This has been slightly edited for typos (sorry) and awkward phrases. I write my ‘stacks quickly and on the fly, as a response to an emotional prompt…
Read Hussein Aboubakr Mansour’s The Passions of Bassem Yousef. I won’t bother with a description of it, that’s a waste of words. Just click on the link and read!
I’m at the end of my rope and I know that things will get worse; they always do.
Answer: get more rope. But I’m also at the end of figuring out new sources of supply. So I write here, desultorily, when I can punch through ambivalence.
The only reason to stay on social media is to learn things, and yesterday I came across the above-linked article about Bassem Youssef. I’d heard of him in passing, but until his appearance on Piers Morgan, that was the extent of it, a glancing acquaintance, which I didn’t want to deepen after his appearance on Morgan’s show.
But anything Mansour writes is worth reading, so I read.
Most of the story didn’t surprise me. I have more than the usual American background in “Middle Easternism” ™ (i.e., completely personal and non-academic) and Youssef’s story is familiar to me. But a couple of things did surprise me. One, Youssef is a qualified cardiologist turned comedian. The majority of show biz folk are dull careerists who went into the business as obsessed youngsters. Most of them are adolescents—barely, more like children—because their development was arrested at a crucial period. They never really worked at anything.1 Those who did something else before going into show biz are always intriguing people.
But mostly I was amazed to learn about Jon Stewart’s visit to Egypt, and further, the influence that the “Stewart-Seinfeld-Friends” genre of humor had on Dr. Youssef. As I’ve said earlier, the older you get, the faster you can put certain things together (nature’s way of making up for physical enfeeblement) so I was able to put the pieces together, but it was a surprise.
(A word about this “Stewart-Senfeld-Friends” genre—SSF from here on in: although I would appear to be a stereotypical member of that tribe, I’ve never been crazy about it. I disliked Stewart’s slick pseudo-left persona, which has now been revealed as a glib facade for smug self-interestedness, as useful in these storms as a flimsy umbrella. As for Friends and Seinfeld… let’s just be kind and say I wasn’t a fan. What did I love? Frasier. The first five years of that show were genius. The rest was still had flashes of brilliance although it became mannered, a self-caricature, as all long-running TV shows do2. Anyway, that’s my humor. But back to Bassem.)
What Mansour doesn’t elaborate on is the implicitly Jewish nature of SSF. Seinfeld is Jewish, Stewart is Jewish, the two creators of Friends are Jewish.
Yet, was that word ever even mentioned on any of these shows? I dunno. Like I said, I wasn’t a fan and I’m not going to bother looking it up. I don’t care.
But everyone implicitly knew that they were Jewish, and in fact, Seinfeld’s wild popularity back in the 90s astonished me because of that. Because he was Jewish and no one made a big deal of it but everyone made a big deal of it.
Two things happened in the 90s in my life: the crime rate in NYC dropped radically. Suddenly you could walk around freely. Amazing!
And just as amazing, Seinfeld, this Jewish guy who didn’t change his name became a totally accepted, major American entertainment icon. He didn’t overdo it, he didn’t underdo it, he just was. He wasn’t sharp, he wasn’t flat, he was just natural.
A girl at work said, “I love Jewish guys like Seinfeld.”
Inside I wondered: “how long will this last?”
We got our answer: recently Seinfeld was accosted on the street after coming from some pro-Israel discussion by a group of pogromists demonstrators. Nazi! Genocide! They screeched through megaphones with howling gleeful hate.
It’s over.
A Canticle for Leibowitz is a classic science fiction novel about a post-nuclear future.
Isaac Edward Leibowitz, a Jewish electrical engineer working for the United States military, survived the war and sought refuge from the mobs of the "Simplification" in the sanctuary of a Cistercian monastery, all the while surreptitiously searching for his wife, from whom he had become separated in the war. Eventually concluding that his wife was dead, he joined the monastery, took holy orders (becoming a priest), and dedicated his life to preserving knowledge by hiding books, smuggling them to safety (known as "booklegging"), memorizing, and copying them. He approached the Church for permission to found a new monastic order dedicated to this purpose. With permission granted, he founded his new order in the desert of the American Southwest, where it became known as the "Albertian Order of Leibowitz". .. Leibowitz was eventually betrayed and martyred. Later beatified by the Roman Catholic Church, he became a candidate for sainthood.
I never quite cottoned to this book, as I never quite cottoned to A Clockwork Orange or Brave New World, but I was profoundly influenced by their ideas. (Which is probably why I wrote my own dystopian series—I love the ideas I’ve encountered in these classics, I just never went for the characters, and to me, fiction is all about characters. If I’m not interested in the characters, I don’t care about the plot, or gimmicks.)
Interesting, isn’t it? Why would a Jewish guy join a Catholic religious order? OK, it was after the world had been destroyed, but still, why that? What choice did he have? Leibowitz wanted to preserve civilization, and this was the best, perhaps only, way to do it.
Leibowitz assimilated.
I always think of this book when I think of Jon Stuart, whose paternal birth name is Leibowitz. Did Bassem Youssef ever consider Americanizing his name to appeal to a greater audience? I think he would consider it a disgrace, which it would be. Maybe the comparison is unfair, as Youssef is a first generation American immigrant and one by accident at that. Maybe his children or grandchildren, if he has any, will become Bill and Ashley. Maybe they’ll change the surname to Joseph.
But still, at nearly the same stage of Americanization, generations of American Jewish entertainers changed their names from Emmanuel Goldberg to Edward G. Robinson, from Julius Garfinkle to John Garfield, from Iris Cohen to Allegra Kent… the list is long. Italians, too, to be fair: Dean Martin, Tony Bennett. Name changes in show biz are a balancing act: if you have blue eyes, you stay Sinatra. If you look like a Sicilian peasant, you go from Benedetto to Bennett. Same thing with Seinfeld: he’s a tall, handsome guy, so the name stays. Leibowitz? It had to go.
Iris Cohen’s name name had to go. Tallchief, on the other hand, was great box office, so the name stayed.3
It’s a balancing act, this assimilation thing. I mean, even to me, Tallchief is a great stage name… Cohen, not so much.
Hussein’s article was all about how Bassem is marooned, neither here nor there, and his act has turned from authentic to fake. That’s all true. From Hussein’s insider perspective as expat Egyptians, he sees Bassem’s agony. Now that I’ve read the article, and from my prior experience with others of his sort, I see that too, but from my outsider perspective as a very assimilated American Jew, I see the ecstasy.
Bassem Youssef can be himself. An Arab, an Egyptian. A foreigner. A stranger in a strange land. I cannot. I’m here, a native daughter, and since October 7, I’ve been wondering what that means.
But about Bassem Youssef is what he is, out, loud, and proud.
Not so Jon Stuart Leibowitz, who gives us his Jewishness in measured doses.
I sing a Canticle for Leibowitz.
Which reminds me, while Bassem Youssef is screeching that Jews appropriated pickles, along with pita, hummus, and Palestine, where did his family get the name Youssef from?
Speaking of dystopian books, here are links to mine.
You can read them on Kindle Unlimited if you’re a member. The second volume is part of the library.
“Show biz” meaning movie actors, models, and pop musicians. This is not the case with stage actors, classical musicians and ballet dancers, who do have to undergo a grueling apprenticeship to make it to the stage.
I was, and am, a big fan of Carol Burnett.
When Tallchief first joined the Ballet Russes, it was suggested that she Russify her name to “Tallchieva” – she refused. She did modify it from “Tall Chief” to one word: Tallchief. Balanchine, of course, saw the potential in the name Tallchief. And in her, marrying her and making her a star.
Enjoyable read
Great piece.
I liked Cheers and Frasier. Seinfeld’s stand up in the show, and his stand up and funny books, but not the sitcom part. And not Friends either.