Open-Ended Questions: Exploring Jewish American Identity in Theatre and Film in The Cambridge History of Jewish American Literature

In the 2005 award-winning musical Spamalot, the character of Sir Robin explains to the puzzled King Arthur the criteria for a successful show, warning him, "We won't succeed on Broadway, / If you don't have any Jews."¹ For audiences familiar with the Broadway hits of Irving Berlin, the Gershwins, Arthur Miller, Leonard Bernstein, Stephen Sondheim, David Mamet, Harvey Fierstein, Tony Kushner, Wendy Wasserstein, and others, Sir Robin's tongue-in-cheek declaration may seem axiomatic. Indeed, as Stephen J. Whitfield argues in his essay in the Cambridge History, "Jewish American Popular Culture," the influence of Jewish American artists on a broader American vernacular culture is so pervasive that mapping its reach presents almost as formidable a challenge as defining the terms "Jewish" and "American" (Whitfield 584). Tracing the genealogies of these terms lies at the center of the expansive new Cambridge History of Jewish American Literature.

In her introduction to the volume, Hana Wirth-Nesher acknowledges the myriad of questions that arise when scholars debate how to classify material as both "Jewish" and "American," Four chapters of the Cambridge History focus particularly on Jewish American contributions to drama and film, but even those that look at other genres, such as novels, poetry, or comic books, circle back almost inevitably to performance-related themes, exploring how concepts of "Jewishness" and "Americanness" have orbited each other, exerting strong gravitational pulls that have shaped their respective trajectories throughout literary history. Or, as Werner Sollors argues in his essay, "Immigration and Modernity, 1900–1945," modern Jewish American culture has been the product of "a complex set of contradictory developments," that defy either easy linear narratives or straightforward histories of alienation or assimilation (106).

As a researcher whose work focuses primarily on representations of identity in American theatre, I am most intrigued by the critical "gaps" between text and performance that leave space for interpretation and renegotiation among authors, actors, and spectators. A twist on an inflection, a telling look to the audience, a minor adjustment in a costume, or even the inclusion of a particular prop, as Edna Nahshon suggests, may invite those witnessing a performance to infuse new understandings of religious, ethnic, or national belonging into an event (242). Performance has the power to elevate a private meditation on identity into a public affirmation or repudiation of allegiance. All too often scholars studying dramatic texts focus narrowly on the words on the page. Happily, the scholars contributing to this volume recognize that imagining embodied performance is equally key to reading a work's "Jewishness." They understand that as the positionality of the spectator shifts, so too will their perceptions of the work's efficacy.

The Cambridge History authors charged with writing on drama and film have chosen a diverse range of approaches to their subjects. Some of the essays invite readers to appreciate the encyclopedic scope of Jewish involvement in American entertainment, while others take a deeper dive into more specific topics, such as Jewish performance and sexual identity. The combined result is a comprehensive survey of Jewish American contributions to and conversations with American culture over the last 135 years.

In chapter 1, "Encountering the Idea of America," Julian Levinson lays the foundation for the discussion of many Jewish American artists' works as he points to the "glittering, triumphant Idea" that America embodied for immigrants seeking an intellectual landscape that would allow them to reconcile "Jewish particularism" with American national identity (22). Indeed, the first decades of the nineteenth century had heralded new opportunities for the nation's Jewish artists. George Washington's promise that Jews might live peacefully under their own "vine and fig tree," the cultural contributions of poets such as Penina Moise, travel writer Solomon Nunes de Carvahlo, and playwright Mordecai Noah, all pointed toward a climate of greater tolerance that would, in Washington's words, give "to bigotry no sanction" (22–23). As Nahma Sandrow, Edna Nahshon, and Jonathan Freedman illuminate in the "Drama" section of this volume, the "idea" of America or "Golden Land" (goldene medine) intersected with...