In fact, on paper (that description) aside, the movie sounded appealing. The plot (the four Meyerowitz siblings prepare for their father’s 70th birthday dinner in the wake of the just-published-by-youngest-son-family-tell-all) seemed new and different enough to sustain a funny, lively narrative. And the cast! Rainn Wilson (of Dwight Schrute fame), Dexter star Michael C. Hall, and sharp-tongued comedian Sarah Silverman play variously troubled siblings dealing with the aftermath of youngest brother Nathan (charming-even-though-his-character-is-a-total-jerk Ben Schwartz)’s bestselling book, Peep World. Sadly, the characters fall flat in four individual, divergent story lines that aren’t fleshed out enough. On the bright side, at least the problem isn’t the Jewish thing!

Sarah Silverman’s character, Cheri Meyerowitz, is the most stereotyped, and “Jewish,” of the ensemble, and she goes all out—as perhaps only she can—to embody middle-child Cheri in all her bratty, obnoxious whininess. It is truly irritating, as I imagine Silverman thoroughly intended, to watch her failed-actress character shriek at her mother and demand back-up her in her libel lawsuit against Nathan. In Cheri’s defense, the film adaptation of Peep World (the film based on the novel within the movie, all with the same name—got that?) is filming outside her window, and the actress playing the film version of Cheri is her father’s new girlfriend. Tough times.

But aside from the stereotyped Cheri (and her inexplicable Jews for Jesus pal, played by Steven Tobolowsky), there is little reference to Judaism throughout the film, and I don’t think any mention at all that the family is Jewish, save for their surname. Cue sigh of relief.

Also worth mentioning is the stellar supporting cast, who play characters more realistic and dimensional than the Meyerowitz siblings. Judy Greer, whose sidekick presence alone makes any film worth seeing, is one of the highlights. Plus, her character is married to Michael C. Hall’s: Awesome couple alert. Taraji P. Henson and Kate Mara shine as Wilson and Schwartz’s unlikely dinner companions.

While I took solace in the fact that not every character in the film (directed by Barry W. Blaustein, who directed The Ringer and wrote Coming to America) was a Jewish stereotype, I wish Peep World had stepped up its narrative game and developed the main characters more fully.

Peep World Trailer

Or maybe not. What do you think? Also, and especially since it is International Women’s Day, is there a problem with The Battleaxe even if you throw out the ethnic angle?

The Dating Persona Test [OkCupid]

“The Holy Land is set to become an even more magical place. Disney has announced that it is to open a theme park in Israel. The Walt Disney Company, which has amusement parks in the US, France and Hong Kong, is planning to open another in Haifa in 2013.”

—The Jewish Chronicle, January 5

Steve Brodner is an illustrator, journalist, and filmmaker living in New York. A regular contributor to The New Yorker since 1993, he also makes films for the PBS news magazine, Need to Know. He blogs at Brodnersbicycle.com.

I have always looked on Bruce Springsteen as the embodiment of lower-middle class, Jewish-American culture. He built up his career in a very Jewish way, shrewdly and carefully. He looked after himself, and never went wild on drugs or drink, just as those other New York-area Jews, Simon and Garfunkel, stayed clean. He was and is good with money…

He was, to my mind, the archetypal Jew who completed the Jewish journey, of taking a format that began with fusions of country and western and black soul music, that had been reinterpreted by Jewish writers, but was now finally being performed by a Jew.

The answer eventually becomes obvious to the writer, Kevin Myers of Northern Ireland: “Bruce Springsteen is as Jewish as hurling or the Christian Brothers.” Of course, his mistake is an honest one (we know where Jackie Mason stands on Italians from New Jersey). We all want to “own” our heroes, and the difference between “steen” and “stein” is subtle but significant. But Myers’s error also involved a leap of, if not impeccable, than at least solid deduction: “it was logical that there should be a Jewish rock star, because for over a generation, Jews had been the intermediary between black music and the larger white population in the US and abroad.”

However, in an attempt to forgive himself for “deal[ing] in stereotypes,” Myers makes another leap, this one also naïve and, in some ways, as reductive as stereotypes themselves: “There is, in reality, no true ‘Jew’, no ‘Protestant’, no ‘Traveller’, no ‘Palestinian’, no ‘Zulu’, no ‘Ibo’…And we on this small island should by now have learnt that tribal divisions are usually a toxic confection in the mind of the beholder.” Quite a jump from this insight on the top of the page: “[A]s we all know, sooner or later, Jews naturally get to the top of the tree. This is one of the simple truisms of life.”

Why it Doesn’t Matter if Bruce Was Born in the USA or in Bray [Belfast Telegraph]
Related: A Fine Romance [Nextbook Press]

You describe your father as “the ultimate cheapskate.” Can you give an example?

My father is quite eccentric—he really couldn’t care less what other people think. We had a car named Minnie, and when she was 13 years old he gave her a bat mitzvah. It was more like a baptism—he threw a few pails of water over her. There’s very little written about the psychology of cheapness, but people who are frugal tend to be independent thinkers and not susceptible to pressure.

You also talk about how you used to be ashamed of the cheapness, but that now you see it as somehow virtuous, take pride in it, and even practice it yourself.

Once I started supporting myself I realized how hard it is to get by. Being cheap has allowed me so much freedom in my life, especially when I look around and see people who have become slaves to their jobs. Why is there some shame in being frugal? If my friends want to go to dinner, but I can’t afford it, why should I feel bad about that?

In today’s economic climate, do you see the idea of cheapness being redeemed?

People talk about the “new frugality,” and on some level that’s really gratifying. Many people are being forced to cut back. There are a lot of people who are in serious trouble, but for a lot of other people it just means canceling the cable subscription, the gym membership. But I don’t buy it when people say this is a sea change. We cycle through this sort of thing over and over.

Where does philanthropy fit into the stereotypes about Jews being cheap?

It’s a very flexible stereotype, but it all stems from a link between Jews and money. In some ways, Jews refer to it as the redemptive part of the stereotype: see, it’s not all bad, look how much good were doing in the world! It’s something I’m proud of. But even that is double-edged. Some people might look at it as ostentatious. Michael Bloomberg named a residence hall at Princeton after his daughter. I think if I were her I’d be a little embarrassed about it.

There’s something paradoxical about the connection between Jews and money. There are stereotypes about Jews being tightfisted, but also about Jews being gaudy.

The stereotype combines both admiration and resentment, and that’s a particularly American combination. On the one hand Jews were called miserly, on the other hand they were called ostentatious. Jews would be closed out of certain resorts because they were vulgar. In the book, I talk about this stereotype of the Jew living in a hovel that was secretly opulent inside. You’re damned if you do, damned if you don’t.

Jen Taylor Friedman. Tefillin Barbie (2007). Plastic, fabric and leather.

Spertus closed “Imaginary Coordinates,” which included both metaphoric and naturalistic maps of the Holy Land by Jews, Christians, and Muslims, on June 20, 80 days ahead of schedule, since “parts of the exhibition” were out of line with “aspects of [its] mission as a Jewish institution and did not belong at Spertus,” according to a museum release. In a conference call with the press that day, Spertus trustee Philip Gordon insisted, “This has nothing to do with censorship.” Howard Sulkin, president of the Spertus Institute of Jewish Studies, said of the developing news stories about the closed exhibit, “We would like to believe that there will be just a blip about that.”

To follow this show, Spertus could have opted for something tame—shtetl scenes by Chagall or colorful Agam designs—but instead it opened “Twisted Into Recognition: Clichés of Jews and Others,” an exhibit which was co-organized by the Jewish Museum Berlin and the Jewish Museum Vienna. “Twisted” is not as edgy as its predecessor—it has neither videos of a nude woman twirling a barbed-wire hula hoop while standing on Israel’s border, nor a driver asking ultra-Orthodox Israeli pedestrians for directions to the Palestinian city of Ramallah—but it is controversial in its own right, with works like Jen Taylor Friedman’s Barbie doll wearing a tallis and tefillin (Tefillin Barbie), and an installation of sculpted and painted noses by Dennis Kardon (49 Jewish Noses).

Tamir Lahav-Radlmesser’s installation includes samples of pubic hair he collected from friends and acquaintances in response to a 1939 exhibit that Josef Wastl, the Nazi curator of the anthropology department at the Vienna Museum of Natural History, created to demonstrate the racial inferiority of Jews. Wastl’s exhibit included plaster casts of faces and pubic hair taken from 500 “stateless Jews” who were subsequently sent to concentration camps.

Ernst Ludwig Hiemer. Der Giftpilz: ein Stürmerbuch für Jung und Alt (1938)

Perhaps the most controversial work in the exhibit is Der Giftpilz: ein Stürmerbuch für Jung und Alt (“The Poisonous Mushroom: an SS book for Young and Old”), a classroom textbook by Ernst Ludwig Hiemer which had a 1938 print run of 60,000. The Spertus exhibit shows an illustration from the book of four schoolboys, matching parts in their blond hair, looking on with their teacher as a fifth student holds a pointer to a blackboard that features chalk drawings of a Star of David, a hunched man who might be the wandering Jew, and the number six. The caption explains the last symbol: “Die Judennase ist an ihrer Spitze gebogen. Sie sieht aus wie ein Sechser,” or, “The Jewish nose is bent at its peak. It looks like a six.”

Spertus hopes the show will be “stereotype-busting,” and its release assures (perhaps both viewers and board members) that the show “does not intend to deny regional, ethnic, or cultural differences. Rather it explores how stereotypes about these differences are conveyed through images and objects, some of which communicate difficult or even brutal messages.” Yet most reviewers aren’t buying it, nor do they seem ready to forgive and forget the “blip.”

Manya Brachear’s review in the Chicago Tribune called “offending Jewish sensibilities” Spertus’ “new stock in trade,” and quoted Beth Gelman, the museum’s director of education, as saying that she expected some people to be offended, because “learning questions our assumptions.” Time Out Chicago’s Lauren Weinberg began her article with a discussion of the censored show, which she hailed as challenging and beautiful, before panning “Twisted” for being “so rigid that it doesn’t leave much room for surprises.” She wondered why Spertus’ show about stereotypes did not mention the museum’s own censorship.

Weinberg is surely aware that it is rare for any museum, let alone one funded by the Jewish United Fund/Jewish Federation, to criticize itself in its own exhibit, but she might be on to something in her critique that the show does not even attempt to respond to stereotypes of Israelis. She also questioned why there are “zero mentions of Palestinians” among the clichés of “others” included in the show: The only Muslim representative is Women of Allah: Rebellious Silence, a photograph of a woman wearing a headscarf and holding a gun in front of her face, which is covered with Arabic writing. The photograph was taken by Iranian artist Shirin Neshat, whose work also appeared in “Imaginary Coordinates.”

Howard Zieff. You don’t have to be Jewish to love Levy’s (1967)

As for a question Weinberg did not ask: Why doesn’t “Twisted” tackle stereotypes of Jews by Jews? If the museum really wants viewers “to closely examine stereotypes and clichés, and to reflect on them and discuss them,” wouldn’t it have been fascinating if the show included ads from the Yiddish press at the beginning of the twentieth century which were designed to assimilate Eastern European immigrants? What about cartoons from Jewish newspapers, in which Jews of one denomination denounce other types of Jews? Showing nineteenth-century walking sticks with noses that double as handles, which were later appropriated as anti-Semitic objects, is an important and ambitious move for a Jewish museum, but an institution that is quick to expose others’ stereotypes might try interrogating and exposing its own biases.

The subtitle of “Twisted” promises that the exhibit will explore not only Jews, but “others.” Instead of examining the philosophical and psychological processes of interacting with (and often forming stereotypes of) “the Other,” Spertus narrowly defines “others” simply as non-Jews. Had “Twisted” taken a closer look at the Jewish community, it would have had to address the fact that Jews are hardly homogeneous, and that members of one denomination often see Jews of different nationalities or levels of religious observance as “others,” too.

Before it tries to repent, Spertus needs to identify exactly where it fell off track. Steven Nasatir, president of the JUF/Jewish Federation in Chicago, told the Tribune that “Imaginary Coordinates” was “clearly anti-Israel” and that he was “very surprised” and “saddened” that a Jewish institution would host such an exhibit. Michael Kotzin, executive vice president of the same organization, added that a Jewish museum is the “last place the Jewish community should hear echoes” of anti-Israel sentiments. But if museums should avoid edginess and provocation, one wonders what venues the American Jewish community has set up to hear constructive feedback and new ideas.

Luckily the Jerusalem Post’s Marilyn Henry elevated the discussion with her observation that the censorship “inadvertently performed a great communal service: It opened the door to a long-overdue discussion on the role of American Jewish museums.” Henry recommended that angry viewers either close their eyes or go home. “I, for one, do not see the geopolitical balance of the Mideast shifting because an American Midwestern museum exhibits its map collection,” she wrote. Instead, Henry sees American Jewish museums as “cultural sanctuaries,” which “may be the only open Jewish space in the U.S. where traditional, ethnic, and disengaged Jews can meet with each other and with the larger community.”

Nasatir and Kotzin seem to think of Jewish museums as mirrors that ought to reflect what the community already believes, while Henry sees their potential to look forward. This is surely a struggle for all museums—not just Jewish ones—as they try to prove that their mandate as educational institutions necessitates some pushing of the envelope. Being on the vanguard does not just mean filling an exhibit with pop culture symbols like Tinky Winky (the allegedly gay character from Teletubbies), Aunt Jemima, and Michael Jackson, as “Twisted” does. It is refreshing to see Monty Python’s comical Life of Brian beside Franco Zeffirelli’s sobering Jesus of Nazareth, and Al Pacino’s performance as Shylock in The Merchant of Venice in an exhibit that also includes Howard Zieff’s ad campaign, You don’t have to be Jewish to love Levy’s, which shows a Native American man with braids and a feather also wearing a black hat and holding a deli sandwich. But this subject begs for more than just clever juxtapositions of art and kitsch.

With “Twisted,” Spertus had an opportunity to distinguish itself from other Jewish museums, becoming self-conscious and thus vulnerable. Instead, it settled for being just another PR voice for American Judaism, piling up even more evidence that Jews are marginalized and oppressed. Until it manages to grapple more fully and honestly with the provocative topics it raises so promisingly, it will be hard to treat the museum as much more than a $55-million building with a great view of Lake Michigan.

Menachem Wecker is a writer based in Washington, D.C. He blogs about religion and the arts at Iconia.

Jewface, a new album from Reboot Stereophonic, introduces several of these songs to listeners far removed from the immigrant experience and the Yiddish inflections that infused it.

Jody Rosen, the music critic for Slate, is the album’s curator. He talks with Nextbook about discovering these scratchy wax-cylinder recordings and what audiences a century ago thought of songs like “When Mose With His Nose Leads the Band” and “That’s Yiddisha Love.”