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Is Judaism a Religion Or an Ethnicity? Ask Larry David.

One literary critic weighs in, with the help of TV’s most famous crumudgeon

by
Mark Oppenheimer
September 27, 2017
Courtesy HBO
Courtesy HBO
Courtesy HBO
Courtesy HBO

You know the drill: Is Judaism a religion or an ethnicity? A nation or a tribe? A clan or a culture? I had the pleasure of interviewing English literary critic Devorah Baum, who writes in her new book, Feeling Jewish, that the best way to think about Jewishness (if not Judaism) is as a state of mind, or brain, represented by a surfeit of feeling, a bubbling-over of emotion. Thus: Some accuse the Jew of neurosis, other of hysteria, or anxiety; we are accused of excessive mother attachment, and we incline toward utopian dreams in politics—in all these cases, the “Jew,” in his own imagination and in the anti-Semitic worldview, is that creature from whom feeling bubbles forth.

By contrast, anti-Semitism is often an attempt to restrain feeling, to tamp it down, to order it—think of fascism in politics, which prizes order, predictability, and a return to known folk ways, against the roil of Jewish disorder and uncertainty. To make her case, she draws on Bernard Malamud, Larry David, the forgotten Victorian English writer Amy Levy, and much more. I had the pleasure of interviewing Baum about her book earlier this month in New Haven. Click on this video to watch some highlights, from a session that was all highlights.

Mark Oppenheimer is a Senior Editor at Tablet. He hosts the podcast Unorthodox. He has contributed to Slate and Mother Jones, among many other publications. He is the author, most recently, of Squirrel Hill: The Tree of Life Synagogue Shooting and the Soul of a Neighborhood. He will be hosting a discussion forum about this article on his newsletter, where you can subscribe for free and submit comments.