When asked about his faith, Detective John Munch (Richard Belzer) says, “The only thing Judaism and I have in common is we both don’t like to work on Saturdays.” Quipping aside, Munch—a cynical, sarcastic, four-times-divorced conspiracy nut—actually has a rich and nuanced, though largely secular, relationship to Judaism.

The character of John Munch is the longest-running one on television to be played by the same actor. He began as a lead on Homicide: Life On The Street as a detective in the Baltimore Police Department and then moved to New York as a Sex Crimes cop on Law And Order: SVU (which occupies the same universe), racking up a current total of 19 seasons of television. Belzer has also appeared as Munch on more series than any other television character, including the original Law And Order and its spinoff Trial By Jury, short-lived UPN cop drama The Beat, The Wire, and The X-Files, comedies 30 Rock and Arrested Development (where Munch helps the FBI run the “scrapbooking sting” on Tobias), and Sesame Street.

But for a character with such longevity, Munch’s complicated relationship to his religion has been sparingly explored. Like Jerry Seinfeld, his Judaism is cultural—he’s oversensitive to perceived anti-Semitism but completely fine with joking about Judaism himself. His sensitivity to personal slights, whether against his religion or not, reaches its logical conclusion in paranoia and an obsession with conspiracy theories. This aspect of the character became less prominent as he moved from Homicide to SVU, but a forensic psychologist in the first season of SVU still pegs Munch as able to “smell a conspiracy theory at a five-year-old’s lemonade stand.”

One of his many crossover appearances suggests Munch might not be so off the mark with his theories. The framing device of “Unusual Suspects,” a Season 5 episode of The X-Files, sees Munch interrogating John Fitzgerald Byers (Bruce Harwood), the leader of the Lone Gunmen—a group of conspiracy nuts more paranoid than Fox Mulder (David Duchovney), another Jew. Within The X-Files, “Unusual Suspects” provides the origins of both the Lone Gunmen and Mulder’s overwhelming fear of the government, but it also helps situate Munch’s persecution complex and surprisingly well-justified distrust of authority.

Still, as much as his attitude reflects a Jewish upbringing, Munch isn’t particularly religious. Homicide’s episode “Kaddish,” the most in-depth exploration of Munch’s faith, makes it clear that although he knows the details of Jewish burial laws, some Yiddish, and a substantial amount of prayer, he wants nothing to do with Judaism. During the episode, Munch refuses to participate in a minyan, a group of 10 Jewish adults required for certain prayers, at a shiva for Helen Rosenthal, a victim whose murder he is investigating who also happens to be his high school crush. At the minyan, Munch claims (while obviously lying) that he doesn’t remember the Mourner’s Kaddish, the hymn of praise to God said by those grieving for a loved one.

Throughout “Kaddish,” we trace young Johnny Munch’s infatuation with Helen. That relationship is important by itself to understanding the adult Munch, but it also lets us peek at his nerdy childhood in the heavily Jewish Baltimore suburb of Pikesville, where he ran a paper route and dreamt of being a detective, “like Johnny Staccato.” Growing up in the suburbs in front of a television, afraid of bullies, it’s easy to trace a line between Johnny Munch and the cynical Sex Crimes cop.

As someone connected to Judaism more through a sort of worldview than through faith, or even rituals, Munch seems to be a kindred spirit of Homeland’s Saul Berenson, another Jewish law-enforcement official who may not be exceedingly religious but takes Judaism as crucial and constitutive of his personality.

Both Munch and Saul experience similar moments confirming their inherent Judaism. Saul says kaddish over Asfal Hamid, a terrorist who has committed suicide, as a way of expressing the compassion that makes him such an effective CIA operative. Likewise, at the end of “Kaddish,” Munch returns to Helen’s shiva, dons a yarmulke, and joins the minyan, the sound of the Mourner’s Kaddish providing the grace note of the episode.

Before he heads back to the shiva, Munch asks his partner why people forget the simple pleasure of holding another person’s hand, clearly pining for the pure love he felt for Helen. The contradiction at the heart of John Munch—the cynical, paranoiac bastard with four ex wives who still believes deeply in true love—is less a signal of the hard-bitten cop’s rejection of Judaism and more a representation of the reluctant Jewish hero, a tradition as old as Moses.

Previously on Network Jews

Dr. John Zoidberg, the Klutzy Jewish Crustacean on Futurama

Jean-Ralphio, the status-obsessed sidekick on Parks and Recreation.

Shoshanna, the scene-stealing afterthought on Girls.

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Yael Kohen’s first book, We Killed: The Rise of Women in American Comedy, is the sort of oral history that encapsulates the form’s pitfalls and its peculiar benefits. It contains the immediacy of lived experience vividly recollected, and it has the authenticity of testimony; it’s also a loose, rough-hewn work, too long in parts and stunted in others. Reading it, one learns much, for example, about what a revelation Phyllis Diller and Elaine May were in the buttoned-up 1950s, when stand-up comedy was still a relatively new art form and women comedians were practically unknown. But Kohen also lets her subjects drone on at times, spilling useless detail or failing to pinpoint what made a particular comedian great. Still, it’s the kind of history that breaks open an area of inquiry, so that future scholars and journalists can start digging.

To fill in some of these gaps, and to learn more about the book’s author, I met up with Kohen at her book release party at powerHouse Arena in Brooklyn. Kohen is in her early 30s and is a contributing editor for Marie Claire. At powerHouse, she wore a satiny blue blouse and cheetah-print heels, and though she confessed to being nervous, she carried herself with a kind of rehearsed confidence, like a young, well-trained lawyer about to try her first big case.

Recently Kohen wrote a profile of Kim Ng, a Major League Baseball executive who has long been seen as likely to become the first female general manager of an MLB team. In 2009, she wrote a widely discussed article, titled “Stiletto Stoners,” about working women who smoke pot.

“I think in general I’m interested in exploring ways in which conventional wisdom is wrong,” Kohen told me. We Killed was born, in part, out of a desire to overturn a hidebound belief. Christopher Hitchens’ notorious polemic, “Why Women Aren’t Funny,” which appeared in Vanity Fair in January 2007, counted Kohen among its many detractors. The article led Kohen to investigate the world of comedy—including for a 2009 Marie Claire story that presaged the book—and why many men are intimidated by female comedians, if not outright dismissive of them.

“Network television has always been a conservative medium,” Kohen claims, and her history backs that up, showing how TV has lagged behind other popular art forms, like music and film. The Mary Tyler Moore Show, which premiered in 1970, was the first TV program to have a protagonist who was divorced. The show’s co-creator, Allan Burns, recounted to Kohen a meeting with CBS personnel, in which one of the network’s researchers said, “We have found that there are four things that American television audiences won’t accept: men with mustaches, people who live in New York, Jews… and divorce.” Later, CBS tested the first episode and told the show’s staff that Rhoda, played by Valerie Harper, was “too Jewish and too abrasive.”

In addition to devoting sections to icons like Elaine May, Phyllis Diller, Mary Tyler Moore, and Carol Burnett, Kohen focuses on several other hinge figures. Lily Tomlin emerges as someone who, along with Richard Pryor, brought the counterculture into comedy. (Bette Midler said that Tomlin “gave women brand-new ways to be funny.”) Janeane Garofolo was not only the prototypical Gen-X slacker comedian; she also, apparently, provided opportunities for numerous people—men and women alike—and practically singlehandedly started the alt-comedy movement. Richard Belzer, now best known for his role on Law & Order: SVU (and for occasionally giving Nazi salutes), helped many young female comedians get work, including Roseanne Arnold and Susie Essman, while Del Close influenced practically every comedian who passed through Upright Citizens Brigade.

There are some marvelous anecdotes, such as the party where Gilda Radner punched Woody Allen in the stomach, as well as some choice lines, revealing in their bluntness. Take Treva Silverman, on comedy writers rooms in the 1970s: “everybody was always stoned.”

Few major industry figures seem to have been free of sexist behavior. Johnny Carson found many female comedians to be “a little aggressive”—he told Rolling Stone as much in a 1979 interview—and though he made Joan Rivers his primary substitute host, he never considered anointing her his successor. David Letterman had a habit of saying that some women were “funny like a guy.” The picture Kohen presents of Lorne Michaels is also complicated. He’s sometimes described as supporting women writers, while at other times he tolerated sexist behavior behind the scenes at SNL. Mitzi Shore, the legendary owner of The Comedy Store, was responsible for launching many careers, but some women found her cold and aloof, and they felt ghettoized when she set aside a small, dark room at the club for female performers.

Annie Beats, an early SNL writer, said that “John Belushi used to regularly ask for [the show’s female writers] to be fired” and refused to be in their sketches. (He also had a problem with Jews.) According to Marilyn Suzanne Miller, another original SNL writer, even noted that Al Franken—later liberal Democratic Senator Al Franken—would say that women weren’t funny.

There are, however, some undeveloped threads. For example, a number of interviewees talk about the preponderance of gay men among their fans, and there is some mention of gay men as a big part of early comedy club crowds (“The gay guys, they were chic,” Phyllis Diller said). But we’re never treated to any further analysis about why or how these two groups, women and gay men, made such natural cultural allies.

And there’s untapped drama as well. In a footnote that cries out for expansion, Kohen recounts the story of Joan Rivers, who after being passed over for inheriting The Tonight Show, got her own program, The Late Show Starring Joan Rivers. Fox canceled the show after Rivers refused to fire her husband, Edgar Rosenberg, who was executive producer. Rosenberg committed suicide months later, and “no woman has ever hosted a network late-night show since.” As for Rivers, she “didn’t appear on a late-night show for the next twenty years.” Yet there’s nothing on the subject from Rivers, who is interviewed in the book and who discussed the episode some in the documentary Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work. (The old talent agent Irvin Arthurs, on Rivers: “I think she would have killed somebody to make it.”)

Appearance has been one of the most difficult issues facing women in comedy, and the standards and expectations have shifted dramatically over the years. In the 1950s, Phyllis Diller hid her looks behind baggy clothes and outrageous wigs. The young Joan Rivers, attractive by most standards, chose to poke fun at herself, playing the character of the single girl who can never get a man. A generation later, Elayne Boosler was seen as threatening because her act included blue jokes about prostitution and sex. Now, many female comics attest that there’s an expectation to be attractive, to dress sexily, while others, pace Diller, wear hoodies and no makeup on stage, in hopes of being taken more seriously.

Many comedians in the book argue that male comedians are rewarded for their shlubbiness—think about Louis C.K. joking about his decrepit body. Women often aren’t allowed that chance. “I do think women, they’re judged a little bit differently for the way they approach their humor and their femininity,” Kohen told me. “I think the difference is that that doesn’t stop a guy from getting a sitcom, and it could stop a woman.”

On this front, she admires Mindy Kaling, and her new show, The Mindy Project.

“She’s not thin. Fine,” Kohen said. “But there’s something very refreshing about the way she’s so confident.”

At powerHouse Arena, a panel of female comedians, moderated by Vulture’s Jesse David Fox, was both critical of the treatment many comediennes have received and in agreement that the situation has improved immensely. Emily Heller, a comedian and writer, said, “Being a woman has helped me greatly… People are really excited if you’re a woman and you’re good.” She added, “the demand now for female comics is high.”

But the industry is still shaking off the sexism that was nothing if not institutionalized and that discouraged women from entering the profession at all. Lizz Winstead, another panelist, recalled that when she created The Daily Show in 1996, she received resumes from 150 writers; two were women. (She noted that “Wake Up World,” her 2007-08 Off-Broadway show, had seven women among its 10 writers.)

And too often, sexism has been dressed up as an act of bawdy daring, an ironic method of subversion. In 1987, Winstead was on Women of the Night, a comedy showcase on HBO. The comics were made to perform in front of a backdrop decorated to look like an alley. “We were dressed up like hookers and got out of a limo,” Winstead said. The producers hoped to get footage of the comediennes being catty backstage, but it didn’t work: “We didn’t fight, and they were bummed.”

Kohen noted that sites like College Humor and Funny or Die, which along with YouTube serve as a kind of digital comedy farm system, a role once principally occupied by clubs in New York and Los Angeles, employ mostly male writers. Even so, Kohen indicated that the current sense among many women is one of possibility, as well as gratitude towards their comedienne forbears. Now, that freedom often takes the form of insouciance.

Or as the writer Julieanne Smolinski announced to the crowd at powerHouse: “If you don’t enjoy what we’re doing, then you can go fuck yourself.”

Recent Kvetches: Shani Boianjiu and the Problems of Youth
Stop Calling Porn Star James Deen a ‘Nice Jewish Boy’

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• Alicia Silverstone has endorsed an eco-friendly vibrator. What would Cher Horowitz say?

• Is zombie drama The Walking Dead a Holocaust allegory? Jeffrey Goldberg thinks so.

• Isaac Mizrahi votes no on manscaping.

• Orthodox and looking to dine at the scenic River Cafe in DUMBO? According to the New York Post, you’ll be the only ones told to pay a $25 minimum fee.

• The 1990s saw a very short-lived British sitcom called Heil Honey I’m Home, where Hitler and Eva Braun live across the hall from the Goldensteins.

• Richard Belzer and Christopher Walken go to Stu Leonards:

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Leo (July 21 – August 20): Az a leyb shloft, loz im shlofn: When a lion is sleeping, let him sleep.

Like your ruling planet, the sun, you believe everything revolves around you. Self-righteous and entitled, you won’t rest until everyone feels the fiery blaze of your tempestuous, regal influence. You may define the fire sign, but come on: have you ever heard the king of the jungle kvetching? For you, bliss lies in instinct and reaction, not cold scheming.

Leo rules the heart. You are among the most loyal, generous, openhearted, and warm signs of the Zodiac, so you make for a great friend. However, the energy you put into friendships can also cause you heartache when you don’t get as much back in return.

It’s like Ru Paul says: “Big hair, big heart,” and you lions have no shortage of either. Although your brutality reaches its peak when you become impatient with others, it is important to maintain perspective: The sun will set without your help, so stop torturing everyone—including yourself!

Famous Leo Jews: David Duchovny, Dustin Hoffman, Roman Polanski, Stanley Kubrick, Richard Belzer, Monica Lewinsky, Samuel Goldwyn, William Goldman, Sydney Omarr, Jonathan Silverman, Sean Penn (half-Jewish), David Steinberg.

Virgo (Aug. 21 – Sept. 20): Don’t worry bubbelahs, it’s not as bleak as it looks. Big changes for the better are on the horizon, and the whirlwind of the past several months is finally settling down. Look around: if there is anything you can live without, let it go.

Libra (Sept. 21 – Oct. 20): Your natural charm has made it easy for you to avoid the tough realities, but sooner or later you’ll have to face the truth. The longer you put it off, the bigger the eventual explosion will be. Looking into the past for clues may be helpful.

Scorpio (Oct. 21 – Nov. 20): Uranus squares your ruling planet, Pluto, several times in the next few years—something that hasn’t happened since the 1930s. Take this cosmic renaissance to heart, it doesn’t help anyone if you suppress the change boiling inside. Accept the inevitability of this breakthrough and make it work for you.

Sagittarius (Nov. 21 – Dec. 20): While you are level-headed when it comes to your career, socially you can be a bit of a creeper. You are channeling your energies in the wrong directions. Owning up to it is the first step: you can’t take the high road without knowing where you’re going.

Capricorn (Dec. 21 – Jan 20): Lighten up! You may be stuck in a rut, but you should know by now that you’re a star. There will always be obstacles, but don’t forget that we make our own realities. Dearest Capricorn, your future’s so bright you gotta wear shades!

Aquarius (Jan 21 – Feb. 20): Everything that’s been happening around you has left you fermisht. Take a moment to breathe. With your ruling planet Uranus in retrograde for the remainder of the year, you have an opportunity to see what’s working for you—and what’s not.

Pisces (Feb. 21 – March 20): It’s all too easy for you to go along with what others want for you. You have so much to offer—and there’s only so much of yourself that you can spare. Seek and you will find, super freak.

Aries (March 21 – April 20): Following your heart and instincts is admirable, but without a little planning and soul-searching, you may find yourself stuck in old patterns. You have all the tools you need to make things work for you. Otherwise, just fake it ‘till you make it.

Taurus (April 21 – May 20): It’s like bubbe always told you: a watched pot never boils. Maybe your romantic prospects have been less than fantastic. But once you learn to love yourself, others will follow. They should be so lucky!

Gemini (May 21 – June 20): It’s better for you Geminis to let loose with both of your twins—the good and the bad, the buttoned up and the reckless. But if you can reconcile the two sides of yourself, you’ll find it much easier to relate to others.

Cancer (June 21 – July 20): You’re finally feeling like you’re ready to open your heart to love, but you crabs often come on too strong romantically. The important lesson is to balance your energies, so that you can be passionate but not overwhelming.

What’s Your Sign?

Introducing Jewcy Horoscopes: Cancer (June 21-July 20)

(Art by Margarita Korol)

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• Richard Belzer, who’s Jewish and really great on Law & Order: SVU, made a Nazi salute on a red carpet in Monaco. He claims he was referencing Charlie Chaplin’s The Great Dictator—he also put two fingers to his lip to represent a Hitler mustache and then went on to show his butt to photographers—but the usual suspects (read: the ADL) are not pleased.

• To prepare his crew for filming Cosmopolis—which takes place mostly in a billionaire’s limousine—David Cronenberg screened the Israeli film Lebanon and the claustrophobic German war epic Das Boot.

• Barbra Streisand held a $20 million (!) fundraiser to raise money for research into women’s heart disease.

• Larry David’s almost-lost sketches from ABC’s SNL competitor, Fridays.

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