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\ufffc\ufffc\ufffc, 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 \u2013 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)
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