Keywords In and For the New Jewish Studies

Abstract

What follows are three short essays that originally saw the light of day as papers at the 2003 American Studies Association meeting in Hartford, Connecticut. The panel was pitched to the ASA primarily because that organization had not yet taken much notice of what we are learning to call the "New Jewish Studies." The panel was organized around three "keywords"-"smart" (Michael Staub), "soul" (Jeff Melnick), and "shul" (Marjorie Feld)-that we thought would generate some conversation and perhaps even a little controversy. But the big mistake, as commentator Daniel Itzkovitz so gently pointed out at the time, was that we called the panel "Keywords in the New Jewish Studies," when none of these words really has had much play in this exciting new area of scholarly activity. So, following Daniel's hint, the three participants have revised and expanded those original papers and offer them up here-with more accuracy and a bit more hubris-under the new title "Keywords for the New Jewish Studies." The "keywords" concept is borrowed, of course, from Raymond Williams's book of the same title. It allowed us to be more investigative, epigrammatic, perhaps even experimental than any of us is in our more traditional scholarship. We never thought any of the words alone, or the three together, reveal some central truth(s) about where Jewish Studies has been or where it ought to head. But if we are in a "new" time for Jewish Studies and if in the beginning was the word, we can at least hope that our etymological turn will inspire others to find some good words of their own. "Smart" Michael E. Staub Baruch College "I'm often asked what it's like to be married to a genius." So begins Rebecca Goldstein's mordantly witty academic novel, The Mind-Body Problem, published in 1983. The answer-as Goldstein's heroine Renee Feuer quickly discovers-is that it's not great. Not great to be the tagalong and emotionally neglected spouse of Noam Himmel, a.k.a. World-Class Mathematician. Not great for Renee to be held in raging contempt by Noam for her inability to keep pace with his genius. And really not great at all to discover-as Renee soon does-that "I was incapable of arousal with Noam. My flesh under his touch was dead, only stirred now and then by a ripple of revulsion."1 In Caucasia, Danzy Senna's slyly satiric 1998 novel of racial passing, the biracial and very light-skinned protagonist Birdie, and Sandy, her WASP mom, must invent new identities as they embark on a new life on the lam from the law. Blonde Sandy has little choice; she changes her name but remains a WASP. But Birdie has more options. Should her invented patrimony be Italian, Sicilian, Greek? Sandy hits on the answer; Birdie will now be "Jesse Goldman," daughter of "this incredibly brilliant" professor of classics, a "so-called genius named David Goldman."2 Or move back in time once more to 1945 and militant Zionist Ben Hecht's screenplay for Spellbound, Alfred Hitchcock's suspense thriller.3 Here the Jewish genius is Dr. Alex Brulov, mentor to psychiatrist Constance Peterson (Ingrid Bergman). Decked out with a goatee, horn-rimmed glasses, and a pipe, Alex would surely remind even the most casual viewer of Sigmund Freud-a fitting tribute in a film garishly steeped in Freudianisms. But it is really Alex's speech that makes Alex Jewish. "You have now the facts," Alex says, or "I know practically what is going on." "Do you think one of the biggest brains who is in psychology is unable to make out two plus two comes out four?" Alex asks Constance, after he single-handedly subdues a potentially murderous John Brown (Gregory Peck) by slipping sleeping powder into his milk. This is one smart Jew who knows how to use his yiddishe kopf. How did Jews get to be so smart? How have-and why have-Jewishness and superior intelligence been so imaginatively and widely linked? Or to put the question a different way, what have been the costs and consequences of this linkage? …