A new documentary tells the story of Jews in America (PBS)
The Jewish Americans is the title of a new six-hour documentary about Jews in the United States, made with the support of the National Endowment for the Humanities, that will begin airing January 9 on PBS stations around the country. Note the title, The Jewish Americans, if you please, not “The American Jews.” “Jewish Americans” puts the emphasis where it belongs: on America. “American Jews” would put it on Jews. The vast majority of Jews who live in the United States think themselves Americans who are also Jewish, some intensely so, some only peripherally.
David Grubin, who wrote and directed this interesting documentary, got his title, and much else, dead-on right. His informative and entertaining film does not, in any serious sense, depart from the standard form of the modern television documentary. But he brings this form to a high sheen, with a solid narration spoken at a perfect pitch of serious non-pretentiousness by the actor Liev Schreiber and haunting music by Michael Bacon.
The standard documentary form features talking heads whose points are illustrated or reinforced by historical bits of film. Much depends on the quality of the talk; more perhaps than on that of the film. In The Jewish Americans, Carl Reiner, who comments on Jewish Americans in show business, is unfailingly charming. He reports that the Queen of England, given his and Mel Brooks's 2000 Year 0ld Man comedy album by Cary Grant, said that she much enjoyed it, causing Reiner to remark that Jewish comedy had really arrived if the Queen, “the biggest shikse in the world,” enjoys it. (Shikse is Yiddish for gentile woman.) The playwright Tony Kushner is predictably left-wing in his views, and hence provides no surprises. The intelligence of the writer Letty Cottin Pogrebin shines through whenever she is on camera. The cartoonist Jules Feiffer is very smart on the connection between Jews and radical politics in America, and is perhaps most impressive when, with much sympathy, he explains why, during the Depression, so many Jewish radicals joined the American Communist party, then caps this off by saying, “and they were wrong.” Ruth Bader Ginsburg, associate justice of the Supreme Court, lends a touch of gravity to the proceedings, and is especially good on the subject of Louis Brandeis, the first Jew to be appointed to the Supreme Court, who said that “the highest Jewish ideals are essentially American.”
Read entire article at Joseph Epstein at the website of the NEH (Humanities, Jan./Feb. issue)
David Grubin, who wrote and directed this interesting documentary, got his title, and much else, dead-on right. His informative and entertaining film does not, in any serious sense, depart from the standard form of the modern television documentary. But he brings this form to a high sheen, with a solid narration spoken at a perfect pitch of serious non-pretentiousness by the actor Liev Schreiber and haunting music by Michael Bacon.
The standard documentary form features talking heads whose points are illustrated or reinforced by historical bits of film. Much depends on the quality of the talk; more perhaps than on that of the film. In The Jewish Americans, Carl Reiner, who comments on Jewish Americans in show business, is unfailingly charming. He reports that the Queen of England, given his and Mel Brooks's 2000 Year 0ld Man comedy album by Cary Grant, said that she much enjoyed it, causing Reiner to remark that Jewish comedy had really arrived if the Queen, “the biggest shikse in the world,” enjoys it. (Shikse is Yiddish for gentile woman.) The playwright Tony Kushner is predictably left-wing in his views, and hence provides no surprises. The intelligence of the writer Letty Cottin Pogrebin shines through whenever she is on camera. The cartoonist Jules Feiffer is very smart on the connection between Jews and radical politics in America, and is perhaps most impressive when, with much sympathy, he explains why, during the Depression, so many Jewish radicals joined the American Communist party, then caps this off by saying, “and they were wrong.” Ruth Bader Ginsburg, associate justice of the Supreme Court, lends a touch of gravity to the proceedings, and is especially good on the subject of Louis Brandeis, the first Jew to be appointed to the Supreme Court, who said that “the highest Jewish ideals are essentially American.”