Storytelling: A Staple of Jewish Masculinity

In S. Bear Bergman’s “Today, I Am A Man”, Bergman provides an alternative perspective to the essential aspects of Jewish masculinity. Bergman frames the essay around stories he is relating to the reader, that are either from his personal experience or he heard from a member in his family. These stories provided the basis for his understanding that “storytelling” being a key aspect of Jewish masculinity. This perspective on how the spheres a Jewish man exists in being easy for a trans man to jump into is enlightening because of what it says about identity. Bergman’s perspective also speaks to claims Sylvia Barack Fishman makes in her essay on “Love, Marriage, and Jewish Families.” While exploring the conversation these two scholars are having with each other, a story is told about what it means to be Jewish man and what it means to be a Jewish woman when everything is the same except for your genders.

“Today, I Am A Man” is a series of anecdotes on Bergman’s perspective on masculinity, Jewish masculinity in particular which are linked together by a series of stories he tells. Bergman notes on page thirty seven how Jewish masculinity “prizes storytelling” and how “as a people of diaspora a people with a staggeringly long oral tradition, even considering our equally staggering literacy rate, there seems to be some…genetic selection at work” (Bergman, 37). Earlier Bergman notes the qualities that have come to be valued due to the inability to compete openly with the culture of the ruling class in it’s areas of achievement are “intellect, skill at argument , or ebate, being bound to family, storytelling (and, especially, good comic timing), and certain sartorial flair, among others” (Bergman, 31). This ideals along with the stories Bergman tells shape the essay as a whole. The initial story Bergman tells about his cousin who cried for three days after the death of his grandfather frames the entire piece. This story is put in contrast to the traditional “north american” masculine standard in order to highlight the uniqueness of this moment, and how it is part of the very essence of what is considered to be Jewish masculinity. When first reading Bergman’s initial story it did not strike me.  It struck me though after the following story of my own :

a young man sitting on an upholstered couch in a black suit, shoulders slumped, breath trembling through deep breaths, an arm around my shoulder as he tries not to cry. A young girl not ten minutes later breaks down in her mom’s arms sobbing.

This story is in direct conflict with the experience of Bergman’s cousin, a young man who’s emotions were accepted. The story above is laced with traditional north american masculine values. This is seen in how the young man is taking deep breaths, resisting the urge to cry, while the girl is allowed to embrace her emotions.  

By picking this story to ground the whole essay, Bergman emphasizes an essential point, “when they are grown and faced with loss, none of them will think that their tears of grief, or process of healing from them, are the exclusive province of femininity” (Bergman, 32). By stating this Bergman brings to the forefront the importance of emotion and expression in identity, and how this was embraced when he was growing up. “Today I Am A Man” does not seek to analyze the long standing traditions of the masculine and the feminine when it comes to practicing Judaism but seeks to better understand the essence of masculine identity by  presenting key moments from his experience as both a Jewish girl and a Jewish man. The ending of the essay is in direct contrast with the beginning story. The ending of “Today I Am A Man” ends with the mother smiling in order to not cry and Bergman’s Dad “looks down and away, tears flowing freely down his cheeks. I think, but do not say : Very Jewish” (Bergman, 38). In this moment this element of masculinity is transcended past young adulthood into manhood. A key element of this ending is the description of “the mother smiling in order to not cry” and the dad “looks down and away, tears flowing freely down his cheeks.” This moment illustrates Bergman’s entire essay. One individual fights back tears while the other embraces them. They both are simultaneously leaning into their identity in a way that their society has allowed them to.

The direct associations Bergman makes between masculinity and storytelling are crucial and he highlights the imagery of, “a man sitting back in his chair at the dinner table with a glass of something in his hand, smiling slyly, saying, “I got one for you”, in just the right way” (Bergman, 38). This imagery continues the element of the man being in possession of a certain level of the tradition because of the conflation of masculinity and storytelling. In its own way the masculine Jewish culture becomes Bardic one with the man becoming responsible with preserving the past and the future, not so much in a poetic way, but the essential aspect of storytelling is there. The kinship that Jewish males feel with storytelling could possibly relate to how for centuries they have been predominantly tasked with torah study. This has been described in the essay Fishman’s “Love, Marriage, and Jewish Families” as the man’s job and not the women’s stating, “women are generally excluded from both Torah study and formal communal authority” (Fishman, 288). The task of passing on the oral history and tradition, while also maintaining the written tradition as well could evolve into the men of Jewish families being storytellers in multiple ways. Both storytellers of tradition and storytellers of the here and now.

One of the important comparisons that is made between a Bergman’s reality and the “rest of america” is the discussion of Bergman’s brother arguing with the family about bats. Bergman notes how “where other cultural groups might be playing football in the yard or sparring in the basement or honing their marksmanship on the cranberry-sauce cans, the Jewboys are inside arguing about bats, practicing our own eventual ways of exerting our power in the public sphere” (Bergman, 35). Bergman draws a connection between how the encouragement to be argumentative, and the practice in doing so preps these young boys for the current structures in place for the public sphere. Bergman references multiple examples of the legal language that places men above women in public, legal, religious, and social hierarchies in Jewish society. Bergman also notes how this is sometimes the direct symptom of feeling “emasculated” in their public life. Bergman’s family created a unique situation because they functioned differently than others at that time. Bergman as a young Jewish girl was encouraged to be “smart and learn to argue someone else into submission” (Bergman, 35-36). This family dynamic allowed for the transition between the feminine sphere to the masculine sphere easier for Bergman. Bergman however noticed as a child that a lot of the other Jewish women of his class were “policed” in regards to their gendered behaviors in argument and debate (Bergman, 36).

“When I am asked, as I sometimes am, why transgendered Jews–and especially transmasculinely gendered Jews–appear, anecdotally, to be more likely to remain religiously affiliated, I say that this is part of the answer : It seems to me that we do not have to go as far, nor do we have to climb into places that seem quite as foreign to us” (Bergman, 36). This statement about the transition into being masculine as a Jewish person is interesting because it calls out the difficulties that could arise when making this transition in a different context. Bergman notes that trans men do not have to “climb into places that seem quite as foreign to us”, they do not necessarily have to, in his experience, acquire new comfort levels that did not exist before because there are certain things that are widely accepted for men to do, such as crying and being sweet to babies. This concept relates to another point from Fishman’s “Love, Marriage, and Jewish Families.” In the middle of her essay in the context of Haredi culture she states “men are generally depicted as “compliant helpers” to women, who are described as the “domestic managers.” Men choose to help in tasks that come naturally to women. Still men who help in the domestic sphere are praised. Women, in contrast, certainly should not “help out” the men in the study hall or in institutions of communal power, and when they do go to work this is depicted as dangerous” (Fishman, 298). Bergman’s note on how the spheres that a trans man has to step in being not foreign to them speaks to conversation Fishman is having because of how Fishman notes that men are often praised for inserting themselves into the domestic sphere. On the flip side a women who transitions to being a man can easily slip in and out of these sectors: the domestic, the private, and the public without criticism or confusion because it is already seen as a positive thing to take part in domestic behaviors such as being sweet to a baby. For a man that transitions into a women it could be argued to be harder using this same conversation as evidence. These individuals are forced solely by the societal structures in place and traditions to abandon certain sectors they easily flowed in, and to restrict themselves to some but not all.

Bergman throughout the essay attempts to illustrate a divide between femininity and masculinity, and comments on how within his family structure the divide was blurred because the females of the family were encouraged to do things the men did such as be argumentative and smart. These similarities made assimilation easier because the leap was smaller.  

References

Bergman, S. Bear. 2009. “Today I Am a Man (And Other Perorations of the Tranny Jewboy).” In The Nearest Exit May Be Behind You, 29-38. Arsenal Pulp Press.
Fishman, Sylvia Barack. 2015. “Love, Marriage, and Jewish Families.” In Love, Marriage, and Jewish Families: Paradoxes of a Social Revolution,” 287-306. Brandeis University Press.