Why We Love Jewspotting
Jack Shafer has a smart piece in Slate about The New York Times penchant for writing "last Jews" stories.
One would think that Jews, toughened by 4,000 years of hardship, would get a little more respect for their tenacity from the New York Times. Yet time and again the newspaper goes popeyed whenever it finds members of the tribe living outside the five boroughs and environs, Los Angeles, Miami, Philadelphia, and Chicago. ...
Pseudo-exotic Jewspotting has become so common in the Times that the paper might as well turn the genre into a standing feature. ...When the paper isn't writing about small numbers of Jews living in what it considers to be unexpected places, it's stumbling onto a forgotten Jewish cemetery (Tombstone, Ariz.[$]) or writing sad pieces about the last synagogue in Dushanbe, Alphabet City, Baghdad, Hartford, Bombay, or Corona. ...
The impetus was the Times story about the Israeli bomb sniffing dog and the rabbi in Montana that I linked to on Sunday. That story happened to be a fascinating one, and extremely well told.
But Shafer's larger point has merit. Why exactly is it news that there are Jews in out of the way places?
As someone who has written a few last Jews stories, and is in the process of writing another as we speak, I'll throw out a few possible answers. For one, Jewish migration often suggests wider trends (Shafer notes this, and them lambastes the Times for not pointing it out). Second, like the Montana dog story, they are often inherently interesting.
Shafer seems to find it inexplicable that the Times marvels at finding Jews in places like Montana. But we all do, especially those of us who live in places like New York (where most Times writers live, which might explain a thing or two). Every time I'd tell someone I was going to write about Jews in Arkansas, I got the same response: There are Jews in Arkansas?!?
Yes, I'd tell them, but only a handful. Clearly, this was news and I was reporting it.
We might ask, of course, why that seems so surprising. Jews are a pretty well dispersed people (although considerably less so as time goes on). And ultimately my standard for news is different than the Times'. I write for the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, so what's happening with the Jews of Arkansas, or Montana, or wherever, is intrinsically newsworthy to us.
But if Shafer is really in need of a news flash, he might try this one: The New York Times really likes writing about Jew-y stuff.
UPDATE: Shafer provides plenty of examples. But in case you needed any more proof, the Times just ran this piece on a Chanukah festival in Budapest by JTA regular Ruth Ellen Gruber.
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One of my favorite quotes on this subject - there are two things you can find almost anywhere in the world - Coca Cola and Jews.
It’s fascinating for a variety of reasons - one of which is that in the past Jews were able to live almost everywhere in the world and survive, even thrive at times. Now it seems that Jewish life is consolidating and as these outposts of how we used to exist dwindle it maybe causes us to become nostalgic about a simpler time for the community. (Of course anti-Semitism, assimilation and other problems are not always remembered. The grass is always greener . . . )
I, for one. like the Jewspotting stories; so NYTimes and JTA, please keep it up. Aside for being interesting, it makes Jews in small places aware of each other. You’d be surprised how we are everywhere. Our family was always happy to find Jews wherever we went. When the Army sent us to Alaska for 4 years, we became part of the “Frozen Chosen” at the Reform Temple in Anchorage, where my wife says I became a born-again Jew. We may be dwindling, but knowing there are some of us almost everywhere, can cause us to build communities whether religious, fraternal or only secular.
I claim to have invented the game FTJ (Find The Jew) while on a class trip to NYC in 10th grade. Growing up in Orange County, California where no one outwardly “looks Jewish”, spotting guys in kippot and/or bearded, women modestly dressed and some be-wigged, I was a Jewish teen in Heaven. Knowing I had a connection to these strangers was certainly a unique experience for me at the time.
When I lived in New Mexico - and now it’s so long ago I forgot the details - but I heard the story of a Jewish man that eventually rose to become the governor of an Indian pueblo in that territory in the late 1800’s or early 1900’s.
My former neighbor in Albuquerque had a similar term to the one Susanne identifies above, FTJ. My neighbor called it FAY (Find-a-Yid).
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Daniel Sod
12/10/09 07:44 PM
It’s definitely interesting for us JTA readers, but it’s indeed surprising that the NYT would find it interesting for its readers… Unless the majority of them are Jewish (?)