The "Jewsploitation" craze

Manischewitz jokes abound. The Pentagon is a Jewish star. Hammer works for a man named Bloomenbergansteinthal. The point is more than made after about 20 minutes -- the original length of "The Hebrew Hammer," before it evolved from Kesselman's USC film-school short into a feature-length version of a bad "Saturday Night Live" skit: What's at first brilliantly funny becomes deadened by excess.

To some, however, the film was never funny in the first place. While most Jewish circles have embraced "The Hebrew Hammer" -- it's been applauded at festivals from New York to Berlin, screened before Jews and non-Jews alike -- Kesselman recalls that at the Berlin screening, a "older Israeli consulate member walked out." And in Orange County, which was foreign territory to Kesselman -- "I thought Jews everywhere were liberal, but this is a conservative place" -- the director found himself justifying blaxploitation and "Jewsploitation" to an offended female viewer.

"It threw me for a loop," Kesselman recalls. "I was like, 'Wow -- is this stuff really offensive?' But then I realized that certain people don't have a sense of humor. And those people tend to be older and religious."

Kesselman himself -- like most members of Time Out's "new super Jews" -- is neither. He's ethnically, not religiously, chic, sporting Jewish pride with fashionable aplomb, all the while spoofing everything Jewish or Jew-ish. Though neither Kesselman nor Hammer have "Jewfros" (Jewish Afros), both consciously align Jewishness with hip-hop, African-American pop culture and, occasionally, actual African-Americans ("I hate to say it like this, but I have lots of black friends," remarks Kesselman).

Inspired by this alignment (a bond that seems to exist more in the minds of today's young Jews than among blacks), "The Hebrew Hammer" is a black-Jew buddy film: Hammer joins forces with Mohammed of the Kwanzaa Liberation Front, fellow foe to Santa and, we learn, friend to the Jew. He's played by Mario Van Peebles, who, to Kesselman's delight, approached him about the role; Mario's father Melvin, father to the blaxploitation genre, also has a cameo.

Kesselman thus wears his homage on his sleeve, plainly tapping the blaxploitation paradox: Just as a figure like Gordon Parks' Shaft simultaneously bucked and milked black stereotypes -- the polar opposite of genteel Sidney Poitier, he's the potent, oversexed black man -- Hammer is both a rarely seen Jewish masculine presence and a classic caricature of Jewish manhood. After saving the day with a secret Jewish weapon -- what else but guilt? -- his mother, who wants only a wife and a stable job for her little Hammer, fills his plate and remarks, "It's only Hanukkah. If you'd saved Yom Kippur or Rosh Hashanah -- that'd be something to brag about."

Oy, the poor Jewish mother. Butt of a thousand jokes, and only she wants for her bubbeleh to be a little happy and comfortable. Kesselman's outrageously overbearing Mrs. Hammer makes her archetype -- Philip Roth's Mrs. Portnoy -- look downright WASPish.

"Actually, I haven't read it," says Kesselman of "Portnoy's Complaint," the 1967 novel that took Jewish gender caricatures to hilariously new heights. Half in jest, Kesselman adds that he hasn't read any book since film school.

I'm surprised, I tell him, considering how crucial Roth is to the stereotypes that "Hammer" toys with, and also considering the similarities between critiques of his film and those leveled at Roth, when "Portnoy" gave a whole new meaning to the term "self-hating Jew."

I toss out another seemingly obvious reference point: Woody Allen. Surely "Annie Hall" and Alvy Singer are part of the equation here.

"Actually, I'm more into Mel Brooks," Kesselman says. "And really," he adds, "I'm just as influenced by black humor," by Richard Pryor or Rusty Cundieff (director of the now-classic hip-hop spoof "Fear of a Black Hat").

What Jewish humor is relevant to him? "Seinfeld," he says. Later Kesselman, joking about New York Jews, remarks that "in New York, even if you're not Jewish, you're Jewish." So he's a Lenny Bruce fan, I inquire, assuming that Kesselman is consciously quoting Bruce's classic Jewish-goyish routine. "He said that, about New York?" Kesselman asks. "I didn't know."

And then I know why much of this "new" Jewish humor, especially "Hammer," has the ring of familiarity: Without necessarily knowing it, it rehashes an old reserve of classic Jewish joke-making. It's familiar stuff, really, stuff we're now fairly comfortable laughing at: Jewish mother jokes, Jewish New York jokes, Jewish/black uncool/cool jokes and Jew-black bonding scenarios (which reach back before Lenny Bruce, back to such early 20th century vaudeville acts as Irving Berlin and Sophie Tucker, who literally and figuratively put on black faces). There's something new in this so-called new Jew review -- but not its irreverence and subject matter, which are old school indeed.

Next Page: Today's trendy Jewish tastemakers don't lust for inclusion -- but rather the edgy thrill of exclusion

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