The nebbish in popular culture or, how the underdog can win

ABSTRACT

This essay uses an exploration of the history of the nebbish, one of Yiddish literature’s most enduring comic stock characters, to discuss how and why this stereotype has evolved, and even been reclaimed, in contemporary popular culture. The nebbish is an interesting case study because it began as a negative, often anti-Semitic stereotype and evolved into an Everyman character with whom the audience can, and even wants to, identify. Furthermore, the contemporary nebbish is complicated by two shifts in the depiction of the character. First, nebbishness has moved from being an explicitly Jewish characteristic to a general attribute that anyone can possess. Second, all the Yiddish stock types started out as male characters, but most of them have been able to encompass women in their contemporary manifestations. The nebbish, however, has remained almost exclusively male. Women who are treated in a nebbish-like way become tragic figures, not comic relief. This essay briefly investigates some examples of potential female nebbishes to interrogate why society has been able to reimagine the nebbish as non-Jewish much more easily than as non-male. The essay concludes by arguing that only by truly embracing the idea of the nebbish as more than a hapless loser can popular culture effectively craft female nebbishes, and only by effectively crafting female nebbishes can the nebbish really be an Everyperson character.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Jennifer Caplan received her Ph.D. from Syracuse University in 2015. She is currently a Visiting Assistant Professor at Wesleyan University. She has previously been published in The Bulletin for the Study of Religion and Shofar magazine, and has presented her work at the American Academy of Religion and the Association for Jewish Studies, as well as being invited to Oxford University for the biennial meeting of the International Society for Religion, Literature and Culture and was a participant in “Frames: Jewish Culture and the Comic Book” at Princeton University in 2015.