The Polite Gentiles

Rabbi Daniel Lapin of Toward Tradition airs a question that I expect most Jews think should be aired, if at all, only among Jews. His reflections are prompted by the movie Meet the Fockers, starring Dustin Hoffman and Barbra Streisand. He is especially disappointed with Streisand because he had coached her in the film Yentl and hoped she was above this kind of thing. “In spite of having several Jewish producers and several Jewish stars,” writes Lapin, “this film’s vile notions of Jews are not too different from those used by Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels.” The argumentum ad Hitlerum, as Milton Himmelfarb once called it, makes one nervous. Lapin continues, “The movie depicts the conspicuously Jewish parents as sexually obsessed, constantly concupiscent degenerates. Nice people, but depraved.” He is put in mind of the defamatory depiction of Jews in Woody Allen films: “If Woody Allen were not Jewish, surely every Jewish organization would have roundly denounced him.”

What is it with the Jews?—is Rabbi Lapin’s question. He mentions potty-mouthed sexpert Dr. Ruth Westheimer, as well as the execrable Howard Stern and Jerry Springer, who also flaunt their Jewishness. Then there is the Jewish pornographer who goes by the name of Ron Jeremy and boasts of having acted in or directed more than 1,500 porn films, explaining, “Jewish families tend to be more liberal than Christian ones; they aren’t obsessed by the fear of the devil or going to hell.” A profile in Jewish Journal reassuringly notes that Jeremy plans to be married in a synagogue. “You’d have to be a recent immigrant from Outer Mongolia,” writes Lapin, “not to know of the role that people with Jewish names play in the coarsening of our culture. Almost every American knows this. It is just that most gentiles are too polite to mention it.”

Lapin says he is describing “anti-Semitism perpetrated by Jews rather than by non-Jews.” He cites a passage from Hitler’s Mein Kampf describing the meretricious influence of Jews and observes: “It does not excuse Hitler or his Nazi thugs for us to acknowledge that this maniacal master propagandist focused on a reality that resonated with the educated and cultured Germans of his day. Not once in Mein Kampf did that monster charge Jews with being complicit in the killing of Christ two thousand years earlier. He knew that long-ago event, shrouded in mystery and theological profundity, would never goad enlightened people to murder. Instead, he drew attention to the obvious and inescapable; that which every German knew to be true.”

After listing more instances of the culture-debasing activities of Jews, Lapin writes: “We Jews routinely depict ourselves in repugnant caricatures of people you’d want nothing to do with in real life. Why do my colleagues in Jewish communal leadership never condemn this anti-Semitism? For, if it is not anti-Semitism, what is?” Yet Jewish organizations went all out in their assault on Mel Gibson’s The Passion. “A year after its release, and after polls show increased regard for Jews among the film’s audiences, Jewish organizations still condemn The Passion as defamatory to Jews. Yet, astonishingly, they don’t consider the examples I cite as defamatory to Jews.” “Do you suppose that people’s view of what Jews are really like is shaped more by Caius, an obscure two-thousand-year old character in The Passion or by the contemporary couple played by Streisand and Hoffman? Which movie more egregiously defames Jews?”

Rabbi Lapin makes serious charges which, although directed against his fellow Jews, should be taken seriously also by Christians. Some distinctions are in order. He is certainly right about the wrong of the organized Jewish attacks on The Passion, and it is true that some Jewish reviewers let their obvious indifference or hostility to that central Christian story control their evaluation of the film. And he is surely right that, if gentiles depicted Jews the way that Woody Allen and others do, they would immediately be accused of anti-Semitism.

Are Jews disproportionately represented in the pornography industry? It is regularly said so, also by Jews. But that, if true, is quite distinct from the self-deprecatory humor of Jews in theater and films that Lapin too readily, it seems to me, describes as self-defamation. Is Jackie Mason anti-Semitic either in intent or effect? I don’t think so. I haven’t seen Meet the Fockers, and it may be as bad as Rabbi Lapin says, but some of the films that concern him are aimed at mainly non-Jewish audiences, inviting them to join in the mainly good-spirited laughter at these crazy Jews. This has been going on in the American world of entertainment for many decades and is a sign of a Jewish sense of security in this mainly non-Jewish society. An argument might be made that this tradition of public self-deprecation by Jews has played an important part in defusing whatever hostility there is to Jews in America.

I’m not sure it is the case that most Christians are “too polite” to say anything about Jews behaving badly. Most Christians don’t think very much about Jews. It is possible that most Christians in America don’t know any Jews personally. And if some have negative thoughts about the culture-debasing influence of some Jews, it is not only politeness but intimidation that inhibits their expressing them. Nobody wants to be viewed as an anti-Semite. In my experience, Christians don’t talk much about Jews, at least not outside the relatively small circle of people who take a particular interest in Jewish-Christian relations. When concern is expressed, it is usually in the form of puzzlement that so many Jews are non-religious or stridently anti-religious.

That mix of concern and puzzlement was pronounced in events surrounding The Passion. On this score, there have been other rough spots in the past and will no doubt be more. While Rabbi Lapin’s reproach of offending and determinedly offensive Jews is no doubt warranted, I suspect that the usually humorous, if unflattering, depiction of Jews in popular entertainment contributes to making ours a society so friendly to Jews. Against the marginal anti-Semites of today and the ravings of Mein Kampf, most people, if they think about it at all, probably think, “If they take such delight in making fun of themselves, they can’t possibly be dangerous.” That’s not the whole of it, but I am inclined to think it is an important part of what continues to be the generally happy story of Jews and Christians in America.