They Tried to Kill Us, We Survived, Let’s Watch TV

For many, Amazon’s “Transparent” is a televisual revelation of what has for so long remained hidden. I’m inclined to agree, but not for the reason most people would expect. To me, “Transparent,” beyond portraying poignant stories of LGBTQ+ identity, looks more deeply and fully into Jewish identity than almost any show I’ve seen on TV.

Jill Soloway’s story about a trans woman’s journey through changing notions of family and identity is beautifully told, if flawed in some ways. “Transparent” traces the aftereffects of a retired political science professor’s coming out, weaving in the personal and sexual struggles of her family. Telling the story of a trans woman so openly is important, but the casting of a cis man to play her is questionable at the very least. But that’s a larger issue that would take far more than a single column to address.

The scenes that have stuck with me most since binging “Transparent” over winter break are not its multitudes of powerful queer female scenes (though the scene in which Ali, Maura’s capricious youngest daughter, makes out with Carrie Brownstein in a bowling alley is certainly one for the annals of queer TV history). The moment that most captivates me is a deeply personal moment completely independent of discussions of sexuality.

In a library doing research, Ali begins to explain to best-friend-turned-girlfriend Syd that Jewish women were forced in the middle ages to wear very specific kinds of shoes to identify them. She furthers this discussion with the concept of epigenetics--the idea that trauma can be generationally transmitted. In a later episode, Ali sees herself wearing these very shoes in a living embodiment of the epigenetic trauma in her history.

It is this simple moment that fully drew me into this world. While of course I, as a bisexual woman, relate to the Pfefferman women’s struggles with sexuality, it was in this distinctly Jewish moment that I saw myself on screen. This confluence of past and present, this strange yet immediate sense of history, this ease of the incorporation of trauma into a current reality, this lightheartedness with which it is sometimes addressed—these are the tableaux that perfectly capture the subjective feel of modern Jewish identity.

Until this show, I hadn’t realized that much of what was being depicted on television simply wasn’t aligning with my experiences. I’ve seen Jewish characters, certainly— Willow from “Buffy,” Monica and Ross of “Friends,” Paris from “Gilmore Girls” —but these characters are Jewish in name only, their religious identities used only to support the occasional quip or crack about family. Their Judaism is otherwise irrelevant to the essences of their characters.

The question of Jewish identity has been on my mind a lot recently. It’s not just a religion, not just an ethnicity, not just a culture. It is all of these and more, marinated in thousands of years of persecution and the inevitable collective consciousness that develops in the face of that persecution. Jews operate distinctly in the world, these operative methods manifesting even more strongly in groups. The Jewish family is an entity unto itself, and it is one frequently neglected by mainstream television.

The Pfeffermans were the first TV family I saw that looked like mine. The perpetually chaotic gatherings punctuated with Yiddish, the discussions of theology, the jokes—these all looked familiar. I’d seen these images before. The Pfeffermans perfectly capture the limbo faced by many American Jews: an uncertainty about the proper performance of ritual combined with a reverence for it, the pressure to assimilate while remaining distinctly tribalistic, the struggle to reconcile centuries of history with a present that is still not sure what to do with you.

“Transparent” succeeds in portraying Jews where other shows fail for one main reason. It allows them to interact. Judaism is an inherently communal, interactive identity. To portray a Jew alone is to show them missing limbs; the picture is incomplete. For much of my life, I have lived in such isolation, a Jew in a sea of Texas Christians. The joy I feel in communities of Jews is a joy of actualization. I am able to enter fully into my identity and revel in it. I become more than jokes about my nose or uncomfortable moments with friends who say I’m going to hell. Jewishness is interplay. It is the talk of G-d and the banter between Jews. It is the uncertainty about a prayer’s proper melody and the quiet moments following the kaddish. Judaism is performed, and it is performed collaboratively.

There is a game Jews like to play: As soon as we met another Jew, we start asking if they know this person from this place, etc. and so on. Jewish geography, it’s called. It is timeless proof of the theory that all Jews are in some way connected. Perhaps that’s why I have a love for the Pfeffermans that runs deeper than I can explain. Perhaps we’re just a degree or two of separation apart.