In Rose’s upcoming Edinburgh Fringe show “Our Hebrew Friend”, he unpacks the legacy of his famous great-grandfather, the American comedian Julian Rose, whose crass caricatures of Jewishness simultaneously catapulted him to stardom but made him a pariah among his own community.
Often publicised to early-20th century audiences as “Our Hebrew Friend”, the elder Rose performed an exaggerated version of Jewishness based on unflattering stereotypes; according to one JC reviewer of a London show in the 1930s, he “made Jews appear sordid, paltry cheats and low-down rascals without a redeeming characteristic”.
The elder Rose’s stage persona, most notably a character called Levinsky, would horrify contemporary audiences: the look featured a revolving inventory of fake noses, oversized shoes and hats, fake black beards, and bald caps, and the character’s disposition was just as unfavourable.
A signed poster depicting Julian Rose's caricature persona Levinsky. (Photo: David Rose)[Missing Credit]
But the act got him far, especially in the UK. Though American audiences lost the taste for his Jewish stereotyping in the 1920s, the elder Rose found eager audiences in London, where he made upwards of 100 appearances on BBC Radio and, yes, even performed for royalty.
“It's easy to cast judgement in the 21st century on the kind of act someone had back then, and it's definitely difficult to see some of the stuff he did,” says Rose. “But he was also dealing with a level of antisemitism that we, until recently, possibly have not been.”
Coming to terms with his great-grandfather's derogatory performance of Jewishness has been an ongoing task for the younger Rose, who’s still trying to define his own Jewish identity. As part of a 2020 ABC radio programme in which Rose delved into his great-grandfather's story, he discovered via DNA test that he’s just 15 per cent Jewish, a fraction that’s led him to question whether he’s entitled to feel Jewish at all.
“My grand-grandfather knew he was Jewish, obviously, and the problem he had was representing that on stage in a way that other people maybe found unpalatable,” Rose says. “His question was, ‘How do you be a Jew publicly?’ whereas my question is, ‘Can I be a Jew publicly?’”
The sign for a show by Julian Rose, "Great Hebrew Star", taken in the US in 1914. (Photo: David Rose)[Missing Credit]
It’s an issue Jews seem to debate ad nauseam: how Jewish is Jewish enough?
But Rose’s discovery of his family’s Jewish roots, however distant, brought certain aspects of his identity into sharper relief, something he’s begun to explore in his comedy.
“I felt like it answered a lot of questions about who I was, like, why am I so anxious? Why am I lactose intolerant?,” Rose says. ”But also, I love learning, I’m curious about the world - there are a lot of things that I feel are common to Jewish identity that sort of made sense. You can't help what you feel connected to, and it just resonates with me.”
Jewishness is also another way to feel close to the ancestor with whom he shares a love of comedy, no matter the differences in their contemporary senses of humour. Nothing collapses eras of history like antisemitism, and even though Rose is less Jewish than his great-grandfather was, he’s experienced his share of Jew-hate all the same.
"I think this is an interesting period in time to do [“Our Hebrew Friend”] because I personally have had a huge uptick in antisemitic behaviour from audience members,” Rose says. “But even before I knew that we had Jewish family, people were already saying that I was Jewish because I went to a very Jewish school and I was doing comedy. I mean, the level of outright antisemitic stuff people have said to me, both online and on stage, it's like, ‘well, I'm going to be painted with this brush either way.’”
Rose’s upcoming Fringe show, the idea for which has been “percolating for the last five years,” will be a landmark moment in a career that reads like a multi-generational prophecy come to pass. Though he’s woven stories about his great-grandfather into previous stand-up routines, this will be the first dedicated entirely to their parallel paths, and to exploring what it means to be a Jewish comedian.
“My great grandfather ended up in the UK, so I thought it would be fun to go back to where he ended up and do a show and talk about him,” Rose says. “I just thought it would be a fun way of concluding the story.”
‘Our Hebrew Friend’ is on at The Snug at Laughing Horse @ Bar 50 from August 12-17
