NFG lyricist Steve Klein is Jewish, as is bassist Ian Grushka. If you didn’t know before the show, you knew when lead vocalist Jordan Pundik wished all the Jews in the audience a Happy Channukah during a holiday song and then indicated Klein + Grushka playing behind him. Of the three holiday wishes (a Merry Christmas, a Happy Channukah and a Happy Kwanza), the second got the biggest applause from the crowd. It probably helped that the show actually took place during Channukah, but also suggested that a lot of NFG fans, at least in NYC, are Jewish emo kids. With another Jewish artist, Max Bemis, releasing the two best emo albums of the year (the collaborative project Two Tongues + his own band’s eponymous Say Anything), maybe it’s time to ask (as though we haven’t before), is there something Jewish about being emo?

Unlikely. Chris Carrabba (Dashboard Confessional) is, as Rolling Stone puts it, the "godfather" of emo music, and his former band, Further Seems Forever, is explicitly Christian. But there are certain emo tropes that suggest some Judaism slipping through. (Full disclosure: I love emo music, so I’m willing to stretch this connection for the sake of personal titillation.) For one, the anxiety-ridden lyrical tropes of the genre, weeping over girls, worrying whether girls like you, worrying about how to ask a girl out, seem like natural reflections of the anxious Jewish public culture archetype. It’s probably not a coincidence that The OC’s very Jewish Seth Cohen (Adam Brody) loved emo music (side note: he also invented Chrismukkah). Moreover, if you ignore that King David was generally singing about God, there’s a lot of emo in Tehillim.

"They mounted up to the heaven, they went down to the deeps; their souls melted away because of trouble. They reeled to and fro, and staggered like a drunken man, and all their wisdom was swallowed up. They cried unto the LORD in their trouble, and He brought them out of their distresses." (107)

Emo! I mean, it’s a religion full of lamentations. Literally. In Lamentations, (attributed to Jeremiah), "She weeps sore in the night, and her tears are on her cheeks. She has no one to comfort her among all her lovers. All her friends have dealt treacherously with her. They have become her enemies." Am I wrong in thinking that this could easily be dealing with a woman contending with frenemies, as it could be dealing with the nation Israel?

At some point, I held out hope for a real Jewish emo band. Ie: One where the songs were about being a young religious Jew. It was ripe for the writing — tons of agony over being shomer negiah, over your Rabbis/Parents not understanding you, over how tough fast days are. Alas, as the decade comes to an end, and emo slips further and further into the passe regions of pop culture, it seems like that’ll never come to pass. I’ll assuage my own sorrow by listening to NFG + Say Anything and pretend they’re really really Jewish, and not just incidentally Jewish. The closest we ever came was a Say Anything song, Alive with the Glory of Love. It’s about falling in love in a Concentration Camp. It’s bleak, but when is emo (or Judaism) not? In "Stars of David," a book about Jews in rock music, Grushka says about New Found Glory’s name sounding like a born-again Christian band, "Sometimes when people ask, I just say, ‘Yeah, we’re a Christian band.’ They’ll figure it out sooner or later." Maybe the secret Jewish message is in the weeping.

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Once said, let’s put that to rest. If my credentials aren’t enough to discuss the new film with any depth, please skip ahead. I won’t be offended. I understand fandom, and if someone wanted to write about the X-Men without an encyclopedic background, I’d thank them kindly to their face and say bad things about them behind their backs. So go ahead. Say bad things.              

What struck me about the film was the role of the Jew, or the lack thereof. The Original Series always had Leonard Nimoy as Spock. He was not simply the intellectual rationalist to Kirk’s fly-by-the-seat-of-his-pants adventurer, as a number of critics have suggested. What is clear from those earliest episodes is that Spock was an equal partner in the great adventure. He may have brought a cooler head from time to time, but the mission was equally his. As such, he was something of a philosopher-warrior, a Jewish archetype rare in contemporary society, but rich in our history; from the Biblical Joshua, King David, to Franz Rosenzweig writing The Star of Redemption "in the Macedonian trenches," or maybe David Ben-Gurion.              

The Next Generation took the Jew in Star Trek one step further. Despite not having as public a Jewish identity as Nimoy in a main role, one could say TNG was even more Jewish than the Original Series. Watch them argue about the Prime Directive, debate subtleties of ethical and intellectual dilemmas, or entirely forgo physical confrontation in favor of multiculturalism and empathy. Hell, the crew was so neurotic, they kept a full-time therapist on the ship. The greatest triumphs were not the defeat of an adversary, but the breaching of borders, the comprehension of foreign language. Watch "Darmok," in my most humble opinion the greatest episode of The Next Generation. It is moving beyond words.

I mean, they might as well have called it Star Trek: The Great Jew Extravaganza. The central themes of the Star Trek shows – exploring new worlds, making contact with new civilizations, doing mitzvoth and good deeds throughout the universe – are central tenets of Judaism. Would a Michael Lerner luncheon have been out of place on The Next Generation? Picard was already, always doing birur nitzutzot (elevating the sparks of the universe) and performing tikkun on the galaxies.              

I have no doubt the Jew in Star Trek has been explored and interrogated at greater lengths than I could do justice to. Certainly, if there were no Jews in Star Trek, there was still plenty of locations for a Jew to find himself in the show. And yet, now, we have J.J. Abram’s new Star Trek and, despite enjoying the spectacle, I find myself wondering: Where has the Jew gone? At first, the obvious issues; there is no exploration, no new worlds to discover. If anything, there’s the collapse of old worlds – the destruction of Vulcan. There’s a political agenda; sometimes terrorists can’t be negotiated with (Spoiler alert: Eric Bana’s villain chooses to die rather than accept Kirk’s compassion).

Spock is no longer played by a Jew, but by Zachary Quinto (whom I know as the villain Sylar on Heroes). That itself is not a problem, but coupled with the character’s transformation makes him into a non-Jewish figure. He is now quick to rush to anger and violence, not to fight based on logic but based on emotional betrayal. He is vindictive against Kirk, and he now embarks on a fairly public love affair with Uhura. In other words, he is an arrogant bore, and he lacks wisdom, possessing only intellect.

This move is made all the more evident by the inclusion of the old Spock, Leonard Nimoy, in the film. Nimoy is everything that Quinto’s Spock is not. He is thoughtful, caring, and wise. When he calls the young Kirk his longtime friend, the scene is poignant and moving. Tellingly, the character is a man literally caught out of time – a refugee from a future time – much as the ethos he once represented are too caught out of time. This new Star Trek has no place for deliberation over ethics, or warm human contact. Compare Nimoy’s brief moments with Kirk to Quinto’s moments. One is deeply connected to the human. The other, no matter how many times the film may argue otherwise, is deeply alienated from the human experience. No, this Spock is no Jew. He truly is alien. 

This would bother me far less if the movie didn’t hold the promise of future installments. The film is doing well in release and I have no doubt a sequel is already in the works. But can they possibly use Nimoy again? It seems unlikely – his role here was as intermediary, ferrying the series from the Roddenberry vision to the Abrams’ vision. I imagine he’ll be gone in the next film and then we’ll be left with no Jew at all, just a bunch of very entertaining goyim canvassing the universe. Maybe they’ll decide to explore strange new worlds, but I doubt it. Abram’s likes his monsters. There’ll be a new villain, a new world-ending catastrophe, another distended-anus snow creature. There isn’t a lot of time for tikkun ha’olem when you’re reacting against terrorists and psychopaths. Or rather, there should be time made, but who will make it? Our only hope, I fear, is that Chris Pine’s Kirk grows into the role Spock once held. He does seem to have sensitivity and a thoughtfulness hiding just behind his impetuousness and impulsiveness. Maybe he’ll cultivate it. 

The narrative itself addressed this. Nimoy-Spock tells Quinto-Spock in one of the final moments that he’ll hide out of sight, working on the preservation of Vulcan cultural heritage. And that, finally, is what the Jew of Star Trek has been reduced to: A cultural heritage, a memory of a series long past. Now, we look to the future. Too bad J.J. Abrams is such a goy.

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Eurovision is the EU’s answer to “American Idol,” only the music is even poppier and the costumes are significantly more ridiculous. Israel joined the competition in its seventeenth year, in 1973, ushering in the first of three distinct eras in Holy Land pop. The first was an era of naïve, innocent folksongs that lasted through the early 80s. The late 80s and the 90s saw an era of pop decadence culminating in the 1997 charedi stand-off against transsexual singer Dana International and the realization that Israel had become socially fractured and contentious. Finally, in the 00’s, politics took over, with bands like Teapacks and Ping Pong representing an overt political aesthetic in music.

So why in this era of songs that reflect current events are we seeing a throwback to the naïveté of the 70s? Maybe Boaz Mauda is more like Hoobastank than Bob Dylan after all–not a consequence of the political spectrum but a response to it: pop culture as counter-culture. In the midst of political upheaval, daily controversies, bombings around Gaza and visits from the President of the United States, what could be more dangerous than a love song that refuses to acknowledge any of it? It's not just escapism as escapism, but escapism as rebellion. We're tired of the BBC, how about some Kokhav Nolad instead?

Mauda didn’t win in Belgrade this May—that honor went to Russia’s Dima Bilan. But he made a strong showing with a song written by Dana International titled “Ke’ilu Kan” (“As If You Were Here”). The song itself is pretty bare: Mauda’s gorgeous voice laid over an acoustic guitar, with a slightly buffered chorus. The lyrics are vague and hopeful, and the music’s brief foray into Mizrachi territory near the end compliments Mauda’s ethnicity. “Come along, come along, see the fire in your eyes and you come with me,” he sings in the brief and accented English segment. It’s both exotic and accessible, inviting and moving.

Compare this with the Eurovision entries of the past few years. 2000’s entry PingPong’s “Sameach” dissected the relationship between a Damascus boy and an Israeli girl via absurdist post-Village People disco. The quartet had grating voices, and they waved a Syrian flag at the end of their performance.

2002’s entry, Sarit Hadad’s “Light a Candle” addressed politics with trite Broadway lyrics: “Light a candle with me. A thousand candles in the dark will open up our hearts.” In 2006, Eddie Butler’s “Together We Are One” reprised Hadad’s “We Are The World” aesthetics, this time with back-up singers in matching white suits and a faux-R&B tune.

Last year saw the most egregious example of Israel pop music’s obsession with international contention: Teapacks’ song “Push the Button.” On their own, Teapacks are a fabulous ska-inflected mod group who sprinkle their performances with broad aesthetic winks at the audience. But the song, a sarcastic melodrama about fearing atomic annihilation (“I don’t want to die / I want to see the flowers bloom / Don’t want to go kaboot-kaboom.”) alienated voters who thought the band was mocking regional conflict. Musically and aesthetically, Mauda’s song reaches past these international worries, back to Israel’s Eurovision 1970s heyday, when the entries were far more folk-inflected and youthful. The first artist to rep Israel, Ilanit, wore a Technicolor dream coat and long blond hair to the contest, looking something like a flower child (a look she reprised when she returned a second time in 1977).

Even prog-rock Kaveret (then going by the ridiculous name ‘Poogy’) played one of their straightest songs at the 1974 contest. Their just-released “Poogy in a Pita” album featured sonically adventurous tracks like the Dylan-esque “Protest Song,” the dirge-like “Ballad of Arivederchi,” and the ska-influenced “Blackout,” but they ended up playing a simplistic, straightforward guitar rock song, “Natati la Khaiai.”

This lack of sophistication worked for Izhar Cohen & the Alphabeta, who brought home Israel’s first Eurovisio win in 1978 with “A-Ba-Ni-Bi.” The eponymous chorus comes from the words “Ani Ohav Otah” (“I Love You”) spoken in Bet Language – which is the Israeli equivalent of Pig Latin or Gibberish. The song isn’t just musically naïve; it’s literally childish as it narrates the love between two young kids.

The 1979 contest gave Israel its second win for Gali Atari and Milk & Honey’s “Hallelujah,” which quickly became a classic and Israeli standard. While “A-Ba-Ni-Bi” was lyrically childish, “Hallelujah” was nationally young – it’s a gorgeous and openly religious song praising God for everything in the world.

In 1980, due to a conflict with Yom Hazikaron, Israel didn’t participate, and in 1983, Ofra Haza performed the last song of Israel’s first decade of Eurovision. Her performance was symbolically rich. Israel’s first entry ever in 1973 was only a year after the Munich massacre. In Eurovision – The Official History, historian John Kennedy O’Conner describes how in 1973, due to fears of a Munich replication, contestants were asked to remain seated while applauding. In 1983, Eurovision was actually held in Munich, and Ofra Haza performed “Am Yisrael Chai,” making it something of a symbolic victory if not an actual one (Haza came in second place overall).

Starting in 1984, Israel’s contestants became much more poppy – more disco, more ridiculous haircuts (look at Izhar Cohen’s haircut when he sang “Ole, Ole!” It didn’t look quite so greasy and floppy in 1978). Maybe Israel’s more confident position on the world stage let to a more poppy, disco influence, or maybe the only possible response to the previous decade’s sincerity was irony.

In 1990, Rita sang Streisand/Bette Midler diva style pop on “Shara Barkhovot,” and Dafna Dekel in 1992 was more of a sex icon than a singer (she had already lost a lot of weight and gotten a nose job before taking on the competition). Shiru Group’s 1993 performance of “Shiru” is practically an evocation of ABBA on stage.

When Dana International sang “Diva” in 1998, it was a summation of the kind of decadent, bubblegum pop that had defined Israeli pop music in recent Eurovision. It was also the most contentious Israeli submission to the contest in the country’s history. International won Israel’s first number one since Gali Atari, but she also earned the ire of many Orthodox Israeli Rabbis as a sequin-clad transsexual. Shas MK Shlomo Benizri demanded that she be removed from the contest. “The Eurovision Song Contest interests me about as much as the weather in Antarctica,” he said on Israel public radio, “but as a son of the Jewish people it offends me.”

The controversy Dana International sparked may have indicated deep-running disagreements between Orthodox and secular Israelis about transsexuals, but it also illustrated a fragmented interest in Eurovision during the 90s. Unlike “Hallelujah,” or “Am Yisrael Chai,” 90s Israeli Eurovision music had sacrificed something naïve and nationalist in favor of more radio-friendly pop.

Perhaps it should be no surprise that the past decade has responded to the worldly but empty glitz of the 90s with such politically charged songs—by appealing to gritty reality, bands like Teapacks hoped to bring national and political attention back to the contest. In which case Mauda’s “Ke’ilu Kan” might represent a further swing of the pendulum: A sweet song, sung sweetly, written by the controversial Dana International but unlikely to upset anyone. It didn’t win at Belgrade, but it did offer Israelis a moment of nostalgia and escape, and maybe that’s enough.

The post What Eurovision Teaches Us About Israel appeared first on Jewcy.

Joss Whedon, the auteur behind Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Firefly, started writing Astonishing X-Men in 2004 with artist John Cassaday. The series was hailed for being exciting, well-written, and beautiful when other X-comics were frankly sub-par. Among the most praised aspects of Whedon's run was his take on Kitty Pryde. When she was first created by John Byrne in 1980 (first appearance Uncanny X-Men #129), she was the comic's precocious child star — the Wesley to Wolverine's Commander Riker. She called Professor Xavier a jerk, she timejumped to apocalyptic, Holocaust-esque futures, and in a memorable Christmas issue (Uncanny #143), she was left home alone during the holiday while her gentile teammates visited family. She faces off against a demon and beats him just in time celebrate Channukah. Whedon, who claimed Kitty was always the inspiration for Buffy, took Byrne's Bat Mitzvah girl and made her an adult.

So why the concern? Since December 2006, Whedon has been teasing that during his last epic storyline on Astonishing X-Men, one of the X-Men wouldn't be coming home. When Kitty got busy with ex-Soviet teammate Colossus on the planet Breakworld, her fate seemed all but sealed. After all, you don't have to read Carol J. Clover's "Men, Women, and Chain Saws: Gender in the Modern Horror Film" to know that when the girl gives it up, she tends not to make it. Some of us hoped that Whedon wouldn't embrace such a cliché, but when the last issue ended in a definite "Kitty in danger" cliffhanger — the Jewess trapped in a hollow bullet being shot to Earth — it seemed like we knew who wasn't coming home. Then we got to wait four months (four months full of hints in other, related comics that Kitty was going to die) to see whether it was true.

I'm not sure what the statistics are on Jewish comic book fanboy and fangirls, But it remains that despite the plethora of Jewish comic book writers (Simcha Weinstein's Up, Up, and Oy Vey! described the Jewish influences on the superhero industry) there is a serious dearth of Jewish comic book characters. For those of us that grew up looking to identify with a coreligionist in the pages of our floppy X-purchases, Kitty Pryde was basically it. (I don't know anyone who choose to identity with that other Jewish X-character, Holocaust survivor/villain Magneto.)

My fear about Kitty biting the bullet wasn't just a concern that a favorite character would die, but the fear that her Mogen Dovid necklace wouldn't show up again in comics for some time.Comic book characters are known for coming back from the dead (after all, Whedon himself revived Colossus), but their deaths can last years until an enterprising author decides to revive them. And with comic books' emphasis on being more and more "adult" and "realistic," who knows when the next resurrection is going to be approved?

Kitty's fate may be left in limbo for now (she doesn't die, but she's still in a precarious situation), but at least she could show up any week now, in the hands of any author (the capable Warren Ellis is taking over Astonishing X-Men from Whedon). Saving her from a bullet is much easier than bringing her back from the afterlife.

I'm twenty-four today (Thanks for the birthday gift, Whedon!) and probably too old to be worrying about the survival of comic book characters. But when I have children, I'd like there to be a Member of the Tribe around when they start reading comic books. It's not just about being represented on the glossy pages, but about being able to identify with the characters you read. Jewish characters are rare enough, but a strong, funny, female Jewish X-Men? It's a perfect storm.

Now if only we could get DC Comics to revive their Israeli supercommando superhero team Hayoth, we'd be in business.

The post “Buffy” Auteur Joss Whedon Didn’t Kill Off Jewish X-Man Kitty Pryde appeared first on Jewcy.

While Israeli Moz fans are understandably excited, the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic & Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI) threw a fit. They feel the famously outspoken activist is betraying his ethics by playing “despite [Israel’s] colonial and apartheid reality.”

You may be forgiven for thinking that the PACBI was just looking for something to complain about on a slow news day, but you’d be wrong. PACBI are such die-hard Moz fans that they scrapbooked some lyrics from “This is Not Your Country” to the press release. The PACBI also paraphrased the original lyrics, “One child shot, but so what?” into “One Palestinian child shot, but so what?”

We suspect PACBI is just annoyed that Morrissey is limiting his Middle East performances to Israel. Back in January, British music rag NME reported that Morrissey was in talks with the government of Iran to play a Tehran concert this year, and follow up with a region tour. The only announcement since, though, has been Moz’s tattooed Tel Aviv love-in. Even the most patient Smiths fanatic is bound to get hot under the collar at missing a chance to see the pompadoured rock star live. If he wants to keep his West Bank fan club, he better schedule a show for Nablus stat. Fair is fair.

The post Morrissey to Play Tel Aviv Festival, Palestinians are Mad appeared first on Jewcy.

Briefly, for the uninitiated, Eurovision is the "American Idol" of European countries. Each participating country (which includes our Israeli homeboys – more on them later) chooses one representative to compete. Those representatives choose one song to perform live on television. Then everyone in Europe votes (you can’t vote for your own country’s song). There’s also a semi-final qualification round and a finals round and whatnot – but since they change the rules every few years, it can be hard to keep abreast of the Byzantine rule structure. As of last year there are now two semi-finals, then a grand finale. The Big Four (France, Germany, Spain and the UK) always automatically qualify for the grand finale.

This year, Israel is sending Boaz Mauda, the bronzed winner of "Kokhav Nolad," Israel’s "American Idol," to Belgrade (Serbia, whose native Marijua Serifovic won Eurovision in 2007, gets to host 2008’s competition). Mauda’s music is totally awesome, falling somewhere between Mizrachi crooning and soft, understated acoustic balladeering. And he’s going to Belgrade with a certifiable gangbuster song to sing—“Ke’ilo Kan,” written by former winner Dana International.

As your Jewcy Eurovision correspondent, I’ll be bringing you breathless Eurovision updates, along with some Israel participation history (we’ve won numerous times!), and maybe a liveblogging or two of the proceedings. I feel slightly ambiguous using the term “we,” being that I’m not a citizen of Israel and this is a national contest as much as anything. But it’s not like Americans can root for a USA candidate, and since it’s a lot more fun when you personalize the contest, I’m going to stick with the second person.

So with our fingers crossed and our lighters held aloft, let's toast to May in Belgrade. L’chaim, Boaz!

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