Yabbok and Roll

Harold Bloom, the great New York literary and cultural theorist, is perhaps most famous for his theory that each generation of artists reject the values and systems of the previous generation (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harold_Bloom). Like all such theories, it sometimes works, sometimes doesn’t, but has some truth in it.

However the theory is of some interest in the context of the current generation of so-called “New Jews”. Personally I hate labels as much as the next man (although I see that today the next man is sporting a black T shirt with "D&G" emblazoned in white) but the term "New Jew" is I suppose useful in identifying the current cultural phenomonenon of Jewish people openly flauting symbols of their Jewishness (see also http://jewschool.com/THE_NEW_JEW.pdf).

The New Jews are something of a contradictory bunch, for there are at least two distinct and very different groups operating under the New Jew banner (or should that be chuppah?): (1) the secular anti or post Zionists, for example groups such as Jewdas (if an anarchic collective can be said to be anything at all) and (2) newly confident religious and Zionist yoof, eg Matisyahu and his fans (see http://www.myspace.com/matisyahu). In between are a whole range of motley variations evidenced by eg the Hebrew Hammer film (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hebrew_Hammer) and the Bar Mitzvah Disco book (http://www.barmitzvahdisco.com/).

What is interesting is how these groups are often appropriating the same set of images – swaying black hatters, shofars, naff bar mitzvahs, "Moses is my Homeboy" and other slogan T shirts, the old East End, Klezmer etc. For example AISH (religious, zionist), Jewdas (see above) and Limmud (yeah everyone is welcome) all make a great deal of havdalah, the ceremony marking the end of the sabbath, extrapolating from the religious element of lighting a candle a more general activity of setting fire to things (leading to such peculiar behaviour as singing round bonfires, as Jewdas did a while back, very retro-zionist if you don't mind me saying, even of it was on bRightOn beach).

To the previous generation, outward visible signs of Jewish identity often provoke(d) mixed feelings - embarrassment, and fear being the two most common. The complexities of these emotions are beautifully set out in Philip Roth’s early short story, Eli, the Fanatic, written in 1959, in which a secular community is traumatised by the arrival of a black hatter in town.

Roth’s mature work, along with other great Jewish artists such as Arthur Miller, Steven Spielberg, Harold Pinter, could be said to represent the generation that this is now being rejected, in that their art, whilst clearly informed by the artist’s Jewish identity, avoids specifically engaging with Jewish themes or images. The generation coming through now hark back to the generation before that generation, a generation more directly connected to the old country – Isaac Bashevis Singer for example- there is a yearning to reimagine the world of dybbuks and golems.

However there is a problem with a lot of the New Jew-ish art, which is that after one has gotten over the amusement factor of the images, where and what is the content? A lot of it is just surface visuals, pop videos for an imaginary mash up that will inevitably feature some whining Klezmer along the way.

All of which brings me nicely round to “Yabbok” a new multimedia play performed at the LJCC last night, directed and I suspect largely created by Elliott Tucker, a film maker and painter often to be found to the side of the stage creating something or other at Jewdas’s events.

The highest compliment I can pay Yabbok is to review it according to the same standards as any of the other plays or events I have been to, even though this was not a professional production as such.

The play was largely based on a Nathan Englander short story about Charles, a New York WASP who in a moment of revelation in the back of a cab realises he is Jewish and goes on to swap his shrink for a new age Rabbi and to try and reconcile his new status with his very much still not Jewish wife. The story in many ways is symptomatic of, maybe even a metaphor for, the New Jew-ish aesthetic.

In Yabbok, the Englander story was fused with Genesis 32.25 et sec where Jacob wrestles with an unknown man, or more likely some sort of demon, who refuses to tell Jacob his name, and whom Jacob will only release once he has blessed him. There were also some scenes set in a mystical shop selling religious artefacts including a mask which seemed to link the other two stories.

Staged in an empty black space with a large screen at the back, the play moved between live action and Tucker’s specially and well made videos, some of which included the cast. The videos were frenetic torrents of images, including those referred to earlier, black hatters, bar mitzvahs et al, with an eerie, whirling electronic soundtrack. I suspect that Elliott Tucker knows his Lynch and was going for the kind of mind altering effects Lynch achieves by the combination of blurring images and psycho-acoustic soundscape.

The acting was not quite so impressive, often a little stilted and awkward, and being reduced to bare dialogue left the text a little flat.

Charles was played by Penny Pollak, although I am not sure whether this was because she was the best available actor, or because it was hoped that this would introduce an extra level of nuance to the play. Either way she did well, and, given that it was a difficult role to play, this was no mean feat. The onstage relationship with his/her wife, which is central to the Englander story, didn’t ring true for me, but nonetheless it was a memorably intense performance. Whether by accident or design, or a consequence of my own demented state of mind, the image of Penny / Charles in yarmulke and tzitzit (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tzitzit) is one that that has burned itself into my brain in a surprisingly erotic fashion.

I also thought the Rabbi character was well played (although I see the chap playing him is leaving to become a rabbi!) and liked the rather odd shop keeper’s odd assistant.

The video projections, technically impressive though they were, you have to say, well what was the content? Were they anything more than just a series of over-familiar images of Jewish life? But on stage some new visual ideas emerged. I particularly liked the section where the Rabbi helps Charles to put on tefillin (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tefillin), which involved binding him/her up in a long black length of fabric wrapped around his/her body, followed by Charles stepping into a giant black tefillin box. Humorous and ambiguous, this was probably the moment which came closest to capturing the mood of the Englander story. For me this went to the heart of the challenge facing New Jew-ish artists today, which is how to find something fresh and original to bring to those old familiar images.

On the whole, Yabbok was a curate's (or should that be Rabbi's ?) egg; a brave attempt to do something experimental and forward-looking, visually impressive and in its own way surprisingly powerful.

It's on again on Wednesday and I would urge my two and a half readers to get down the LJCC to support the production.