Media fusion is what happens when forms of mainstream media converge in overwhelming force on a single entity or institution. It can occur in politics (the Monica Lewinsky scandal), in the criminal justice system (the O.J. Simpson trial), in the realm vaguely labeled human interest (the death of Princess Diana), or it can emerge from a pop-culture event like the last episode of Seinfeld.

The last three of Seinfeld's 186 episodes have been ballyhooed on the network news, on magazine covers, in hundreds of newspapers, and on the Web. HotBot spits up nearly 60,000 Seinfeld sites, ranging from audio collections of past shows to reprints of old scripts to countless fan clubs and discussion groups debating every conceivable bit of Seinfeld esoterica -- one site tabulated the number of times Kramer has slammed the door to Jerry's apartment.

There are groups providing support for soon-to-be-deprived Seinfeld fans. There are sites devoted to Jerry's apartment, Monk's Diner, where he and his friends gather, and his black Saab. There are sites where Seinfeld aficionados can continue writing and even animating scripts for future episodes. On the Web at least, Seinfeld will never go off the air.

It's possible to make too much of these American pop-culture phenomena, to apply more sociological analysis than they deserve.

But if you subscribe to the notion that in America, TV is the magic mirror that shows us the reality of our own lives and society -- and I do -- the close of the Seinfeld era is worth pondering.

Smash TV shows always have resonance beyond themselves. In the 1950s, Leave It to Beaver captured simple-minded notions about idealized American families. In the '70s, The Mary Tyler Moore Show was emblematic of the emerging women's movement. In the '80s, Bill Cosby's family mirrored the rise of the black middle-class. The X-Files has brilliantly captured the ambiguous, brainy geek culture coinciding with the rise of the Internet. Seinfeld is a broadcast for our times, self-reflective, cynical, profoundly neurotic.

Seinfeld glibly bills itself as a show about nothing, but the most popular TV program in America is, by definition, about lots of things. Well-written and acted, Seinfeld is about friendship and absurdity and community and urban randomness, and it's pretty funny, too.

So here's my own particular offering to the orgy of Seinfeld-gazing:

Seinfeld is the most Jewish program in TV history. New York City, practically a character along with George, Elaine, Kramer, et al., is the home of more Jews than any other city in the world. Almost everything about the show -- its ethos, humor, cultural reference points, characters, neuroses -- has an overwhelmingly Jewish aura. The gang's dramas hew closer to Woody Allen than to most network television sitcoms. Their Jewishness is implicit -- rarely if ever mentioned despite the Yiddish phrases and intrusive Jewish mothers -- but it's unmistakable.

Why does this matter? Because it says something interesting about America -- that so ethnic a broadcast could become so pervasively popular in an overwhelmingly Christian country, in cities and towns far from New York. It seems unlikely that this could have happened even a decade ago.

If Seinfeld is a emblem for anything, it may be the extraordinarily successful assimilation of Jewish Americans into the mainstream of American life in the half-century since the Holocaust. Assimilation is itself a controversial notion in Judaism, some Jews lamenting, others celebrating it. How appropriate that Seinfeld's final furor -- expected to be watched by more than half the nation -- dovetails with the 50th anniversary of the founding of Israel.

For decades, American media has covered Israel disproportionately to other foreign countries, gauging its internal and regional politics, even as they seem increasingly remote and disconnected from American life.