Essay: Jewish Humor’s ‘Tradition, Tradition’ Or the Saturday Night Live College Presidents’ Congressional Hearing Skit Is Not Anti-Semitic

By Marleen Barr

Anti-defamation League National Director and CEO Jonathan Greenblatt posted this comment  about the December 9, 2023 Saturday Night Live cold open skit concerning  the Harvard, M.I.T, and University of Pennsylvania presidents’ response to calls for Jewish genocide on their campuses:  “The skit was atrocious. The sentiment even more appalling”  (X, December 10, 2023, https://twitter.com/JGreenblattADL/status/1733975732148183439 ).  I disagree. The laugh out loud funny skit was devoid of anti-Semitism. It instead focused on at once pervasive and ludicrous aspects of academic culture: administrators’ rampant embrace of equivocation as well as scholarly discourse’s  jargon filled incomprehensible locutions. The knee jerk anti-Semitism accusations the skit garnered fail to place it within the Jewish humor tradition. This omitted contextualization is integral to understanding the skit.  I will link the skit to comedic “tradition, tradition” and counter the anti-Semitism accusations. 
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Chloe Troast playing Congresswoman Elise Stefanik announces that she is “going to start screaming questions at these women [the college presidents].”  Scream she does. Her questions, as opposed to the presidents’ dodges, are clear. “Antisemitism yay or nay? . . . Do you think genocide is bad?” asks Troast/Stefanik. The focus on Stefanik reflects the fact that, despite the congresswoman’s Trump loving embrace of MAGA in general and replacement theory in particular,  her insistent questioning during the specific college president congressional hearing instance should not be faulted. The liberal Harvard constitutional law professor Laurence Tribe concurs: “I’m no fan of @RepStefanik but I’m with her here” (X, 2023, https://twitter.com/tribelaw/status/1732419593225044246 ).  The skit does not directly address the accusation that anti-Semitism is being weaponized by American right-wingers who are themselves actually anti-Semitic as yet another way to enforce conformity and bolster racism. It does,  however, reflect Tribes’ allusion to Stefanik’s culpability and one time correct stance. In other words,  Troast/Stefanik, who announces that she is “Catholic,” is no angel.  She says, “If you [‘M.I.T. lady] don’t say yes [to the question about defining genocide as bad] you’re gonna make me look good which is really really hard to do. . . . Hate speech belongs in Congress . . . in private dinners with my donors and in public speeches by my work husband Donald Trump.” Those who criticize the skit for valorizing Stefanik are mistaken. Stefanik does not care about Jews. She is usinig the upsurge in anti-semitism to inflict a conservative agenda upon higher education. However, what she said during the Congressional hearing and the skit’s response to her comments when taken out of all outside “context” (a now highly charged word) is reasonable.  

​The interchange between Troast/Stefanik and Ego Nwodim/Harvard president Claudine Gay hilariously at once ridicules Gay’s failure simply to answer “yes” or ”no” in response to questions about speech advocating Jewish genocide and spoofs academic jargon. “Simple question,” says Troast/Stefanik. “Is it acceptable for students to use anti-Semitic language on this subject [genocide?]” Nwodim/Gay’s answer: “I would like to speak not from the heart but from the thesaurus.” Speaking from the heart is anathema–a big no no–in relation  to scholarly discourse. The pervasiveness of academic jargon is extreme to the extent that in the late 1990s professor of mathematics at University College London and professor emeritus of physics at New York University Alan Sokal published a purposefully nonsensical article in the scholarly cultural studies journal Social Text called “Transgressing the Boundaries: Towards a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity.”  The skit again highlights scholarly discourse’s unintelligibility. This is how Nwodim/Gay answers hearing moderator congresswoman Virgina Foxx’s (played by Molly Kearney) request to “rephrase that [Nwodim/Gay’s answer] in an even more academic way”: “Sure that variety of odious oration is vis-a-vis me repugnant.”  This exchange, which is much more intelligible than most literary theory, is akin to Sokal’s article, not to anti-Semitism. The humor is aimed at the atrocious and appalling culture of academe, not Jews.

This point is emphasized when the skit departs from spoofing the real conversation Stefanik had with the college presidents. Keenan Thompson abruptly appears playing the part of the University of Phoenix president.  His presence is a sight gag which reveals the prestige disparity between this internet university and the ivy league. Since my title alludes to Fiddler on the Roof, I will drag in Oklahoma lyrics: as opposed to the presidents who all act like the musical’s girl “who just can’t say no”–or “yes”–Thompson/University of Phoenix president  says “I would say yes to anything”--especially “how to set up autopay.” Since the University of Phoenix is not specifically connected to Jews, its fantastic inclusion demolishes the anti-Semitic  connection between Jews and money. The skit defends rather than disparages Jews. This point is exemplified when Troast/Stefanik responds to Thompson/University of Phoenix president’s honesty by saying “That is the only straight answer I got all day.” Chloe Fineman playing M.I.T. president Sally Kornbluth’s following ridiculous response humorously and pointedly reflects academic culture: “Please don’t say the answer was straight. You don’t know what the answer’s sexual orientation is.” “The answer,” something that is not human, receives more respect than Jewish students. In other words, exaggeration reveals that anti-Semitism is not the answer.  

Hence, the conversation ensuing between Troast/Stefanik and Fineman/Kornbluth adheres to Jewish humor’s cultural traditions. Historian Matthew Friedman expresses an opinion which relates to this observation. He calls Stefanik “the anti-Semitic member of the House of Representatives who has reinvented herself as a heroic opponent of anti-Semitism while, at the same time, never repudiating her embrace of the ‘Great Replacement’  conspiracy theory. He positions her as “the manifestation of all that has happened to my people” and further explains that Jews  “no longer exist as an autonomous community, but only as a floating signifier to be deployed by Zionists, the State of Israel, and neo-totalitarians. We have become vacated of all meaning, erased by cultural and political appropriations even more thoroughly than by any of our historical tormenters and enemies” (Facebook, December 11, 2023, https://www.facebook.com/matthew.friedman.564/posts/pfbid0Ek4vMbpn5bypoXtuRMgZk8vqkv1dYXa8ghmAP599uk4LVPVs2Ra1wSyCFoNXr9zbl ). Placing the skit within the context of the Jewish comedic tradition–the manner in which Jewish comedians deal with their tormentors and oppressors–acts as a corrective to the erasure Friedman describes. Substituting acknowledgement of this tradition with a knee jerk anti-Semitism charge is another example of relegating Jews to the status of floating signifier rather than autonomous community. 

I will briefly refer to the Marx Brothers, Mel Brooks, and Joan Rivers to point out that Jewish comedians respond to oppression by portraying themselves in an exaggerated fashion which ridicules their oppressors. Groucho Marx in Animal Crackers played an explorer of Africa who is lauded as the guest of honor at a genteel Gentile society matron’s house party. Marx parodies Jewish people’s exclusion from exploring Africa and fraternizing socially with Gentile elites. When Harpo Marx takes a dead fish out of his enlarged coat–as well as more silverware garnered from the party than could realistically fit within the coat– he enacts a scenario exceeding Gentiles’ worst nightmare of imagined Jewish invasion.  The real version of the matron would be the hostess with the mostest racism. She would place Jews and Africans within the same category: savages. Mel Brooks, in The Producers’ “Springtime for Hitler” scene, renders Hitler ridiculous rather than monstrous. Joan Rivers reacts to negative depictions of Jewish women (such as the female Jewish gorilla/human in Cabaret)  by empowering herself to become the judge and jury in relation to the dictums of “The Fashion Police.” In the vein of these comedians, the skit’s exaggeratingly screaming Troast/Stefanik demeans the college presidents’ milktoast responses to anti-Semitism. Like Greenblatt’s negative characterization of the skit, many Jewish audience members were initially uncomfortable with the parody of Hitler in The Producers and the Jewish woman-as-animal in Cabaret. These depictions are now accepted as being nonprobelmatical comedic responses to anti-Semitism.  

The skit upends the serious consequences of  college administrators’  routine penchant for trying to push problems under the rug instead of taking direct action to solve them. The Pennsylvania State University  administration famously failed to stop Larry Nassar from sexually abusing female gymnasts. The Virginia Tech administration famously failed to stop the shooter from wreaking havoc in classrooms weeks before he opened fire. The Harvard, M.I.T.,  and University of Pennsylvania  presidents’ failure directly to take issue with the call for Jewish genocide occuring on their campuses is par for the course.  Saturday Night Live was not, to evoke the title of the film starring the Jewish New York actor Judy Holliday, “born yesterday.” Lorne Michaels, the originator of Saturday Night Live who in 1944 was born Lorne David Lipowitz on a kibbutz in Palestine,  is television’s most long standing comedic creator. In that Michaels exerts as much control over Saturday Night Live as nonkibbutznik William Faulkner had over Yoknapatawpha County, to question  his professional judgment via the accusation that he greenlighted  an anti-Semitic skit deprives him of his moral subjectivity–or, in Friedman’s terms, renders him “vacated of all meaning, erased by cultural and political appropriations.” 

Groucho Marx played college president Quincy Adams Wagstaff (an appellation which was given to no Jew ever) in Horse Feathers.  “Horsefeathers” means “absurd.”  If President Wagstaff appeared in the SNL skit no baloney he could comedically articulate would be more nonsensical than the dead pan gobbledygook twaddle about Jewish genocide articulation allegations depending upon  “context” the real presidents of Harvard, M.I.T., and the University of Pennsylvania espoused.