While we generally leave journalists and political pundits to discuss and predict what the immediate future may bring, there are scores of nerdy, computer-literate, and otherwise “indoor” types who formulate what will happen in the next millennia, instead of in the next fiscal quarter. These are our dear and not-so-near science-fiction writers, whose pimply-faced audiences are turning their inventions into realities as we tweet. One of their more lighthearted prophecies is the satirical animated series Futurama, created by David X. Cohen and The Simpsons’ Matt Groening, which addresses the issues of life in 31st-century “New New York.”

The series, which was canceled by Fox in 2003 and revived by Comedy Central in 2008 due to high DVD sales and a committed fanbase, much like Family Guy, follows the dysfunctional misadventures of the crew of Planet Express, a dismally inefficient intergalactic delivery service. Under the auspices of the geriatric mad scientist Prof. Farnsworth, the business serves as a courier for such futuristic items like dark matter energy, alien aphrodisiacs, and honey from giant space bees. In this not-so-advanced landscape, aliens and mutants live alongside humans, hovercars and pneumatic tube travel are realities, and the preserved head of Richard Nixon is President of Earth.

The world of Futurama can also provide us with some foresight on what the Jewish legacy might be like in a thousand years through Dr. John Zoidberg: The pathetic and klutzy lobster-like extraterrestrial with questionable medical skills and a strong Yiddish accent, who also happens to be the resident doctor of Planet Express.

Disliked and ignored by virtually everyone on the show, this lab coat-donning crustaceous alien is perpetually scavenging for garbage scraps as well as any iota of sociable interaction and approval—(he is so unlikeable that you might get punched in the face for even imitating him. Unlike most other secondary characters on the show, Zoidberg is rarely seen engaging in any dialogue with others—he exists mainly as an entertaining and foolish sideshow, recalling Chaplin-esque misadventures and the reckless blunders of the Three Stooges. His eager desire for attention has even found its way into Internet culture with the popular “Why not Zoidberg?” meme—something that he never actually says in the show but was created as a pastiche from his need for recognition and Yiddish rhetoric.

Despite Zoidberg’s accent, which voice actor Billy West claims was influenced by “marble-mouthed” Jewish actor George Jessel as well as other “rabbinical” and Bronx voices (which is complemented by telltale grammatical constructions along the lines of “You want I should put it here?”), he and others of his species are never explicitly referenced as Jewish. We get many clues, however, such as the episode featuring his burnt-out movie star uncle Harold Zoid—who was voiced by the inimitable voice and character actor Hank Azaria (the same year he starred in a TV movie about the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising)—that recalls the golden, and largely Jewish, age of Hollywood.

A later season showcases Zoidberg’s home planet Decapod 10, full of even thicker-accented Ashkenazi shellfish (perhaps planet Decapod 9 is full of Sephardic crabs?). Further solidifying his Jew cred, in my personal favorite Zoidberg moment and one particularly telling of his cultural and stereotypical Jewishness, he has a flashback of his mother reprimanding his dream to become a comedian and suggests he become a respectable doctor—yet she later reprimands him once more for being spineless and giving up his dream of becoming a comedian by going to medical school.

Yet aside from accents and behavior, nowhere does it ever mention that Zoidberg or his fellow trayf crustaceans are Jewish. Interestingly enough, the only explicitly Jewish characters on Futurama are a handful of robots—we witness a “Goldborg Bot Mitzvah,” complete with robot hora dancing, a banner reading “today you are a robot” in Hebrew, and a rabbi explaining his attitude toward Robot Jesus—he believes he was built, and well programmed, but not the robot messiah.

The Jewish robot life cycle also includes “Robanukah,” a holiday that spurs Bender, Planet Express’ mischievous robot, to sing a song explaining the traditional six and a half weeks of oil wrestling—which eventually faces a crisis when his oil supply runs short two weeks, prompting Bender to descry that he needs oil for the whole holiday since it isn’t a “lousy Reform Robanukah.” Although Zoidberg’s Jewishness is less explicit than the robots’, he is still clearly Jewish. As others have noted, unlike the Irish vaudeville comedy of The Simpsons, Futurama is pervaded by the Jewishness of its borscht-belt comedy and Woody Allen-esque despair, giving Zoidberg and others their distinct and not-so-kosher personalities.

Given his disguised yiddishkeit, Zoidberg appropriately plays the parts of the Jewish character types the schlemiel and schlimazel—the one who spills the soup and the one who gets spilled on. While one could lament that the legacy of Jewishness in Futurama is embodied by Zoidberg’s overwhelming ineptitude, it’s clear that the series serves as one more atomic bond in the ever-strong molecular chain between Jews and geekdom. And above everything else, I’m certainly glad that at least according to Futurama, Jewish humor has survived for another thousand years.

Previously on Network Jews:

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

Shoshanna, the scene-stealing afterthought on Girls.

Ruxin, the fantasy football-obsessed jerk on The League.

The post Network Jews: Dr. John Zoidberg, the Klutzy Jewish Crustacean on ‘Futurama’ appeared first on Jewcy.

• A list of ways to help after Hurricane Sandy, no matter where you live. [Tablet]

• The Simpson’s diabolical CEO Mr. Burns endorsed Mitt Romney. Krusty the Clown would never have done that. [LA Times]

• “The Vienna Rite,” Judith Berkson’s new opera, follows Salomon Sulzer’s real-life creation of the modern synagogue. [NYT]

• Jewish actress Marissa Jarret Winokur, best known for her role as Tracy Turnblad in the Broadway production of Hairspray, lost 60 pounds—and says she’s still considered a chubby actress by Hollywood standards. [Hollywood Reporter]

• Jewish author Mitch Albom was the Mick Jagger of Southern New Jersey in the 1970s. [Tablet]

• Barbra Streisand explains why she’s voting for Obama:

The post Daily Jewce: Barbra’s Voting for Obama, Mitch Albom’s Moves Like Jagger appeared first on Jewcy.

• Art Garfunkel defends, well, his art.

• Matisyahu’s The Posession beat out Shia LaBeouf’s Lawless in the battle at the box office.

• Forget those bungalows: it’s Rockaway Beach’s style that has hipsters heading out there en masse.

• Yiddish theater heads to Williamsburg this fall.

• Changes in how Israel depicts and presents the Holocaust are seen at the country’s various Holocaust museums.

• If you’re Matt Groenings waitress at Bennigan’s, he just might leave you a napkin filled with these awesome Simpsons-themed doodles:

The post Daily Jewce: Yiddish Theater Heads to Brooklyn, Rockaway Beach Has Style appeared first on Jewcy.

But when South Park finishes its improbable run, future generations will view it as an incomparable document of its time. The show—arguably more sustained in both relevance and quality than its animated contemporaries The Simpsons and Family Guy—will endure because South Park manages the binary requisites for cultural longevity: it succeeds in explaining its era and, more importantly, the show has heart.

The tragedy of South Park is that it remains culturally defined by specific controversies. In a 2006 two-part episode, the writers attempted to feature animated images of the Islamic prophet Mohammed to protest censorship in the wake of the Danish cartoon scandal (Comedy Central blocked them out after receiving death threats). What was overshadowed by the episode’s controversial message were jokes the writers made about its rival Family Guy. As with many other episodes, the broader context remained unexamined and the show, which is consistently a thoughtful and equally-offending American conversation, was dismissed for its lowbrow flourishes.

With the Jews, it’s no different. While the show’s detractors see only anti-Semitism (or the myriad boundary lines of identity politics), many fail to even investigate the extremely blunt points the show attempts to make, which often stem from topical real life. Consider Kyle Broflovski, the major Jewish character, who was actually created in the image of the show’s co-creator Matt Stone.

In interviews, the Jewfro-ed Stone cites his experience growing up as the only Jewish kid in his predominantly Christian hometown of Conifer, Colorado. Accordingly, the character Kyle (whom Stone voices) is also Jewfro-ed and shares Stone’s birthday on the show. Kyle is outspoken, morally righteous, and often insecure about his place adrift in the Midwest. Fearing the worst about his brother Ike’s impending bris, Kyle helps him escape. When the school’s most unpopular kid is revealed to have no Facebook friends, Kyle befriends him, losing everything in the process.

In an episode early in the first season, South Park covers the War on Christmas controversy that dominated the news cycles in the late 1990s. For the sake of tolerance, citizens of the town attempt to wash out religion from the school’s Christmas pageant. Much of the episode is a treatise on the life of an American Jewish family in a place where Jews are scarce, especially for Kyle, a Jewish kid struck between belonging and not.

Kyle’s ridiculous song “A Lonely Jew on Christmas” is high on sentimentality and an insider brand of exlusion. When Kyle’s stereotypically Jewish mother Sheila (who in the episode becomes the target of a once-famous song about her particularly Jewish obstinacy; the Estonian version will blow your mind) argues that the emphasis on Christianity in the school play offends the Jewish community, a teacher replies by shouting back, “You are the Jewish community!” It’s hard to imagine that this line and its specific verisimilitude could work its way into an episode of the show without some authentic experience behind it.

But the approach to South Park’s Jewish themes comes most often through Kyle’s confrontations with his foil Eric Cartman, the show’s best known and most incendiary character. Consider this amazing collection of (just some) of Cartman’s anti-Semitic utterances throughout the series. In the course of this minute-plus clip, Cartman uses the word Jew as a noun, adjective, and verb. (A note for novices: The most pernicious of the utterances in this clip is during an episode in which Cartman pretends to have Tourette’s Syndrome so he can say whatever he wants and still seem noble.)

While this compilation would no doubt give Abe Foxman shortness of breath (the accompanying user comments enabled by this clip are also wildly problematic), these moments isolated from their context don’t show Kyle fighting back, a microcosm for the shortchange the show receives from worried parents and critics.

Then, of course, there is the episode when the town is about to be flooded and Cartman is willing to save Kyle’s life if Kyle hands over the bag of Jew gold that “all Jews carry around their necks.” Kyle tries to tell Cartman he’s insane, but Cartman persists. Kyle then produces a bag from around his neck and Cartman calls it out for being the decoy bag of Jew gold that every Jew carries. Rather than give him the real bag, Kyle throws into the maelstrom below. It’s funny. You have to see it.

Previously on Network Jews:

Ziva David, the ass-kicking Mossad agent on CBS’s naval drama NCIS

Rachel Berry, the overachieving Jewish superstar-in-training on Fox’s Glee

Maurice Levy, the shyster lawyer on David Simon’s HBO show, The Wire

Adam Chandler is a contributing editor at Tablet Magazine. He Tweets at @AllMyChandler.

The post Network Jews: Kyle Broflovski, South Park’s Resident Jew 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.

The post Network Jews: Krusty the Clown, Jewish Entertainer on ‘The Simpsons’ appeared first on Jewcy.

• Artist Cindy Sherman, to the photoshop generation.

• Tablet Magazine, our sister site, is nominated for a Webby award! Vote for them here.

• Claire Danes interviews Lena Dunham, and our brains basically explode from the awesomeness.

• Have you seen former Big Jewcy and How Was Your Week podcast host Julie Klausner’s deleted scene from It’s Complicated? You should.

The post Daily Jewce: Claire Danes Interviews Lena Dunham, The Simpsons’ Jewishness, and more appeared first on Jewcy.

Neil Gaiman’s classic comic, The Sandman, first came out around the time that the first full episodes of The Simpsons debuted on Fox.  So maybe you can call the news that Gaiman reported on his blog sort of a dream come true that some of us thought so impossible, that we didn’t even think to dream of it at all.

Gaiman says:

“I play myself. I play a very different version of myself to the me I played in Arthur, though. For a start, I do not appear in anyone’s falafel. Also, I expect I will be yellow.”

The episode will be airing next year.

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