BONUS: Oy with This Show Already!

Guest Writer Sabina Wex on Gilmore Girls and its Strange Relationship to Judaism

Welcome to another Gilmore Women bonus newsletter (for paid subscribers)! Thank you so much for your support of this newsletter — it means the world to us that we have found such a community here to give the careful attention to this show that we think it deserves.

Today, we have a guest essay from writer Sabina Wex, deconstructing the dissonance between Gilmore Girls’ lack of Jewish characters and the great debt it owes to Jewish humor and culture, and how, behind the patter, you can hear a girl asking what it means to be Jewish.

It’s a topic we were hoping someone would cover for us since we were first puzzled by Luke’s non-sequitur chuppah construction skills, and we’re so glad Sabina made it happen.

If you are getting this issue, you’re already a paid subscriber. But a Gilmore Women subscription also makes a delightful gift, circumvents supply-chain issues, and avoids putting additional cash into the coffers of the first corporation you thought about as soon as you read the word “corporation.” Pass this one on like the catchphrase Lorelai thinks she invented: “Oy with the poodles already!” — Maggie & Megan

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The very thing that makes Gilmore Girls so distinct — rapid-fire, pop culture reference-laden dialogue — is extraordinarily Jewish, and yet the characters are WASPs.

Oy with This Show Already! On Gilmore Girls’ Strange Relationship to Judaism

by Sabina Wex

For a Jewish woman who continues to love and re-watch Gilmore Girls, it’s always hard when anything Jewish comes up in the show. And for a show about two non-Jewish characters, it comes up a lot — so often and in such weird ways that my fellow Jews/Gilmore Girls-loving friends and I have always attributed “self-hating Jew vibes” to the show. 

I know it seems weird to do an annual watch-a-thon of a show I believe to be “self-hating” about my own culture/religion/ethnicity. (Being Jewish is like dating that guy in college who just “doesn’t like labels.”) But hey, isn’t that what this whole newsletter is about? Loving the show despite its problematic elements?

Let me explain.

The very thing that makes Gilmore Girls so distinct — rapid-fire, pop culture reference-laden dialogue — is extraordinarily Jewish. I know Jews don’t have a monopoly on fast and quippy language, but the Gilmore Girls cadence is a nod to the Borscht Belt Jewish comedy style. (If you watch The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, you know exactly what I mean.)