Thinking about Jewishness in 90s popular culture as like, marked, but distinctly not a separate culture, with fluidity at the margins

Phoebe assuming Chandler is Jewish cause of his self-deprecating humor, George Costanza’s parents being white-ethnic gentiles in the most nominal way, with Festivus as a Freudian-Jewish festival about casting off the burden of civilization and freeing the grievance-filled Id to establish hierarchy by feats of strength.

Friends’ Rachel and Clueless’ Cher Horowitz’s specificity as Jewish-American Princesses being missible (the nose job stuff just landing as a tease about ‘90s plastic surgery fads) and being received as icons of well-off young womanhood generally

The Beastie Boys no less than Madonna as white-ethnic New Yorkers who kept up with the streets as the vibe shaded browner. Adam Sandler as avatar of all suburban goobers. Howard Stern as honestly a decade-older same thing.

Overall an adoption of the Woody Allen version of the American Jewish narrative – Brooklyn tenements, the Dodgers, Coney Island, psychoanalysis, comedy, the Catskills circuit, magazines, radio, TV, movies, all sorts of interesting neuroses and intellectual arguments along the way.

(In retrospect I notice that even keeping to 20th century America this was totally burying longstanding leftist tradition, but that’s the 90s for you)