When Harry Met Sally is 35 this week, the same age as both of the characters at the end of the film. Despite it being the best part of four decades since it came out, it has remained a defiant classic both as the archetypal romcom but also a quintessentially New York movie that isn’t just set there, it is there. It’s quirky and well-written and well-observed and very very funny. In other words, it’s very Jewish.
Ever since I first saw it a few years ago, I’ve only ever thought of it as a Jewish film. Think about it. Harry is neurotic and funny and slightly emotionally-autistic. He covets a glamorous blonde shiksa, who initially wants nothing to do with him. He kvetches and groans and makes weird noises and has millions of health issues that may or may not be in his head. He lives in Upper Manhattan and has the sort of job that his mother would be proud of, but no one else knows what it is. I’m sorry to any gentiles that want to claim him, but all of that is about as Jewish as you get.
But it’s not just Harry. Aside from Billy Crystal, Carrie Fisher is reminiscent of the millions of Jewish women sent begrudgingly on dates with Jewish men, who they dislike because they remind them of their dads and then never see again. It’s a tale as old as time and one that’s unfolding across the New York Jewish community to this day.
The backdrop to the story is quintessentially Jewish too and representative of the standard Jewish New Yorker - not kosher, eating at Katz’s (with Rob Reiner’s mum), taking long walks around the park - the only thing that’s changed in the last 35 years is that now everyone also likes sushi. One of the film’s most memorable scenes - when Harry is caught embarrassing himself in front of his ex-wife’s new partner “Ira” is so drenched in angsty Ashkenazi self-loathing, it may as well have been in the Tanakh.
And what then of Sally? Surely she of the blonde hair and the blonde boyfriend couldn’t possibly be Jewish. Well. Firstly she may have the trappings and aesthetics of a gentile, but she is fundamentally Jewish. Nora Ephron and Rob Reiner (both Jewish) are on record as modelling the two main characters after themselves and their friendship, but realising that the prevailing Hollywood sentiment at the time wouldn’t have allowed two Jews to dominate a mainstream film resolved to make Harry the gentile and Sally the Jew. But when casting the film, and presented with Billy Crystal and Meg Ryan, they flipped the characters to make it work. And while clearly most of Sally’s Jewish qualities have disappeared, her pedantry and indignation about minor inconveniences are such comedy gold they survived the de-judification.
But ultimately the most Jewish thing about the film is that it never actually says that it’s Jewish. Does a fish need to remark on the water that surrounds it, does a cloud need to tell you it’s in the sky? When something is so obvious, it sometimes doesn’t need to be pointed out - the clues are there for everyone to see. Judaism is not an evangelical religion, it is largely a closed shop. We’re not looking for recruits, so we cater to the in-crowd. And just like so many of our traditions, When Harry Met Sally is a case of if you know, you know.
