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Stuart Schoffman: The Circumcision Monologues
Stuart Schoffman

�Why Jews Are Cooler Than They Seem�: Ten Executive Snippets

Don't know much about marketing, to paraphrase Sam Cooke (does that date me, or what?), but after hearing the buzz and seeing the ink (including The Jerusalem Report�s Back Page, June 30) about a new study, funded by top Jewish philanthropists and conducted by the fashionable Republican pollster Frank Luntz, with the irresistible title "Israel in the Age of Eminem: A Creative Brief for Israel Messaging," I went straight to my Google and downloaded a copy.

I must say I found the diagnosis persuasive. I�ve no doubt that most young American Jews are ill-informed about their heritage and "have switched off and turned away from their own identity." I�m sure they find Israel and synagogues and campus Hillel uncool, considering the myriad competing coolnesses of the world at large. Even back in the Age of Aquarius, when I went to college, Golda Meir and Kol Nidre couldn�t hold a candle, amazingly enough, to Gracie Slick and Tijuana two-toke.

After digesting the 50-page report I felt compelled to reach out and help. I carefully considered Luntz�s "�Ten Commandments� For the Next Generation of Israel Advertising" (which daringly subverts its own 6th Commandment, "Overly religious appeals will fail"). Commandment No. 2 (entitled "Tell me or show me something I don�t already know") offers a useful formula: "irony + creativity + relevance = success" plus the addendum, "And for the real home run, sprinkle in a little attitude." Since I have long endeavored, however imperfectly, to live by this credo, I figured I was the man for the job. But what clinched the assignment for me was Luntz�s reference (twice) to the feminist theatrical hit "The Vagina Monologues" as an example of how political message and popular culture can be effectively fused.

Space limitations prevent me from publishing the full version of my "Circumcision Monologues: Why Jews Are Cooler Than They Seem." Herewith, instead, 10 Executive Snippets:

1. Exotic rituals. Christmas has nothing on Sukkot, when we not only decorate the tree but party inside it for a whole week. On Purim you�re commanded to do shots of tequila till you can�t remember who Haman (a Biblical villain) was. Best of all is circumcision, which is a guy thing that admits you to the oldest fraternity in the Western world, and is also way sexy (see #2).

2. Jews are hot. A dorky guy like Woody Allen gets babes one-third his age. And even misanthropes are into Jewish women. See "The Devil�s Dictionary," by the toxic-tongued American author Ambrose Bierce: "HEBREW, n. A male Jew, as distinguished from the Shebrew, an altogether superior creation."

3. No Pope. I don�t mean this ad hominem, I�m a big fan of the incumbent; but what�s great about Judaism is that there is no central controlling authority, not even Hadassah. As for God, by us this is a personal matter. Even the great Maimonides (check him out at amazon.com) rejected the anthropomorphic image of God they try to sell you in Hebrew school.

4. Enormous influence. Tikkun olam, fixing the world, is so fundamental to Jewish thinking that it is inscribed in our very flesh. Once upon a time, a cynical Roman asked Rabbi Akiva how come, if the Jews� God was so clever, He didn�t create pre-circumcised babies? That�s our job, replied the rabbi, holding up a stalk of grain and the bread that improves upon it. Despite our modest numbers, we have given the world Jesus, Marx, Freud, Dr. Jonas Salk, Monica Lewinsky and Seinfeld, and also (according to informed sources in Islamabad) control the world�s gold reserves, the U.S. government and Osama Bin Laden.

5. Fascinating history. Skip this one if you agree with Henry Ford that history is bunk, but please recall that Henry Ford was the worst anti-Semite in American history, give or take a few neo-Nazi yokels in a shack in Idaho. The myth: We Are One, and for 2,000 years pined endlessly for Zion. The history: Diaspora was a growth industry even before the Second Temple was destroyed, and variegated Jewish communities have flourished symbiotically and adaptively in non-Jewish societies all over the world, just as they do today from Minneapolis to Melbourne, demonstrating an astonishing resiliency despite devastating persecutions that must never be forgotten or minimized, but should not constitute the core of our memory or identity.

6. A peerless sense of humor. Fairly miraculous, considering the Jewish penchant for heaviosity (see #5).

7. Our very own funny, lusty, creative, excessively relevant (see Page One of any newspaper on the planet) but hard-to-sell little country. As Luntz sagely observes, "the reality of young Jews is informed by Rabin�s assassination and the second intifada." Frankly, my reality is informed by these too, only I can�t change the channel, and I�m bummed when I listen, as even Eminem Jews had better do, to Hamas honcho Dr. Abdel Aziz Rantisi, who told Ha�aretz in mid-June, shortly after narrowly escaping assassination by the Israeli army, that "this conflict will not end as long as the Islamic land remains occupied. The Crusaders stayed 200 years and then left." One big reason why the Crusaders couldn�t hold out was that European Christendom no longer thought they were cool.

8. Guilt. It may not be cool, but, hey, you own it.

9. Jews are disproportionally smart. For a list of Nobel Prize winners, see www.us-israel.org/jsource/Judaism/nobels. If this doesn�t switch you back on, there�s always #10.

10. A proud Jewish tradition of relentless self-criticism. Moses invented the genre back in Exodus 33, and Theodor Herzl (an ambitious Viennese journalist), who sniped in 1899 that "anyone who wants to work in behalf of the Jews needs ... a strong stomach," has a street named after him in Brooklyn and dozens in Israel. Only a cool people congenitally dissatisfied with received wisdom could commission studies like the Luntz report. And come to think of it -- what�s a bris if not a radical critique of what God gave you?