The Sephardi Perspective: Don't mess with the stereotype

I have to admit it; I really enjoyed Adam Sandler's new film "Don't mess with the Zohan". If all of Sandler's previous films barely elicited a smirk from me, with Zohan I was in tears. The Israeli stuck in the age of 'Disco' and obsessed with matkot (beach racket game) was spot on.

While Sandler's attempt at an Israeli accent sounded more Marseille than Metulla, there was another stereotype which bothered me more.

Sandler's Zohan is just another attempt to express Israeli culture solely through the lens of the Jewish-American experience. The actors playing Israelis pepper their language with Yiddish, like telling a pair of dogs to 'Gay shluffen', and are obsessed with a drink bizarrely named 'Fizzy Bubblech'. Even more outlandish is an Arab chain of shawarma shops called 'Muchentuchen'.

Sandler, fellow producers Robert Smigel and Judd Apatow, are all Ashkenazim who have been to Israel a total of twice between them. This means that their view of Israel and Israelis is decidedly out of context and seen as a kind of Lower East Side on a national scale. The only authentic non-Israeli Sephardi in the cast is Emmanuelle Chriqui, a Canadian Jew of Moroccan parentage, who plays a Palestinian hairdresser.

In the producer's views, Jews in Israel appear as an appendage to the Jewish American culture, which is overwhelmingly Ashkenazi. However, Sandler and co can not be blamed for this stereotype.

American Jewish humor has long been the bastion of the Ashkenazi histiography and the Yiddish punchline. Words like shnook, shlong and shmendrik are adapted by the Jewish American comedian because of their funny sounds. There is a legend that F. Scott Fitzgerald used to wander into a Jewish delicatessen just to hear the word "knish."

The birthplace of modern American Jewish humor is undoubtedly the Catskills, otherwise known as the 'Borscht Belt', and this nickname says it all. Most contemporary American Jewish comedians are inspired by the likes of Jackie Mason, Woody Allen, Lenny Bruce and Milton Berle and will mimic them up to the Yiddishisms which they undoubtedly did not grow up with. According to the introduction to 'The Big Book of Jewish Humor' most people "still seem to think of Jewish humor as belonging to the world of Eastern Europe and to the early stages of acculturation in America--more or less like Yiddish itself."

When these comedians joke about Israel they must dip into the tired Ashkenazi box of punch-lines because they feel that is what the Jewish and non-Jewish audience expect. It is similar to the African-American experience being completely divorced from the realities of Africa.

A few years ago Jon Stewart of The Daily Show, talked about a new Middle East war breaking out because Israelis lobbed a bagel at some Arabs. This was considered hilarious by the audience who obviously had no idea that up until fairly recently you couldn't find a bagel in Israel for love nor money.

I think it is little coincidence that there are no famous Sephardi comedians in North America. Sephardi culture would seem so alien to an audience too used to hearing Jewish comedians jibe about kneidlach soup or their 'Yiddische mama'. This is in direct contra-disctinction to North American Jewish singers and actors where Sephardi Jews more than make their mark.

Sandler's Zohan can be seen through this prism. The audience is happily spoon-fed a diet of old-school American Jewish jokes coupled with some outlandish and unlikely Israeli characteristics.

As George Eliot once noted "Different taste in jokes is a great strain on the affections". To be successful in American Jewish comedy you have to become familiar and not break the mold, thus anyone in comedy with an Ashkenazi-sounding name must sprinkle their comedy with Yiddishisms. It is almost expected.

The Zohan film serves Israeli hasbara on the whole quite well. Israelis are seen as more real and accessible and not purely through news and documentaries about war and terrorism. However, to imprint on the Western mind that Israel is but a small version of the eastern European or even a New York ghetto does little for our arguments about our roots to the land.

Although Israelis are shown in the film to be obsessed with humous and use Arabic slang, perhaps the largest nod to the presence of Sephardim in Israel is not particularly a positive one. Towards the end of the film, Arabs and Israelis are lamenting their lot in America to one another. The Arabs say they are disliked and mistrusted because everyone thinks that they are terrorists. One Israeli countered that they experience a similar feeling from Americans "because people think we are you!", addressing one of the Arabs.

Although possibly quite true, it highlights one of the few places in the film where the "other" Jews are even alluded to. Suddenly shattered in the last few minutes of the film is the idea that Israelis actually aren't a projection of the Ashkenazi American and are quite possibly from a different construct. This throw-away joke is telling and although derogatory, hopefully makes the audience aware of a different kind of Israeli, one that they may not be familiar with.

American Jewish comedians would do well to scrape beyond the surface of their own ignorance about the Jewish state and learn more about Israel and its diversity. Perhaps then the stereotype will drop and Israelis will be seen as an authentic part of the Middle East.