This weekend, America will say goodbye to the cultural phenomenon that is “Mad Men.” Over seven seasons, the series — which airs its last episode Sunday on AMC — traces the United States’ transition from the staid, tradition-bound Eisenhower years to the freewheeling exuberance and social upheaval of the 1960s.
It’s about the rise of meritocracy in the workplace and the decline of the WASP establishment. It’s about outsiders seeking a way in, grasping for a gauzy version of the American Dream while blotting out their grimy pasts.
In other words, it’s a story about the Jewish-American experience, even though creator Matthew Weiner insists that it has never been a Jewish show.
That may be true, but there are too many writerly winks and nudges, too many frissons of recognition, for the inclusion of Jews to be an afterthought. Like the scene from the first season in which department-store heiress Rachel Menken tells Don Draper that she would never consider living in Israel, but she’s glad the country exists. Or the time that Michael Ginsberg, the copywriter who was born in a concentration camp, receives a blessing, in Hebrew, from his father after telling him he got the job at the ad agency. (“Such a country!” you can imagine him thinking.)
For Jewish Americans who struggle with their identity — the viewers whose grandparents spoke Yiddish, whose parents lit candles on Shabbat but never joined a synagogue, who married non-Jewish spouses and haven’t been to Israel but send their kids to Hebrew school — the series spoke to them in a way that other TV programs haven’t. As it turns out, that was a deliberate choice on Weiner’s part. Weiner, who was raised in Los Angeles, wanted to tell a story about other-ness.
“Getting to say that about Jews was fresh — to me,” he says. “And it’s a part of my life. Having grown up in a community with restricted country clubs and a lot of sophisticated anti-Semitism, I felt proud that I got to actually say that. And a little bit defiant.”
Last week, Weiner talked about how he chose to portray New York Jewish life in the 1960s. The interview has been edited for clarity and brevity; read more at wapo.st/weiner.
Q: What were you trying to say about Jewish identity and how it changed?
A: Well, there is a fluidity to it. On the one hand, I’m saying it’s inescapable, you should be who you are. I’m saying that about Don, I’m saying that about everybody. On the other hand, I’m saying Roger’s wife, Jane Siegel, is Jewish, and it’s really inconsequential. And this is the guy who clearly has biases and belongs to restricted country clubs. But I love the idea that for her, it’s not a big deal. And for Rachel, it’s completely defining. It’s the separateness of how you see yourself, whether it’s inside you or you’re being reminded of it every day. And I think that there are moments of tolerance. I think that despite anti-Semitism, that the Israeli victories in the late ’60s were very inspiring to the American public. And those characters like Moshe Dayan were completely heroic. For being outnumbered, for being smarter, for winning against all odds.
Q: Two of the most poignant scenes in the entire series involved Michael Ginsberg. The one was when he was telling Peggy …
A: He’s a Martian.
Q: And he was born in a concentration camp. And then the second was when his father put his hands on his son’s shoulders and prayed aloud.
A: He blessed him. That is a traditional Friday night blessing of like, ‘You’re my kid.’ And it’s something you get at your bar mitzvah. The rabbi does it. It’s a priestly blessing for your kid.
Q: And to me, it said that they had just gone through the most abhorrent case of genocide, they were rebuilding their lives, and it was possible because the United States really felt like a place of opportunity. If you had smarts, and you worked hard, you could overcome this horrendous thing that had just ripped your existence away. And I wondered if that’s what you were trying to get at.
A: I think that’s definitely part of it. It’s also part of it that you can’t escape who you are. Ginsberg lies to Peggy and says he has no one to tell. He doesn’t have a family. And there’s his father, who is very proud of him, who’s trying to construct a family out of the disaster that happened. I feel like a lot of the characters are doing the same thing, where they’re kind of clinging to what looks like a normal experience. And I wanted it to be touching, because he’s giving him a fatherly expression of love, and the kid is completely not interested in it, and embarrassed by it, because he just wants to be a Yankee.
Q:Why was it so important for Michael Ginsberg, who basically went nuts, to be Jewish?
A: He’s a reflection of the movement to have Jews behind the scenes in the creative department. And then what kind of Jew he was, what kind of person he is, was just me trying to represent the kind of people that went into this field at that time. Most of the people who are in advertising are Ivy League people. Even in 1968. With big beards and Army jackets, whether they’re Jewish or not, they’re coming out of Columbia and Harvard and Dartmouth. I mean, so much of the story is about class, too. So he is cut from a certain kind of creative genius. I wanted him to be a little bit like Don, because I think it gives you unique skills for advertising, acknowledging that you’re an outsider, and using that outsider status to look at how people function and what they want.
Some of it involves not being part of the ruling class. And being a C student. Being someone who is not conventionally an achiever. So, he is cut from that cloth. And I also was really influenced by Art Spiegelman’s book “Maus.” Which I think is a masterpiece. I just found there was so much truth in the way that the son was trying to break away from the father, and the father’s kind of secret life, that he didn’t really want to share with his kid, and this pain that they’re hiding and the kind of coldness that goes along with being a survivor. It’s only been 20 years since the end of World War II. And people, like the soldiers who were in World War II, or Korea, or World War I, who saw all kinds of things, and a lot of the immigrants who came to the United States, they were expected to just fold themselves into society, and go get a job and eat hamburgers and buy a house and get married. So that was why it was fun to have someone like Ginsberg.
Q: Of all the Jewish characters in “Mad Men,” who’s your favorite?
A: I was very, very attached to Rachel. I was very proud of having a character on TV who is Jewish, and who says they’re Jewish, and not just has a Jewish last name and comes out in, like, Season 7 or something.
It was important for me that Jewish women in particular be represented in a slightly more positive light than they traditionally are. I felt that they got beat up on very easily. I wanted to make sure that there was an honest and non-disparaging representation.
I have two older sisters and I’m married to a Jewish woman. I really wanted to make sure that they were presented as something beautiful, not being sexually repressed, or cloying, or money hungry, or all of the other negative stereotypes. Because that’s not my experience. For Jane Siegel to come in, be this incredibly beautiful woman, incredibly middle class, and happens to be Jewish. But she’s not my generation. She’s definitely the generation before. She still knows some Yiddish, and she knows that she’s in a world of strangers sometimes.
Rachel is sort of going to be the closest to my heart. She reminded me of what I imagined the women of my parents’ generation were like. She felt related to me.
Q: Is “Mad Men” a Jewish show? Is the entire arc of this series a story about Jews?
A: No. No, it’d be great if I could say it was and take a victory lap for that. It’s not. It’s a story about the 20th century and about a certain group of people who are mostly white, what we could consider to be the population that entertainment has focused on the most, and then showing that it’s made up of all different kinds of people who are aspiring to fit that image. You aren’t what you were born as. There are certain things that have nothing to do with who you are or where you’re born. And the United States is extremely tolerant of people completely transforming themselves.
