Miracle on 42nd Street it ain't (National Post, December 08, 2004)

Pre-emptive self-mockery has long been a Jewish specialty. This past weekend, I cracked up at an especially hilarious recent specimen: The Hebrew Hammer. Written and directed by 28-year-old California native Jonathan Kesselman, this self-described work of "Jewxploitation" pays homage to Philip Roth, Jackie Mason, Woody Allen, Eddie Murphy, Superman, Mel Brooks, South Park and assorted others. If you've had your fill of sugary Christmas-in-peril plots, rent this film -- it isn't in theatres -- and meet the Jew who saved Hanukkah.

The Hebrew Hammer is not for kids, unless you're resigned to the F-word as a bona fide mainstream adjective.

Along with an annoying overdose of toilet humour and Jewish mother cliches, there is a also a rather nasty assassination of Santa pere by his reindeer ("Et tu, Blixen?") orchestrated by Santa fils, Damien, the movie's gay, coke-snorting and gin-swilling villain.

Played by actor Adam Goldberg, the "Hammer" is Mordecai Jefferson Carver, a badass Orthodox Jew eking out a living as a private eye (or, as he describes himself, "certified circumcised dick"). The roots of his militancy lie in the mockery he bore as a child: A flashback takes us to a Christmas party at the St. Peter, Paul and Mary Elementary School. As Carver sits alone with his plastic dreidel, his brooding dark eyes rake the festive, gift-laden tree and his preppy blond classmates.

A community hero dressed in black, the adult Hammer is a cross between a Hasidic rabbi, P. Diddy and a spaghetti western-era Clint Eastwood. Earlocks flying, he frightens away anti-Semitic bullies, breathing courage into demoralized victims ("Stay Jewish, Shlomo!"). Though he drives a pimpish, Jewishly accessorized Cadillac, the Hammer remains devoted to "G-dash-D."

With the kindly, multicultural Santa murdered, his evil successor Damien launches a mission to eradicate Hanukkah, so Christmas will be stripped of competition. This throws the "Jewish Justice League" into panic. Although the league has shunned Mordecai as too radical in the past, they need him now. The lovely Esther is dispatched to seduce him into fighting Damien.

The Hammer is smitten. Soon, the pair are in each other's arms, and she is prodding him for spicy pillow talk. "You want I should talk dirty?" he responds. "I want to have lots of children with you ... a house in Long Island, fancy, but not fancy-shmancy ... our children to take music lessons ... go to Ivy League schools."

Such "fantasies" mine Jewish-American stereotypes, but they don't connote self-hatred. Just the opposite: They satirize the cherished Jewish ideal of prosperous, stable family life. (By contrast, its treatment of blacks pushes the envelope. Mordecai recruits his old friend -- "my main nigger" -- amiable Mohammed-Ali-Paula-Abdul-Rahim at the Kwanzaa Liberation Front headquarters, where the anachronistically afro'd Brothers and Sisters, armed to the teeth, chant Black Pantheresque anti-white slogans.)

Damien executes his plan to distribute "the most addictive pride-weakening product known to man" to children in Jewish communities: not heroin, but bootleg cassettes of Frank Capra's It's a Wonderful Life. Soon Jewish children are questioning their heritage and dragging Christmas trees home.

It all ends at the North Pole, where Mordecai uses "the ultimate Jewish weapon" -- don't ask -- to subdue Damien. "I saved Hanukkah!" he boasts at Shabbat dinner (at which a Chinese man mutely sits across the table. Listen carefully to discover why it's one of the best gags.). His mother is unimpressed, however. She'd have preferred him to be a banker. Hanukkah "isn't even a High Holiday," she reminds her son. "Let's be honest, Mordecai, it isn't as if you saved Yom Kippur or Passover," she adds, urging more food on the deflated hero.

To summarize, it's Jewish history in nine words: "They tried to kill us. We won. Let's eat." Enjoy, enjoy.

© National Post 2004