Of Dogs and Jews (and Lena Dunham Too)

Lena Dunham’s mock “quiz” in the March 30 issue of the New Yorker caused a stir in the always roiling Jewish precincts of Manhattan and beyond. The question, “Do the following statements refer to (a) my dog or (b) my Jewish boyfriend?” was followed by 35 items like “He’s crazy for cream cheese,” “He doesn’t tip,” and “[He] has hair all over his body, like most males who share his background.” The premise was so flat and the satire so stale that the piece should have been prosecuted for killing comedy. Instead, it stands accused of anti-Semitism by none other than Abraham Foxman, retiring head of the Anti-Defamation League.

Foxman calls the piece “particularly troubling because it evokes memories of the ‘No Jews or Dogs Allowed’ signs from our own early history in this country, and also because, in a much more sinister way, many in the Muslim world today hatefully refer to Jews as ‘dogs.’” Although he doubts that Dunham had any intention of evoking such comparisons, and acknowledges that humor has rules of its own, Foxman wishes that she had chosen a “less insensitive way to publicly reflect on her boyfriend’s virtues and vices. We are surprised that the New Yorker chose to print it.”

No less off-point than Foxman’s intervention was the immediate response from New Yorker editor David Remnick: “The Jewish-comic tradition is rich with the mockery of, and playing with, stereotypes. Anyone who has ever heard Lenny Bruce or Larry David or Sarah Silverman or who has read [Philip Roth’s] Portnoy’s Complaint knows that.” With so much real hatred and tragedy in the world, Remnick thinks objecting to the so-called anti-Semitism of this piece is “howling in the wrong direction.”