Page - 61 - in Entangled Entertainers - Jews and Popular Culture in Fin-de-Siècle Vienna

Jewish Volkssänger and Musical Performers in Vienna around 1900 | 61 We can draw a parallel between the Jewishness that Hirsch portrayed in his plays and the sense of Jewish identifi cation made evident by his actions. While religion was not a factor for Hirsch, we detect in his life and work a performative distinction between Jews and non-Jews. Although other Volkssänger had at least to some extent a similar conception of Jewish self-understanding, Hirsch provides us a clear and concrete example of this kind of Jewishness (see chapter 3). To echo what I discussed in chapter 1, Hirsch represents the Viennese Jews whose expe- riences and self-understanding cannot be understood in terms of acculturation. We clearly see the deemphasizing of religion in one of Hirsch’s plays, titled Wrestlers at the Kosher Restaurant. Th e focus of this play is a tavern that suff ers from a painful lack of patrons.81 Th e innkeepers, Zalma and Yentl, blame their kosher menu for their failing enterprise. Th ey complain that even Jews avoid their restaurant because they have all discovered a love for pork. To remedy the situation, they decide to attract customers by off ering entertainment and have a kind of vaudeville act in mind. However, they fi nd themselves incapable of mak- ing any concrete steps to implement their new business model. Zalma and Yentl’s marriage appears to be in shambles, and Yentl regrets hav- ing married him. Th eir daughter Malvina’s plans for the future are closely tied to the fate of the restaurant. Moritz, the waiter who works there, wants to marry Malvina, but Zalma is against it because Moritz does not earn enough money to support a family. Moritz suggests that they organize a wrestling match at the tav- ern. He argues that this attraction will lead to an infl ux of customers, thereby in- creasing profi t. But before that, Moritz wants Zalma’s promise that he can marry his daughter. Zalma agrees to the proposition and even puts their agreement in writing. In what follows, they announce the wrestling match with great fanfare, and patrons do indeed show up. Th e problem is that the customers immediately leave because the restaurant doesn’t serve pork. Moritz’s suggestion to organize the wrestling match reveals itself as a way of deceiving the family into allowing him to marry Malvina. Instead of inviting famous wrestlers, Moritz and another waiter who works at the restaurant enter the ring. Wrestlers at the Kosher Restaurant critiques boundaries between Jews and non- Jews based on the observance of religious dietary laws. As the play illustrates it, they not only alienate Jews from non-Jews but also Jews from fellow Jews, as the absence of Jewish patrons at the restaurant underscores. A tavern restaurant off ering a wide array of entertainment options—essentially an emblematic space for Jewish–non-Jewish interactions—drives off its customers in complying with a religious commandment. We might interpret the play’s representation of di- etary laws as an admonition that religion has no place in popular culture, that is, the realm of Volkssänger. Th e religious dimension of Jewishness, which does not appear in the overwhelming majority of Volkssänger plays, is thematized in Wres- tlers at the Kosher Restaurant, only to be rejected. A religious outlook is depicted as obsolete and detrimental to everyday life. On the other hand, the play off ers This open access edition has been made available under a CC BY 4.0 license thanks to the support of Knowledge Unlatched.