This was FASCINATING and I'm sending to all my (Jewish) family :) I was today years old when I realized that of course it was a Jewish family. But my family are Jews from Syria (originally referred to ourselves as Sephardic but now use the Mizrahi term) so I have never related to the Catskills and Ashkenazi of it all, but now I need to watch it immediately again with this lens. Thank you so much for this wonderful piece.
It is never too late to learn that Baby's family was Jewish, lol! And also, really appreciate you pointing out (as I'm sure Sarah would agree) that this story is a Jewish story generally, but an Ashkenazi Jewish story specifically.
I love this essay! My only quibble is that the Fountainhead line is 100% in the movie. The movie's confident association of an Ayn Rand worldview with extreme douchebaggery is one of my favorite things in the world!
Really appreciated reading this. Ethnically, I’m half-Ashkenazi Jewish but didn’t even know it until I was nearly 20 (my mother told my father, who’s from extremely anti-Semitic Russia where Jewish people weren’t even considered Russian, not to tell us) and have been extremely conflicated and ambivalent about it since then — not because of how I feel about it or how I percieve myself, but because who I am (who we are?) always seems to be determined by someone not-me. “Am I Jewish?” seems to have almost more conflicting answers than “Are Jewish people White?”
And it was many years before I finally clued into the Jewishness of that movie! I was living close to the Catskills and hiking around some of those old resorts at the time and it all clicked …
Aug 1, 2023·edited Aug 1, 2023Liked by Garrett Bucks
It wasn’t for me at first! That’s part of the feeling conflicted. I didn’t think about it much until 1) my dad solidly explained to me what it was like being ethnically Jewish (even though his parents had each left their faith and the Pale of Settlement the moment it was legal to do so) in the Soviet Union and through most of Russian history; and 2) when I was living in the northeastern U.S. where the identity *meant* something to so many people and I met many who were almost … disturbed might be the word? that it didn’t to me. It’s more that I have to keep processing what it means—and who I am—*to other people.* I’m sure there are some other people out there who know what I mean by that, and I’m sure it doesn’t apply only to Jewish ethnicity.
thanks for sharing this story. i know so many people, mostly who were born in the first half of the 20th century, who didn't know they were jewish until they were adults. that practice reveals so much about racial and religious identity and what it means to people. i remember as a kid being totally flummoxed as to why someone would hide their judaism. but then i grew up and understood the nuance a bit more.
Well put. I'm not sure my dad would have chosen to hide it from us, but we grew up in a small town in Montana and my mom was definitely worried. (I was born in 1976.)
Fascinating point about Jews insisting that the identity must mean something. There's always been this sense of duty communicated to me -- at times explicitly, but often implicitly -- where being Jewish means you have pretty specific work to do, and where doing things wrong will disappoint, or even betray, my ancestors and the Jewish people at large. I truly love this responsibility, but also I didn't really ever get much of a say in it's being placed on me.
And then there's the question of Israel and Palestine and the continued violent denial of rights based on ethnicity, where many Jews have told me I have a duty as a Jew to always side with Jews in any battle, a demand which I (and , I think, most progressive Jews) think is not only wrongheaded but deeply unjust.
Thank you for sharing these thoughts. I really appreciate it. As someone who grew up in small-town Montana completely disconnected from any idea of identity in this respect, I had no idea how to respond when talking about it as an ignorant 20-something in the northeast. It’s obviously so important, and what does it mean when it’s part of you but also not at the same time?
I feel like we could discuss these questions for a hundred years and never come up with an answer. Which doesn’t seem off-track considering the context! My great-grandfather was a well-known Torah scholar in Ukraine, I’ve been told.
RE Israel and Palestine, I heard a very interesting podcast episode recently from England with two young Jewish people. They’d started a farm in England because they’d been raised strong Zionists and started questioning why they were encouraged to be connected to land they hadn’t spent much time in but felt disconnected from land they’d been raised on, while also strongly opposing the politics of Israel. Not that that’s what you’re talking about, but it was interesting to listen to people who were rethinking what land they feel to be in relationship with.
Garrett, what a great call to have Sarah write this essay. It was fabulous and opened up a whole new world to me about Dirty Dancing...which was filmed in the mountains of Virginia not too far from my hometown of Roanoke. The one Jewish family I knew were extras in the movie. Maybe that’s why I always “knew” it was about a Jewish resort? Sarah’s deep dive into the complications of race and identity as it relates to religion will be turning over in my head for a while. Thank you both!
I really loved the line: "his mother asked him every day after school not what he’d learned that day, but whether he’d asked any good questions." This is why I became a Jew. I was brought up this way by my non-Jewish WASP parents, which was totally different from all the other white working class kids around me. It wasn't until I got to high school that I found other people who "asked good questions" like I did, and almost all of them were Jewish. I would go to Sunday School at the Reform Temple with my friends when ever I could, what they were learning made much more sense to me than what was taught in Methodist Sunday school. It set me on a path to conversion.
Wow, thanks for sharing this. Of course, Jews don't have a monopoly on curious inquiry, but I'm very proud of this aspect of Jewish culture. When I had my bar mitzvah, I had a pretty negative reaction to the Torah portion I was supposed to give a speech about, and it was so important to me that the rabbi said I could say whatever I wanted about it, including that I thought its messages were actively bad and harmful, and that the actions of God described in it or something we should condemn.
Excellent and wonderful piece! Dirty Dancing was part of a whole buncha films in the Eighties looking back at the Sixties through the lens of youth but its impact surely surpassed the rest of the pack.
Some random thoughts/links:
Jennifer Grey is the daughter of award-winning actor Joel Grey, who is most remembered for his stage and screen performance as the Master of Ceremonies in Cabaret. Jennifer's teen screen debut in Ferris Bueller's Day Off ties her into the John Hughes universe.
If you haven't seen the documentary Welcome to Kutsher's: The Last Catskills Resort, it's delightful: https://www.kutshersdoc.com/
Finally, one of the best things that came out of the early months of the pandemic lockdown was all the creative work artists and ordinary people did alone in their shelter-in-place world and shared with the rest of us via video and social. This one is a must-see: https://youtu.be/iyBkmHcvdkE
I have always been so fascinated by this trend (which makes sense when you think of the age of people who create mass media) of pop culture looking exactly two decades in the rear-view: the 80s looking at the 60s, the 90s looking at the 70s, etc.
Aug 2, 2023·edited Aug 2, 2023Liked by Garrett Bucks
Sarah, thank you so much for sharing this.
In late 2020, I had the idea of launching a publication (w/ the hope of it being an anthology eventually) that had various people write about the same things - at the time it was words, like "love" or "justice" - words that we all think mean A THING but they actually mean so many things to so many people...and that until we understand those nuances, we can never truly cross politics/identities/perspectives enough to create change.
Over the next year, the idea came to include cultural touchstones, like movies/TV, songs, and bands, etc. And your essay reminded me of exactly why I thought that would be so powerful. I had never thought about much (most) of what you wrote about - and yet, reading your essay takes absolutely nothing away from what this movies means to me/ the essay I would write.
As Emily Dickinson said, “I know nothing in the world that has as much power as a word.”
I learned so much from this essay! Thank you, Garrett and Sarah! Although I had previously understood Baby's family to be Jewish, I honestly could not say when or how I realized this. Reading this essay really makes me wonder why. I also loved how it confronted all of these complexities within Whiteness--so much more to be curious about! And perfectly timed for me, as I read it right before facilitating a conversation with White colleagues about how we talk about our own marginalized identities (such as they are, or not) within the category of "White."
I agree- I think it's so hard to hold these discussions of "yes and" for folks with both White and any number of marginalized identities at the same time and I feel like Sarah offered such a lovely case study of how to do it with both honesty and grace.
This is a wonderful entry into your sub stack. If you can find it I would recommend the PBS documentary title: from swastika to Jim crow. It Is about the Jews who fled Nazism and started to teach and work in the all black colleges of the south. It has a lot to say about this connection between blacks and Jews and a sense of being a minority. Also look up the May 9, 1968 Ocean Hill Brownsville teacher strike. I was part of that event while working in Brownsville as a school psychologist. This was a seminal moment in a serious break between Jews and blacks. A rift that was never healed. As a post script sidenote I spent nine days rafting through the Grand Canyon with Patrick Swayze and his wife who was also his high school girlfriend. They were both such sweet down to earth wonderful people. The three of us had a lot of fun together during those nine days.
My apologies that I'm just getting to this now, but I'm honestly not sure which anecdote impresses me more (they're both incredible), rafting with Patrick Swayze or the fact that you were involved with th Ocean Hill Brownsville strike (I'm definitely familiar).
This was FASCINATING and I'm sending to all my (Jewish) family :) I was today years old when I realized that of course it was a Jewish family. But my family are Jews from Syria (originally referred to ourselves as Sephardic but now use the Mizrahi term) so I have never related to the Catskills and Ashkenazi of it all, but now I need to watch it immediately again with this lens. Thank you so much for this wonderful piece.
It is never too late to learn that Baby's family was Jewish, lol! And also, really appreciate you pointing out (as I'm sure Sarah would agree) that this story is a Jewish story generally, but an Ashkenazi Jewish story specifically.
Yes! The Jewish experience is not a monolith. So many factors there. Thanks for sharing.
I love this essay! My only quibble is that the Fountainhead line is 100% in the movie. The movie's confident association of an Ayn Rand worldview with extreme douchebaggery is one of my favorite things in the world!
Correction noted!! And reaction agreed with!
Really appreciated reading this. Ethnically, I’m half-Ashkenazi Jewish but didn’t even know it until I was nearly 20 (my mother told my father, who’s from extremely anti-Semitic Russia where Jewish people weren’t even considered Russian, not to tell us) and have been extremely conflicated and ambivalent about it since then — not because of how I feel about it or how I percieve myself, but because who I am (who we are?) always seems to be determined by someone not-me. “Am I Jewish?” seems to have almost more conflicting answers than “Are Jewish people White?”
And it was many years before I finally clued into the Jewishness of that movie! I was living close to the Catskills and hiking around some of those old resorts at the time and it all clicked …
Not knowing about an ethnic/religious identity (particularly one that often means membership in a community) until you're 20 is a lot to process, Nia!
It wasn’t for me at first! That’s part of the feeling conflicted. I didn’t think about it much until 1) my dad solidly explained to me what it was like being ethnically Jewish (even though his parents had each left their faith and the Pale of Settlement the moment it was legal to do so) in the Soviet Union and through most of Russian history; and 2) when I was living in the northeastern U.S. where the identity *meant* something to so many people and I met many who were almost … disturbed might be the word? that it didn’t to me. It’s more that I have to keep processing what it means—and who I am—*to other people.* I’m sure there are some other people out there who know what I mean by that, and I’m sure it doesn’t apply only to Jewish ethnicity.
thanks for sharing this story. i know so many people, mostly who were born in the first half of the 20th century, who didn't know they were jewish until they were adults. that practice reveals so much about racial and religious identity and what it means to people. i remember as a kid being totally flummoxed as to why someone would hide their judaism. but then i grew up and understood the nuance a bit more.
Well put. I'm not sure my dad would have chosen to hide it from us, but we grew up in a small town in Montana and my mom was definitely worried. (I was born in 1976.)
Fascinating point about Jews insisting that the identity must mean something. There's always been this sense of duty communicated to me -- at times explicitly, but often implicitly -- where being Jewish means you have pretty specific work to do, and where doing things wrong will disappoint, or even betray, my ancestors and the Jewish people at large. I truly love this responsibility, but also I didn't really ever get much of a say in it's being placed on me.
And then there's the question of Israel and Palestine and the continued violent denial of rights based on ethnicity, where many Jews have told me I have a duty as a Jew to always side with Jews in any battle, a demand which I (and , I think, most progressive Jews) think is not only wrongheaded but deeply unjust.
This is a really smart exploration of both what's really empowering and tricky about duty and obligation to a collective.
Thank you for sharing these thoughts. I really appreciate it. As someone who grew up in small-town Montana completely disconnected from any idea of identity in this respect, I had no idea how to respond when talking about it as an ignorant 20-something in the northeast. It’s obviously so important, and what does it mean when it’s part of you but also not at the same time?
I feel like we could discuss these questions for a hundred years and never come up with an answer. Which doesn’t seem off-track considering the context! My great-grandfather was a well-known Torah scholar in Ukraine, I’ve been told.
RE Israel and Palestine, I heard a very interesting podcast episode recently from England with two young Jewish people. They’d started a farm in England because they’d been raised strong Zionists and started questioning why they were encouraged to be connected to land they hadn’t spent much time in but felt disconnected from land they’d been raised on, while also strongly opposing the politics of Israel. Not that that’s what you’re talking about, but it was interesting to listen to people who were rethinking what land they feel to be in relationship with.
Two lines that really stood out to me:
"Jewish folks often seem to want to be exonerated from racial politics in America"
"In the game of racism, everyone gets to play."
I'll be thinking about these for a long time!
absolute powerhouse lines
Garrett, what a great call to have Sarah write this essay. It was fabulous and opened up a whole new world to me about Dirty Dancing...which was filmed in the mountains of Virginia not too far from my hometown of Roanoke. The one Jewish family I knew were extras in the movie. Maybe that’s why I always “knew” it was about a Jewish resort? Sarah’s deep dive into the complications of race and identity as it relates to religion will be turning over in my head for a while. Thank you both!
I am very into the image of casting directors scouring Southern Virginia until they found a Jewish family to be extras. Also: VERY PRETTY SETTING!
oooh i didn't even get into where it was FILMED! good intel.
I really loved the line: "his mother asked him every day after school not what he’d learned that day, but whether he’d asked any good questions." This is why I became a Jew. I was brought up this way by my non-Jewish WASP parents, which was totally different from all the other white working class kids around me. It wasn't until I got to high school that I found other people who "asked good questions" like I did, and almost all of them were Jewish. I would go to Sunday School at the Reform Temple with my friends when ever I could, what they were learning made much more sense to me than what was taught in Methodist Sunday school. It set me on a path to conversion.
Wow, thanks for sharing this. Of course, Jews don't have a monopoly on curious inquiry, but I'm very proud of this aspect of Jewish culture. When I had my bar mitzvah, I had a pretty negative reaction to the Torah portion I was supposed to give a speech about, and it was so important to me that the rabbi said I could say whatever I wanted about it, including that I thought its messages were actively bad and harmful, and that the actions of God described in it or something we should condemn.
Excellent and wonderful piece! Dirty Dancing was part of a whole buncha films in the Eighties looking back at the Sixties through the lens of youth but its impact surely surpassed the rest of the pack.
Some random thoughts/links:
Jennifer Grey is the daughter of award-winning actor Joel Grey, who is most remembered for his stage and screen performance as the Master of Ceremonies in Cabaret. Jennifer's teen screen debut in Ferris Bueller's Day Off ties her into the John Hughes universe.
If you haven't seen the documentary Welcome to Kutsher's: The Last Catskills Resort, it's delightful: https://www.kutshersdoc.com/
Ever wondered what happened to Frances "Baby" Houseman? Alison Lowenstein did: https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/nobody-puts-baby-in-a-corner-frances-baby-houseman-the-og-pro-choice-activist
Finally, one of the best things that came out of the early months of the pandemic lockdown was all the creative work artists and ordinary people did alone in their shelter-in-place world and shared with the rest of us via video and social. This one is a must-see: https://youtu.be/iyBkmHcvdkE
I have always been so fascinated by this trend (which makes sense when you think of the age of people who create mass media) of pop culture looking exactly two decades in the rear-view: the 80s looking at the 60s, the 90s looking at the 70s, etc.
Sarah, thank you so much for sharing this.
In late 2020, I had the idea of launching a publication (w/ the hope of it being an anthology eventually) that had various people write about the same things - at the time it was words, like "love" or "justice" - words that we all think mean A THING but they actually mean so many things to so many people...and that until we understand those nuances, we can never truly cross politics/identities/perspectives enough to create change.
Over the next year, the idea came to include cultural touchstones, like movies/TV, songs, and bands, etc. And your essay reminded me of exactly why I thought that would be so powerful. I had never thought about much (most) of what you wrote about - and yet, reading your essay takes absolutely nothing away from what this movies means to me/ the essay I would write.
As Emily Dickinson said, “I know nothing in the world that has as much power as a word.”
More essays about Dirty Dancing!!!
This was such a fascinating and delightful read about one of my favourite movies, thank you!
I agree! I've long loved the movie but Sarah's super deep dive into it took me into so many new directions.
Also it was really interesting to read about the original script. Thanks for writing about that! I had no idea.
I learned so much from this essay! Thank you, Garrett and Sarah! Although I had previously understood Baby's family to be Jewish, I honestly could not say when or how I realized this. Reading this essay really makes me wonder why. I also loved how it confronted all of these complexities within Whiteness--so much more to be curious about! And perfectly timed for me, as I read it right before facilitating a conversation with White colleagues about how we talk about our own marginalized identities (such as they are, or not) within the category of "White."
I agree- I think it's so hard to hold these discussions of "yes and" for folks with both White and any number of marginalized identities at the same time and I feel like Sarah offered such a lovely case study of how to do it with both honesty and grace.
This is a wonderful entry into your sub stack. If you can find it I would recommend the PBS documentary title: from swastika to Jim crow. It Is about the Jews who fled Nazism and started to teach and work in the all black colleges of the south. It has a lot to say about this connection between blacks and Jews and a sense of being a minority. Also look up the May 9, 1968 Ocean Hill Brownsville teacher strike. I was part of that event while working in Brownsville as a school psychologist. This was a seminal moment in a serious break between Jews and blacks. A rift that was never healed. As a post script sidenote I spent nine days rafting through the Grand Canyon with Patrick Swayze and his wife who was also his high school girlfriend. They were both such sweet down to earth wonderful people. The three of us had a lot of fun together during those nine days.
My apologies that I'm just getting to this now, but I'm honestly not sure which anecdote impresses me more (they're both incredible), rafting with Patrick Swayze or the fact that you were involved with th Ocean Hill Brownsville strike (I'm definitely familiar).
This is brilliant. Thank you!