| Exhibition Review | The Journal of American History, 90.3

You have not been recognized as a subscriber to JAH online. About 650 words from this article are provided below; about 947 words remain.

If you are a individual member of the Organization of American Historians, you may:: • login here if you have already registered for online access.; • Or if you're already logged in register your subscription.
• Set up your online account for the first time.
If you are not a member of the Organization of American Historians, you can:: • Join the OAH and receive many member benefits including print and electronic issues of the Journal of American History.
• Purchase a research pass to gain two-hour access to the entire History Cooperative web site. You will have full access to current issues of the Journal of American History (86.1-present). Note: the Research Pass does not provide access to JSTOR's holdings of the Journal of American History.
Instititutions can:: • Subscribe to this journal and receive print and electronic issues.
• Activate your existing subscription so that we recognize your IP number ranges.

| Exhibition Review | The Journal of American History, 90.3 | The History Cooperative

Exhibition Reviews

"Entertaining America: Jews, Movies, and Broadcasting." Jewish Museum, 1109 Fifth Ave. at 92nd St., New York, NY 10128.

Traveling exhibition, Feb. 21–Sept. 14, 2003, New York, N.Y.; Oct. 16, 2003–Jan. 18, 2004, Jewish Museum of Maryland, Baltimore, Md. 4,400 sq. ft. Fred Wasserman, project director and associate curator; J. Hoberman and Jeffrey Shandler, guest curators; Robin Parkinson, designer.

Entertaining America: Jews, Movies, and Broadcasting. Ed. by J. Hoberman and Jeffrey Shandler. (Princeton and New York: Princeton University Press and the Jewish Museum, 2003. 334 pp. Cloth, $49.95, ISBN 0-691-11301-7. Paper, $35.00, ISBN 0-691-11302-5.)

Internet: visitor information, online discussion board, archive, themes, and resources <http://www.thejewishmuseum.org> (Aug. 23, 2003).

In the Habsburg empire at perihelion, Nathan Birnbaum (1864–1937) was so conscious of the unrelenting pressure of anti-Semitism that he envisioned a national homeland for the Jewish people, and he coined the word "Zionism" in the hope of mobilizing a political movement to assuage the pain of exile. In America in 1896, another Nathan Birnbaum was born on New York City's Lower East Side, where he faced no such ideological Judeophobia—but felt a yearning to flee the poverty of the ghetto. The escape route was show business. Rather than appealing to the masses, he amused them. Having changed his name to George Burns, he proved that merit—not ancestry—mattered in competing for success within mass culture. Or consider Franz Kafka's novel The Trial (1925, first English edition 1937), which evokes alienation, injustice, and vulnerability through the fate of its protagonist, Joseph K. His American homonym was Danny Kaye, a comedian whose chipper, effervescent charm was well outside the range of Kafka's kulturpessimismus.

No wonder that a spirit of fun pervades "Entertaining America," which New York's Jewish Museum has mounted with great panache and perspicacity. The exhibition is a rousing celebration of the impact of one ethnic group in the media of cinema, radio, and television. By their fruits shall ye know them, and some of the top bananas of show business came from a minority that rarely broke 4 percent of the general population in the twentieth century. Yet not even this ambitious exhibit can do justice to the Jewish effect on the popular arts over the course of the last century. Take, for instance, 1935, when Porgy and Bess, "Cheek to Cheek," A Night at the Opera, and Awake and Sing! helped make that year an equivalentannus mirabilis to 1605, which marked the publication of Don Quixote, part 1, and the opening of King Lear at the Globe.

Still, the scale of "Entertaining America" is impressive. The 18 video/audio presentations include excerpts from 46 films, 31 television shows, and 9 radio programs. Appetites can be further whetted by 63 vintage photographs and 36 photo reproductions, by sheet music and playbills, by 26 books and magazines, and by 17 posters and flyers. There are links to 6 Web sites. Also on display are tchotchkes—or what non-Yiddish-speaking curators call "artifacts," ranging from a couple of Emmys presented to the actress-author Gertrude Berg to a mezzuzah (a casing containing a parchment scroll) belonging to the celebrity convert Marilyn Monroe. Because the release of Otto Preminger's Exodus in 1960 sparked tours of Israel sponsored by that country's national airline, El Al's promotional materials, aimed at fans of the film, are included. This is only one instance of how intertwined American mass culture has been with the Jewish experience. Exodus was not unique, for the mass media have sometimes been used to validate Judaic values and a sense of peoplehood. The ghetto walls that had imposed communal solidarity in the Middle Ages were not rebuilt in Middle America; and as the cohesiveness of immigrant neighborhoods receded into the past, American Jews communicated with one another across the vast continent through the images and icons circulating in the popular arts.

. . .

There are about 947 more words in this article. Please log in (or, if you are not yet an authorized user, please go to the User Setup page) to gain full access rights. Or if you're already logged in register your subscription.