The "Jewsploitation" craze
Jonathan Kesselman's "The Hebrew Hammer" is the manifesto for a hip, hype-driven "new Jewishness." But here's a news flash: American Jews aren't actually black, and anti-Semitic stereotypes aren't automatically funny.
By Baz Dreisinger
Dec. 23, 2003 | For New York Jews in Los Angeles exile, Canter's Deli is a glimpse at the Promised Land. An L.A. eatery with enough chutzpah to pretend "Atkins" and "low carb" don't exist -- diet, you say, in the land of kugel and knishes? -- Canter's, born in 1924, churns out 4,900 pounds of pastrami every month. Close your eyes and smell the borscht. You're suddenly in the land of milk and honey (Ratner's, Katz's or any other high-holy deli on New York's Lower East Side).
This morning, though, nothing can drown out Los Angeles. Jonathan Kesselman, writer/director of "The Hebrew Hammer" -- fresh off its run on Comedy Central and now schlepping into theaters in New York and Los Angeles, with other cities to follow -- is eating breakfast, talking movies and waxing neurotic about ethnic slurs.
"The Hebrew Hammer"
Written and directed by Jonathan Kesselman
Starring Adam Goldberg, Judy Greer, Andy Dick, Mario Van Peebles, Peter Coyote
"I don't get it. You can't say 'kike' on TV, but you can say 'nigga.' You can't say 'n----r,' though, just 'nigga' -- except if it's a Richard Pryor film, in which case everything goes." Kesselman sips his coffee and sighs. "Why can't I say 'kike,' for God's sake?"
Kesselman's kvetch is prompted by the bleep-heavy Comedy Central version of "The Hebrew Hammer." Though he was thrilled to see his film on network television, Kesselman remains distressed by the watering-down process that comes with such exposure. He'd prefer, for instance, that lines like "Shabbat Shalom, motherfucker!" live a long network life. And that the "Kikes Go Home!" sign, prominently displayed in an early scene, survive the cutting-room floor.
If such phrases offend you -- if they leave you stifling the urge to notify the Anti-Defamation League -- then Kesselman's joke is on you. The 29-year-old Angeleno's film revels in stereotypes and slurs, joyously mocking those old-fashioned and unhip enough to be affronted by them.
The film recently landed on the cover of Time Out New York, which set Kesselman among the "new Super Jews," one of the "edgy young tastemakers" crafting today's "hip new Jewish identity" and responsible for such things as "Jewsapalooza," a two-day music festival; art-house films like "Kissing Jessica Stein" and The Believer; satirical Web sites like Jewsweek and International Jewish Conspiracy; and T-shirts reading "Jew Wannabe" or "Jewcy."
One might sip He'Brew, the "chosen beer," while enjoying the music of the Hip Hop Hoodios (a Latino-Jewish group), novelty rapper 50 Shekel (you can find him "in da shul"), or tunes like "Hanukkah with Monica" and "Hot Jewish Chicks" (from the New York variety show "What I Like About Jew").
But peer beneath the hype of this so-called new Jewishness, and you might find something old and familiar there. Especially when it comes to the film genre it's spawned -- the genre Kesselman calls "Jewsploitation."
Like '70s blaxploitation -- boldly black flicks including "Shaft," "Foxy Brown" and "Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song," which stuck it to whitey by spinning African-American stereotypes into brash action films -- "The Hebrew Hammer" is Kesselman's effort to explode Jewish clichés. Its protagonist, played impeccably by "Dazed and Confused's" Adam Goldberg, is Mordechai Jefferson Carver, aka the Hammer: "certified circumcised dick," boy from the "chood," a "big-nosed biblical brother" hired by the Jewish Justice League to save Hanukkah from nefarious non-Jews. Kesselman has created an over-the-top Jewish superhero who still isn't good enough for mother. Hammer is, he says, "essentially a black Jew."
"His speech is black American speech mixed with Yiddishisms. And yes, he has a large penis. The idea is to take black stereotypes and Jewish stereotypes and blend them together to create --" Kesselman pauses, grasping for the right phrase -- "well, one big stereotype."
The one-of-a-kind cast list for "The Hebrew Hammer" could be a page from "Typecasting for Dummies." There's "Shlomo," "Chaim Feygele," "Mohammed," "Jamal," and "Black Teen." There's "Gentile Boy #1," "Gentile Boy #2," "Freckle-faced Gentile" and "Blonde Gentile Girl." There's "Chairman of the Worldwide Jewish Media Conspiracy," "Skinhead Bartender," "White Accountant," "Macabee," and "Sassy Black Prostitute." There's even "Edward I. Koch" -- played by the only one who can do Koch justice: himself.
Dedicated -- with a nod to Melvin Van Peebles' 1971 "Sweetback" -- to "all the Jewish brothers and sisters who had enough of the gentile," The Hebrew Hammer takes on the most potent of them all, the über-gentile known as Santa Claus. At home among the recent crop of bumbling, big-screen Santas -- in "Bad Santa" or "Elf," for instance -- Kesselman's is a campy, coke-snorting anti-Semite played by lowbrow comedian Andy Dick. He and his sidekick, Tiny Tim, set off to eradicate Hanukkah by, among other schemes, fomenting Jewish Christmas Envy: Free copies of "It's a Wonderful Life" leave visions of Hanukkah bushes dancing in little Jewish heads.