Upon distribution of this session's handout, one student launched into a soulful crooning of Irving Berlin's "White Christmas." So we began there: "White Christmas," the ultimate wholesome American Christmas song, written by a Jewish immigrant from Russia, the Bing Crosby video featuring tinsel, a fire in the fireplace, and a very blond woman singing harmony at his side. After that, "God Bless America," a hymn-like ode to the greatness and physical beauty of the U.S.A., written during World War I, at the dawn of America as a global power. Berlin's two songs represent a common approach within the Jewish diaspora: to integrate ourselves into our adopted "land of opportunity" and serve as its loudest cheerleader.

In contrast, Paul Simon's "American Tune" paints a bleak picture of an America whose greatness is receding ("the Statue of Liberty sailing away to sea"), and Simon and Garfunkel's "7 O'clock News/Silent Night" is the antithesis of "White Christmas," artfully pointing out the hypocrisy of the Christmas season during a time of societal strife. Simon grew up in a post-war middle class Jewish neighborhood, and his two songs reflect the turmoil that engulfed the country during the civil rights movement, the Vietnam War, and the Watergate scandal. He represents a different approach within the diaspora: to critique our adopted land and point out the ways in which it fails to meet our expectations.

We also viewed Stephen Sondheim's "America" from West Side Story (with music by fellow Jew Leonard Bernstein), which reflects both of the approaches above through competing groups of Puerto Rican immigrants living in New York. At the close of class, I noted that many of our course's topics will echo this theme of insiders and outsiders, assimilation and condemnation. 

View this session's handout.

For the first part of class, we revisited in more depth the two sets of contrasting strands of Jewishness from last week's exploration of superheroes: assimilating vs. standing out, and justice vs. vengeance. This led to some surprisingly personal and reflective comments about the kind of Jew we are and aspire to be. (Two big takeaways: Assimilation is selective, and resisting revenge is hard!)

We then transitioned to an examination of contemporary Jewish comedians, beginning by defining the Yiddish term kvetch, which means, roughly, to complain. We looked at two video clips featuring contrasting approaches to kvetching. Larry David's clip from Curb Your Enthusiasm reminded many students of people they know: complaining for the sake of complaining, moving from one random topic to another in order to continue complaining. I noted that this is more than a mere stereotype of Jews (though it is indeed a stereotype!) and is rooted in the ancient Jewish tradition of questioning and debate, of wrestling with the world, of scholarship for its own sake.

We then viewed a longer clip of Jon Stewart from The Daily Show (warning: bad language bleeped) as he picks apart a climate change rally and then a televised congressional hearing. This too reminded students of a familiar type: interrupting the TV, building in intensity with the same complaint and a tone of "Can you believe this?" This mode of "activist kvetching" and calling out what we deem to be foolish also has deep roots in modern Jewish culture.

Finally, we viewed an except from Sarah Silverman's latest comedy special (update: the clip has since been taken down), in which she recounts a seemingly serious anecdote, surprises her audience with a humorous twist, and then processes the craft of her story with her audience. In the time remaining, we talked about the art of storytelling in Jewish tradition (all the way back to the Torah) -- using stories to make a point or teach a lesson, and going "meta" to interpret our reactions to the stories.

We concluded with a call to notice these three cultural modes within our community and to employ them wisely in our own interactions.

For this class, we did not debate politics along a spectrum of liberal-conservative or Democrat-Republican. Instead, we examined two well-established Jewish traditions of making change through politics and government: as a revolutionary outsider and as a pragmatic insider. I deliberately chose examples of current officeholders who pretty much agree ideologically, in order to focus more on their approaches to politics.

We spent the bulk of our time analyzing the contrasting rhetoric and strategies of Senators Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Chuck Schumer (D-NY). We watched videos clips of Sanders speaking about his Jewishness and his campaign for "political revolution," and then of Schumer speaking about his Jewishness and his pragmatic deal-making with President Trump. Using the handout as a guide, the class engaged in an intellectually vigorous conversation about the merits of dismantling systems versus making incremental change when you can. Most students found themselves in the Schumer camp, though they also seemed to appreciate where Sanders is coming from.

We also connected these two strands of Jewishness back to ancient times, with the Maccabees as revolutionary outsiders and Queen Esther as the classic pragmatic insider, as well as the influential Jewish presence in global socialist movements and by the side of powerful capitalist leaders. We concluded by looking at another study in contrasts, between Jewish Supreme Court Justices Ginsburg and Breyer, as discussed on page two of the handout.

(Note: In an effort to include conservatives as well as liberals, throughout the portion of class on Sanders-Schumer I pointed out a similar tension occurring now between the revolutionary outsider Donald Trump and the insider Mitch McConnell. Neither is Jewish, but the spectrum is the same!) 

View this session's handout.

We began this class by discussing how American Jews have defined "success" and how they have navigated the potential pitfalls of success. Most of the responses to this prompt involved money, status, and comfort (with a short tangential conversation about top colleges), and students identified humility and religion as two ways Jews can prevent success from getting to their heads. This ended up being a perfect lead-in to our packet of interview excerpts with four Jewish-American actors: Jesse Eisenberg, Natalie Portman, Jonah Hill, and Mayim Bialik.

We focused the most on Eisenberg's fear that too much assimilation into white American culture can cause Jews to lose their ambition; the ensuing conversation touched on work ethic, growth mindset, and systemic racism. Some students initially ridiculed Portman's comparison of her Oscar statue to idol worship, but it revealed an important way that religion can ground people and steer them away from the temptations of materialism. With Hill's interview, we discussed the stereotype of the money-hoarding Jew and how Jews who do in fact become wealthy can avoid turning into the stereotype. We almost ran out of time for Bialik's page, but we did link it back to Portman's fear of materialism. This was another dynamic class period that helped us think about uniquely Jewish-American dilemmas in a universal context. 

View this session's handout.

Once again, we began with an opening prompt, this time asking whether someone trying to change something about their society should begin by getting people to like them or by getting people to pay attention to their concerns. The students all seemed to side with the former, but the conversation became more nuanced as more people contributed.

For the bulk of class, we viewed and then discussed videos about three Jewish-American activists: Emma Goldman, Harvey Milk, and Larry Kramer. The class was intrigued by the Emma Goldman video, which I supplemented with information about her involvement in an assassination plot (conveniently left out of the video!). We debated whether the ends necessarily justify the means and how long a "long game" must be to be worth playing (since Goldman's beliefs took nearly a century to enter the mainstream).

The Harvey Milk video, by contrast, shows him endearing himself to skeptical fellow citizens through humor and by finding causes that appeared universal, ultimately using this goodwill to help reverse public opinion on an anti-gay ballot proposition.

Finally, a short portion of a documentary about ACT UP (from 38:00 to 42:51) introduced us to Larry Kramer's strategy of making people mad in order to call attention to the problem of misinformation related to the AIDS crisis. The activists interviewed in the film had different perspectives on the usefulness of such tactics.

After a spirited class discussion about these topics, I tied it back to two contradictory negative stereotypes of Jews: the insufferable nag and the slick pitchman. Embodied in activism by Goldman/Kramer and Milk, respectively, these two strands have some historical truth to them, simply for the reason that Jews in the Diaspora have needed to develop strategies for achieving change in order to survive as underdogs in inhospitable territory.