Thursday, June 23, 2016

Fourteen Potential Classes I (Literal OMG) Might or At Least Could Teach at My Synagogue...


Israeli Politicians:
David Ben-Gurion: The Elder of Zion
Golda Meir: The Only Man
Menachem Begin: The Greenie
Moshe Dayan and Shimon Peres: The General and the Yekke
Yitzhak Rabin: The Sabra
Ariel Sharon: The Chayyal
Meir Kahane: The Zealot
Benyamin Netanyahu: The Yeridah

Politicians in the Diaspora:
Benjamin Disraeli: The Court Jew
Louis Brandeis and Henry Morganthau: The Liberals
Herzl and The Dreyfus Affair: Why Israel?
The Leons Trotsky and Blum: The Jewish Socialist
Walter Rathenau and Bruno Kreisky: How to be Jewish among Nazis?
Henry Kissinger: The Last Court Jew
Ruth Bader Ginsburg: The Jewish Woman's Time Has Come 
Bernie Sanders and Joe Lieberman: Two Extremely Jewish Visions of Progress

Jewish Fiction:
Franz Kafka and Joseph Roth: Jews under Imperial Rule
Isaac Babel and Vassily Grossman: Back in the USSR 
Shalom Aleichem and Isaac Bashevis Singer: Two Views of the Shtetl
Bernard Malamud and Henry Roth: The Greenie Arriving in America
Primo Levi and Ellie Wiesel: Writing the Unwriteable
Saul Bellow and Philip Roth: The Second Generation in America
Oz, Kishon, and Keret: In the Land of Israel
Mordecai Richler and Howard Jacobson: Jewish Life Elsewhere
Jonathan Safron Foer and Nicole Krauss: The Third Generation in America

Jewish Moviemakers:
David O. Selznick and Irving Thalberg: The Original Producers
Ernst Lubitsch and Billy Wilder: European Sophistication
Mel Brooks and Woody Allen: Low Class and High Class Jewish Life
Stanley Kubrick and the Coen Brothers: The Jewish Chameleons
Barry Levinson: Jewish Baltimore
Steven Spielberg: The American Consensus
Zucker Brothers, Harold Ramis, and John Landis: The New Jewish Comedy
Judd Apatow: The Jew-Bro, As Privileged As Anybody Else.

Jewish TV:
Rod Serling and Sid Caesar: Jewish Strangeness
Dick van Dyke vs. Larry Sanders: The Jew in Hollywood
All in the Family and M*A*S*H: Jewish Liberalism
Seinfeld and Sex in the City: Talmudic Disquisition About Profane Subjects
The Daily Show and The Wire : Tikkun Olam Judaism
Mad Men and The West Wing: Derekh Eretz Judaism
Curb Your Enthusiasm and Arrested Development: Jewish Privilege

Jewish Classical Music:
Felix Mendelssohn v. Wagner: The Impossibility of Assimilating
Gustav Mahler and Osvaldo Golijov: Jewish Musicians from Everywhere
Arnold Schoenberg and Gyorgy Ligeti: Musical Moseses?
George Gershwin and Kurt Weill: Stranded Between Two Worlds 
Aaron Copland & Leonard Bernstein: Gay Jewish Socialists Create America in Sound.
Steve Reich and Philip Glass: The American Jew-Bu (Jewish Buddhist)
The Jewish Virtuoso: The Great Jewish Performers

Jewish Popular Music:
Tin Pan Alley: Jews create songs for the age of mass distribution.  
Golden Age Broadway: Jews Write the Songs the Whole World Sings
Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen: the Prophet, the Seer, and his Biblical Inspirations
The Rock Gods: Jewish Musicians Worshipped Like Golden Calves
Phil Spector and Rick Rubin: The Jews Who Ran the Show
Billy Joel and Barbara Streisand: The Long Island Experience
Being Jewish in a "Black Profession": Great Jewish Musicians in Jazz, R&B, and hip-hop.

Modern Jewish Poetry:
Medieval Spain: The Second Golden Age of Jewish Poetry
Heinrich Heine: Jewish Enlightenment
Bialik and Tchernikhovsky: Zionist Longing
Osip Mandelstam and Boris Pasternak: Soviet Tragedy
Paul Celan and Nelly Sachs: German Horror
Yehuda Amichai and Naomi Shemer: Israeli Longing
Allen Ginsburg and Sylvia Plath: Countercultural Rage

Jewish Theater:
Clifford Odets and Arthur Miller: Social Justice in the Theater
Neil Simon: Jewish Nostalgia
Pinter and Stoppard: The Two Uses of British Erudition
David Mamet: Jewish Vilgutsch
Tony Kushner: The Gay Jewish Experience 

Jewish Musical Theater:
The Silver Age: Jewish Wish Fulfillment in Annie Get Your Gun, Showboat, and others
Rogers and Hammerstein: Two Rich Jews Portray the Lives of Poor Goyim
Fiddler on the Roof: Echt Yiddisheit or Endaring Schmaltz?
The Golden Age: Jewish Wish Fulfillment in My Fair Lady, West Side Story, and others
Stephen Sondheim: The American Shakespeare

Modern Jewish Philosophers:
Spinoza and Wittgenstein: Modernist Philosophy as Mishnah
Buber and Freud: The Inner Life, Circumcised
Karl Marx: The New New Testament
The Frankfurt School: Marxism Goes Bourgeois 
Rand, Strauss, Bloom, and the New York Intellectuals: Marxism for the Bourgeois
Berlin, Aron, Popper, and Arendt: How Jews Confront the USSR
Levi-Strauss and Derrida: Postmodern Philosophy as Gemarrah
Critical Theory: The Postmodern Philosophy of Ideology

Jewish Comedy:
Low Class Jews in High Society: The Marx Brothers to Larry David
The Dream Team Behind Sid Ceasar: The Golden Age of Jewish Comedy
Insult Comedy: Don Rickles to Sacha Baron Cohen
Consensus Comedy: Danny Kaye to Adam Sandler
Issue Comedy: Tom Lehrer to Jon Stewart
The Ultimate Jewish Women: Joan Rivers to Broad City.
The Jew Bro: Judd Apatow, Adam Sandler, and the Jew as Goy. 

Jewish Art: 
How Goyisher Painters Paint Jewish Subjects I: Michelangelo and the Italians
How Goyisher Painters Paint Jewish Subjects II: Rembrandt and the Northern Europeans
Chagall and Modigliani: The Jewish Artiste
Silenced Voices: Art of the Holocaust
Rothko, Newman and the Abstract Expressionists: The World Beyond (Olam Ha'Baa)
Lucian Freud and Frank Auerbach: Jewish Expressionism

Jewish Popular Art:
Roy Lichtenstein and David Ogilvy: Jews in Advertising
Calvin Klein, Ralph Lauren, Isaac Mizrahi: Jews in Fashion
The Jewish Mythology of Superman
The Jewish Mythology of Batman
The Jewish Marvels of Comics:
Maus, American Splendor, Dropsie Avenue, and Waltz With Bashir: Unpopular Themes in A Popular Art


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