I was about to write a blog post about a giant Israeli cucumber, but then I decided to check my email.
And what happens? First I see a JTA piece by Ben Harris about Jewish Hipsters, then I read a Tablet article by Wesley Yang about how Jews invented Rock n’ Roll.
Yang’s argument channels Jack Black, another Jew, as he says that rock is about stickin’ it to the man. In the 50s, as the postwar generation lived lives of “Leave It to Beaver,” a subculture of beatniks and musicians was busy being “mischievous, irreverent, impulsive, drunken, and sex-obsessed,” breaking the social mores that came along with Ike and the Baby Boom.
Who better to lead this culture than Jews, a people who were
eager to embrace the new, able to serve as intermediaries linking black and white, high and low, sensitive enough to hear joy where others heard only squalor, clever enough to hear opportunity where others only heard noise, alive to the mordant humor of the ghetto, heedless of existing prejudices and conventions, enterprising enough to invent an industry where none had existed before.
And so it was the Jews, from broadcaster Alan Freed to producers Len Chess and Syd Nathan, Yang writes, who led the rock revolution, who catalyzed the subculture and changed American music–and culture–forever. The revolution existed in literature too, as Alan Ginsburg led the beatniks, and continued into the 60s, when Abby Hoffman and Jerry Rubin instigated the protests at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago while Bob Dylan was the voice of a generation.
But what happened to that generation? Jerry Rubin went to work in finance, Abby Hoffman died and Dylan went so mainstream, and got so old, that while his earlier music still rings true his newer material doesn’t register on the cultural barometer. Most rock, in fact, has become so corporate that it no longer reflects a subculture or a marginalized and subversive voice. So where do we go now? And where are the Jews?
Enter Ben Harris. Harris wrote his story in response to a DG Meyers Commentary piece about the “specter” of Jewish hipsters, people who identify as Jews and do Jewish things because it’s “cool” to be Jewish, not because of a deeper cultural tradition or, God forbid, religious values. Harris responds to the piece with two points: first, that Jewish hipsters comprise a negligible percentage of all young Jews and that second, the Jewish hipster movement should be recognized as a group of Jews trying to form an independent community in an era of changing social norms, not as a bunch of shallow kids too concentrated on raves to recognize the value of traditional, institutional Judaism.
I agree with Harris that Jewish hipsters reflect a larger trend among young Jews in that they’re attempting to redefine community, but I wish there were more to their mission. The significance of people like Freed and Chess in the 50s was that their job was to take rock and bring it to a wider audience, to challenge the general population to confront the culture created by rock n’ roll. Hipsters don’t seem to be interested in crossing over to mass culture, and I don’t see Jews as being at the forefront of the hipster movement, though I’m by no means an expert.
So where did the Jews go? Why are we no longer at the vanguard of culture, as we were decades ago?
One answer, I think, is comfort. Jews have become comfortable in America. We no longer feel as marginalized as we did in the 50s and so have less affinity with American subcultures. We have no interest in revolution. For better or worse, we embrace the status quo.
Then again, it might not be so bad. At least we have Judd Apatow.
