is lucky to get a single entry out of a semi-famous academic. Forget about Pulitzer Prize winners.

Encyclopedia of American Jewish Popular Culture begins with Bella Abzug, an interesting (as well as distinctly non-conservative) choice, because apart from her hats, it is difficult to see precisely how she fits into American popular (as opposed to political) culture. Senator Joseph Lieberman, known mostly for his hostility towards areas of popular culture (that is, sex in recorded music and on television) may be yet harder yet to place in familiar popcult frameworks. Still, it is just the seemingly oddball entry that gives particular weight to any reference volume and throws some fresh light upon the larger, more vastly complex subject.

Examples of particular editorial choices and their treatment abound, in any case. Department store magnate Louis Bamberger certainly makes sense in the usual ways, but the focus on his philanthropic activity is of particular interest here (the next entry is the Beastie Boys, not known for philanthropical activity). Shmuley Boteach, “Rabbi to the Stars,” a disciple of Rebbe Schneerson who has his own television series and bits in Playboy, was someone not all of us had heard about. Ditto: who knew that Dr. Joyce Brothers first became famous for answering all questions correctly on the $64,000 Question (the only woman to win the top prize, and on boxing, no less)?

“Chess” is one of the big, long entries, with Einstein, Bobby Fischer and less remembered players here, making me wonder about Contact Bridge, Poker and other less notably cerebral pastimes of Jewish sharpies. Alan Dershowitz as an entry? He’s a world-historical popularizer for sure, although he would claim more for himself. “Exodus” (the only novel to gain its own entry) would not have outsold many an adventure novel by an American Jewish writer, but arguably put the young state of Israel on the map for many popular readers, Jews and non-Jews alike. Only World of Our Fathers gains similar volume status, and for feminists, an issue: a potential if never compiled “World of Our Mothers” was already in play at the original’s 1978 publication.

Jewish sacred music composer Debbie Friedman, whose music is the cornerstone of every Jewish day camp and retreat, is definitely unknown in wider circles of popular music let alone popular culture…but it’s interesting to learn that she started out practicing her guitar with Peter, Paul and Mary records, moving on to her first triumph, at Kamp Kutz. Then there’s Haim Gnott, a clinical psychologist, who made it big explaining to parents how to cope with teenagers.

There is much underrepresented or missing here. Take Yiddish-language radio, heard by hundreds of thousands in its day. Or the phenomenon of the Jewish Film Festival, perhaps the most successful venue for bringing together Jewish audiences across generational and political lines during the last twenty years or so. Take klezmer. Take women’s basketball (Chicago Jews invented the rules!). And in less respectable quarters, take gangsters, sex-work and pornography in particular. Where are the sainted Annie Sprinkle, vaginal explorer, or less sainted Al Goldstein (of Screw) , or Seymore Butts aka Adam Glasser, part of a family business that franchised porn seen by about a thousand for every reader of Henry Roth? They definitely outmarketed the sacred, whatever else may be said about them.

A reader leaning leftward would also be inclined to say that the victims of the Hollywood Blacklist such as the once fabulously successful Albert Maltz or Jack Lawson, don’t get much respect here, and that their impact upon film art of the Golden Age, slapstick comedy along with World War II antifascist epics, is not much noticed. More weight is placed upon Hollywood/music industry popcult of the last thirty years or so, which seems increasingly to be the way of the (reference or referenced) world. The definite post-1970 trend of Jews identifying themselves as Jews in television particularly appears here—e.g. Adam Sandler–but is not explored as a subject. Krusty the Clown, anyone?

So a lot is missing–so what? In today’s Wikipedian world, where every known fact (and many doubtful ones as well) has gained something like a democratic equality, printed encyclopedias are mostly for fun reading for the middle aged anyway. Expect an undergraduate to go to the library and take a volume off the shelf? Forget it. Online entries, maybe. One presumes that we educated people have lost something, but it gets harder with each year to remember just what that something is. The Encyclopedia of Jewish American Popular Culture contains lots of interest for those who like that sort of thing. I know that I do.