Triskaidekaphobia stock photo. Source: iStock by Getty Images

What’s in a Number?

Thirteen in American History

09.13.19

The 13th of any month is more likely to occur on a Friday than any other day of the week and it’s happened as many as three times in a single calendar year. So, why is it considered bad luck? In this episode, Joanne, Nathan and Brian explore stories of superstition and the surprising roles the number 13 has played across American history.

superstition

Open Episode Transcript as PDF

Segments

A Bad Rap

Atlas Obscura writer Cara Giamo has the story of a 19th century club that set out to buck superstition with elaborate dinner parties.

Music:

Pigalle by Jahzzar
Jardins du Luxembourg by Jahzzar
Kingbeat 9 by Podington Bear

dinner parties; superstition

00:00:00 / 00:00:00

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Joanne: Major funding for Backstory is provided by an anonymous donor, The National Endowment for the Humanities, the University of Virginia, The Joseph and Robert Cornell Memorial Foundation.

Brian: From Virginia Humanities, this is Backstory.

Joanne Freeman: Welcome to Backstory, the show that explains the history behind today’s headlines. I’m Joanne Freeman.

Brian Balogh: I’m Brian Balogh.

Nathan Connolly: And I’m Nathan Connolly. Each week, Joanne, Brian, our colleague, Ed Ayers, and I, all historians, take a topic from the news and try to see how we got here.

Joanne Freeman: Well guys, I hope you’re hungry because if we’re going to start today’s show with dinner. And this is no ordinary meal because we’re in New York City and it’s 1881. We have fancy hors d’oeuvres. We have fine wines and the main course, the [foreign 00:01:03] is a rich lobster salad. And get this, it’s molded into the shape of a coffin.

Cara Giamo: And there are exactly 13 crawfish around each coffin lobster salad.

Brian Balogh: Sounds like a dinner to die for.

Nathan Connolly: Oh gosh.

Joanne Freeman: Cara Giamo is a writer for Atlas Obscura. She says the 13 crawfish on each plate had special significance. As significant as the 13 men who tucked into their coffin lobster salad and crawfish that night.

Cara Giamo: And then there are 13 candles and there’s a big banner and in red letters it reads, [foreign 00:01:41], which is Latin for, “We who are about to die salute you.” This was the first ever meeting of the 13 Club.

Nathan Connolly: That sounds auspicious. The 13 Club, what the heck is that?

Joanne Freeman: Well, it was a social club devoted to mocking superstitions, and not surprisingly given the name, especially those around the number 13.

Cara Giamo: The specific superstition at the time was that if 13 people sit down to dine together, one of them is going to die within a year. And this was based partially, I think, on the story of the last supper in which Jesus and his 12 disciples have dinner and then he dies soon after.

Joanne Freeman: The 13 Club was founded by a New Yorker named William Fowler, who was a very sociable kind of a guy. He owned a bar. He was always out with his friends and he loved New York social clubs. These were extremely popular in the late 19th century. Men gathered at the city social clubs to eat and drink and hang out with friends or to be with people who shared their interests in things like photography or politics. Fowler, appropriately enough, belonged to 13 different social clubs. He was particularly fond of the number 13 because he felt that it had been a good luck charm for him.

Cara Giamo: He went to Public School 13 in Manhattan. He was a builder briefly and he worked on 13 different buildings. He had survived 13 civil war battles when he was in the Union Army. He thought the number was getting a bad rap.

Joanne Freeman: Turns out plenty of New Yorkers agreed. Hundreds of people showed up for the club’s 13 course dinners. Members dine under ladders and sat at tables covered in spilled salt and opened umbrellas. The 13 Club even spawned various sub-clubs like the 13 cycle Club. That one was for bike enthusiasts who were also against superstition. Now the 13 Club actually caught on outside of New York.

Cara Giamo: So there was a branch in Chicago, there was a branch in Paris, there was a branch in London. A special women’s only branch opened in Iowa, and there was an announcement of the women’s only branch that said, “This seems a bolder move than the famous men’s 13 Club, women being usually much more superstitious than their brothers.”

Joanne Freeman: Oh please.

Brian Balogh: So it’s clearly an idea that speaks to all kinds of people across America. Joanne, what is the appeal of these clubs?

Joanne Freeman: In the late 19th century, superstition was losing its grip on American culture. It was an era of statistics and experts, but Giamo says the 13 Clubs were popular for another reason. They were fun.

Cara Giamo: Any endeavor that is so committed to its joke, it survived for years and years and got hundreds of people in on it. It must’ve just been a really good and unique time.

Joanne Freeman: 13 Clubs remained popular until the early 20th century. Giamo says that by the 1920s, the only mention you’ll really see of them is in member’s obituaries. But even though they’re long gone, the 13 Clubs may have had a lasting impact in at least one respect. Members fought against all kinds of superstition, not just fears around the number 13. Another one of their pet causes was Friday, which had long been thought to be an unlucky day of the week.

Cara Giamo: One BBC reporter recently was trying to figure out the origins of Friday the 13th as a bad luck day, and he traced it back to the 13 Club. His theory is that before the 13 Club, nobody associated Friday and 13 together, but since they were trying to rehabilitate the reputation of 13 and of Friday, they would do things like have an extra special dinner on Friday the 13th and he thinks that they actually accidentally kind of made this chimerical bad luck monster that exists to this day.

Rogue Island

Rhode Island historian Patrick Conley explains how Rhode Island became our thirteenth state…by refusing to ratify the Constitution for nearly three years.

Music:

Collapsing Slow-Mo By Podington Bear

Last Dance by Jahzzar

waxing waning by Ketsa

Rhode Island; ratification of the U.S. constitution

00:00:00 / 00:00:00

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Joanne Freeman: There’s even a word for that bad luck monster, that fear of Friday the 13th, [Frigga Triskaidekaphobia 00:05:52].

Brian Balogh: Frigga Triskaidekaphobia. You say that, Nathan.

Nathan Connolly: Frigga Triskaidekaphobia.

Joanne Freeman: Yeah, I knew he was just going to whiz right through that.

Brian Balogh: Yeah. So disappointing.

Nathan Connolly: So today on the show, we’ll have some fun of our own with Friday the 13th. We have an assortment of stories connected to the number 13, from Bar Mitzvahs to the invention of the PG 13 movie rating, and the missing 13th floor in so many Manhattan high rises.

Joanne Freeman: But first it turns out that the number 13 had a special importance in early American history. Just look at our flag with its 13 stripes. Those stripes represent the 13 colonies that rebelled against Britain and became our first 13 states. But here’s the thing. For a few years it looked like the new United States might only have 12 states. That 13th state wanted to go its own way.

Brian Balogh: You mean they were going to have to Redo all those flags, Joanne?

Joanne Freeman: Such expense. In 1787, delegates from across the country gathered in Philadelphia to revise their plan of government and ended up writing the Constitution.

Nathan Connolly: I remember this from my history textbook, people in that room, each state sending delegates.

Brian Balogh: Yeah, Philadelphia. It’s a good time.

Joanne Freeman: Right, but 12 states sent representatives. The 13th state refused, much to the annoyance of those who did attend. Now, does anyone want to guess what state was the spoil sport state?

Brian Balogh: I’m pretty sure it wasn’t Hawaii.

Joanne Freeman: It was not Hawaii.

Nathan Connolly: Georgia.

Joanne Freeman: Not Georgia, definitely not Alaska. Come on. Try again.

Brian Balogh: Rhode Island.

Joanne Freeman: You got it. Or as it was known in the 1780s by some, Rogue Island. Patrick Conley, historian laureate of Rhode Island, since the founding fathers could barely contain their contempt.

Patrick Conley: James Madison, for example, blasted Rhode Island. A wicked little state he called it. All sense of honor has been obliterated there.

Joanne Freeman: Even as a colony, Rhode Island had earned a reputation as being, shall we say, independent-minded. It was especially militant in guaranteeing the separation of church and state in its charter, and Rhode Islanders were particularly democratic. Even under British rule, they managed to elect their own governor, legislature and other officials.

Brian Balogh: Pesky.

Joanne Freeman: Definitely pesky. And not like in many other states. And as the revolution approached, Rhode Islanders were more than ready to fight.

Patrick Conley: Rhode Island actually was in the vanguard of the movement towards independence, probably the first major act of defiance against the crown. We burned a British custom ship to the water line and a shot the commander in the groin in June of 1772, about a year and a half before the Boston Tea Party. But unfortunately, Rhode Island doesn’t have very good publicists, and we’re guilty sometimes in Rhode Island of hyperbole, but here in Rhode Island we sometimes call it the first a blow for freedom.

Nathan Connolly: So clearly there proudly democratic and were the first in line to fight in the American Revolution. So I’m confused. Why would they refuse to send delegates to the Constitutional Convention?

Joanne Freeman: Well, good question, Nathan.

Patrick Conley: Rhode Island was called a downright democracy in a pejorative way, and did not want to surrender sovereignty to a remote and what might be an impersonal central government.

Joanne Freeman: And things went downhill from there. When the Constitution was sent out to be ratified, Rhode Island put it up to a popular vote.

Patrick Conley: The final vote on the constitution was 2,714 against ratification, 238 in favor. So Rhode Island rejected the Constitution in a popular referendum by a vote of about 11 to 1.

Nathan Connolly: Oh, that democracy is troublesome.

Joanne Freeman: And this is actually where the story gets really interesting because Rhode Island held out against signing the Constitution for nearly three years. By the end of 1789, it was the only state that hadn’t ratified. Patrick Conley says Rhode Islanders had multiple objections to the Constitution.

Patrick Conley: Number one, it did not contain a Bill of Rights. In Rhode Island, religious liberty, very, very much rights-oriented, very much of an independent spirit. We can’t ratify this document. We’re creating a stronger central government without any specific protections for individual liberty. Also, the Constitution, in three different places, compromised with slavery. The Three-Fifths Compromise, Fugitive Slave Clause, and the moratorium on legislation banning the foreign slave trade for 20 years. And the Rhode Island Quakers had assumed a great deal of influence in Rhode Island politics at that time. They were the abolitionists of the late 18th century, and so they regarded the Constitution as a compromise with the slave power and the very influential Quaker community opposed it for that purpose.

Joanne Freeman: Here’s my next question then. What is then the reaction of the other states when they discover that Rhode Island has refused to ratify the Constitution?

Patrick Conley: Well, they’re very, very hostile, let’s put it that way. We were referred to as Rogues Island, the home of the dishonest debtor. Another group called Rhode Island the quintessential example of villainy. The most eloquent censure came from neighboring Connecticut in the form of a poem called The Anarchiad, penned by a group of literati who styled themselves The Connecticut Wits. “Hail realm of rogues, renowned for fraud and guile, all hail ye knav’ries of yon little isle. The wiser race, the snares of a war to shun, like a lot from Sodom from Rhode Island run.” So on those days, political critics a played real hardball.

Joanne Freeman: So how did Rhode Island respond to all of these nasty epithets being tossed around?

Patrick Conley: Well, the more, the more the outsiders criticized them, I guess the more some hardened against ratification. So basically, the name calling promoted, they use the term, a contemporary term, resistance.

Joanne Freeman: So there is this fight going on, there’s the epithets being tossed around. There’s Rhode Island that feels even more opposed given all of the insults. So how do we get to a point that Rhode Island actually does ratify? When did they ratify it and how do they get there?

Patrick Conley: Well, they get there because they’re alone and in the meantime, the government had organized, and George Washington was inaugurated on April 30th of 1789. And I wrote an essay once in one of my books, and it was called the Republic of Rhode Island, because for all intents and purposes, Rhode Island was at that time, an independent state, independent country really. So the founding fathers, so enraged at this, started to exert economic and political pressure on Rhode Island, threatening to put tariffs on goods that came from Rhode Island into the other states and demanding that Rhode Island pay the balance on its Revolutionary War debt and making other threats and pressure.

Joanne Freeman: Okay. Well, I’m actually very curious about this. So I have heard a story that early in his presidency, George Washington made a northern tour to sort of show himself as new President of the United States and that he didn’t go to Rhode Island because at that point Rhode Island was not part of the United States. Did that happen?

Patrick Conley: Yes, that happened. He went to Connecticut and then went up before he got as far east as Rhode Island, he turned a northward up into Massachusetts and he snubbed Rhode Island. And Rhode Island smarted that snub. And of course the fact that Washington was the president, it helped to break down a little bit of the opposition to the Constitution. Some Rhode Islanders said, “Well, if this system can produce a great hero and a great patriot like George Washington, then maybe it’s not quite as bad as we as we feel it could be.”
But above and beyond that, the federalists in Rhode Island were getting fed up and so you have internal pressure and pressure from Congress, and the combined pressures forced Rhode Island to take a vote on May the 29th of 1790. Benjamin Bourne of Providence and Bristol made the motion to ratify at 5:20 PM. Ironically, it was in the second Baptist Church because the State House in Newport couldn’t handle the crowd. So for all the separation of church and state, we ratified the Constitution by a vote of 34 to 32, the narrowest of any state, in a Baptist meeting house.

Joanne Freeman: Wow. So Rhode Island finally becomes our 13th state, if only by a narrow margin, and some of its criticisms of the Constitution did get addressed. Like for example, the Bill of Rights, which helps protect religious liberties. But some other objections, like the protection of slavery, didn’t get addressed. So in the end, do you think it was worth it for Rhode Island to put up that fight?

Patrick Conley: You know, you can lambaste them for their position, but there’s a very, very strong spirit of foot in America today, individuals that want to take power away and out of Washington, or as some call it the swamp, and return it to the states. There’s an overriding concern for individual rights and individual liberties and freedom of expression and freedom of religion. And of course the issue of slavery, certainly no one would defend that today. So Rhode Island’s position opposing those provisions in the Constitution were commendable. So some people from Rhode Island say that we should ask not why it took Rhode Island so long to join the union, but why it took the union so long to join Rhode Island.

Joanne Freeman: Well put.

Nathan Connolly: Patrick Conley is historian laureate of Rhode Island. We also heard from Cara Giaimo, a writer from Atlas Obscura.

The Thirteenth Rail

In the 1870s, a prominent Boston synagogue stopped holding bar mitzvah ceremonies for thirteen-year-old boys. Brian and historian Meaghan Dwyer-Ryan explore the reasons behind the decision — and why decades later, the ceremonies started again.

Music:

Little Strut Surprise by Podington Bear

Little Chance by Jahzzar

Pong Delight by Podington Bear

Ducky by Podington Bear

Boston; Massachusetts; celebrations; judaism; tradition

00:00:00 / 00:00:00

View Transcript

Brian: Joanne, you got us into this, but it seems to me like if anybody had bad luck it was the United States of America. I mean, what Rhode Island was saying was, we shouldn’t have slavery, we should have a bill of rights. What’s wrong with that?

Joanne Freeman: Well, it’s not so much that something’s wrong with not wanting slavery and wanting a bill of rights. I think it’s just the, at least in the time period, it has more to do with the way that they went about saying that.
You’re right, that to some degree you could say, well Rhode Island did the “American thing” by saying, “We protest. We don’t wanna do this. We’re holding back.” But the other states also wanted a bill of rights. They just basically agreed to ratify the Constitution with the promise that a bill of rights would be attached later. So some of this has to do with process.

Brian: So I’m developing a theory here about superstition and 13. It seems to me like a lot of the people who get tagged with this 13 thing, they’re kind of iconoclasts. They’re kind of pushing against the grain. Certainly that 13 Club in New York, they were laughing at the notions of superstition, and Rhode Island gets tagged as “Rogue Island, the 13th state”, because they wanna do the right thing, basically.

Nathan Connolly: Yeah, but in both of those cases I mean, look. So the 13 white male voters in Rhode Island who wanna hold out, right? They can do that, and they can do it on very high-minded principles. Or the folks in these elite clubs in New York City can laugh at those folks, who frankly aren’t on hard times and having bad luck.
So that there’s a lot you can do from a vantage point-

Brian: Who aren’t earning $13 a month.

Nathan Connolly: 13 cents a month, exactly right.

Joanne Freeman: And also, to back us from the number 13 for a second, the fact of the matter is Rhode Island and Connecticut were both kind of, slightly wacko states because they were formed as colonies by dissenters who left Massachusetts. So they started out as colonies full of people who had attitude, basically.

Nathan Connolly: Contrarians, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Brian: Exactly.

Nathan Connolly: It’s certainly true that democracy was troublesome in this case too. Rhode Island is going to continue to be a place that asks for sovereignty, that expects a kind of participation in democracy. That wouldn’t be the case in a place like Georgia or Virginia, or they have to come up with all manner of really creative counting schemes relative to slaves. So the fact you don’t have slaves means you can argue for a democracy in a way that other states might find threatening.
So in that sense too, I think the allure of democracy for Rhode Island is far less of a danger than other states might consider.

Joanne Freeman: You know, it’s also worth saying that dissent is less effective when you’re little in number or you’re small. And Rhode Island is a little tiny state. Now that said, I think it’s worth saying is, well, that dissent is an American tradition and it doesn’t matter if you’re big or small, dissent was pretty much gonna go on in this period and forever after.

Brian: I vehemently disagree Joanne.
Every religious Jewish boy knows what the number 13 means. It’s when they become a man. Historian Meaghan Dwyer-Ryan says bar mitzvah literally means “son of the commandment” in Hebrew.

Meaghan D.: For boys, once they reach that age of maturity, it was time for them to become an adult and to become a fully participating member of the faith.

Brian: The main event at a bar mitzvah or a bat mitzvah, the ceremony for 13 year old girls, is a reading from the Torah, which by the way is sung, not read. Oh, and did I mention, it’s gotta be done in Hebrew?

Nathan Connolly: Now, I know you Brian. You’ve got a line or two rattling around upstairs still. Give us a taste.

Brian: I know you Nathan. You always hit my sore spots and this is one of them. This is something I brought up with our guest.

Joanne Freeman: Okay, this I gotta hear.

Brian: I went to Hebrew school three times a week for at least three years, maybe four. And the only word of Hebrew I know is shalom. Do kids actually learn Hebrew now, when they go to Hebrew school?

Meaghan D.: You know, that’s a great question. I think some do, but I think most are just, they learn the bare minimum, just to get through the bar mitzvah ceremony and then they kinda forget it.

Brian: So what’s up with that? I mean, right? How can we be sending generations of kids to thousands of hours of Hebrew school and the only word that all of us know is shalom?

Joanne Freeman: Dwyer-Ryan worked as an archivist for nearly a decade at a historic Boston synagogue called Temple Israel. It’s the largest Reform congregation in New England. It was founded in 1854 by German-speaking Jews.

Brian: And listening to Dwyer-Ryan describe religious education for Jewish kids in the mid-19th century, I realized that I actually got off pretty easy.

Meaghan D.: Boys would have bar mitzvah training in the home of the [foreign language 00:23:06] at the time, or the reader. And both boys and girls attended religious school classes at the synagogue itself, about three days a week. They learned everything, from Hebrew and scripture, Jewish history, and various other kinds of topics and they learned those topics both in German and in English.

Brian: The congregants at Temple Israel worried that their American born kids would resent and even reject these old-world traditions. They were even more afraid that kids would reject Judaism altogether.
So, like other Reform synagogues in the US, they decided to Americanize some of their religious practices. They had sermons in English. They installed an organ. Gasp. Created a choir, and let men and women sit side by side rather than in separate sections.
In 1874, Temple Israel hired a rabbi named Solomon Schindler who made even more changes.

Meaghan D.: And one of those measures was the discontinuation of bar mitzvah for boys and instead-

Brian: Hold on. I thought that bar mitzvah was such a big deal. How could he … Isn’t that touching the 13th rail?

Meaghan D.: It is for many Jews at the time. It was a very controversial issue and in fact the board of trustees was not too happy with Schindler when he made this executive decision to discontinue bar mitzvah. But they went along with it. They voiced their objections and then just said, “Okay, well, go on. Continue.” So it’s not that-

Brian: So wait, wait. Meaghan, Meaghan.

Meaghan D.: Yes.

Brian: Who was the first kid that got denied a bar mitzvah?

Meaghan D.: I’m not sure, really. What they did instead was they adopted a confirmation service.

Brian: I see.

Meaghan D.: And this was a practice that was open to both boys and girls. And it was in line with other Reform measures at the time. Many Jews decided that the way to Americanize was to adopt some, I guess you could call them Protestant kind of practices, and confirmation was one of those practices.

Brian: And I just have to ask a little bit about this confirmation because I was bar mitzvahed and I had to do the Haftorah and it was really hard to learn how to chant that passage from the Torah in Hebrew with all of those very seriously observing Jewish people around me.
Was there anything like that in the confirmation? I just wanna make sure that these kids weren’t getting off easy.

Meaghan D.: Yeah, to disappoint you, yes they were getting off easy.

Brian: Ah, you see?

Meaghan D.: Particularly in the late 19th and early 20th century. One of the reasons why the congregation adopted confirmation was that they realized fewer students, fewer children were learning Hebrew. It wasn’t considered as important, particularly for Reform Jews. In fact, in the classical Reform period which had its height, again, late 19th, early 20th century, many other branches of Judaism considered Reform Jews to be Jews in name only.
And Temple Israel kinda of adopted some of those practices that were questionable to say the least, such as having services on Sundays as opposed to Saturdays.

Brian: Yes, that’s sounds somewhat questionable. So when did they get back to doing bar mitzvahs and why did that come about?

Meaghan D.: In many ways, they were among the wealthiest Jews in the city, the most Americanized Jews. They were the leaders in many ways. They were the German-Jewish synagogue. But into the ’20s, ’30s, and into the ’40s the membership was changing slightly. You had Jews of Eastern European descent and more traditional backgrounds joining the synagogue.
And in fact, one of the things that made Temple Israel change back, sort of the pendulum swinging back the other way, was the hiring of Rabbi Joshua Loth Liebman. And so he brought back a lot of traditions that were considered more conservative in nature. Things like having a Friday evening Shabbat service. He got rid of the Sunday service. Having candles at services and bringing back the bar mitzvah.
In 1941 bar mitzvah was again celebrated at Temple Israel. And he also, the previous year, made it mandatory for all students to learn Hebrew again, so those practices were back. And again, it was in keeping with trends in Reform Judaism. What was interesting too was they continued to perform the confirmation service. They saw it as bar mitzvah would happen at age 13, kids would keep going to school, it was a way to keep them going, to learn more about their faith, and then at age 16 they would have their confirmation service.

Brian: Now, this is a period, if I understand correctly, that girls started having bat mitzvahs in greater numbers. How does that square with the Rabbi’s emphasis on tradition? Or was it not the case at Temple Israel?

Meaghan D.: Temple Israel is actually fairly late in adopting the bat mitzvah ceremony. The first bat mitzvah didn’t happen until 1956 and there were three that year, whereas the first bat mitzvah in the United States occurred in 1922. So for Temple Israel-

Brian: So quite a lag time.

Meaghan D.: … And by that point, it was just seen as time. It wasn’t necessarily that it was controversial by that point. Girls just, they started doing it and there really wasn’t that much controversy by that point.

Brian: I’m guessing the 13 year olds and adults have a very different definition of what it means to be 13.

Meaghan D.: Very much so. Yeah, for kids I think they go throughout their religious education preparing for and thinking about the bar/bat mitzvah and thinking, “Oh great. Now I’m done.” But for the rabbis, for the religious educators, they’re thinking, “Nope, nope. This is just the beginning.”

Brian: So bar mitzvah, at least today, is less about becoming an adult and more about marking a very important transition.

Meaghan D.: Yes, I’d say so. Yeah, it’s certainly, I don’t think anybody would call a 13 year old an adult.

Brian: They would.

Meaghan D.: They would, yes they would. But yeah, and I think these are kids and for them I think it’s an important milestone, but it also means a really great party.

Brian: Meaghan, I have to tell you that when I was bar mitzvahed, for a boy, the pen and pencil set was very much the thing. What is the quintessential bar or bat mitzvah gift these days?

Meaghan D.: I’d have to say money, at this point.

Brian: Always in style. I’m sure they rush out and buy a pen and pencil set.

Meaghan D.: Oh, of course, yes. Or maybe a computer or an iPad.

Nathan Connolly: Megan Dwyer-Ryan is co-author with Susan Porter and Lisa Fagin Davis of “Becoming American Jews: Temple Israel of Boston”.

Parental Guidance Suggested

Film historian Jon Lewis tells Brian about the genius marketing move that gave us movie ratings from G to PG-13 to R.

Music:

Molasses by Podington Bear

Mr Trumpet by Ketsa

film; marketing; parenting

00:00:00 / 00:00:00

View Transcript

Joanne Freeman: You know, Nathan, Brian, it’s really interesting to me that in that last piece, I learned something that I feel kinda goofy for not knowing, I will confess. So, I had a bat mitzvah, I knew what that was all about, but then I stayed and I went on and was confirmed.

Brian: You stayed?

Joanne Freeman: I know, I’m a nut. I stayed.

Brian: I always wondered about those kids that stayed. That was like-

Joanne Freeman: Yeah, I was one of those kids.

Brian: … the jailbreak once you were done with your bat mitzvah or bar mitzvah. Did you not get the memo?

Joanne Freeman: I was that kid, and I was the one who stayed. No, I enjoyed the whole process of learning and I just, I guess, I didn’t have much of a background in Judaism before that point, so I think I was kinda soaking in all of this information, so I stuck around. But I never understood why it was called confirmation. It always felt to me like something that should happen at a church. And in a sense, that last piece basically said, “Yeah.”

Brian: That’s exactly right.

Nathan Connolly: I had a confirmation as a Catholic and basically you already have the big milestone when you have Holy Communion when you’re much younger. So you get to have the Eucharist and the sacramental wine, and that’s always the big deal. Can I participate in the procession. The confirmation was just kind of like, “Okay, now I have more obligations. I have to show up and lector on Sunday as opposed to just being an altar boy.”
So for me, as I’m sure for a lot of folks, getting confirmed at 13 is not nearly as significant as getting your drivers license at 16 or being allowed to vote when you’re 18, and certainly not being allowed to drink alcohol when you’re 21. So, it gets lost in the sea of other milestone in adolescence.

Brian: So maybe that’s because there’s not a specific number, like 13 for instance, associated with it.

Nathan Connolly: Probably. I think it’s certainly some of it. I actually remember being more excited about being PG-13 legal than having the confirmation.

Joanne Freeman: I think that the same holds true for my confirmation, right? There’s no number associated with it but bat mitzvah and bar mitzvah are these really meaningful moments when it’s a big deal. Certainly my parents, actually my parents never went to synagogue until I was 12 and then suddenly it was like … “Oh my gosh. We gotta go to temple.”

Brian: Better get moving.

Joanne Freeman: “She’s gotta have a bat mitzvah.” Yeah.
And I have to share with you guys, particularly Brian because of your confession about only knowing the word shalom, which I think is probably true for any Jew who went through that training.

Brian: It is a two syllable word. I just wanna point out.

Joanne Freeman: I have several syllables, and I’ve never had a reason to do this, to actually offer the world my Hebrew sentence.

Brian: Hit us with it.

Joanne Freeman: I have a whole sentence.

Brian: Hit us with it Joanne.

Joanne Freeman: Okay, here it is. [foreign language 00:34:02], which means-

Joanne Freeman: [foreign language 00:34:01] which means “I like to hang out in cafes on Saturday nights.” That literally … I took conversational Hebrew, and that is the only sentence I remember.

Brian: And just to be clear, that’s actually a bad thing, right? To be hanging out on the Sabbath, or no?

Joanne Freeman: Well, no. Saturday night’s okay. Friday night, not so good.

Brian: Okay, got it.

John Lewis: At age 13, Nathan. It’s a bad thing.

Joanne Freeman: That’s true.
Due to strong language, and simulated teen partying, the following segment has been rated PG-13.

John Lewis: Did you let Nathan party again?
You might ask “Why 13?” And I’ll tell you, it’s arbitrary.

Brian: This is film historian John Lewis. We asked him about the origins of PG-13, and why 13 year olds are considered mature enough to see edgy content.

John Lewis: Why it became PG-13 is anybody’s guess. I guess it’s sort of halfway between 10 and 16. It’s also maybe it’s like bar mitzvah age. I really don’t know.

Brian: Lewis says Hollywood studios introduced the PG-13 movie rating for a very specific reason: To boost the bottom line.

John Lewis: Before 1968, you have a very strict production code written by a Jesuit priest in 1930 named Father Daniel Lord. I mean, you couldn’t invent a name like that.

Brian: Good name.

John Lewis: Yeah, yeah. And it was explicit, what you could and couldn’t do.

Brian: You couldn’t show a criminal beating a cop, or unmarried couples in bed, for example.

Nathan Connolly: But by the 1960s, young people were bored by the bland, buttoned down offerings of Hollywood studios.

John Lewis: So cinema is struggling, and then you’ve got these foreign imports coming in, and you have a generation of very well educated young people in America who are anxiously talking about the next Truffaut or [Gadar 00:36:16] film, and aren’t the slightest bit interested in seeing a studio movie.

Nathan Connolly: Hollywood needed to find a way to attract those young people without alienating more conservative audience members. Lewis says this tension was apparent in the 1966 movie adaptation of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf.

John Lewis: The content of the film was …

Brian: Intense.

John Lewis: It’s intense, and it’s also not suitable, and it’s not even interesting to anyone under 18. There are a couple of quotes … There’s a line in the play “Hump the hostess,” and then the word “screw” is used not in a carpenter’s context.

Nathan Connolly: In other words, for that time, pretty racy stuff.

Joanne Freeman: But Jack Valenti, the new president of the Motion Picture Association of America, figured out how to get Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf into theaters.

John Lewis: Part of the compromise was the first implementation of an M-rating, and the film was a box office success despite a restriction. This was further encouragement for developing a new system based on the concept of age-based categories.

Joanne Freeman: The M-rating stood for mature audiences, but all ages were permitted. The first rating system also included G, appropriate for all ages; R, or restricted, no one under 16 allowed without an adult; and, of course, X, for adults only. Eventually, M became PG for parental guidance.

Nathan Connolly: Lewis says the creation of the ratings system was a brilliant marketing move. It allowed Hollywood filmmakers to push the boundaries in terms of sex and violence, and with ratings, the public, not some Hollywood censor, got to decide whether or not a film was appropriate for children.

John Lewis: Valenti’s basically saying that it’s not the movie business’s position to tell parents how to parent.

Brian: The rating system worked just fine for awhile, but by the 1980s, PG films like Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, where a guy’s heart is ripped out of his chest, made some parents uncomfortable.

Nathan Connolly: That was my movie right there.

John Lewis: Yeah, well, it wasn’t everybody’s movie because …

Brian: Some parents felt that the space between PG and R had become a mile wide. So, in 1984, America’s first movie with a PG-13 rating hit the theaters. It was a movie called Red Dawn.

John Lewis: And it’s the sort of lunatic, right wing fantasy film that’s been remade.

Brian: For those of our many listeners who have not seen Red Dawn, this is about Cuban Marxist Russian proxies invade the United States.

John Lewis: That’s right. And were saved by Patrick Swayze.

Brian: And find all the guns in the United States because overzealous American bureaucrats have forced Americans to register their names if they own guns.

John Lewis: Right.

Brian: So they know right where to go.

John Lewis: Right. And our only hope is a group of teenagers headed by the then charismatic movie star Patrick Swayze, who leads a rebellion against the invasion. And the cast was appealing to teenagers. But if you’re going to tell teenagers, if you give it an R-rating, that they can’t go see it, or they can’t go see it unless they go with their parents, and no 16-year-old wants to see anything with their parents, you’re basically killing that film’s box office. It’s driven by the market.
There are certain films that so depend on an adolescent audience that they can’t get an R-rating and make money.

Brian: I see.

John Lewis: So the paradigmatic PG-13 films are films that could possibly get an R, but couldn’t possibly succeed at the box office if indeed it got that. So something like Twilight, Hunger Games, a superhero film that maybe has some kind of difficult content. They all have plenty of violence. Those are the films that PG-13 is designed to contain.

Brian: Are you listening, all you 11-year-olds?

John Lewis: It’s also a guarantee of a certain kind of appealing content, that if you’re a 12-year-old and you’ve found some of the movies you’ve seen recently a bit tame for your tastes-

Brian: Exactly.

John Lewis: -the PG-13 is a descriptor that guarantees a certain kind of content.

Brian: So would you change this system?

John Lewis: If I worked in the industry, I wouldn’t, no. I mean, it’s capricious. It’s inequitable in some ways. By and large, the raters … There are all these acronyms. They’re called CARA, the Classifications and Ratings Administration. They’re the board, this sort of anonymous committee of middle aged parents.

Brian: Are these just civilians? Do these folks have other day jobs?

John Lewis: No, I think you could make a living doing this, yeah.

Brian: Really?

John Lewis: Yeah.

Brian: Did you ever find out who some of these people were? Has anybody ever found out?

John Lewis: Well, there’s a movie called This Film’s Not Yet Rated, which was directed by Kirby Dick, a terrific documentary filmmaker. I’m actually in the movie, too, so perhaps you might see me in the movie.

Brian: Cool.

John Lewis: And he hired private detectives and outed a number of the raters. They’re called raters. And it turned out they actually weren’t what they were supposed to be. That they hadn’t by then grown-

Brian: They didn’t even have kids?

John Lewis: Well, they had grown kids, so their kids were already out of the house. It’s a dreary job. If you could imagine.

Brian: Yes. No, I cannot imagine.

John Lewis: Yeah. If you talk to anybody who reviews films for a living like at a newspaper, they’ll tell you it’s the worst job because you’re seeing 300 movies a year, and 285 of them are terrible.

Joanne Freeman: John Lewis is a professor of film studies at Oregon State University and the author of Hollywood Versus Hardcore: How the Struggle Over Censorship Created the Modern Film Industry.

Very Superstitious

Joanne, Brian, and Nathan look at the ways superstition impacts not only the way Americans act, but how they build.

rebuilding; superstition

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Brian: We started the show by talking about the 13 club, which made fun of superstitions. Even so, I think it’s safe to say that the number 13 and Friday the 13th are still associated with bad luck.

Nathan Connolly: So just looking back at America’s history, is it worth being so fearful of the number 13? I mean, there’s a lot of good things that have happened. I think, for instance, [Brian 00:43:12], you and I from Miami can talk about Dan Marino having a great career as a number 13.

Brian: Yes. A terrific quarterback for the Miami Dolphins. At least until he tried to run, Nathan.

Nathan Connolly: That’s right. But what about thinking through the 13th president, Millard Fillmore? Is there a way that we can maybe rehabilitate his [inaudible 00:43:31].

Joanne Freeman: I don’t know. The Fillmore Factor. I think being the 13th president did not help him much. I mean, he’s actually … Franklin Pierce and James Buchanan come after him, and they’re much worse.

Brian: Yeah, absolutely. And Andrew Johnson.

Nathan Connolly: I don’t know. This all could be really blown out of proportion, right?

Brian: Well, look. Let’s make this personal. How many of you have changed your behavior because of 13?

Nathan Connolly: Hmm.

Joanne Freeman: The way that Friday the 13th, I would say, appears on my radar screen would be not that I do anything different about that day, but if something bad happens on a Friday the 13th, my response is “Oh, yeah, well, it’s Friday the 13th.”

Nathan Connolly: Right.

Brian: Yeah. That’s something. So maybe over hundreds of years, maybe those “Oh, it must be Friday the 13th” kind of gathers historical momentum.

Nathan Connolly: So it’s the story we can map onto bad happenings after the fact.

Brian: Exactly.

Joanne Freeman: Or do we, rather than blaming this on any luck or lack of luck inherent in the number 13, do we need to fear it because other people act goofy on things surrounding the number 13? In other words, are we really more talking about the impact of superstition and the way we have to accommodate for that?

Nathan Connolly: There’s some figure about there being some 630 buildings in New York City that are built 13 floors or higher, and of that number, less than 10% actually have a designated 13th floor.

Brian: That’s remarkable. Right? I mean, that is literally built into steel and concrete, this superstition.

Joanne Freeman: Well, and it’s goofy, too, right? Because they are living on the 13th floor if they’re on the 14th floor.

Brian: Shh. Do not tell them that, [Joanne 00:45:19].

Joanne Freeman: I’m really sorry. I’m really sorry. I’m really sorry. But so it’s about the number, right? It’s not even about the floor. It’s just about the number because of money.

Nathan Connolly: Because of money.

Brian: Now, that’s right.

Joanne Freeman: I mean, let’s put that out on the table, too, right? Because people aren’t going to buy something associated with the 13th floor, or the 13th row of seats.

Brian: And because of the market, even though I have no problem living on the 13th floor, I would avoid it because it would hurt the resale value knowing that somebody else out there might not buy my condo because it’s on the 13th floor.

Joanne Freeman: Right.

Nathan Connolly: Right, right, right. And some of this stuff has indeed been tracked. I mean, you have these research centers that study consumer behavior on Friday the 13th, and according to one study from 2004, almost a billion dollars in revenue gets lost on Friday the 13th simply by people changing their habits to avoid bad luck. You can get a discount from wedding venues if you want to have your ceremony on Friday the 13th.

Brian: Especially if you hold it on the 13th floor.

Nathan Connolly: Exactly.

Joanne Freeman: I feel like I’ve totally missed out on a discount factor.

Nathan Connolly: Right. Right, right, right. But I guess it’s just another reminder. If we can’t go back, and look at the sources, and say there’s definitely bad luck around the 13th of this, and the 13th of that … If you can’t be very concrete, it doesn’t mean that people aren’t thinking about history with this number, or thinking about history in terms of luck. And I’m always fascinated by these folk understandings of the past, that you can somehow track bad things having happened on this particular date on the calendar that you may want to circle enough to want to change your behavior. Or that Americans in general think that they can simply control against future risk by staying indoors on a day like Friday the 13th. It actually is historical thinking, strangely enough.

Joanne Freeman: And it’s historical thinking, and it’s the word you just used, right? It’s about control. It’s about somehow or other wanting to come up with a theory that enables you to respond to events, or prevent things from happening by doing the right things, and somehow controlling randomness. So you randomly assign meaning to this number, and that gives you a way to act, according to some logic.

Brian: And I still believe that Friday the 13th is kind of a collective reminder to us all that blank happens, and better that it should all happen on one day-

Nathan Connolly: On one day, right.

Brian: -than be spread across the entire year.

Nathan Connolly: Yeah. It saddens me to share with both of you that bad luck may be more frequent than we think. The Gregorian calendar has one day that appears more frequently above all others and that’s Friday the 13th.

Joanne Freeman: Okay, that’s weird. That’s just weird.

Brian Balogh: That’ll do it for us today. Thanks for joining me to take a look back at the BackStory archive. There are hundreds of other shows available at our website backstoryradio.org. You can keep the conversation going online. Let us know what you thought of an episode or ask us your question about history. Send us an email at backstory@virginia.edu we’re also on Facebook and Twitter @backstoryradio. BackStory is produced at Virginia Humanities. Major support is provided by an anonymous donr, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Joseph and Robert Cornell Memorial Foundation, the Johns Hopkins University and the Arthur Vining Davis foundations. Additional support is provided by the Tomato Fund, cultivating fresh ideas in arts and humanities and the environment.

Brian Balogh is professor of history at the University of Virginia Ed Ayers is professor of the humanities and president emeritus of the University of Richmond. Joanne Freeman is professor of history and American studies at Yale University. Nathan Connolly is the Herbert Baxter Adams associate professor of history at the Johns Hopkins University. Backstory was created by Andrew Wyndham for Virginia Humanities.