Is Mel Brooks Also Among the Prophets? - Mark Leuchter

Jewish tradition is a cornerstone of Mel Brooks’s films, in both explicit and implicit ways. An example of the latter is a moment in his 1974 film Blazing Saddles that uses the trope “the People of the Land” found throughout classical Jewish discourse and early rabbinic literature, with biblical origins. Brooks’s use of this trope has very strong points of contact with the prophetic literature of the Hebrew Bible, which also engages this language for humorous purposes. But the humor in the prophetic texts is deployed not for laughs but for shock value, presenting audiences with a radically different understanding of what “the People of the Land” had come to mean by their day. In a subtle way, Brooks’s use of the term does the same. So…is Mel Brooks also among the prophets?

Mark Leuchter is Professor of Hebrew Bible and Ancient Judaism and Director of Jewish Studies at Temple University in Philadelphia. His publications include An Empire Far And Wide: The Achaemenid Dynastic Myth and Jewish Scribes in the Late Persian Period (Oxford University Press, 2024) and The Levites and the Boundaries of Israelite Identity (Oxford University Press, 2017). He is one of the editors of the New Oxford Bible Commentary, an executive board member of the Canadian Society for Biblical Studies, and contributes regular op-eds to Religion Dispatches, Smerconish.com, and other public facing venues. His favorite band is Rush.

Tuesday, March 11, 2025 • 314 Royce Hall • 4PM
Is Mel Brooks Also Among the Prophets?
2024-2025 Etta and Milton Leve Scholar-in-Residence

Mark Leuchter (Temple University)
Moderator: William Schniedewind (UCLA)

Preceding the Lecture:
Memorial for Alan D. Leve

Event will also be live streamed via Zoom. To register for the live stream, go here