Does it prove that a new Jewish subculture is emerging?



Eric Silverman, now an Associate Professor, who got an undergraduate degree in anthropology at Brandeis some twenty years ago, says it does. And since last week’s colloquium the anthropology faculty have been tearing him into pieces for lack of evidence – he hasn’t asked a single person actually wearing these clothing items what significance they attribute to them. It is only according to him that yarmulke with Mickey Mouse, Little Mermaid or Harry Potter and T-shirts or even underwear carrying “Eat Me, I’m Kosher” signs are means of identification for “Generation J” Jews.

Yes, the proliferation of this new production is an interesting phenomenon and some Brandeis students do wear similar T-shirts on Friday parties in the dorms. For fun? Because of pride? Aiming to change the conservatism of traditional Jewish culture? The reasons might be different. Only in one of the dozens of pictures of these products shown in the colloquium was Hitler mentioned. And there was one more reference to Jihad. Besides these two cases, it is obvious that the construction of this new identity is entirely self-referential, de-essentializing, re-contextualizing, maybe even treating with irony the core symbols of being Jewish. The new Jew is not created in opposition to the Other, be it a Nazi or an Islamic fundamentalist.

But Eric did not talk about this at all. He was jumping from one image to another, sometimes laughing, sometimes embarrassed to translate what the words in Hebrew mean for a majority of graduate students who do not come from a Jewish background. For the first time I saw how openly critical for methodological failures Brandeis professors can be. This might have been good enough as a project in cultural studies, but not in anthropology, one professor observed.

In any case the phenomenon itself is worth attention. The only question that I am worried about is: Isn't it just an assemblage of quite different things instead of a uniformed subculture? A yarmulke with Disney characters is not really the same as a "Mensch" T-shirt. Or is it?

Some websites with the products mentioned above:

http://www.cafepress.com/awesomeseminars

http://www.jewishbride.com/store/children_babies.html

http://www.kippah.com/