YouTube clips come in all shapes and colors. The variety is virtually infinite and continuously growing. Of all of YouTube clip breeds, there is one that really gets my goat: Jewish cover songs. Artists take a song of questionable quality and inexplicable popularity and rewrite its lyrics, making it about an upcoming Jewish holiday or about some aspect of “Jewish culture” that they deem worthy of good-natured jeering.
I place "Jewish culture" in quotations, because, more often than not, these dreadfully tedious byproducts of the confluence of technology and modern Jewish education are not an accurate representation of Jewish culture or identity. The likes of “Rosh Hashanah Rock Anthem” by Aish Hatorah or “Dip Your Apple” by The Ein Prat Fountainheads are as representative of Jewish culture as Manischewitz wine is of kosher wine selection. They take select elements of modern American Jewish culture, predominantly material items and social stereotypes, and present them as defining characteristics of Jewish identity. In so doing, they amplify, perpetuate, and reinforce negative and derogatory stereotypes about Jews rather than express meaningful attributes of being Jewish.
Take, for example, “I’m Jewish and You Know It”, a 5.2-million-hit parody of LMFAO’s “I’m Sexy and I Know It”. Puerile humor surrounding circumcised “Shlomos”, the wearing of kippot, and the consumption of kosher food are a medium for conveying the producers’ identification with their Jewish identity. These clips bolster stereotypes via lewd lyrics and images (take the cleaver-wielding mohel at 0:43, for example). Its filming on the Tel Aviv promenade and oversized magen david necklaces dangling mockingly from the actors’ necks are the only aspects that - culturally speaking - differentiate this abashedly “Jewish” clip from the original. I would even dare to argue that the original has more cultural worth.
Not only do these videos portray Judaism as a material - rather than intellectual - venture to the rising generation (i.e. Jewish identity is sufficiently expressed through possession of particular ritual items or consumption of certain foods), they also greatly misrepresent Judaism to the outside world. Modern Jewry is cast before the eyes of the gentile audience in pieces like “Black and Jewish”, which play on anti-Semitic stereotypes such as money grubbing, diamond dealers, gefilte fish, Manischewitz wine, big noses, and an assortment of strange practices with odd objects whose relevance go unexplained to viewers. If I didn’t know better, I’d suspect it was a promo for Mel Gibson’s latest film, not an expression of pride in one’s heritage.
This genre represents the Disney-fiction of American Jewish culture - reducing it to the lowest common denominator so that anyone who is eligible for birthright can get two minutes of cheap amusement and feel “connected” to their Jewish roots. In fact, it is turning “two thousand years of beautiful tradition, from Moses to Sandy Koufax” - to quote Walter from The Big Lebowski - into something as blatantly shallow as Ashley Faith of “Kosher Face”. Compare the Jewish consumer culture of bagels, lox, and schmear presented in the abovementioned videos to the more tasteful, thoughtful, and original “What It Means to Be Jewish” by Andrew Lustig, which analyzes the contradictory nature of modern Jewish identity.
Most of the time, the producers of these tacky remixes are making these music videos out self-obsession, not genuine interest in expressing Jewish pride or conveying interest in an aspect of Jewish culture to others. They try to transpose the popularity of the song they're covering onto a skin-deep version of Jewish identity. For that reason the motifs are hackneyed, the lines chintzy, and, like their ‘80s and ‘90s ancestor Schlock Rock, they are just that: schlocky.
Ilan Ben Zion is an active blogger currently living in Jerusalem; he is a graduate of Tel Aviv University with a Masters in Diplomacy and a veteran of the IDF.
