July 2026 Book Review

Review of The Song is Not the Same: Jews and American Popular Music. Bruce Zuckerman, Josh Kun, and Lisa Ansell, eds. West Lafayette, IN: Purdue University Press, 2011.

Rich Robinson

This month we pursue a somewhat lighter theme: music. This review is being seen by an international audience, so my only excuse for reviewing a book on American music is that not only am I myself American, but the music emanating from America has made its way around the globe. And at any rate, The Song is Not the Same is a unique series of essays.

The Song is Not the Same is volume 8 in the series “The Jewish Role in American Life” (there we go again—American!) Like so many books on Jewish topics today, the writing is sociologically-driven, making for a sometimes “thick” read even though the topics themselves are fascinating.

First up, we find a chapter on Michael Jackson and Jewish music, or at least on listening to Michael Jackson as a Jew. I found this essay one of the less gripping ones in this collection, as it is author Gayle Wald’s recollections of listening to Jackson as a Jewish teenager, and how listening to him helped her “negotiate” her identity as a Jewish American in the 1970s. Most of the essay inhabits Wald’s mind, which is to say, it may not resonate with every reader.

Of greater interest to me was Jody Rosen’s chapter on images of Jews in old sheet music. What has become known as “Jewface” in vaudeville and early 20th-century theater was a commonplace back in the day. As Rosen writes: “A song like ‘Cohen Owes Me Ninety-Seven Dollars’ seems exotic and somewhat offensive, but in 1915 it was mainstream pop and would have been seen by no one—least of all Jews—as occasion for angry responses from the Anti-Defamation League (had the ADL existed).” The stereotyped bumbling schlemiel, to use two of Rosen’s words, have always been with us, eventually transmogrifying into Woody Allen and Larry David, two more examples from Rosen. (I might add that the physical stereotyping of “Jewface” has given way to social and attitudinal stereotyping.) The essay comes with 25 illustrations which have to be seen to be believed.

Next up is Peter La Chappelle on Henry Ford, antisemitism and—get ready for it—dance. Ford was, of course, Exhibit A for early 20th-century antisemites and is infamous for having published The International Jew. Much less known is Ford’s crusade to revive “old-time” dancing as a way of reinforcing a “traditional” way of life, which among other thing did not include Jews. In this endeavor, combined with Ford’s antisemitism was what is called Nordicism, a belief that Northern Europeans were the pinnacle of the human race, basing itself on the so-called scientific racism of the day. This essay brings us a blow-by-account of Ford’s attempts to revive styles of dance and music that reinforced white supremacy (not yet called by that name in Ford’s day). As you can imagine, Ford had no tolerance for jazz, infused as it was with, shall we say, non-Northern European influences.

If La Chappelle’s essay will be a revelation to some, so will Jonathan Z. S. Pollack’s on Yiddish in Black music. Yes, there were songs which included lyrics like, “I’m hinky-dink, a solid sender/ A very good friend to Mrs. Bender/ Bender, schmender, a bee gezindt!/ I’m the cat that’s in the know.” The Black incorporation of Yiddish was, says Pollack “both parody and tribute” to how Jews and Blacks related in the first half of the twentieth century. Louis Armstrong comes in for an appearance, a man who “claimed that his approach to scat singing was an effort to imitate what he called, ‘the Jews rockin’ ’, or praying, in the storefront synagogues of his native New Orleans.” Cab Calloway is here, too. There were even Black performances of the Yiddish standard, “Bay Mir Bistu Sheyn.” All in all, some fascinating material here that will send you scurrying to Spotify.

Then Josh Kun brings us the “blue,” i.e. bawdy, X-rated, musical comedy of Jewish female comedians like Belle Barth and Pearl Williams. Since most of their acts were stand-up comedy, it’s a bit of a dubious inclusion in this volume, even though music does enter. I imagine that this chapter will not be to everyone’s taste, but it is a real, if for many regrettable, part of Jewish show-business history.

David Kaufman offers an essay on Jewish influence in Bob Dylan’s music. You will find the maximalists and the minimalists here, and Kaufman himself gravitates to the latter end of the spectrum. In some ways, Dylan’s rendition of Hava Nagila was a way of working out his relationship—or lack thereof—to his Jewishness. How much did Jewishness really influence Dylan? The answer is blowin’ in the wind, and maybe in Kaufman’s essay too.

Lastly, Jeff Janeczko talks about the album series, pioneered by John Zorn, that goes under the umbrella of Radical Jewish Culture. I bought a few albums in this series back in the ’90s, trying to find what was Jewish in the music and what was “just” jazz or something else. The “hybridity” of the music has, for Janeczko, a “double edge,” either challenging existing beliefs or reproducing them. As you can tell from that sentence, we are definitely in the world of sociological lingo and frameworks in this essay. It will perhaps be of most interest to those, like myself, who have explored the aural world of Radical Jewish Culture.

For anyone interested in the history of antisemitism, Black-Jewish relations, or questions of Jewish identity vis-à-vis music, this book will be of interest, and most likely will tell you some things you didn’t know.