From Hester Street to Seinfeld: A Semester Wrap-Up

Everyone knows Seinfeld as the show about "nothing." However, few people have ever looked deeper into the message Jerry Seinfeld and Larry David are trying to create with this nothingness.

These two comedians created a series reminiscent of the early performances of the Marx Brothers, with a slight hint of the Woody Allen whiney self-loathing type. It was amusing to see the evolution of the Jewish performers over the twentieth century through this literature class. Ending the semester with Seinfeld created a great wrap-up to everything that we were working in this class.

It was interesting to see this progression through texts such as the early works of the Bintl Briv all the way down to writings of modern writers like Robert Pinsky. Nevertheless, it was even better to see other works of Jewish literature, beyond just textual content. The movies were very informative because they offered clarification to any images that I created in my head from what these writers were trying to talk about during each period.

It has to be said that my favorite portion of the semester was the graphic novel. I had taken a liking to this for of literature when I first came across Art Spiegelman in Holocaust Literature class. I really enjoy reading graphic novels because they allow for a more interesting creation of the text. The writer can get so much of his or her message across without ever using words, just their illustrations.