Burt Tepfer wil lead a discussion of the issues and ideas raised by the play he is directing, “Bad Jews”, on Sunday August 14 at 3:30 pm at Brattleboro Area Jewish Community – 151 Greenleaf Street in West Brattleboro. Since it is Tisha B’Av, the program will include a brief explanation of the holiday from Cantor Kate Judd, with a few words about why talking about what it means to be a “good” or “bad” Jew might be particularly appropriate on that day. Snacks will be supplied for those who are not fasting for the holiday.
Burt hopes that folks will come and see the play before attending the discussion, but all are welcome, free of charge.Don’t let the title fool you! Our own Burt Tepfer is directing a production of Bad Jews at the Actor’s Theater in West Chesterfield, NH. Tepfer says, “Among Jewish people, a ‘good Jew’ is a Jew who embraces the rituals, language, cultural, and religious traditions of their Jewish heritage whereas a ‘bad Jew’ rejects those traditions. In 2016, how much do young adults identify with the cultural and religious traditions they have inherited? Some align closely with their family’s observances and history while others wish to shed their Jewishness and move fully into America’s melting pot.
Shaden Freudster
As my cherished namesake, a Dutch excommunicado, was an original poster boy for the ‘Bad Jew’, I’m feeling an impulse to chime in here.
Woven into the fabric of Jewish identity has been the streak towards self-deprecation, gallows humor, and neurotic loathing as part of a sharp survival sense, including a bent towards hyper-analysis just for fun.
To me assimilation is a two-way street, not something to attach negative stigma to. Think of how comics from Phil Silvers through Jon Stewart or Seinfeld seeded a kvetchy-kitchy shtick into the American zeitgeist. Or how writers, like Roth, Saul Bellow, Salinger, or even Bob Dylan spanned gaps and opened understandings.
On other fronts, linguistic contributions to our common argot, shades and nuances of doofy idiocy come from Yiddish; shmuck, putz, shmendrick, to name but a few terms of dubious endowment. Annoying? Cloying? Yes, maybe. Outright ‘Bad’, I’m not so sure.
When I consider Bad Jews, what comes to mind is David Berkowitz, Bernie Madoff, Roy Cohn, Leopold and Loeb…not the kosher-keeping lobster-eating absolution-seeking hypocrite-variety, but genuinely despicable individuals, of which every race and religion has contributed its fair share.
גַליָא
When you think about “rituals, language, cultural, and religious traditions” some might see those traditions as entrapments. Spending my youth in the midst of one of the greatest cultural shifts in any lifetime, I had the good fortune to live my life to this day largely free of peer-pressure traditional constraints.
Having spent most of my adult life in NYC, oftentimes friends and coworkers would engage in discussions about Jewish heritage, Jewishishness and Jews as a race of people.
Once, during an office lunch break discussion I responded to the question of the Jewish race by saying the Jews are no more a race of people than Christians or any other religion. Culture and heritage is not DNA, and no one is born religious. So I was asked, if Jews aren’t a race, then what are they?
My answer: If a Jew is born and raised in America then they are Americans, in Russia, then they are Russians, in France, then they are French, etc. To my surprise, in reaction to my elemental answer, he said, “Oh yeah, of course.”
Naturally, it’s more complicated than that, but neither is it as simple as good Jew, bad Jew.
But it probably makes a good typical play about conflict/resolution.