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November 19, 1999/10 Kislev 5760, Vol. 52, No.12
Lectures look at Jews on TV"Screening Jews: The '60s to the '90s," a series of free lectures about the American Jewish experience as shown on television, will be presented on successive Tuesdays beginning Nov. 23 at Temple Beth Israel, 10460 N. 56th St. in Scotts-dale.The 7:15 p.m. to 9 p.m. lectures by Jack Kugelmass, the director of Arizona State University's Jewish Studies Program and a professor in the Interdisciplinary Humanities Program, will look at the transformation of Jews and Jewishness from the '60s to today, Kugelmass says. "Television is a wonderful marker of how our ideas have changed over the past 30 years," Kugelmass says. The first session, "American TV and the Holocaust: The '60s," will be a discussion of early programs that dealt with the Holocaust, something Kugelmass described as "very rare" on American television. Among the programs to be discussed will be a "Twilight Zone" episode titled "He's Alive," which was shown during the series' fourth season in January of 1963 and starred Dennis Hopper as a "bush-league fuhrer," guided by a mystery man who turns out to be Hitler and who teaches him how to control and mesmerize the populace. The second session, Nov. 30, will be on "Jewish Women Through the Television Lens: The '70s vs. the '90s" and will compare and contrast two programs from each decade: "Rhoda" and "The Nanny." Kugelmass will discuss how these "signature shows" from the two eras construct radically different ideas of Jewish women - their sexuality, families and their relationship to Jewishness. Kugelmass says that when he lectures about " 'The Nanny,' " "people (become) very upset and say (that) it's terrible how the show depicts Jewish women." However, Kugelmass says, it's actually in "Rhoda" that "the depiction of Jews is quite despicable." "Everything about 'Rhoda' is (about) fleeing from the ghetto," Kugelmass says. "And the ghetto keeps running after her" in the person of her mother. "If you look at the issue of positive vs. negative, 'Nanny' is positive, 'Rhoda' is negative," Kugelmass says, adding that, while "The Nanny" depicts a loving Jewish family, Rhoda's family "appears almost like the Addams family in how grotesque they are; they're horrible." The final session, Dec. 7, is titled "Romantic Interludes: Jewish Christmas" and deals with how television shows written by Jews portray Christmas. "You're not going to find Christ in these shows," Kugelmass says. "There's evidence they Judaize the holiday." Kugelmass calls this "a travesty by Jews." |
