Sinners, Scandals, Scoundrels, And Scamps on the American Jewish Stage.

Let us praise infamous Jews. Bad Jews have a good name in Western theater. Whether as a construct of Christian dogma or of antisemitism, or as an embodiment of Jewish protest or dissent, bad Jews serve admirably as vehicles for a gamut of notions and attitudes. Few figures more reliably trigger conflict, the fundamental requirement of drama, than those who flout or defy convention. Bad Jews made their stage debut in the Middle Ages. Model troupers, they have been on the road ever since. Even the rise of modern pluralistic societies, and with them the conspicuous emergence of plays by Jewish playwrights, has not put them out of work. On the contrary, Jewish authors have perpetuated, even expanded, Western theater's census of Jewish sinners, scandals, scoundrels, and scamps. By the time American Jewish dramatists arrived on the scene in the twentieth century, an enormous legacy awaited them and they took full advantage of it. Culpable Jews are infinitely versatile; they can play a number of roles, three of which are the focus here. Early on, the Jew is envisioned as Other, the locus of the impure thoughts, mischief, and underhanded deeds that everybody is capable of, but few find the opportunity or audacity to indulge. Subsequently, the Jewish scoundrel comes to betoken some problematic activity or new development in mores that threaten the status quo. Moneylending comes immediately to mind, as it will, for Jews and money comprise an imperishable icon. But the extravagant accumulation of wealth and questionable business practices are not the only troublesome social issues hung around Jewish necks. In more modern rimes, as we shall see, the Jew has come to stand for unconventional and unsettling gender roles that spurn cultural sanction. More recently, the cocksure, occasionally pugnacious Jewish daredevil represents a deliberate rebuttal of stereotypic Jewish submissiveness and victimization--and even in-your-face assertions of Jewish endurance, accomplishment, and pride.