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Imagesof Modern
Jews OnTelevision
A Finkelstein,
Probably
ALINA SIVORINOVSKY SPECIAL TO THE JEWISH NEWS
L
ately, it seems that the
mother of every fiction-
al female on television is
advising her daughter to
find a nice Jewish boy. And
the daughters are listening.
From hour-long dramas
"LA Law," "Thirtysomething,"
"Sisters" and "Northern Ex-
posure" to 30-minute come-
dies "Mad About You," "Love
and War" and "Murphy
Brown," Jewish men are dat-
ing — and marrying — gen-
tile women in numbers far
exceeding any other inter-eth-
nic relationship currently on
television.
Perhaps because of the re-
sulting Jewish male shortage,
television's only Jewish
women, "Homefront" 's Gina,
"Cheers" ' Lilith, and "Bever-
ly Hills 90210" 's Andrea, are
exclusively dating and mar-
rying gentiles.
Quite a departure from
1972 and before, when
protests from both sides re-
garding the Jewish/Catholic
pairing of David and Mered-
ith Baxter Birney in "Bridget
Loves Bernie" caused CBS to .
pull it off the air after barely
a season.
Neal Gabler, author of An
Empire of Their Own: How
the Jews Invented Hollywood,
quotes one Jewish movie stu-
dio executive of the 1930s. He
explains the reason there
were so few Jews on the
screen was because "Jews are
for killing, not for making
movies about."
Of course, now Jewish
characters involved in inter-
ethnic pairings are the norm,
particularly in cases of stand-
up comedians who transfer
their personas into sitcom
form, i.e. Richard Lewis in
"Anything But Love," Jerry
Seinfeld in "Seinfeld" and
Paul Reiser in "Mad About
You."
And frighteningly, the ma-
jority of these Jewish leading
men, in both sitcoms and dra-
mas, are the same person.
All are either resident New
Yorkers, as in "Seinfeld,"
"Mad About You," "Love And
War" and "Flying Blind," or
transplanted New Yorkers, as
in "Northern Exposure,"
"Murphy Brown," "Home-
front," "Civil Wars" and "LA
Law."
All are above-average neu-
rotic, below average with
women, liberal, well-educat-
ed, non-athletic, and well,
let's be honest, have a ten-
dency to whine.
Why?
MARK FINKELSTEIN SPECIAL TO THE JEWISH NEWS
Why should an ethnic
group that makes up only one
percent of the U.S. population
be so disproportionately rep-
resented on television?
And why is that represen-
tation near exclusively male?
Historically, the Los Ange-
les entertainment industry
was for 30 years operated by
Eastern European Jews. The
writer F. Scott Fitzgerald
even went so far as to dub
Hollywood, "a Jewish holiday,
a gentile's tragedy."
Faced with such attitudes,
the Hollywood Jews hungered
to assimilate into America's
mainstream. According to Mr.
Gabler, "(They) effaced their
Judaism as a means of being
accepted.
and Robert Lichter and Stan-
ley Rothman of Smith College
revealed that 59 percent of
Hollywood's decision makers
had been raised Jewish.
Diane English, "Murphy
Brown" creator, has admitted
to basing transplanted New
Yorker, neurotic, whiny Miles
Silverberg, on her husband
and co-executive producer,
Joel Shukovsky.
Co-producer and star of
"Mad About You," Paul Reis-
er has described the show
about a neurotic, whiny, Jew-
ish New Yorker and his
WASP wife as "based on my
life."
According to Pulitzer Prize
winning Jewish novelist
Phillip Roth, "I'm an Ameri-
-
Alina Sivorinovsky is a free-
lance writer based in San Fran-
cisco.
Coq... • 1•8$1.1tawn Itnnict Doldhsoal by to Angeles Uwe Ste.
There were a great many
Jews who resented being
branded outsiders, and they
reacted against their Judaism
aggressively."
For many Hollywood
moguls, including Louis May-
er, David Selznick and Jack
Warner, one of the more pop-
ular forms of rejecting their
past came in the form of cel-
ebrating "American" — oth-
Jews are
disproportionately,
and badly,
represented
on TV.
erwise known as Christian —
holidays, avoiding synagogues
and all other Jewish tradi-
tions, and, especially, marry-
ing preferably blond, 100
percent American gentile
women.
And times haven't changed
all that much since the 1930s.
In 1985, a study by Linda
can writer, and like every
American writer I know, I
deal with the world I came
out of. You don't jump off a
roof and start to write. You
plant your feet on the ground,
and this is my ground, this is
what I know about most."
So then. The reason there
are so many neurotic, New
York Jewish men on televi-
sion involved with gentile
women is because most of
those in power behind the
scenes of television are (neu-
rotic?) New York Jewish men
involved with gentile women.
Which, considering that the
intermarriage rate among
American Jews is over 50 per-
cent, is entirely possible.
It may also explain why,
until two years ago, the sole
identifiable Jewish woman on
television was "Cheers" semi-
regular Dr. Lilith Crane. Al-
though, considering that
Lilith's Jewishness was men-
tioned a grand total of one
time, and that was only so
that an entire episode could
be written about her baby's
JEWS ON TV page 8
W
hat do some people
named Fields, Felton,
Steen or Stein have in
common? They, un-
doubtedly like others, were orig-
inally named Finkelstein —
before someone in their family
changed it.
Now, Fm a Finkelstein. Prob-
ably. The story in our family is
that my great-grandfather's
name was Levine before pass-
ing through immigration, in
1870, at Castle Garden, N.Y.
(It's amazing how many other
families have similar stories,
isn't it?)
At any rate, for three gener-
ations now, we've been Finkel-
steins. We pronounce it
Finkel-steen (except for my
daughter who for several
months, when she was 3, in-
sisted on calling herself Finkel-
stine, to our amusement.) Most
people probably assume that
the "steen" pronunciation is
simply an Anglicization of
"stein." But I have a feeling that
the "ee" sound in "steen" may
be an Anglicization of "shtain"
— a regional pronunciation in
Yiddish.
I think Finkelstein is a great
name. But I didn't always. Af-
ter all, it is not the most glam-
orous name in the world,
according to our standards. Yet
the name must have been at-
tractive to people in the Old
Country at a time when fami-
lies selected their own surname.
A fmkel stein or stone might
well have been thought of as an
object that brought one good
luck. One explanation is that
Finkel refers to pyrite, a min-
eral associated by color with
gold, and by extension all the
positive attributes of that com-
modity. In English, however,
the name apparently doesn't
carry the same connotations.
So I too, at one time, consid-
ered changing my name to
something more mellifluous
and perhaps, unconsciously or
not, less noticeably Jewish. This
is not to imply that others who
did change their names are nec-
essarily any less proud of their
heritage.
It was when I was in junior
high school during the early
1960s back in Bensonhurst,
Brooklyn, that I first began
casting around for alternatives.
First, I thought maybe I'd play
around with the syllabification
and throw the accent on a dif-
ferent syllable. Fin-kel' - stein.
But that wouldn't work. (With
some names, it does.)
All right, then how about us-
ing just my first two names, and
jettisoning my last name alto-
Mark Finkelstein is director
of Michigan State University
Hillel.
gether? Mark Stephen. No,
that wouldn't work either. I
think there was an actor of
the same name at the time.
And, I wasn't sure that I
would respond were someone
to call me by that name any-
way.
OK then, I'd shorten my
last name. (It was somewhat
of a burden, you know, hav-
ing a long last name of any
kind. And this was before the
days when computer lists
chopped short any name
longer than 10 letters.) I
wanted. a crisp name, my fa-
vorite literary character at
the time being Tornado
Jones, hero of a boys adven-
ture series. That's a crisp
name.
I remember it vividly. I
was playing what was known
as Chinese boxball, a variant
of handball, in the courtyard
of my friend's apartment
house, when I decided I
would try out my best possi-
OK. I decided
to shorten my
last name.
bility on my friend, and see
what he thought.
"You know, Barry. I thing
I'm going to change my
name." (This to a guy whose
first and last names totaled
to five syllables.)
"Yeah? To what?"
I sprang it on him.
"To Mark Fine," I proud-
ly announced. Then I waited
for a response.
About a half-minute of si-
lence, during which our
boxball game went uninter-
rupted.
"Mark Fine," Barry says.
"Sounds like a pen."
He was right. So OK, I
kept my name. I guess I ei-
ther couldn't think of anoth-
er equally attractive
alternative at the time or was
deterred by the fact that they
were going to calligraph my
name shortly onto my junior
high school diploma. I figured
that once they did that, I'd ei-
ther be stuck with my name
for life or would have to con-
tinually explain why some-
one else's name was on my
junior high school diploma.
The interesting thing to
me, looking back on the inci-
dent, is that I probably was
unaware that the name Fine
would most likely be taken to
be a Jewish name — as
would, quite frankly other
substitutes, like Fields, Fel-
ston, Steen, or Stein. The fact
NAMES page 8