by Elaine Durbach
NJJN Bureau Chief/Central

April 9, 2009

Barbie might not look Jewish, but she served as a provocative starting point for a discussion on Jewish identity for a group of around 50 women at the Wilf Jewish Community Campus on March 31.

On two points, they found common ground with the vinyl idol: Her “mother” — or creator — was a Jewish woman, and the various Barbie incarnations have followed the dictum: “Be all you can be.”

Where they differ from Barbie aroused more debate — about what it means to “look Jewish” these days, to be “outsiders” as compared to her quintessential “insider” image, and what is entailed in being a real Jewish woman, with or without a bond to Israel.

The event, hosted by the Women’s Campaign of the Jewish Federation of Central New Jersey, started with a screening of a video, The Tribe, about the 50-year-old doll. Directed by Tiffany Shlain and narrated by actor Peter Coyote, the film traces the doll’s creation by toy entrepreneur Ruth Handler, who adapted a German sex object into the wide-eyed, anatomically questionable figure she named Barbara Millicent Roberts, after her own daughter.

Using that as a springboard, the film goes on to examine Jewish identity — both collective and individual, how the Barbie phenomenon intertwines with Jewish stereotypes and realities, and how those are tied in with Israel.

Handler had enormous success with her doll. Over a billion have sold since its introduction in 1959 — that’s 77 for every Jew, as the video points out. And after she developed breast cancer, Handler created a new company — to sell prosthetic breasts. As the narrator remarks in the film, “She made two fortunes out of plastic boobs.”

Federation board member Pam Zaifman moderated the evening’s discussion. Before opening it up to the general audience, she addressed a series of questions to a panel of three women from three generations: interior designer Barbara Rood, who lists her 58-year marriage as her proudest accomplishment; Robin Brous, the assistant executive director of the JCC of Central New Jersey and director of its Early Childhood Department; and Rutgers student and president of its Hillel, 22-year-old Hilary Nesher (the other two women’s ages were not mentioned.).

The three explored what it means to be a member of the Jewish “tribe” in the 21st century and their feelings about Barbie symbolism and Jewish identity.

Rood compared Barbie’s unreality to the ideal of womanhood — and Jewish womanhood most all — that prevailed when she was a young mother. Women faced pressures to be perfectly groomed, a perfect host, and a mother of well-behaved children.

“You know how that turned out,” she said wryly.

While they might have sought to match an American ideal, she said, her generation had no ambivalence about their support for Israel. “It is the most important thing in our lives,” she said. “I think so often, ‘There but for the grace of God….’ I could have been another Anne Frank, or one of those children who wrote that they never saw another butterfly. Those six million were my brothers and sisters. But as long as Israel exists, we don’t have to worry about extermination.”

‘Passing as non-Jewish’

Nesher described a far more divided situation. Though brought up with a strong Jewish involvement herself, she said there are many young Jews who haven’t been to Israel, and who find it hard to deal with the criticism of the country that they hear on campus.

As for concerns with identity, she said, “In many ways we’ve escaped that concern about Jewish looks and Jewish behavior. In American culture, we’ve gone beyond that. We’re not hard-pressed to find many Jewish women who are regarded as beautiful.”

On the other hand, she described an incident from the previous weekend that shocked her. Visiting with a Jewish friend who is blond, someone commented that they wouldn’t have expected her friend to be Jewish, but did expect Jews to look like Nesher, with her dark hair. “It’s the first time I’ve been targeted that way,” she said. It is very troubling, she added, “that it can still be seen as a compliment if you can ‘pass’ as non-Jewish. It’s really important that young Jewish women embrace how they look, as a step to combating that attitude.”

Brous identified herself as part of the generation between Rood’s and Nesher’s, with attitudes that also fall between theirs. She pointed out that Barbie was created out of an ambivalent attitude — “an Aryan-looking doll” named after a Jewish woman’s daughter, but she became a symbol of the times, reinvented and reinterpreted just as women’s identity and Jewish identity have kept evolving.

That ambivalence carries over into contemporary attitudes regarding Israel, she said. In some ways, it has been easier to identify with Israel than it was for the older generation, “because the world has become a smaller place.” But it has also become more difficult, as the debate about what Israel stands for grows more complex. “As I say to our camp counselors,” she said, “You have to visit it to understand it.”

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