Jews, God, and Videotape: Religion and Media in America

The impact of the media on American Jews is the subject of this badly written work. Author Shandler, a professor of Jewish studies at Rutgers University, starts his presentation with cantors, discussing their recordings and their participation in movies and operas. He then proceeds to radio broadcasts, analyzing a program called “The Eternal Life,” claiming that its rise and fall paved the way for linking broadcasting and Judaism. Other chapters are devoted to Holocaust remembrance, photographing and videotaping Jewish life-cycle events from circumcision to funerals, television programs related to the juxtaposition of Christmas and Hanukkah, and use of new media by ultra-Orthodox Jews to promote their agenda. From this potpourri of examples, Shandler concludes with the baffling assertion that the impact “of new media on a community's religious life [is] not at its extremes but somewhere in the middle.” Apparently, he is asserting that the media affect Jewish religious practice, a self-evident proposition. (Apr.)