A course delves into the many depictions of Jewish characters—as insiders, outsiders, or both
“Fiddler on the Roof” is one of the many works of Jewish theater that students discuss in Heathers Nathans’ class. Photo: Lev Radin / Shutterstock.com
“Tradition, tradition!” Those are words sung in the legendary Jewish musical Fiddler on the Roof, but are also the driving force behind much of Jewish representation on the American stage.
That’s one of the lessons from Heather Nathans’ class, Jewish American Theatre, as she teaches students about the history behind famous theatrical works and their ties to cultural heritage.
“The class is an invitation to think about histories of representation, both positive and negative,” said Nathans, the Nathan and Alice Gantcher Professor of Judaic Studies, Theatre, Dance, and Performance Studies. “And to find your own way into debating, considering, reflecting on those representations in something that is meaningful for you.”
She facilitates conversations not just about art and theater, but about how history and antisemitism have shaped the progression of Jewish art and migration.
What Does It Mean to “Perform Jewishness”?
Some of the earliest representations of Jewish characters on the U.S. stage were mostly antisemitic, but emerging popular Jewish writers in the 19th and 20th century focused on what it meant to be both Jewish and American. Often, these writers wrote about a “Jew who is not a Jew,” Nathans said, a character depicted as another ethnicity but given the struggles and characteristics of Jewish people.
With Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman, for instance, students learned to read a play “Jewishly,” said Nathans. If the main character, Willy Loman, isn’t Jewish, did Miller—who is Jewish—write him through a Jewish lens?
The historical context matters, too. “You can’t understand Death of a Salesman if you don’t explore the Great Depression and World War II,” said Nathans, AG99. “You really can’t understand Fiddler on the Roof if you don’t think about the changing idea of what it means to represent Americanness in musical theater.”
“I’m inviting students to see the many, many ways in which Jewish citizens have been imagined as part of America, whether it’s as insiders or as outsiders, or sometimes both simultaneously,” Nathans said. “What does it mean to perform Jewishness?”
The class spends a lot of time discussing who is inside and outside of the joke. “Seinfeld is a great example,” she said. “You don’t have to be Jewish to think Seinfeld is funny. But there are some episodes that you might find funnier if you were a part of Jewish culture.”
Plays about all facets of Jewish life come up in the class, including a secret interfaith marriage between a Jewish World War I veteran and an Irish Catholic girl in the 1922 comedy Abie’s Irish Rose. The play humorously deals with disapproving fathers and the eventual cultural blending between the couples’ families—like a Jewish character carrying in a ham that’d been cooking in the kitchen on Christmas.
“Abie’s Irish Rose” was first a comedy play written in 1922 by Anne Nichols about a Jewish man and an Irish Catholic woman marrying secretly, causing conflict between their devout fathers. It became a movie in 1928. Photo: Wikimedia Commons
Embracing Cultural Legacies
The course culminates in a final research project in which students pick a topic that resonates with them and connects to Jewish culture, ritual, or performance. They create everything from podcasts, websites, and maps to cookbooks and graphic novels.
“I hope that students really dive into something that can be rich and meaningful for them,” said Nathans.
This spring semester, student projects included how bar and bat mitzvahs have become more inclusive, how Jewish athletes are represented in the sports world, and Jewish ties to mushrooms in folk culture. One even designed action figures of Jewish comedians—with a box design promoting the figure’s “20% more self-loathing.”
Naomi Kellman, A29, had long heard that a relative of hers had been a filmmaker in Philadelphia, and created a documentary about her great-great-uncle, Louis Kellman, and the burgeoning Jewish film industry in Philadelphia in the mid-1900s.
He produced the feature film The Burglar, a 1957 film noir featuring Jayne Mansfield in her first starring role. Both the director, Paul Wendkos, and author of the book it was based on, David Goodis, were Jewish, too.
“This course taught me to look for ‘Jewishness’ encoded in characters,” Kellman said. “I looked at what kinds of hidden messages were there and found hints of their past experiences embedded in the narrative.”
Jewish American history “is very personal to me, because my family has lived that,” she said. “Understanding the different contexts that my family was involved in as a part of larger American history helps me understand a little bit more about myself.”
“This course taught me to look for ‘Jewishness’ encoded in characters. I looked at what kinds of hidden messages were there and found hints of their past experiences embedded in the narrative.”
Samuel Jackman, A29, had no background in theater before taking the course, but said it’s sparked a passion for Jewish culture and made him feel more connected to his roots.
For his final project, he created a podcast about Jewish charitable organizations in Miami-Dade county and south Florida, where he has family ties. In it, he details how his grandparents and great-grandparents developed nonprofit organizations focused on issues like food insecurity, all the while facing antisemitism.
“Being able to hear the voices of people who are involved in these charitable organizations shows how different generations have helped each other through storytelling and through teaching and communicating,” he said.
Talia Polish, A29, researched the synagogue Beth Emet that her great-grandfather founded in Evanston, Illinois, and the social justice and resistance work that area temples did. For her final project, she created a website with a timeline of intersectional Jewish activism in the Chicago area.
The project, along with the texts she read in the class, helped her understand her own cultural history. “I gained a better sense of the resilience that Jews had to go through in order to be as openly and proudly Jewish,” she said.
