The birth, and ‘death,’ of the cool
You know that dream when you’re late to a party, and by the time you arrive the doors are locked, the lights are off, and everyone’s gone home?
That’s sort of how I felt after reading an article in New York’s Jewish Week, “Pop Goes the Hipster Judaism Bubble.” The article suggested that a “backlash” has begun against the young, entrepreneurial Jews who are behind a movement to brand Judaism “cool.” The touchstones of the movement — or un-movement, as B’nai B’rith magazine called it — include the cheeky Heeb magazine; JDub records and its signature act, the hasidic reggae star Matisyahu; the multimedia Jewcy.com, which hosts parties and markets “Chai Maintenance” T-shirts; and Reboot, a New York-based nonprofit that stages salons and publishes the star-studded Guilt & Pleasure Journal.
In fact, much of this scene is New York-based, which is why I was late to the party. I kept waiting for the scene to spill over the Hudson River so that we could report it as a local story. The closest you can probably get in the suburbs to the “New Jew” mindset is downloading Adam Sandler’s Hanukka song off of iTunes, renting the Orthodox-Jew-meets-Superfly action spoof The Hebrew Hammer, or reading Bar Mitzva Disco, a book that celebrates the polyester simchas of the 1970s and ’80s.
Do all three, and you know what Jewcy means when they describe their philosophy as “pro-Manischewitz, pro-Jewfro, pro-Barneys Warehouse Sale. It’s knishes with a knasty attitude! To be Jewcy is to be bold and visible, vocal and proud.”
That emphasis on the secular ephemera of Jewish life is what seems to have led the handful of critics in the Jewish Week article to suggest that the movement is “substanceless.” More importantly, enthusiasm among mainstream philanthropists has waned in recent months. The Joshua Venture, launched six years ago in San Francisco to encourage Jewish “social entrepreneurs,” is on indefinite hiatus, thanks to administrative problems and a struggle to raise funds. New York’s UJA-Federation cut its funding for Heeb, presumably in response to articles like “the 10 sexiest scenes from the Bible” and a Passion of the Christ parody that featured a bare-breasted Virgin Mary.
Leaders of the various projects say that hardly amounts to a death sentence — besides, what kind of youth movement measures its success by the grants it receives from the hoary heads in charity board rooms? Dan Sieradski, whose Jewschool.com Web site collective is at the center of the “hipster” movement, understands that deal with the devil. “The problem isn’t so much the projects, but rather the fact that their grant writers all have to lie about their intentions in order to get funded,” he explained in an angry response to the Jewish Week article. “All of the grant money available to Jewish cultural projects fall[s] under the auspices of Jewish continuity — recently rebranded ‘renaissance & renewal.…’ In this climate, the only way for innovative Jewish projects to get funded is if they present themselves within the context of Jewish continuity. It’s a dirty game, but it’s the reality.”
In truth, the backlash against the scene is not nearly as strong as the Jewish Week suggested it is, nor have the 20-something Jews managed to transform Jewish culture in the ways they keep predicting.
The “social entrepreneurs” can find solace in the experience of previous generations of young Jewish rebels. Nearly 40 years ago student activists staged a revolt at the national convention of the Jewish federation movement, demanding increased funding for Jewish education and programs that promote “creative Jewish living and identity.” It took a few decades and some scary news about intermarriage, but their “radical” platform is now the mainstream. Those same students, who lost their Jewfros long ago, are now leaders of Jewish organizations around the world.
Those veteran Jewish leaders, meanwhile, need to let go of their obsession with “authenticity” and “depth” if they expect to tap Jewish energies beyond an observant elite. Steve Bayme, American Jewish Committee’s director of Contemporary Jewish Life, was characteristically critical of the hipsters in the Jewish Week article. “Being Jewish isn’t whatever it is that Jews happen to be doing,” he said. “It’s speaking a language that has some degree of connectedness to Jewish people and Jewish values.… Pop culture is no substitute for serious Jewish learning.”
Except, of course, when it is. The problem here is one of analogy. If you compare everything in Jewish life to a Platonic (or is it Mishnaic?) ideal of Torah, prayer, and acts of loving-kindness, no wonder a lot of new projects are going to come up short. Those attracted to the hipsters aren’t looking for a synagogue, at least not yet. They are drawn to pop culture, exactly the way most Jews in my parents’ generation were more likely to read Leon Uris’ Exodus than the Book of Exodus. Was “serious Jewish learning” ever a majority Jewish choice?
Fully assimilated young Jews, who grew up outside of the social ghettoes that encircled their parents, are trying to recreate the ethnicity that came easily to those earlier generations. We can scoff at a Jewish life built around Manischewitz, mezuza necklaces, Allan Sherman records, and Woody Allen films, but these pop artifacts were and are daily, living reminders of what kept Jews Jewish.
Hipster Judaism will come of age when those initially attracted to Judaism’s pop surface find themselves with a desire to look beneath it. And I’m guessing many of these same folks now on the entrepreneurial margins will be leading — and reinvigorating — “mainstream” Jewish organizations when they do.