The Television Project: You Don’t Have to Be Jewish
Highlights from the National Jewish Archive of Broadcasting Examine Classic and Contemporary Advertising Beginning September 16, 2016

New York, NY – With the third installment of its ongoing exhibition series, the Jewish Museum will continue introducing visitors to a dynamic part of its collection: the National Jewish Archive of Broadcasting (NJAB). The Television Project: You Don’t Have to Be Jewish, on view from September 16, 2016 through February 12, 2017, explores commercials produced for Jewish audiences or with Jewish content, and examines the way religion, ethnicity, and identity play out on American television. This focused exhibition features a compilation of commercials and related clips, paired with print advertising campaigns, works of art, and related ephemera. A number of the commercials employ humor to attract a diverse customer base, and have become iconic examples of campaigns that are still referenced today.

Television commercials have been fertile ground for aesthetic invention, with sponsors and advertising agencies turning to modern art and graphic design for ideas. The “new advertising” revolution of the 1950s and 1960s brought innovative elements into the ad format, often characterized by humor, candor and irony. This resulted in one of the medium’s most creative periods in the United States. Commercials were also often on the front line of identity politics as well, targeting (and celebrating) various racial and ethnic demographic markets well before TV programming.

Commercials in the compilation include: three 1960s commercials  for Manischewitz wine, one from a series of ads featuring Sammy Davis, Jr. intended to sell the brand to a wider, non-Jewish market; a well-known ad for Hebrew National beef frankfurters featuring Uncle Sam, stressing high quality while affirming that as a kosher product “we answer to a higher authority;” a 1992 commercial promoting tourism to Israel which featured a jingle created by American singer Pat Boone; and ads for Waldbaum’s Supermarkets and JDate with clearly recognizable Jewish types.  The compilation also features a 1980 spoof ad for “Jewess Jeans” from Saturday Night Live featuring Gilda Radner, satirizing ads for Jordache Jeans; and clips from the acclaimed series Mad Men where the ad agency takes on fictional versions of the Manischewitz and Israel tourism accounts.

The exhibition will also include art and artifacts from the collection of the Jewish Museum relating to advertising and consumer culture, ranging from a photorealistic painting by artist Audrey Flack depicting a selection of pre-packaged foods including three boxes with the Manischewitz label, to an example of the well-known “You Don’t to Be Jewish to Love Levy’s” rye bread print ad and the widely used Maxwell House Hagaddah, created to spread the word to Jewish consumers that coffee is kosher for Passover.

The Television Project was originated by Maurice Berger.  The Television Project: You Don’t Have to Be Jewish was organized by Jaron Gandelman.

The National Jewish Archive of Broadcasting is the largest and most comprehensive body of broadcast materials on twentieth-century Jewish culture in the United States. The Jewish Museum established the archive in 1981 to collect, preserve, and exhibit television and radio programs related to the Jewish experience. The collection comprises more than four thousand radio and television recordings, dating from the 1930s to the early 2000s.The programs in the NJAB constitute an important record of how Jews have been portrayed and portray themselves from the 1930s to the present, and how mass media has addressed issues of diversity, ethnicity, and religion.

Support
The Television Project is made possible by The Knapp Family Foundation and the Blanche and Irving Laurie Foundation.