And the filmmakers spray all this stuff around in a brave and noble cause. American diplomatic efforts have so far proved inadequate to the task of bringing peace to the Middle East, but “You Don’t Mess With the Zohan” taps into deeper and more durable sources of American global power in its quest for a plausible end to hostilities. Ancient grievances and festering hatreds are no match for the forces of sex, money, celebrity and exuberant, unapologetic stupidity.

Image The Phantom (John Turturro) vs. the Zohan (Adam Sandler). Credit... Tracy Bennett/Columbia Pictures

Zohan (Mr. Sandler) certainly seems to think so, though he might express his views differently, and certainly with a thicker accent. A highly skilled military operative who specializes in counterterrorism, he is basically a less anguished version of the character played by Eric Bana in “Munich.” The brilliant opening sequence places him in a tableau that would bring a tear to Theodor Herzl’s eye. Whether it would be a tear of joy or dismay I will leave to more seasoned polemicists, but there is something both appealing and authentic about a vision of the Jewish state on its 60th birthday that emphasizes lithe young bodies frolicking, flirting and playing Hacky Sack on the beach. If you will it, it is no dream.

But only part of Zohan’s life is carefree, and it’s the other part  the job that requires heavy weapons, deadly stealth and hand-to-hand combat with a superterrorist called the Phantom (John Turturro)  that drives him into the diaspora. Zohan may have a picture of Moshe Dayan on his bedroom wall, but his real idol is Paul Mitchell, the American hair-care mogul whose outdated styles Zohan studies as if they were pages of the Talmud. He wants to stop fighting and cut “silky smooth” hair. And so, like everyone else with a dream, he migrates to New York, where he finds an entry-level job at a salon run by a pretty Palestinian named Dalia (Emmanuelle Chriqui).

A romance between them seems at once inevitable and unthinkable, but the taboos that “You Don’t Mess With the Zohan” is unwilling to smash are few indeed. The movie is principally interested in establishing its main character as a new archetype in the annals of Jewish humor. He’s a warrior and also, to an extent undreamed of in the combined works of Philip Roth, Woody Allen and Howard Stern, a sexual hedonist, so utterly free of neurosis or inhibition that it’s hard to imagine him and Sigmund Freud occupying the same planet, much less the same cultural-religious tradition.

Sex, for Zohan, is like hummus: there is an endless supply, and no occasion on which it could be judged inappropriate. He is always on the make, but Mr. Sandler’s natural sweetness inoculates the character against sleaziness. In his feathery ’80s haircut and loud, half-buttoned shirts, Zohan joins a long tradition, stretching back from Will Ferrell through Steve Martin to the great Jerry Lewis himself, of goofballs who mistake themselves for studs and turn out to be right.