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By Donald H. Harrison
 SAN DIEGO_-Rabbi Simcha Weinstein’s thesis is that as Jews have emerged from the ghettoes and gained success and acceptance, our humor—as well as our movie personnas—have become more Jewishly assertive and more willing to confront and parody anti-Semitic stereotypes.
Think Sacha Baron Cohen, a Jew who as the title character in the movie Borat plays a clumsy, inane anti-Semitic visitor from Kazakhstan who voices all the anti-Semitic canards, or Sarah Silverman whose stand-up comedy is both vulgar and facetious about Jews, or Larry David, whose character in the television series Curb Your Enthusiasm embraces the idea that Jews love, love, love money—but it just doesn’t bring them happiness.
Weinstein is a much-valued. occasional contributor of columns to San Diego Jewish World. The decidedly “with it” campus rabbi at New York City’s school of the arts, the Pratt Institute, has a view of cinema that successfully mixes realism and impressionism. I just can’t tell whether that which he has described as a “shtick shift” is a fast snapshot of our American Jewish condition, as depicted by our humor, or whether it is a lasting portrait.
Knowing that the book was written in the waning years of the George W. Bush administration, when American support for Israel seemed a given, I suspect that Rabbi Weinstein's book was a freeze frame photo of action that went hurtling by his humor lens. I cite two symptoms of Jews not being as comfortable in America as perhaps we are pretending to be. One is the uptick in families making aliyah to Israel since Nefesh b’Nefesh took over responsibility for encouraging North Americans to migrate to Israel. This could be due to the organization’s prowess, or it could be due to some Jews reevaluating their American prospects.
Perhaps more symptomatic is the disquiet and uncertainty felt in the Jewish community over President Barack Obama’s intentions toward Israel. I stay this as one who voted for him last November, after having chosen Hillary Clinton in California's primary election.
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Will the dispute over Israel’s ‘settlements’ get more serious? Is President Obama so determined to woo the Muslim world that he believes he must put more and more daylight between the U.S. and Israel?
When Jews ask such questions, we also wonder if such an open break between the American government and the Jewish community could embolden the anti-Semites in our country. As such questions and doubts reverberate within the American Jewish community, will we Jews feel obliged to shift our shtick into reverse?
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