Netanyahu, Jon Stewart and the silence of Jewish laughter

My father claimed that in any creative arc of a country, Jews would claim a prominent role. He would have enjoyed the 2013 film, “When Jews Were Funny,” which effectively documents the vast wellspring of schmaltz brought to the post-war world by the great Borscht Belt comics. And I wonder what he would think of this: The world’s two most prominent Jews were in the the news this week: Benjamin Netanyahu, long-time prime minister of Israel, and Jon Stewart of the popular “The Daily Show.” Together they mark the end of an age; a turning, perhaps, that also brings a silence to Jewish laughter.

It was an age of ethnic transition, which might have gotten its inspirational beginnings from the dark and visionary Lenny Bruce, whose searing intuition brought him holy man status to the counterculture of the Sixties; an age which moved to crescendo with the funniest man ever to have lived, Mel Brooks; an age come to conclusion with the greatest comedic genius probably ever, Jerry Seinfeld.

{mosads}Then came Stewart and “The Daily Show.” But the season had passed. There was more to being Jewish than just being funny. In Dubrow’s cafeterias in Brooklyn and Manhattan, among the customers chattering in Yiddish, Hebrew, Russian and English were Nobel laureates, Academy Award winners, old line Trotskyists and even Lincoln Brigade survivors from the Spanish Civil War.

But by the Seinfeld era, many American Jews from the old migration had become hyphenated “Jewish-Americans” as there was little left of old Europe in them and increasingly more of America. They were more inclined to head to Los Angeles than to return to Israel. Even as every Jewish friend of mine had blistering stories about the horrors of death camps in their families. Today, not so much; the memory in three generations passes and so does the pain of horrific memory and the collective instinct to “the return” next year, to Jerusalem.

The millennium brings a turning for Netanyahu and for Israel as well. Reared in the Philadelphia region, he comes to understand that he is to be the last of the Americanized Israelis to govern Israel. As American Jews lose interest and as outright contempt rises within the liberal camp, it becomes increasingly clear that Israel must now go alone. A new generation will rise — is rising — in Israel, and Netanyahu will not be part of it. He understands that this talk to Congress could well be his American swan song.

I had the opportunity to talk on Israel National Radio recently and made the case that Israel today is actually in a pre-history, post-American condition, waiting for a revolutionary generation to awaken it, waiting for an archetypal figure to lead it. And that there is a feeling of this throughout Israel. But certainly not here. Not in Jon Stewart’s America.

Israel’s relationship with America is much like India’s relationship was with Queen Victoria’s England, I claimed. “What Israel needs [awaits] today is a Gandhi figure,” I said.

The day after my talk, American-born Rabbi Yehuda Glick was shot four times but survived the attempt on his life. He had been marked for assassination for advocating the right of Jews to pray at Temple Mount, the oldest and holiest place in Jewish history. He could be such a figure.

He and those who respect him rise today in Israel and in the diaspora to a new post-Netanyahu generation; a dynamic generation already well detached from America, in which the laughter is silenced.

Quigley is a prize-winning writer who has worked more than 35 years as a book and magazine editor, political commentator and reviewer. For 20 years he has been an amateur farmer, raising Tunis sheep and organic vegetables. He lives in New Hampshire with his wife and four children. Contact him at quigley1985@gmail.com.