Josh
world
Andy Warhol:
Good for the
Comic Road
Josh Kornbluth finds
Andy Warhol and Judaism.
Sue Fishkoff
Jewish Telegraphic Agency
Experience Hotel
Berkeley, Calif
style environment
offering traditional
Seder dinners and three
Kosher for Passover
meals daily during
the Passover holiday.
osh Kornbluth didn't find his
Jewish identity the typical way.
It was pop artist Andy
Warhol who sparked the process that
brought the successful San Francisco
Bay Area performer, now 52, to discover
Torah, synagogue and, in a few months,
a bar mitzvah in Israel.
"I was raised orthodox — ortho-
dox communist!" Kornbluth said as
he sat down with JTA over a plate of
bacon and eggs to discuss his new-
found appreciation of his Jewish roots.
"Zionism was the enemy in our house."
Kornbluth is a writer, activist and
former host of The Josh Kornbluth Show
on TV. But he is best known for his
one-man shows, where he offers pithy,
highly personal witticisms on history
and the human condition.
Sometimes he assumes other
personae, as in his performance piece
about Ben Franklin. But his real genius
comes through in his autobiographi-
cal monologues, especially Red Diaper
Baby, a bit about growing up as the
son of New York communists that
he later turned into a book, and The
Mathematics of Change, which chron-
icles his failed attempt to become a
math genius at Princeton University.
It was his most recent one-man show
— Andy Warhol: Good for the Jews? —
that activated his pintele Yid, the Jewish
spark that the kabbalists say lurks
inside every Member of the Tribe.
"My humor has always had a Jewish
sensibility, but only recently have I
come to terms openly with my Jewish
identity," he told an audience at the
Jewish Community Center of San
Francisco during a recent discussion
onstage of his Jewish journey. "I've
always been culturally Jewish, but I in
no way connected it to the religious
aspect of Judaism, to being 'a Jew."
Kornbluth grew up in New York
shuttling between the homes of his
divorced parents, both card-carrying
members of the Communist Party. In
the 1970s, when his Jewish friends
were demonstrating on behalf of Soviet
Jewry, he mocked them — something
he's not proud of today.
"But at the time, I was so in love with
the ideals of communism as transmitted
to me by my parents," he says.
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48
April 14 • 2011
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He recalls a trip he made as a
teenager to visit elderly relatives
in Leningrad, now St. Petersburg.
A great-aunt served him cold
borscht, saying it was what the poor
Jews ate in the Soviet Union.
"I said, 'But there are no poor Jews in
the Soviet Union!"' Kornbluth recalls.
"I can only imagine their bemusement."
Kornbluth knew "nothing at all" about
Judaism when he got a call in 2008 from
the Contemporary Jewish Museum
in San Francisco, asking if he'd put
together a talk for an upcoming exhibit
of "Warhol's Jews',' 10 portraits the art-
ist made of famous Jews in history.
Eventually the talk became a full-blown
monologue that Kornbluth opened at
Theater J in Washington, then brought
back to the Bay Area for a sold-out run
and now hopes to take elsewhere.
In many ways the show was typical
Kornbluth. The lights go up to find him
standing on the stage — a portly, col-
orfully dressed fellow whose continu-
ally startled eyes peer out from behind
wire-rimmed glasses — gazing at a
wall displaying huge reproductions of
Warhol's Jewish portraits.
He begins working his way through
the pictures, interweaving his per-
sonal history of coming to terms with
his Judaism as he explores what each
character stands for in world Jewish
iconography.
Golda Meir and Jewish pride. Sigmund
Freud and self-examination. Louis
Brandeis and commitment to social jus-
tice. With each portrait he delves deeper
into the Jewish psyche — and his own.
In preparation for the piece,
Kornbluth wanted to learn more about
philosopher Martin Buber, and was
referred to Rabbi Menachem Creditor,
a Buber aficionado and spiritual leader
of Berkeley's Congregation Netivot
Shalom. Kornbluth had met Creditor
some years earlier when he performed
a one-man show at the synagogue as a
benefit for Darfur, Sudan, and the rabbi
in gratitude offered him a family mem-
bership. Kornbluth declined.
"Going to temple wasn't anything I
contemplated doing:' he says. "My fear
was that I'd go in the coat room and
have to check myself, that I wouldn't be
able to be me:'
As he worked on the Warhol piece,
Kornbluth spent more and more time in
Creditor's office. The talk turned from
Buber to what Kornbluth calls "the big
issues: God, the meaning of life, Israel."
F letc he r Oa k
Celebrate
your
Passove
with
Kornbluth
performs in
Kornbluth found himself opening up to
new ideas about his own heritage.
"I told him that I'd never experienced
the supernatural God and didn't believe
in it',' Kornbluth says. "If that's a require-
ment for being a Jew, I can't do it. Then
Menachem told me his definition of
God, as the collective potential of the
human imagination. That stunned me.
The idea that this is his notion of God,
and he's as devout as he is, made me
want to go to a service, to see
Kornbluth went. And went some more.
His discussions with Creditor turned
into a class at the synagogue that was
open to the public. The class is serving
as Kornbluth's preparation for his own
bar mitzvah, which he will celebrate in
Israel in July as part of a synagogue trip.
Since the Warhol project, Kornbluth
has been reading voraciously about
Israel, beginning with the early Zionists
and working his way through the coun-
try's 20th-century history up to the
current political situation. He's study-
ing Torah, midrash — whatever he can
get his hands on. He keeps a notebook
close at hand to record new facts, cre-
ative thoughts — anything that can
help him construct his newly emerging
Jewish identity and bring it into line
with the rest of his beliefs.
In doing so, he seems willing to turn
everything he thought he believed on
its head.
"I'd always felt an affinity to Israel as
a country set up by (my' people, a place
I could always go if something hap-
pened; but I'd never thought of actually
going:' he said.
Kornbluth also has always supported
Palestinian rights. That hasn't changed,
he says; his horizons have expanded.
He's finding his brave new world
somewhat unsettling.
"When I started the Warhol piece, I
really started looking at myself as a Jew,"
Kornbluth says. "And as a Jew I feel a
responsibility and a desire to participate
in what is happening in Israel, which I
didn't feel before. I want to engage, to
find out as much as I can and to be on
the side of justice as much as I can.
"It was always easier for me to see
the Palestinians as 'my' people. That
was my upbringing. Now they're both
my people."
He has, he says, "a lot to learn." L I