On Media / Pop Culcha

Jewish World Review July 27, 1999/ 14 Av, 5759


Elliot B. Gertel

Popular Providence sends troubling messages about religion and science




http://www.jewishworldreview.com -- WITHOUT A DOUBT, the most offbeat approach to a Jewish theme in a television series was found on NBC's Providence, and quite early on.

This show, described by TV Guide as "NBC's most successful dramatic debut since ER" tells of an L.A. plastic surgeon, Syd (Melina Kanakaredes), who returns to her home town of Providence, R.I., after her mother's death to find meaning in tending to her father and single-parent sister, and in working at a clinic. Syd finds guidance, by the way, in the spirit or ghost of her mother, an oracle for every family problem from romance to baby care.

Econophone In an episode written by Nell Scovell, a baby is brought to the clinic suffering from an inexplicable syndrome that includes an inability to suck in nourishment. Despite the father's obvious hostility to women doctors, compounded by Syd's troubles performing a certain procedure, she persists in trying to pinpoint the disease. She meets the baby's mother, who appreciates her concern, at the hospital chapel. The mother suggests that as a ruse to see the baby again, despite the father's objections, the doctor take a Bible that belonged to the baby's great-grandmother and say that she found it in the chapel and is returning it to the family. It is a good ruse which itself is almost biblical in flavor. Syd notices a Star of David on the Bible, and is thus alerted to the possibility of a Jewish genetic disease.

Barely in time to save the baby from an unnecessary surgery, Syd confronts the parents with her suspicions about the Jewish disease. The mother confesses that she was "raised Jewish" but converted to Catholicism after meeting her now husband, Doug. The problem is that the disease is inherited from both parents. Syd (who is not Jewish) asks Doug, whose last name is Kosowski, whether he could be descended from Ashkenazi Jews. Doug says that while he never knew his father's family, one could not "get more Catholic" than his mother's side, which included a grandmother who never missed a day of church and who was raised by nuns in Poland.

After Syd probes and discovers that the grandmother was raised by nuns in the 30s and 40s, she points out: "That's the time when a lot of Jewish children were raised outside the family for their own protection."

I found it curious that writer Scovell does not use the term, "Holocaust," here, just a code word, "for their own protection," which almost implies that the children chose to be raised by nuns out of prudence and for the best of reasons! Also, Syd is made to respond here that she does not doubt the beliefs of the couple's ancestors, "just their genetic makeup."

Actually, the writer means for Syd to say that the "genetic makeup" is not in doubt, for the doctor's next line is, "You can't escape your DNA."

What can we make of this scenario and of this sort of dialogue? Certainly, TV writers, whether Jewish by birth and by faith, or Jews by Choice, or even Jews who have converted to other religions (more commonly, Buddhism) will express a point of view about Jews, conversion, biology and DNA in television dramas. This is the first such occasion of which I am aware.

But what message comes across? One thinks of the old jibe, "You can change your noses but not your Moses." Does this hour declare, "You can change how you pray but not your DNA?"

And what does the reference to DNA mean? In growing schools of New Age attempts to blend religion and science, there is a new trend to speak of "blood memory and DNA carrying their own racial resonances to the sacred."

While the New Age line is still to respect and even to experiment with any and all religions so long as no one believes that any one faith holds absolute truth or demands exclusive loyalty, one hears more and more at "conferences" on "mysticism and science" either that interfaith marriage should be encouraged in order to blend "racial resonances" or discouraged in order to preserve them.

The dangers of reducing religious loyalty or the changing of religion to biological issues need not be spelled out here. What I found disturbing about this episode of Providence is that the writer saw no need to deal with the biblical concept of Covenant which alone puts the biological issues into perspective.

We were told of the wisdom of the Book of Job, and assured of the young mother's sincere faith in Catholicism, but given no insight into why Jews believe that loyalty to their people's Covenant with God is binding and eternal. If the writer had not brought the discussion to faith or doubt or belief resting with DNA, I might have accepted the ironics of the story line without delving into some of the vocabulary and catchwords used. At best, however, the episode is ambiguous and, therefore, lends itself to exploitation by syncretistic platitudes and trends of "thought" that are unfriendly both to Judaism and Catholicism.

Also, the obsession with what the Torah disapprovingly describes as "familiar spirits" is another troubling motif of this episode, as of the series as a whole, a motif that began, as I remember, with another NBC series, Sisters. If anything can groom a mass audience for New Age proselytizing, that can.

One further message of this particular episode of Providence should be mentioned. The science is wrong.

Leiters Sukkah At one point, Dr. Syd tells the young couple that the baby's disease is called Familial Dysautonomia (or Ryley-Day Syndrome), and that once detected, the disease is "fairly easily treated." Yet the truth is that this disease, which robs the eyes of tears, the person of the essential protective alarms of pain, spills liquids into the lungs, resulting in infections and pneumonias, which impairs the inner regulation of body temperature, bends the spinal chord, and destroys the taste buds, severely reduces the life-span of its victims.

I am grateful to the alert members of the Pomegranate Guild of Judaic Needlework, Chicago Chapter, who sent me a tape of the episode and who taught me about FD, and who are familiar with stories about the disease revealing hidden Jewish backgrounds in ways that hauntingly parallel the episode of Providence. Their hope is that the writers will not make light of the seriousness of the disease. I share that hope, and add my own that the series will no longer mix religion with DNA.


Contributing writer Elliot B. Gertel is JWR's resident media maven.

06/14/99: May 'The Nanny,' R.I.P. --- not!
06/07/99: Suddenly Susan's Death of a Rabbi
05/13/99: During the "sweeps," religion suffers

Up


©1999 Elliot Gertel