Michael Dekel

Transcription

Dr. Jeffrey Shandler: I've been working on a project looking at the impact that all of the new media of the 20th century have had on the religious life of American Jews, and I work very much from specific examples of not only media works, but what I call media practices, which is how people use, engage, talk about, argue about, their engagement with different communications media. Mid 1980's, in December somebody gave me a card, holiday card, and I opened up the envelope, front of the card is a picture of a bagel, underneath the bagel is a little bow that's decorated with little sprigs of holly, right so the whole thing looks like a Christmas wreath. Then you open up the card and inside it says "Oy vey! Another holiday!" That's it. So, you know, I open this card, I laugh, I say to my friends, it's a very funny card, then a couple of days later I was in a card shop and I saw there was a half a dozen other cards that are doing something similar of Jews dealing with Christmas, the coincidence of Christmas and Hanukkah, and these cards are kind of funny cards because they're edgy. So, these cards, on the one hand were gaining in popularity, on the other hand, precisely because they were becoming popular, there were organizations like the National Council of Christians and Jews, which did not like it. They said this isn't good for Christianity or for Judaism. These are two separate religions that should be respected as separate and equal. That was a really interesting reaction, and started to get me thinking about how these cards are an example of what we call popular religion, which is religion not from clergy, or other community leaders, but rather it's ordinary folks engaging in religious ideas and creating religious practices on their own at this sort of grassroots level, and then kicking it up, and what's interesting is how the guys upstairs looks at, scants at this and say, well, what's going on here? Not only because they don't necessarily like the idea of this, it's also a challenge to their authority. Another example of popular religion coming into conflict is videotaping, and the desire of people increasingly to videotape all kinds of lifecycle events, and where we have an interesting clash between the elite and the popular in the Jewish world is around Bar and Bat mitzvahs. As this expansive desire for documentation grows, and especially with the flexibility with video, there was a desire to videotape Bar mitzvah or Bat mitzvah ceremonies in the synagogue. Most synagogues, however, have a problem with this either because, it is against religious law to operate electronic equipment like a videocamera on the Sabbath, and that's when Bar/bat mitzvahs take place, or there were also concerns whether if the presence of the camera interferes with worship. They raise some really interesting questions about the nature of videotape and under what circumstances could you videotape on the Sabbath if you made certain special provisions? And do you really want to have a videotape of a Bar/bat mitzvah ceremony? Other people say, but you know if you have this videotape people who couldn't make it to the service can witness something and feel virtually a part of something that otherwise they weren't part of, so that's actually an extensive of religious experience. We see how that desire from ordinary people prompts the leadership to have to consider a wide range of issues in a new way, and often in ways they never would have thought of before. Another medium that I'm interested in is radio. Just at the end of World War II, when the Jewish Theological Seminary, which is the headquarters of the Conservative Jewish Movement, and NBC joined forces and start producing regular radio programs. They're aired nationally and this is part of a larger agenda to air religious programming that is not of one particular denomination, but is educating the public about religion broadly, and putting the emphasis on shared religious values. At the time, in this public discussion, there are protestants, there are catholics, and there are Jews. So, Jews wind up representing the alternative to Christianity with large, and as a result, wind up representing a kind of diversity in a very interesting way. Jews are also listening to these programs too, and of course for a very different reason, and it becomes a source of enormous pride for people, that on this regular basis, Jews are presented in national broadcasts not as comic, ethnic stereotype figures which you might hear on a radio sitcom or something like that, but with great dignity, and with great seriousness and with great respect. It was a broadcast that wasn't just for them, it was shared with everybody. This venture really gave a whole new sense of possibilities about how Americans might think, not just about Jews, but about religion as a platform for discussing diversity. It is very interesting and if you think of it in the history of Americans grappling with the challenges of multiculturalism. (music playing) k