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My Dad was in veterinary school in 1950. "Quotas" limited the number of Jewish students in his class, he told me years later. "One day, I felt something hard, painful press into my shoulders," recalled my Dad, now deceased, "The professor had gripped me with meat hooks. 'Go to the 'Jew table,' Jewboy!' he screamed at me."
After this incident, my father and the veterinary school dean had a belt of Bourbon. The anti-Semitic prof immediately "retired."
Nearly, twenty years later, my Mom was dying in the local hospital in our small Southern New Jersey town. A cop stopped my father as he drove, speeding, to be with his wife. "My wife's dying," he pleaded with the police officer, "I'll pay the fine. Just let me go be with her! Please!" "You don't get to go anywhere, you Jew doctor!" the officer told my Dad.
When I was in elementary school, I'd occasionally find a swastika had been drawn on my desk. Sometimes, I'd hear whispered jokes about or slurs aimed at Jews in our area, Holocaust survivors, who'd come to the United States after World War II.
I don't want to make my Dad or myself too much of a victim or hero. My Dad used his connections to have the police officer, who interfered with his getting to my mom on time, fired. As a kid, I not only failed to speak out against anti-Semitism: I was embarrassed when my relatives spoke Yiddish in front of my friends.
Despite these instances of anti-Semitism, I and my family in the United States haven't, by and large, experienced such prejudice. In college, grad school, at work – in pop culture – I'm often tempted to think of anti-Semitism as a thing of the past (at least in the United States). But recent news has been a wake-up for me.
I write this a few days after Frazier Glenn Cross, a white supremacist, fired shots at a Jewish community center, and then a Jewish retirement home in Overland Park, Kan. He killed three people. Ironically, and no less hatefully, the people who died in the shooting, were Christian.
This is a searing reminder, as New York Times columnist Frank Bruni noted in his April 14 column, that anti-Semitism still exists in the United States. Twenty percent of the hate crimes committed in the U.S. in 2012 were motivated by religion, according to Federal Bureau of Investigation statistics. Of these, 65 percent, were fueled by hatred of Jews. Anti-Semitism, as Bruni aptly notes, isn't always overt, brutal or fatal. In 2013, the Anti-Defamation League surveyed 1,200 American adults. "...14 percent agreed with the statement that 'Jews have too much power' in our country, while 15 percent said Jews are 'more willing to use shady practices,'" Bruni wrote, "and 30 percent said that American Jews are 'more loyal to Israel' than to the United States."
As creative artists – whether poets, filmmakers, playwrights, painters – no matter our genre – the question is: how do we make art against the background of such news? For those of us who make art and our audience (viewers, readers, etc.), the question is: what art do we turn to in the face of such news?
Such questions may seem to many, too old hat, too "After School Special{ish}" in this post modern (some would say post, pomo), cynical, ironic, meta age. This makes sense on one level. A poet and I talked recently about poetry and social justice. "I don't think about social justice when I write a poem," my friend said, "when I write it comes from...I don't know where exactly..my unconscious." I understood this. My buddy agreed with me when I said, "If we tried consciously to write a political poem, it might well be horrible."
Art that is too driven, or only driven, by the desire to call out social injustice can be too preachy or polemical. I've sent an untold number of my poems to "delete heaven" when they've been polemics and not poetry. "The Mary Tyler Moore Show" was one of the best sit-coms of all time. If Shakespeare had been alive during the series' run, he would have been among its writers. Yet, an episode of the program which focused on anti-Semitism was one of the show's rare clunkers. "All in the Family,"created by Norman Lear, one of television's greatest and most innovative producers, was a well-crafted, satiric sitcom that was widely popular in its time (among both ordinary viewers and critics). Yet, even when it first aired, many viewers didn't realize that Archie Bunker was being satirized – that "All in the Family" was decrying, through satire, Archie's bigotry. A lot of people who watched the show liked Archie. They agreed with his prejudices. Today, perhaps it was satiric, "All in the Family," unlike the "Mary Tyler Moore Show" (which was character-driven) seems dated.
Yet, I don't believe that art should give up its role of calling attention to social injustice – what poet Carol Foche calls "poetry of witness." Sometimes, in this age, this might take the form of irony, satire, humor -meta moments. This reminds me of "30 Rock," the dearly missed sitcom, created by Tina Fey. In one episode of the show, Glad trash bags were used humorously to validate GLAAD's (the LGBT group) protests against homophobic remarks made by Tracy Morgan, one of the actors on "30 Rock." (Morgan apologized for his anti-gay statements.)
Having said this, there's still a need and a place for art (poetry, film, plays, paintings, etc.) of the past and present that, unapologetically, says: social injustice is wrong – let's work for justice. As Arthur Miller said, attention must be paid. One such work of art is the 1947 movie "Gentleman's Agreement," directed by Elia Kazan and starring, among others, Gregory Peck, Celeste Holm, Dorothy McGuire and John Garfield. Kazan justly was criticized for his behavior before the un-American Activities Committee during the McCarthy era. But "Gentleman's Agreement" should be judged separately from Kazan's bad behavior. (The Selected Letters of Elia Kazan" just out from Alfred A. Knopf is a fascinating read.)
I've seen this riveting, engaging movie many times. Though made nearly 70 years ago, it never feels dated. From the moment when the young boy Tommy is called a "dirty Jew" to when Celeste Holm tells her complacently anti-Semitic table companion (who's just said that some of his best friends are Jewish) "some of your best friends are Methodists, but you never say it," the film is a searing indictment of the spectrum of anti-Semitism that flourishes in even the most polite society.
No work of art – even a great movie like "Gentleman's Agreement" will stop prejudice. No creative artist can eradicate bigotry through his or her art. Yet, art can call prejudice out. It can teach us about bigotry and give us the courage to stand up, however we can, against intolerance. I'm down with the ironic, meta, post mo program. Yet, there are times, when we need to get off our ever-so-ironic, exquisitely cynical, meta-sculpted butts, and make art that witnesses injustice. Now is one of those times.
I leave you with a poem from my chapbook The Green Light (Finishing Line Press):
Atonement
Yom Kippur, 1950
Stan never wanted God, especially during the High Holy days.
He craved unholy day pleasures, swapping racing tips
with two-bit bookies at the track, eating traif hot dogs
at the ballpark, schmoozing with ladies of the evening
when their night's work was done, not lusting after
their forbidden fruits, but thirsting for their juicy tales.
Why would he, American as Bogart or Einstein, need God,
Stan wondered, listening to the lecture on rabies
at veterinary school on the day of Atonement. Growing up,
he'd listened to Orphan Annie, drunk his Ovaltine, given
to the March of Dimes, and run the farm while his brothers
fought the Nazis. What did he have to atone for?
Hitler was gone, Harry was giving them hell, Israel
was now a country and Rita, his bride-to-be, was so
beautiful, everyone said her last name should be Hayworth.
Why miss this chance to learn how to stop dogs
from going mad, to the house of a washed-up,
Old Country God, Stan thought, until Professor X strolled
from the podium toward him, clamped the meat hooks
down, hard on to his shoulders and hissed "Jewboy!"
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