It is, one has to assume, no accident that Lilith Sternin (Bebe Neuwirth) of Frasier (and Cheers) is named after the biblical Adam’s mythological first wife, known in legend as a demonic, child-killing woman. Frasier Crane’s ex-wife may not snatch newborns, but she’s hardly easy to love.

Like Frasier, Lilith is a psychiatrist; an exceptionally smart woman given to a distant, highly intellectualized, unemotional way of interacting that often has her branded an ice queen by members of the Crane family. She is the image of consummate uptightness: Her hair always in a perfect bun, her wardrobe a treasure trove of pantyhose and sensible, darkly colored suits. Frasier consistently refers to her domineering ways. In one episode, he snorts, “If I had trouble taking orders from a woman, Frederick would never have been conceived.”

Even when it comes to her child, where Jewish women are generally thought of as exuding warmth and caring to a smothering degree, Lilith expresses love in unusual ways. In one episode, Frasier and Lilith become consumed with getting young Frederick into an exclusive prep school. After an initial visit at the headmaster’s house, Frasier and Lilith return repeatedly to try to butter up the fussy teacher—in one ruse, Lilith pretends to have left behind an earring given to her by Golda Meir. Meanwhile, Frederick, under the care of his grandfather and uncle, gets hit in the face with a baseball, breaks out in hives from eating anchovies, and walks into the refrigerator door. In her zeal to secure Frederick’s academic future, Lilith, the Jewish mother meant to tend to her son’s every hangnail and skinned knee, doesn’t notice his shiner and rash.

But underneath the cold, calculated, emotionless exterior runs some hot blood. Lilith is also, it turns out, a bit of a temptress. In one episode, after Lilith’s new husband has left her, she visits Seattle to turn to Frasier for emotional support. Frasier is anxious—in times of distress, he has trouble resisting Lilith, a weakness exacerbated by the short red dress Lilith turns up in. “Oh, baby,” he moans sadly when he answers the door, resigned to the certainty of his giving in to his attraction.

Despite her sexiness, Lilith retains some essential Lilithness—she greets Frasier’s brother, Niles, in a characteristically blunt way: “I’m sorry to hear your marriage ended in a shambles.” And yet, the next morning, Niles wakes up in bed with Lilith, cursing her “bewitching” ways.

So Lilith—both siren and schoolmarm—encompasses the opposing ideas that have long been the hallmarks of Jewish femininity: that Jewish women are either frigid or floozies, uptight in bed or else quite the opposite. Jewish women have long been associated with a conniving sort of sexuality; from Ivanhoe on, literature is filled with Jewesses who use their wiles to get their ways. But in a post-World War II world populated with literary characters like the prudish-but-trying-to-get-over-it Marjorie Morningstar, Jewish women became withholding shrews. It’s the attitude that led Anthony Weiner to famously exclaim last year, in what must win the honor for most romantic text message of all time, “Wow, a Jewish girl who sucks [word for penis that my mother would not approve of]! This thing is ready to do damage.”

Lilith isn’t exactly doing much to dispel the stereotypes. Vacillating between repellently repressed and bewitchingly seductive, she has it both ways, but doesn’t win any fans. Her reputation precedes her; when Frasier mentions that she is in town, Niles deadpans, “Oh, so that explains why blood was pouring from all my faucets this morning”—but still sleeps with her in the same episode. Lilith is destined to exist in the in-between world of beguiling and repugnant, in which she has both the power to tempt and the power to terrify. But Lilith might be playing the stereotypes to her advantage: Either way, she’s got the power.

Previously on Network Jews:

Neal Schweiber, the 14-year-old crotchety ventriloquist on Freaks & Geeks

George Bluth Sr., the erstwhile Jew and patriarch of Arrested Development

Fran Fine, the nasal-voiced star of The Nanny

The post Network Jews: Lilith Sternin, The Ex-Wife From Hell on ‘Frasier’ appeared first on Jewcy.

According to the Internet, Krusty is supposed to be based on Jerry Lewis, and indeed both make funny faces, are beloved by the French, and have substance addictions. But we are trying too hard if we don’t point to the resemblance most obviously suggested in the Season 3 episode in which Krusty, asked to say grace at the Simpsons’ Evergreen Terrace abode, proceeds to recite the motzi and, prompted by Lisa’s characteristic prying, reveals that his real name is Herschel Shmoikel Pinchas Yerucham Krustofski. (“A Jewish entertainer?” wonders Homer. “Get out of here.”) He is Al Jolson, which is to say he is also Al Jolson’s character in The Jazz Singer: an entertainer who has betrayed his father—”my father was a rabbi,” sighs Krusty, “his father was a rabbi, his fathers’ father was a—well, you get the idea.” To a lesser extent, he is the comedian Jackie Mason, who also comes from a long line of rabbis, but who clearly does not feel so weighted by that burden that he couldn’t guest-star as the voice of Krusty’s father, Rabbi Hyman Krustofski.

There is betrayal: Rabbi Krustofski is shamed that the sandwich named after his son at Izzy’s Deli features “ham, sausage, and bacon with a smidge of mayo—on white bread” (maybe they should call that the Ted Danson). There is, of course, reconciliation at the end: Bart’s quotation (supplied by Lisa) from the Babylonian Talmud fails to move the rabbi, who easily ripostes with a different authority; but a melodramatic line about Jewish persecution from the autobiography of Sammy Davis, Jr., leaves the rabbi with no response. Mason won an Emmy for the part. In a post-Golden Age episode (Season 15), he returns, and Krusty gets bar mitzvahed.

But that’s about it. You most likely don’t remember Krusty saying the brucha (his word). You remember him betting against the Harlem Globetrotters (“I thought the Generals were due!“); taking a break to show an Itchy & Scratchy sketch; nearly killing Bart by merchandising shoddily made cereal that has o-shaped pieces of metal in it; hosting an unfortunately named Krusty Komedy Klassic at the Apollo Theatre; and, of course, having unleashed the sinister Sideshow Bob on the world.

Ultimately, we see Krusty as the Simpsons do: as an entertainer. In fact, Krusty is one of the earliest Simpsons characters, tracing his origins all the way back to Matt Groening’s shorts on The Tracey Ullman Show—and even there, in the The Simpsons‘s Mesozoic Era (they looked like this), he is not a stand-alone character, but somebody the Simpsons watch on television. From the beginning, he’s the TV actor within the TV show—the other prominent example being local news anchor Kent Brockman, born Kenny Brockelstein.

Because in the world of The Simpsons and in the Simpsons’ world, that’s who the Jews are. And so Krusty’s Jewishness ultimately says the most when it articulates what makes The Simpsons distinctive. You would probably have to go back to the mid-1960s and The Andy Griffith Show—and cede the rule-proving-exception of South Park, which owes a self-acknowledged, tremendous debt to The Simpsons—to find a quality and popular television series that isn’t either set in a major city or among a milieu from a major city: in either case, among people for whom Jews are neighbors, bosses, friends, or enemies—just other people. The Dick Van Dyke Show had Carl Reiner playing Sid Caesar. Mary Tyler Moore’s boss was Ed Asner. The doctors in M*A*S*H* are sophisticated city-folk transplanted to a warzone. Dallas was in Dallas, Cheers in Boston, The Cosby Show in Brooklyn. Oh, and then Seinfeld happened, and you can take things from there.

But there was and is The Simpsons. We don’t know what state Springfield is in, but we do know that it’s the sort of small American town that actually doesn’t typically have many Jews (Krusty grew up “on the Lower East Side of Springfield,” literally ghettoized). If they do have Jews, they are likely to be entertaining you on television. More than any other show, Jews can watch The Simpsons and watch them watching Krusty, and watch Krusty through their eyes, to feel like real Americans. Or, at least, the sort of Americans that would eat a ham sandwich with mayo—on white bread.

Previously on Network Jews:

Schmidt from FOX’s breakout hit New Girl

Marc Tracy is a staff writer at Tablet Magazine. He tweets here.

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