"Duet" is a brilliant episode -- DS9's first truly great one, and one of the best of any ST. ("What you call genocide, I call a day's work." That is a fantastic line by any standard.)
But as I watched it again, I found myself wondering how it came to pass that DS9 incorporated Jewishness in such divergent and discordant ways. How in god's name did the same series morph every negative Jewish stereotype ever into the greedy, cowardly, lascivious, latinum-and-shiksa-craving Ferengi, and also transform the Holocaust into the Bajoran/Cardassian conflict? How did this crazy thing come about? Googling, I found this fascinating piece, with this insight: "To me, DS9 was largely about the Jewish diaspora. Cardassians are Nazis, Ferengis represent Jews as the world sees them (i.e., anti-Semitism), and Bajorans represent Jews as they see themselves (i.e., Israel)."
Now that has more than a soupcon of truth. But it got me thinking....
DS9 is Star Trek breaking away from Roddenberry's legendary, meshuganah commitment to a conflict-free universe. It brings back the untidiness and rough edges that make characters and situations believable and relatable. And intentionally or not -- I tend to think, mostly not -- the Jewishness of it is revealing in its messiness, too. We are outraged at the antisemitic caricature of the Ferengi, and yet somehow they refuse to be defined by our pearl-clutching. Quark just won't stay in that bottle. Armin Shimerman won't let you reduce Quark to the ugly stereotype that is so clearly his starting point. There's too much humor, exuberance, and sheer humanity about him. Who doesn't like Quark? NOBODY. Kira may embody the Jewish resistance, the Haganah, the early pioneer spirit, but she's kind of...well, dull. Quark is irrepressible. On a gut level, we know that, for all Starfleet's hoity-toity "we've evolved beyond money and materialism," and for all Bajor's spiritualism and feisty can-do attitude, you want to stick close to the guy with a backup plan. The universe could not possibly be that sincere, earnest, and perfect. The goyim and the idealists may deride the merchants, but we all know it's because they haven't figured out how not to need them.
Which is not to say that playing in the sandbox of racist stereotypes and casual bigotry is to be hand-waved. Too much about DS9's Jewishness feels accidental, like the writers didn't know how many cliches, inane conventions, and outright bigotry they were regurgitating. I will always wonder how it is that no one stood up in the writer's room and said, "Houston, we have a problem." DS9 is a mess of contradictions that seem to have been created, at best, by shockingly unaware people. Nevertheless, that messiness somehow beats the hell out of TNG's sterile, WASPy, unconvincing niceness. They imitate, co-opt, distort, and conflate -- and it's so much better than the alternative.
One last point: As Disco's writers explore the ghosts of Star Trek past, they are clearly in the market for the aspects of the ST universe that don't quite fit the idyllic myth -- the exceptions that prove the rule. The Mercenary Outsider who doesn't buy into Starfleet's selfless altruism clearly fits that bill. Quark has a precursor: Harry Mudd. "I'm not siding with anyone. But I sure as hell understand why the Klingons pushed back. Starfleet arrogance. Have you ever bothered to look out of your spaceships down at the little guys below? If you had, you'd realize that there's a lot more of us down there than there are you up here. And we're sick and tired of getting caught in your crossfire." Without a doubt, we've not heard the last of that weltanschauung.
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