Category Archives: Mythology

Chanukah, Sukkot Bet and the Brumalia

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With the dissemination and availability of 2 Maccabees (preserved in the Catholic and Orthodox Christian cannons), more Jews are learning that the eight day festival of lights originated as a renewal of the eight day festival of Sukkot.  That essential Fall pilgrimage and fertility festival (which included the joyous water-drawing festival, Simchat Bet haShoeva) was missed due to the Temple desecration and ensuing revolt. The relationship between Sukkot and Chanukah is explained in 2Maccabees chapter 10 verses 5-8. Here is the translation from the original Greek as found in the The New Oxford Annotated Apocrypha (Augmented Third Edition):

It happened that on the same day on which the sanctuary had been profaned by the foreigners, the purification of the sanctuary took place, that is, on the twenty-fifth day of the same month, which was Kislev. They celebrated it for eight days with rejoicing, in the manner of the Festival of Booths [Sukkot], remembering how not long before, during the Festival of Booths, they had been wandering in the mountains and caves like wild animals. Therefore, carrying ivy-wreathed wands and beautiful branches and also fronds of palm [lulavim], they offered hyms of thanksgiving to him who had given success to the purifying of his own holy place. They decreed by public edict, ratified by vote, that the whole nation of the Jews should observe these days each year.

It can be difficult to imagine how important the pilgrimage holidays were in the Temple eras. Not only did they fulfill the important social function for reuniting families and clans, opportunities for the young to meet and fall in love (or for the arrangement of marriages), they also expressed the real anxieties Jews shared for a good harvest and a sufficient rainy season. The passion of the Sukkot fertility rituals and the joy expressed at the Simchat beit hashoeva (Water Drawing festival) cannot be exaggerated. The Mishnah in Middoth 2:5 exclaims “He who has not seen the rejoicing at the place of the water-drawing has never in his life seen true rejoicing.”  The loss of the Sukkot pilgrimage due to fighting must have been so difficult that the victory inspired a religious innovation: recelebrating a Sukkot, albeit with light! The important bull sacrifices in the Temple on Sukkot that were missed could symbolically be commemorated by offerings of light by all of Israel. (This also helps to explain the symbolism of Beit Shammai’s alternative Chanukah lighting tradition. See below.)

Given that a pagan ritual defiled the Temple on that same winter day (the 25th of Kislev), what can we know about it? Chapter 6 of Maccabees 2 describes a series of defilements including the Temple’s consecration to Zeus and a festival to Dionysus (2 Macabees 6:7). Could this have been the Brumalia, a month long holiday held in honor of Bacchus/Dionysus ending on the winter solstice? (Brumalia is derived from the Latin bruma, or “shortest day.”) The holiday was known for its wine mixing and revelry. Perhaps there was some Dionysian mystery cult that also lit candles on the solstice, but the  ritual lighting of sacred candles on Chanukah, signifying an increase of light both above (with the solstice) and below (with the Temple’s re-sanctification) seems a more relevant celebration of the bruma.

The Talmudic legend in Tractate Shabbat 21b — that undefiled oil found in the Temple, only enough for one day nevertheless lasted for eight — is not found in either Maccabees 1 or 2. Nor is the connection to Sukkot made obvious in the Talmud. In his distinctive poetic form, Beit Midrash shel Melkh Goblin elucidates the connection between the Talmud and Macabees in his latest (brilliant) d’var torah “.” (Check this link for the full drash.) [My translations and transliterations are in brackets.]

In the Babylonian Talmud
in מסכת שבת [Masechet Shabbat, Tractate Shabbat of the Talmud, 21b]
our Sages explain
the holiday of חנוכה
with the story
of the miraculous jug of pure oil
that lasted for eight days
when it should have only lasted
for one.

When the Maccabees
liberated the בית המקדש,
they found the Temple
stained
with spiritual darkness
and impurity.
Everything had been desecrated.
And then,
in the midst
of that thick dark cloud
of impurity and despair,
they found that first small jug of oil —
the first glimmering hint
of holy light.

But we find another explanation —
another layer of significance —
to the eight days of illumination
in the Books of the Maccabees,
which describe the first חנוכה
as a late סוכות,
celebrated by the victorious Jewish warrior-priests
in commemoration
of the סוכות they were unable to observe
when they were busy fighting
for the survival of Judaism
against the Seleucid Empire.

This other layer
of the Festival of Lights
is corroborated
by hints in the על הנסים prayer
and by the opinion of בית שמאי in the גמרא —
who taught
that like the bull sacrifices
of סוכות,
we should count down in candles
for the eight days
of the חנוכה holiday.

Just as the number of sacrifices
decreased each day of סוכות
from 13 to 12 to 11 and so on,
according to בית שמאי
we should kindle the חנוכה lights
8 on the first night
and 7 on the second
6 on the third
and so on,
all the way down
to one.

However
we don’t rule
according to בית שמאי.

Instead,
following the opinion of בית הלל,
we start
at one candle the first night;
on the second night, two;
on the third night, three —
and slowly,
day by day,
work our way up
to eight.
As בית הלל put it, going up in holiness.

We increase light
we increase holiness
and we increase hope.

In מסכת עבודה־זרה [Tractate Avodah Zara of the Talmud, page 8a]
we are told a story
about אדם הראשון.

After he was kicked out of Eden,
Adam noticed
that the days
were getting shorter.
Every 24 hours
the amount of daylight decreased
and the amount of darkness grew.

אדם fasted and prayed
for eight days,
terrified
that it was all his fault —
that because of his sin inside the Garden,
the light of creation
was dwindling away
to nothing,
and the world was returning
to empty chaos.

And then
תקופת טבת came —
the winter solstice —
and אדם saw
that the days
were once again
growing in length.

When he realized
that light
was returning to the world —
that the universe
was not dissolving
back into the primordial darkness —
that what he was so frightened of
was nothing but a natural cycle,
instituted by God —
אדם celebrated
for another eight days,
from the solstice onwards.

אדם celebrated תקופת טבת
for eight days
as hope returned to his dreams
and light returned to the world.

Whatever victory the Maccabees had wrought from Antiochus in 164BCE, the following hundred years of Hasmonean rule described a painful progression from despotism and corruption, to masscares and civil war, and finally to Roman rule over Hasmonean puppet governments. Disturbed by this history, both the midrash cited in Tractate Avodah Zara and the decision to follow the candle lighting tradition of Beit Hillel represent a rabbinic tradition in late antiquity that clearly emphasized Chanukah as a celebration of light. The relationships that connected the Maccabean victory with Sukkot became obscure — but not lost. Through Chanukah, the renewed light of the sun on the winter solstice becomes identified with the renewal of the light of the menorah in the Temple, and as on Sukkot, for the shining light of peace to spread over the entire earth. (This last apocryphal vision is related to the luminous skin of the leviatan and the primordial light reserved for the righteous at the end of time, myths discussed elsewhere on this blog.)

Significantly, the tradition of Beit Shammai is relegated to the manner in which Judaism imagines the candles lit in the messianic age. Until then, Jews follow the tradition of Hillel: increases light each day below in anticipation of the increase in light above, a beutiful example of magical reciprocity. But in the messianic age, when the primordial light will be revealed, Hillel’s tradition will no longer be necessary. (Perhaps the decrease in light will signify the approaching end of the messianic age and the coming of the myserious and unimaginable Olam Haba, the world-to-come (aka, the next epoch of creation).

The Longest Darkest Night of the Year

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Although the significance of Chanukah is masked by both its commercialization (in competition with Christmas) and its status as a “minor” or post-biblical Jewish holiday, there are important reasons to believe that it is ancient, hardly known, and quite deep.

Before he passed away this past year, Rabbi Zelig Scharfstein of blessed memory, taught me a very special Hassidic vort (bit of Torah) concerning the fifth night of Chanukah. To review it, I sought the teaching online at Sichos in English, a site providing translations of the teachings of the Chabad Lubavitch hassidic tradition. The following is very similar to what I remember Rav Scharfstein teaching me.

The fifth day of Chanukah can never occur on a Shabbat. When Chanukah occurs on days that are even only potentially Shabbat days, the light of Chanukah combines with the light of Shabbat for a powerful illumination. So the fifth night, which can never be Shabbat, represents great darkness relative to the other nights.

Thus, the fifth light of Chanukah has the unique task and power to illuminate and instill spirituality even in such a time of darkness. [source]

To really grasp the intensity of  this tradition, one has to imagine themselves in a time and a place where artificial light and electricity are not as ubiquitous and familiar as they are in our nighttime world. The chassidic teaching  describes a spiritual darkness that can be imagined, but the darkness of the fifth night is one that can also be observed. This is because the Hebrew calendar follows a lunar cycle. The first night of Chanukah always begins on the 25th of the month of Kislev, the fifth night corresponds with the 29th of Kislev, the Eve of the New Moon. While the winter solstice is the longest night of the year, the nights of the waning moon are the longest darkest nights of the year. Without the moon’s illumination, and without the joy of the Sabbath, the 29th would be profoundly dark — if not for the light of our Chanukah lights. Chanukah, aka Chag Urim [Festival of Lights], ends with the light of the sun increasing as well as the waxing of the moon’s strength.

The Eye that Blinds

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Two years ago on mog.com, I wrote about Urs Amann’s Claus Cordes’ cover art for Klaus Schulz’s 1983 album Audentity, the new wave punk slit glasses shown in the film Big Trouble in Little China (1986), and the specialized glasses worn by Geordi La Forge, the blind engineer played by LeVar Burton in Star Trek: The Next Generation (1987-1994). Since then, I’ve been wondering about the art history that presaged Cordes’ design. So this post is something of a meditation on the roots of this fashion, starting with the cyclopes of Greek cosmogony.

Before they were made famous as one eyed monsters in Homer’s epic poem, The Odyssey, the cyclopes were known as primordial blacksmiths who could fashion the power of the universe into tridents and other weapons wielded by gods. It’s not such a far leap to see La Forge (lit. the forge!) as a current incarnation of the cyclopaean archetype. According to a hymn of Callimachus, the Cyclopes were helpers at the forge of Hephaestus, the god of blacksmiths and craft. I can even see La Forge as a reconstituted Polyphemus, once blinded, but liberated from the darkest depths of Tartarus through the intervention of Technology.

The depiction of a cyclops by Odilon Redon (see below, The Cyclops) follows less from Hesiod’s tale than from an antediluvian idyll. The cyclops in this garden to me appears to be modeling a primordial desire: a rather sheepish, male gaze. Is the cyclops of Redon a representation of the Edenic snake, the single eye symbolizing phallus and desire, staring at Eve? Or perhaps the cyclops is one of the mysterious נפילים (Nephilim), who in Genesis 6:1-4 desires of the daughters of Adam? The story is expanded on in aggadic literature both in Rabbinic midrash and in pseudepigrapha. There these Watchers and their progeny are giants that share some of the attributes of the Greek cyclops. In both myths, these divine figures possess useful technological knowledge. In the Book of Enoch it is the sharing of this knowledge with men that leads to the dissemination of evil on Earth. It should also be mentioned that Goliath, the foe of David singularly defeated by a single blow to the head from a slinged projectile, was characterized in midrash as the last of the race of Giants.

The Cyclops (1914) by Odilon Redon

The Cyclops (1914) by Odilon Redon

The first modern adaptation of the cyclops must be credited to the robot Gort from the 1951 sci-fi classic The Day the Earth Stood Still. Here too, there seems to be some syncretism between ancient Greek and Hebraic myth, except that the technology the heavenly beings wish to share with earthkind is wholly good, and it’s only our xenophobia and paranoid tendencies which cause mayhem. Fear of subjugation and the unknown replaces the earlier myth’s fear of sexual conquest of earth women (a common enough trope in other period sci-fi films).

The slit eyed helmet of Gort seems the obvious root of the robotic fashion leading up to Urs Amann’s cover art to Klaus Schulze’s Audentity (1983). A closer antecedent influencing Amann may have been the design for the Cylon Centurions in the TV show Battlestar Galactica (the original series, 1978-1980). Pictured below, Cyrus, a Cylon from the episode “The Return of Starbuck” (aired May 5, 1980). Battlestar Gallactica was famously rife with biblical adaptations, from the wandering of the “twelve colonies” to the character of Adamah. It’s no surprise that the fecund imagination of the Mormon writer, Glen Larson, managed to stuff so much biblical myth into a show that aired at the peak of 70s fascination with UFOs and new age religion. Larson’s story of war between the civilizations of robotic Cyclons and space faring humans (developed to greater depth in Star Trek’s war withthe Borg) is another shade of the antediluvian battles described in the Book of Enoch and Jubilees.

Come to think of it, the Borg character of Hugh, rehabilitated by La Forge in the Star Trek Next Generation episode “I, Robot” (1992) totally parallels the Cylon character of Cyrus, reconstituted by Starbuck in “The Return of Starbuck.”

No discussion of mute cyclopean monsters would be complete without mentioning Maximilian, Disney’s homicidal robot from The Black Hole (December 1979). (Poor eviscerated Dr. Durant (played by Anthony Perkins), just another casualty of Disney’s adventurous post-Walt, pre-Eisner decade of dangerous entertainment experiments.)

With these antecedents in mind, looking above back to Audentity, note Amann’s translation of the cyclopean cliché from robot to human; Amann is depicting some sort alienated audiophile listening to Schulze’s Kosmiche Musik. This is the cover Schulze should have had for his 1973 album Cyborg. Here is man like machine but not as automaton — rather, man as desocialized being, completely self-centered, and focused inwardly on processing piped in audio and perhaps also visual stimulus. The commercial realization of this ideal has been evolving over the past 15 years with a profusion of (the not-yet-quite popular) head mounted displays (aka video goggles and video glasses).

Early reports of nausea and neck cramps prevented these consumer products from gaining too much popularity. Every few years gadget bloggers report that the technology has improved and that the price has dropped some. (See below, a protoype 360° immersive environment by Toshiba.)

Even as the realization of this dream has (so far) failed consumers, the obverse of this ideal has been realized in the torture of prisoners of war by our horrible Bush administration. Insanity is the natural consequence of sensory deprivation inflicted on these prisoners. (See below Jose Padilla being led to a dentist, December 2006.) Others must endure the torture playlist.

Where once the cyclopean eye represented the focal point of untold and mysterious power in the creature of Gort, in the characters  of Maximillian and the Cylon Centurions the eye is demoted to the unblinking, unwavering madness of automatons that lack free-will and empathy. The bold vision of bringing sight to the blind depicted in Star Trek’s 25th century techno-utopia is perverted at the dawn of the 21st century. In Guantanamo (and presumably elsewhere) our society brings blindness and madness to the sighted and sane (imprisoned under suspicion of terrorism).

Our blinding of presumed terrorists (officially, to prevent communication through blinking) recalls Odysseus’ blinding of the cyclops Polyphemus. But really, who now has become the myopic monster of yor, the blinder or the blind? I write with great hope that we will soon end this era of manufacturing suitable monsters, and suitable blindness.

Hopefully, in three weeks.

Some unanswered questions to inspire further exploration in the labyrinth of myth:

What do the single eyes of the cyclopes of Greek myth symbolize? The sacred inner eye turned outward? The realization and beneficence of inner knowledge expressed and realized in the outer world?

How is the cyclops eye related to the single eyes (and the lost eyes) of Odin and Ra in Norse and Egyptian mythology? Does one eye represent empathy while the other a sort of panoptic embrace of all creation? If so, which eye is lost?

Are the Cyclopes eyes related to the biblical character of Cain and the sign on his forehead? Are the extra-biblical myths of the Nephilim related to the Cyclopes who are renowned for their productive and creative capabilities?

How might the eye of the cyclops be related to the shining light of the Tzohar or the brilliant eye of the Leviathan? Is this a kind of primordial eye that has not yet been divided into two (or more) eyes at a later stage of the cosmogony?

Can the myth that masturbation leads to blindness be rooted in some sort of cyclopaean/phallic conflation? What then would the blinding of the cyclops represent for Odysseus?

Strange questions to ponder in sleep with my inner eye open in dream.

More on Emergency Broadcast Network

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Ten years ago I was in Philadelphia and excited to learn that Emergency Broadcast Network (or EBN for short), an art music/video project would be touring with dj Spooky providing live mixed visuals and even performing their own set. I had first seen their work in college in the mid 90s, probably on a friend’s VHS player showing a copy of Commercial Entertainment Product, their 1992 release of eleven videos on video tape. The frenetic and aggressive music on the video album didn’t really appeal to me; it was more the way they sampled video samples of explosions and machine guns firing with their audio into a coherent music (and video) collage that blew me away. Till then I hadn’t been fortunate enough to see them perform live and didn’t even realize that they were more or less an art project that had been shoehorned into the form of a touring band. (It might be a testament to how narrowly focused I was on the particular strains of ambient music that I was listening to and mixing with then as a DJ at SUNY Binghamton’s WHRS, that I missed their 1995 CD release Telecommunication Breakdown. If I had heard it I would have been amazed at the ambient stylings of the tracks “3:7:8″ and “This is the End” and I would have been enchanted to learn that both Bill Laswell and Brian Eno were involved with the release.) Shown below, “3:7:8″ :

Upon moving to Philadelphia in 2007 I bought a copy of Commercial Entertainment Product at the Digital Underground, a music store at 5th and South where I was making friends with local scenesters, and it was there that I probably learned the following year of the Spooky tour with EBN coming to the TLA. I had a mixed experience at the show. I think I got there late but was quickly impressed by EBN’s visuals. They had set up a double screen with a mirror image of the left on the right side, so there was some very cool if simple effects of action in the videos blending towards the center of the two screens. The visuals they provided for Spooky’s set were again very aggressive and I thought kind of childishly masculine, with lots of quick cut edits of men in race cars, spies, guns, and things getting blown up. EBN had made their name for videos that parodied the manipulation and dissemination of propaganda for the first Gulf War through mainstream media. For example, in their video “Syncopated Ordinance Demonstration #1″ (see below) they contrast the war footage of tanks getting bombed, with GI Joe’s cartoon battles, and scantily clad women shooting uzis in gun manufacturer advertisements, and so present the different ways violence on TV is presented in one single grotesque.

EBN’s viduals for dj Spooky’s sets were much more superficial. Without depth, EBN’s art was merely being used to complement the aggressive and masculine tone of Spooky’s presentation of illbient in relation to hip hop.

But I wasn’t dissapointed during EBN’s solo set. I saw videos that were works of art in and of themselves, and not being used to complement some other message. One of them featured a manipulation of Frank Sinatra from a short TV clip that would phase in and out of itself in audio and video. Seeing it made the entire evening worthwhile. Following the show, I searched in vain for anyone who had recorded the show. I wrote to dj Spooky asking for more information. I asked friends who new folks that regularly bootlegged shows at the TLA. Nada. And to make matters worse, I soon learned that EBN disbanded.

Fast forward to 2006. EBN videos were all over the place on youtube, and I did some exploring and found that the EBN project has been revived somewhat. All the members had gone onto other things, mostly in media production work, and EBN frontman Joshua L. Pearson had become a family man. But he had also created an official web page for EBN and posted a few videos, mostly quicktime files from Commercial Entertainment Product, for download. I still couldn’t find the Sinatra video but I was excited that it probably wasn’t lost. Hopefully it would be posted on youtube or somewhere else. At the time, looking for it would have to wait since I was terribly busy in Louisiana doing urban planning following the hurricanes of 2005. I would follow up on this later.

And so when I had some spare time earlier this year I sent out emails to all the EBN project members on whether the group had any plans to make an official release of the old videos on DVD. Greg Deocampo (currently of Mediatronica) was the only one who responded, but wow, what a response. He pointed me to his pesonal project Eclectic Method (EMN) and his portfolio of EMN videos. On a separate page of the EMN project, Greg had all the videos that had been made for the CD album Telecommunication Breakdown in 1995 but hadn’t been released due to there not being enough space on the CD for all those videos. (Only “Electronic Behavior Control System,” “3:7:8,” and “Homicidal Schizophrenic (A Lad Insane)” were released on the data side of the CD.) Mediatronica was also hosting a mirror of the videos on their video distribution site televis.es. Among the flash videos was a copy of the Sinatra video entitled “Frank”; I was overjoyed! (See “Frank” below.) A great interview of Deocampo is available in the episode archive of the public radio program, Some Assembly Required.

Having become a collector of EBN videos, I was dismayed to find that quite a few were no longer accessible on youtube or anywhere else. For years, a site called GNN (Guerilla News Network) had hosted a series of seven EBN videos it called “The Lost Tapes.” A few had surfaced on youtube, and one or two on file sharing networks, but the others had since 2004 when GNN stopped hosting them, become truly lost. Another video, “Banjo Lesson,” was made inaccessible when a youtube user named Nomeus had his account suspended. And so last week, I went looking for Nomeus, and finally caught up with him on his urban exploration site flurbex.com. I’ve since been able to get copies of all the missing files and repost them on youtube. Here’s “Banjo Lesson”:

Nomeus also clued me onto quite a few other projects of Deocampo as well as the video work of Hexstatic and TV Sheriff who were influenced by EBN’s work. I’ll post more news on my findings as I pursue this research.

You Don’t Mess With the Samson

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I promised myself that I would not think too hard about You Don’t Mess With the Zohan, Robert Smigel and Adam Sandler’s comedy film this summer. But alas, reading about the story of Yiftach in the haftorah reading this past shabbat, I couldn’t help but think of the context of Zohan within the context of Jewish legendery strong men: biblical, Diaspora, and modern Zionist. (For those who haven’t seen the film yet, go see it. There are a few minor spoilers below.)

Zohan fits well within a pantheon of fantastic He-Man stories of the bible beginning with a fugitive young Moshe (Moses) defending Midianite women and ending perhaps with Moshe “Muki” Betser’s largely successful IDF hostage-rescure mission at Entebbe. Zohan is a “Golden Boy,” capable of near miraculous feats of perfect timing, detail, dexterity, strength and endurance. In the Torah, as in other Mediterranean mythologies, the source of Zohan’s talents would have been identified early on as Divine; that Zohan’s are not, points to the story being couched within a modern and secular worldview.

Zohan is really a new take on the story of long-haired Israelite strong man, Shimshon (Samson), and his clever Philistine lover and hair cutter, Delilah. Just to make sure you don’t miss the parallel, Robert Smigel named Zohan’s Palestinian love interest Dalia (played by Emmanuel Chriqui).

The connecting motif is hair. For Samson, hair represents his Nazirite status and by extension, his divinely given strength. This is a critical point since in his story both Samson and the Philistines make the mistake of perceiving his hair as the actual source of his strength, while in reality it is just an outward, if sacred, symbol. In Zohan, this understanding is implicit, since Zohan’s strength isn’t his curly Jewfro (or much discussed giant bush of genital hair). Rather, Zohan’s strength is his passion to fulfill his dream of self-becoming (a hair dresser). This is impressed in the film so many times when he tells the Paul Mitchell hair salon, and afterwards, to Dalia that he’s ready to cut hair in his salon, not because he has any prior experience but because he has the passion and desire to do so. For Samson, his strength is ultimately given to the selfless call to war and ultimately, martyrdom. Zohan’s sacrifice of what his mother calls his “safe career” as a macho war hero for his “faygele” dream of becoming a hair dresser turns this theme of sacrifice on its head. It is through his striving to realize his personal dream that Zohan discovers, achieves, and in the end help to safeguard a place on earth where Israelis and Palestinian Arabs can live together in peace and love.

Just as Jonah learned, Zohan can’t really run away from his calling; he is a born leader, a defender of his people, and his past does catch up with him. But significantly, Zohan has given up on Israel as the place where his dreams can be realized. And this is why You Don’t Mess With the Zohan has been called post-Zionist. The film speaks to the frustrated desire of many Israeli Jews to make peace with their neighbors and get on with the fulfillment of the Zionist dream to achieve self-determination within a land of their own. However, the peace that must sustain the reality of this self-determination is shown to be shallow and fleeting. The leisure of Zohan’s parade through Tel Aviv’s beachfront, through its myriad of beautiful hedonistic people, is shown to be just so fragile and fleeting. Without warning, an IDF helicopter comes to break the peace of his ocean side BBQ.

But in America, the dream of simple success trumps all nationalist and ethnic division. And here we see the difference in worldviews between Zohan and the Hebrew Hammer (2003). Only a few months ago, for the first time, five years late I watched Jonathan Kesselman and Adam Goldberg’s Hebrew Hammer . Here was a film that speaks to a diaspora Jewish identity struggling with assimilation and acculturation. Just as with the Zohan’s unapologetic clownish macho sabra-ness, the Hebrew Hammer has no interest in arguing with stereotypes. The Hammer appropriates guilt and angst into a rubric of traits that include badass decidedly non-Orthodox Jewish tattoos and pre-marital sex. In embracing tattoos and sex, the Hebrew Hammer not only presents an alternative take on Jewish identity, it arguably reflects the reality of not a few proudly Jewish hipsters.

The difference between Zohan and Hammer, however, is in the attitude towards America as either an immigrant’s dream or as the continuing challenge of diaspora Jewish identity. As a first generation immigrant, Zohan is self-confident in his identity as an Israeli Jew. As a fourth or fifth generation descendant of European Jewish immigrants the Hammer represents the insecurity of diaspora Jewry as the angry defender of a cultural world under attack. If buffoonish and over the top, Goldberg’s Hammer and Sandler’s Zohan are archetypes (if not role models) for relating to Jewish identity in the US. While the Hammer took some plenty of identity from religious Judaism, it took none from Israeli secularism, and the reverse is true for Zohan. The difference points to real divisions in Jewish diaspora and Israeli Jewish ethnocultural identities.

I promised myself I wouldn’t think too hard about this film. It’s totally enjoyable if you’re Jewish or Israeli and I’m hopeful that for all the non-Jews I saw this with at the AMC theater in Northern Kentucky it delivered a bit more nuance and sophistication into their understanding of Jews and Arabs. (After all, we can all agree that the real problems in this world are caused by greedy capitalist WASP real estate developers. Right?)

The UK release date for the film is August 18th, so Israeli cinemas can’t be too far behind. I’ll be very curious to hear how Israelis receive the Zohan.

[crossposted to Jewcy]