Is a Skullcap a Statement or a Dramatic Device? : Television: ‘Rosie O’Neill’ producer defends Ben Meyer character amid complaints from viewers and some CBS execs.

Ben Meyer considers it just part of his normal garb.

He wears it every day, all through the workday, as chief deputy public defender in downtown Los Angeles.

It is a yarmulke , a skullcap associated with Jewish prayer and other occasions.

Ben Meyer is a fictitious character who is Sharon Gless’ supervisor on the new CBS series “The Trials of Rosie O’Neill.”

And some viewers--and several Jewish CBS executives--have questioned the use of the yarmulke on the weekly one-hour drama.

Is it preachy? An affectation? Or just an intriguing dramatic device to make people think?

In Monday’s scheduled episode of “Rosie O’Neill,” Meyer, portrayed by Ron Rifkin, gives his own answer. Walking with O’Neill (Gless) from a Jewish cemetery that has been desecrated, he says he wears it for two reasons:

“It gives me constant awareness that there’s something above me--God. It also lets the other people know that I’m very proud of who I am.”

Simple enough. He’ll continue to wear the yarmulke in future episodes. And it certainly hasn’t hurt the series, which thus far has attracted a good-size audience, except for this week, when it was upended by an NBC blockbuster special, “Danielle Steel’s Kaleidoscope.”

But in fact, there’s much more significance to “Rosie O’Neill,” because Ben Meyer, by simply being himself each week, is helps demolish Hollywood’s old sensitivities to real portrayals of minorities.

Despite the success of clearly Jewish lead characters in such past series as “Rhoda” and “The Goldbergs,” Hollywood executives, particularly older ones, have been cautious in this area. A concern was that most of the audience might not relate to such characters; less than 3% of Americans are Jewish.

Last year, for instance, Jewish comedian Jackie Mason’s highly ethnic “Chicken Soup” series was quickly canceled.

But several other shows, including “L.A. Law” and “thirtysomething,” have presented significant portrayals of religious awareness by Jewish characters at a time when spiritual reawakening has become important to many people of all faiths.

Thus, it is noteworthy that the Meyer character raised some eyebrows. Here’s how:

“Rosie O’Neill” went on the air without a pilot show because of the track record of Gless and executive producer Barney Rosenzweig on “Cagney & Lacey.”

“The first day of dailies (footage from the show),” says Rosenzweig, “we heard from CBS executives who are Jewish, saying, ‘What’s with the yarmulke ?’ ”

Says the producer: “I thought it was interesting. How do you make these characters interesting as people? Here’s this guy who goes downtown into all kinds of civic problems, and yet he has time to think and care about his roots. That’s interesting.”

In fact, Rosenzweig says, he got the idea from a Catholic priest.

It came in the last year of “Cagney & Lacey,” when Gless, as police officer Chris Cagney, was battling alcoholism.

“In a small publication in the East,” Rosenzweig says, “there was an open letter to Christine Cagney from a priest, who said, in effect, ‘Why don’t you try God, Chris?’ And if we had been on another year, I would have had her go back to Catholicism. Spiritually, there’s a lot going on in this country. And I thought about such a character.”

Besides the questions from CBS executives about the yarmulke , there were letters. Oh, not a whole lot, says a spokeswoman for “Rosie O’Neill.” But, oh yes, some phone calls, too. And the questions they raised were important, and some were hostile.

Some of the mail, according to Rosenzweig, said “it was OK to be Jewish, but why make a big thing of it? We also had letters asking how come Rosie isn’t wearing a rosary or a crucifix?”

One big question, however, seemed to be why viewers were getting this so-called “stereotype” of a Jew with his yarmulke . And that reaction absolutely flabbergasts Rosenzweig, Rifkin and religious figures who support the vivid character of Ben Meyer.

“My question,” Rosenzweig says, “is how anybody can call this a stereotype when there is no other character like this on television.”

“The stereotype is usually a bent-over, pathetic character,” adds Irwin Katsof, executive director of the American Friends of Aish HaTorah, an organization that educates Jewish adults about their heritage.

“Here you have a guy who’s involved in the world, who works in the public defender’s office in downtown L.A., and outside of his yarmulke you wouldn’t know he’s Jewish. So where’s the stereotype?”

Actor Rifkin, notable as Meyer, concurs: “I’m astounded that people consider this character a stereotype. There’s never been anyone on TV like this before, so to say it’s stereotypical is insane to me. The guy’s job comes first. I think Barney’s doing something important with this.”

Jackie Mason has long said that his ethnicity seems to bother Jewish show-business executives, but that he has no problems from the Gentiles in his audiences. Rifkin has a companion view when it comes to the yarmulke .

“I commute back and forth to New York,” he says. “On the street, people say, ‘Ben, where’s your beanie?’ People I know who are Jewish are the only ones who complain.”

But for Rifkin, wearing the yarmulke “is a metaphor for a lot of things.”

He has another supporter in Rabbi Abraham Cooper, associate dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center.

“My first reaction just seeing the yarmulke was a shock, a pleasant one,” Cooper says. “I welcome it as something long overdue, a part of the American Jewish reality today as much as intermarriage. I think anybody--Jewish, Buddhist, Catholic, Protestant--who feels comfortable with their religious values and doesn’t wear them with a chip on their shoulder, well, it’s as American as apple pie.

“What you have here (in ‘Rosie O’Neill’) is wonderful--someone comfortable in the secular world who keeps his values. In ‘The Jazz Singer,’ the father, the cantor, was not comfortable out in the secular world. And the son, Al Jolson, had to choose between show business and the synagogue. You don’t have to choose anymore.”

For Rosenzweig, the series is a particularly personal matter. At the opening of each episode, for instance, he is the unseen psychologist who talks to Gless. “Sharon said it was easier for her to have a person to relate to,” he says.

And he freely concedes that “The Trials of Rosie O’Neill” wears its liberalism on its sleeve: “Oh, sure. I’m not making any bones about that.”

CBS has had a long tradition of such shows, from “The Defenders” to “Lou Grant” to “Cagney & Lacey,” and there is a distinct kinship in their social outlook. But who would have thought the question of a yarmulke would come up in a series about a lawyer named O’Neill?