Uncategorized
As ‘The Marvelous Mrs Maisel’ ends, will its Jewish legacy be more than a punchline?
(JTA) — After five seasons, 20 Emmy awards and plenty of Jewish jokes, “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel” airs its final episode on Friday.
The lauded Amazon Prime show from Amy Sherman-Palladino has enveloped viewers in a shimmering, candy-colored version of New York during the late 1950s and early 1960s — a world in which “humor” has meant Jewish humor and “culture” has meant Jewish culture.
But as it comes to an end, the show’s Jewish legacy is still up for debate: Did its representation of Jews on mainstream TV make it a pioneer of the 2010s? Or did it do more harm than good in the battle for better representation, by reinforcing decades-old comedic tropes about Jews?
The comedy-drama followed the vivacious Midge Maisel (Rachel Brosnahan) on a journey from prim Upper West Side housewife — left in the lurch after her husband has an affair with his secretary — to ambitious, foul-mouthed comic fighting her way through the male-dominated standup comedy industry. Her New York Jewishness colored her jokes, her accent, her mannerisms and much of her daily life.
That’s because the whole landscape of the show was Jewish, from the well-to-do, acculturated intelligentsia (such as Midge’s parents) to the self-made garment factory owners (such as her in-laws). Even the radical Jewish comic Lenny Bruce, a countercultural icon of the midcentury, appeared as a recurring character who propels Midge’s success.
Henry Bial, a professor specializing in performance theory and Jewish popular culture at the University of Kansas, said the emergence of “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel” in 2017 exemplified a shift to more overt portrayals of Jews on TV — especially on streaming services. Although Jewish characters featured in TV shows throughout the 20th century, such as “The Goldbergs” in the 1950s, “Rhoda” in the 1970s and “Seinfeld” in the 1990s, their Jewishness was often more coded than explicit. Network television, seeking to attract the majority of Americans coveted by advertisers, feared alienating audiences who couldn’t “relate” to ethnic and racial minorities.
“If there are only three things you can put on television at 8 o’clock on Tuesday night, then there’s a lot more incentive for networks and advertisers to stay close to the herd, because you’re competing for the same eyeballs,” said Bial. “But when people can watch whatever they want whenever they want, then it opens up for a much wider range of stories.”
Other shows such as “Transparent,” “Broad City” and “Crazy Ex-Girlfriend,” which debuted in 2014 and 2015, are often cited alongside “Mrs. Maisel” as part of a new wave of Jewish representation.
Riv-Ellen Prell, a professor emerita of American studies at the University of Minnesota, argued that Midge subverts the stereotype of the “Jewish American princess.” At the start of the show, she appears to embrace that image: She is financially dependent on her father and husband and obsessive about her appearance, measuring her body every day to ensure that she doesn’t gain weight. Despite living with her husband for years, she always curls her hair, does her makeup and spritzes herself with perfume before he wakes up.
“She looks for all the world like the fantasy of a Jewish American princess,” said Prell. “And yet she is more ambitious than imaginable, she is a brilliant comic who draws on her own life. You have Amy Sherman-Palladino inventing the anti-Jewish princess.”
Bial said that Midge’s relationship with her Jewishness defies another stereotype: That identity is not a source of neurosis or self-loathing, as it often appears to be in the male archetypes of Woody Allen and Larry David, or in Rachel Bloom’s “Crazy Ex-Girlfriend.” Through the spirited banter, the pointed exclamations of “oy,” the titillation over a rabbi coming for Yom Kippur break fast — Midge’s Jewishness is a source of comforting ritual, joy and celebration.
“She has anxieties and issues, but none of them are because she’s Jewish,” said Bial.
Some critics argue the show’s depiction of Jewish culture relies on shallow tropes. In a 2019 review, TV critic Paul Brownfield said “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel” repurposed stereotypes to appear “retro chic.” He pointed to a consistent contrast between the Weissmans (the assimilated, cultured Jews of the Upper West Side) and the Maisels (the boorish, money-focused Jews of the Garment District), arguing that these superficial types replace an exploration of what the period was actually like for American Jews.
“However ‘Jewish’ Sherman-Palladino wants the show to be, ‘Maisel’ fails to grapple with the realities of the moment in Jewish American history it portrays,” Brownfield wrote. “Which is ultimately what leaves me queasy about its tone — the shtick, the stereotypes, the comforting self-parody.”
Meanwhile, Andy Samberg took a jab while co-hosting the 2019 Golden Globes with Sandra Oh. “It’s the show that makes audiences sit up and say, ‘Wait, is this antisemitic?’” he joked.
Tony Shalhoub and Marin Hinkle, shown in a synagogue scene, are two of the show’s non-Jewish actors. (Nicole Rivelli/Amazon Studios)
Others have criticized the show’s casting: Its titular heroine, her parents Abe and Rose Weissman (Tony Shalhoub and Marin Hinkle) and Lenny Bruce (Luke Kirby) are all played by non-Jews. A debate over the casting of non-Jewish actors in Jewish roles has heated up in recent years, taking aim not only at Brosnahan as Midge Maisel, but also at Felicity Jones as Ruth Bader Ginsberg in “On The Basis of Sex,” Helen Mirren as Golda Meir in “Golda” and Gaby Hoffmann and Jay Duplass as the Pfefferman siblings in “Transparent.” Comedian Sarah Silverman popularized the term “Jewface” to critique the trend.
“Watching a gentile actor portraying, like, a Jew-y Jew is just — agh — feels, like, embarrassing and cringey,” Silverman said on her podcast in 2021.
Midge’s rise as a comedian is interlocked with her ally and one-time fling, the fictionalized Lenny Bruce. His character has a softened glow in the show, but in reality, Bruce was branded a “sick comic” for his scathing satire that railed against conservatism, racism and moral hypocrisy. Between 1961 and 1964, he was charged with violating obscenity laws in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago and New York, and he was deported from England. At his Los Angeles trial in 1963, Bruce was accused of using the Yiddish word “shmuck,” taken as an obscenity to mean “penis.” He incorporated the charge into his standup, explaining that the colloquial Jewish meaning of “schmuck” was “fool.”
Driven to pennilessness by relentless prosecution, police harassment and blacklisting from most clubs across the country, he died of a morphine overdose in 1966 at 40 years old. The real Lenny Bruce’s tragedy lends a shadow to the fictional Midge Maisel’s triumphs.
The United States that he struggled with until his death also looks comparatively rosy through the lens of “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel,” whose protagonist battles misogyny but takes little interest in other societal evils — including still-rampant antisemitism. Some critics have noted that she is oblivious to segregated facilities when she tours with Black singer Shy Baldwin, then nearly outs him as gay during her set.
“‘Mrs. Maisel’ takes place in a supersaturated fantasy 1958 New York, one where antisemitism, racism, homophobia and even sexism are barely a whisper,” Rokhl Kafrissen wrote in 2018.
Reflecting on the criticism that had piled up by 2020, Sherman-Palladino and her husband Daniel Palladino, also an executive producer and a lead writer for the show, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that trying to appease every Jewish viewer was a futile exercise.
“We knew that if we show a Jewish family at temple — if we show them and talk about Yom Kippur and all those kinds of things — there are going to be people who are going to nitpick at specifics that maybe we didn’t get exactly right,” said Palladino, who is not Jewish. “But a lot of the feedback that we’ve gotten has been ‘Thank you. Thank you for leaning into it and showing Jews being Jewish, as opposed to just name checking them as Jewish.’”
Sherman-Palladino added: “[T]here are many different kinds of Jews! To say, ‘oh, Jewish stereotypes,’ well, what are you talking about? Because we have an educated Jew, we have a woman who was happy to be a mother, we have another woman striking out as a stand up comic, and, you know, Susie Myerson’s [Alex Borstein’s character] a Jew! We’ve got a broad range of Jews in there.”
However “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel” is assessed in the future, it will remain significant for thrusting a new kind of Jewish heroine into the mainstream consciousness, said Bial.
“Because of its popularity, its longevity and frankly its quality, it’s going to be the example,” Bial said. “In the history of Jews and TV, this is going to be the chapter for the late 2010s and early 2020s — you have to mention ‘Mrs. Maisel.’ It is very clearly a landmark in Jewish representation, particularly for Jewish women.”
—
The post As ‘The Marvelous Mrs Maisel’ ends, will its Jewish legacy be more than a punchline? appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
Uncategorized
Chicago Adopts IHRA Definition of Antisemitism
Chicago, United States, on Aug. 22, 2024. Photo: J.W. Hendricks/NurPhoto via Reuters Connect
The City Council of Chicago, Illinois, voted on Tuesday to adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s (IHRA) definition of antisemitism, becoming one of many governments and municipalities to affirm its utility as a reference tool for identifying antisemitic hate crimes and a safeguard of Jewish civil rights.
The measure was passed on International Holocaust Remembrance Day, which commemorated the 81st anniversary of the day when Jewish prisoners were liberated from Auschwitz, the Nazis’ deadliest extermination camp during World War II.
“Chicago now proudly joins a global consensus of more than 1,200 entities worldwide, including the United States, 37 US state governments, and 98 city and country bodies who have adopted this definition,” city council member Debra Silverstein, alderman of the 50th Ward, said in a statement praising the adoption. “At a time when antisemitic hate crimes are surging locally, this unanimous City Council action sends an unmistakable message that anti-Jewish hate has no place in Chicago.”
IHRA — an intergovernmental organization comprising dozens of countries including the US and Israel — adopted the “working definition” of antisemitism in 2016. Since then, the definition has been widely accepted by Jewish groups and lawmakers across the political spectrum, and it is now used by hundreds of governing institutions, including the US State Department, European Union, and United Nations.
According to the definition, antisemitism “is a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews. Rhetorical and physical manifestations of antisemitism are directed toward Jewish or non-Jewish individuals and/or their property, toward Jewish community institutions and religious facilities.” It provides 11 specific, contemporary examples of antisemitism in public life, the media, schools, the workplace, and in the religious sphere. Beyond classic antisemitic behavior associated with the likes of the medieval period and Nazi Germany, the examples include denial of the Holocaust and newer forms of antisemitism targeting Israel such as demonizing the Jewish state, denying its right to exist, and holding it to standards not expected of any other democratic state.
Chicago’s embrace of the definition comes amid a historic surge in antisemitic incidents across the US and the world.
In 2024, as reported by the Anti-Defamation League’s (ADL) latest annual audit, there were 9,354 antisemitic incidents — an average of 25.6 a day — across the US, creating an atmosphere of hate not experienced in the nearly thirty years since the ADL began tracking such data in 1979. Incidents of harassment, vandalism, and assault all increased by double digits, and for the first time ever a majority of outrages — 58 percent — were related to the existence of Israel as the world’s only Jewish state.
The ADL also reported dramatic rises in incidents on college campuses, which saw the largest growth in 2024. The 1,694 incidents tallied by the ADL amounted to an 84 percent increase over the previous year. Additionally, antisemites were emboldened to commit more offenses in public in 2024 than they did in 2023, perpetrating 19 percent more attacks on Jewish people, pro-Israel demonstrators, and businesses perceived as being Jewish-owned or affiliated with Jews.
Illinois alone saw the eighth most antisemitic incidents in the country with 336, a 59 percent increase from the previous year which led the nation.
The ADL’s “Heat Map,” which tracks hate crimes in real time, shows 105 antisemitic hate incidents recorded in 2025.
In one disturbing incident in the Highland Park suburb of Chicago, an antisemitic letter threatening violence was mailed to a resident’s home. So severe were its contents that the FBI and the Illinois Terrorism and Intelligence Center were called to the scene to establish that there was no imminent danger, according to local news outlets. Later, the local government shuttered all religious institutions as a precautionary measure.
With Tuesday’s measure, Chicago became the second largest US city to adopt the IHRA definition. However, it is now the largest to have it on the books as New York City under its new mayor, Zohran Mamdani, recently revoked it along with a series of other executive orders enacted by his predecessor to combat antisemitism
US Jewish groups sharply criticized the move.
Israel’s Foreign Ministry similarly lambasted the reversal as an invitation for intensified bigotry against Jewish New Yorkers, saying, “On his very first day as New York City mayor, Mamdani shows his true face: He scraps the IHRA definition of antisemitism and lifts restrictions on boycotting Israel. This isn’t leadership. It’s antisemitic gasoline on an open fire.”
The definition could have been problematic for Mamdani, a far-left democratic socialist and avowed anti-Zionist who has made anti-Israel activism a cornerstone of his political career and been widely accused of promoting antisemitic rhetoric. A supporter of boycotting all entities tied to Israel, he has repeatedly refused to recognize Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state; routinely accused Israel of “apartheid” and “genocide”; and refused to clearly condemn the phrase “globalize the intifada,” which has been used to call for violence against Jews and Israelis worldwide.
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
Uncategorized
Israel is teaming up with the far right to fight global antisemitism
The Israeli government’s second annual antisemitism conference in Jerusalem this week is part of a relatively recent move by the country to concern itself with countering global antisemitism.
Early Zionists presented the State of Israel as a solution to antisemitism, sometimes downplaying the concern Jews expressed about their persecution. “The Jewish people were mistaken for blaming antisemitism for all the troubles and suffering endured in the diaspora,” David Ben-Gurion, the country’s first prime minister, wrote in 1950. “This is one of the blind spots that the Jewish people were stricken with in exile.”
But in the decades since, and especially since the government established its Ministry of Strategic Affairs 20 years ago, Israel has poured tens of millions of dollars into fighting antisemitism in the diaspora.
“You must declare, no more antisemitism. Not here. Not now. Not anywhere,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told attendees at the Jerusalem conference. “Not on the right, not on the left.”
Netanyahu’s rhetoric mirrored the way many American Jews think about antisemitism, with concern shifting since Oct. 7 from an overwhelming focus on the far right to equal levels of concern across the political spectrum.
Israel, though, has adopted a strategy to combat antisemitism with little precedent in the diaspora: It’s partnering with the far right to fight two groups that Amichai Chikli, Israel’s minister for diaspora affairs and countering antisemitism, believes are a shared enemy for Jews and European nationalists: the “woke far left” and Muslim extremists.
Concern about antisemitism on the right is relegated to what Chikli calls the “woke right,” meaning figures like Tucker Carlson and former U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, who have turned against Israel in recent years.
This framework leaves space to partner with European officials like Jordan Bardella, a French politician who attended the conference and has called for closer ties between Israel and France even as he leads a party founded by a Holocaust denier.
Chikli’s approach threw last year’s inaugural conference into turmoil as Anti-Defamation League CEO Jonathan Greenblatt, British Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis and several other prominent leaders pulled out of the event over the inclusion of far-right figures.
Yet Chikli doubled-down this year, reportedly dropping the ADL from his guest list while welcoming Sebastian Kurtz, the former Austrian chancellor who has railed against “political Islam,” far-right Dutch politician Geert Wilders, and Dominik Tarczynski, a Polish member of European parliament who has called Islamists “sick animals” and pledged to “fight for Christian Europe until the final victory.”
***
Some have argued that Jews should embrace these tactical alliances so long as they help address a common goal — support for Israel in Europe, say, or pressure on university leaders to address campus protests in the U.S.
But most diaspora Jews have taken a much dimmer view of antisemitism strategies that appear too one-sided. While the Israeli government presented Leo Terrell, Trump’s antisemitism task force chair, with its annual Award of Honor ahead of the conference, many Jews in the U.S. have opposed the antisemitism policies that Terrell and the White House have promoted.
And when the Heritage Foundation released their blueprint for Trump to fight antisemitism, several prominent Jewish organizations rushed to distance themselves from the plan, despite supporting some of its ideas for targeting anti-Zionists, because it completely ignored far-right antisemitism.
Israel, though, is in a bind.
Given their relatively small share of the population, Jews inevitably seek to craft narratives about antisemitism that can help build a broader coalition of supporters.
For liberal Jews, who make up a majority of the American Jewish community, that often means joining with other minority groups by connecting antisemitism to other forms of racism and discrimination.
But that’s a nonstarter for the Israeli government, which is now treated as a pariah by most non-Jewish liberals outside the country, compelling it to embrace a different narrative that views its controversial conduct in Gaza as an asset: Israel is on the front lines of the battle against the threat radical Islam poses not only to Israelis and Jews but also to white, Christian Europeans and Americans.
“This conference seeks to banish political correctness,” Chikli declared during his welcome address, outlining a “struggle of the free world against the imperialism and tyranny of radical Islam.”
It’s an effective strategy for joining Israel’s cause to that of the growing nationalist movements in Europe, though it also threatens to drive a deeper wedge between American Jews and Israel.
Chikli, at least, seems to have made his peace with such a rupture and suggested that it was liberal Jews who had gone “against Torah” by succumbing to “progressive, woke neo-communist ideology.”
“This is the reality,” he said. “At the core, we’re very different.”
GO DEEPER:
- Hosting Europe’s far-right again, minister says Diaspora criticism ‘just a disagreement’ (Times of Israel)
- Israel’s antisemitism confab welcomes far-right pols, but draws less fire than last year (Times of Israel)
The post Israel is teaming up with the far right to fight global antisemitism appeared first on The Forward.
Uncategorized
BBC Apologizes for Not Mentioning Jews During Holocaust Remembrance Day Coverage
The BBC logo is displayed above the entrance to the BBC headquarters in London, Britain, July 10, 2023. Photo: REUTERS/Hollie Adams
The BBC apologized on Tuesday night after at least four of its presenters failed to mention the murder of Jews in the Holocaust during the national broadcaster’s coverage of International Holocaust Remembrance Day.
“BBC Breakfast” presenter Jon Kay said on air Tuesday morning that Holocaust Remembrance Day was “for remembering the six million people murdered by the Nazi regime over 80 years ago.” Several BBC broadcasts by some of its most well-known presenters included similar comments that omitted the mention of Jewish victims when discussing the Holocaust.
In one broadcast, “BBC News” presenter Martine Croxall also said Holocaust Remembrance Day is a day “for remembering the six million people who were murdered by the Nazi regime over 80 years ago.”
BBC World News presenter Matthew Amroliwala introduced a bulletin on his show with the same scripted line.
On the BBC Radio 4 program “Today,” presenter Caroline Nicholls discussed plans to mark Holocaust Remembrance Day and said in part: “Buildings across the UK will be illuminated this evening to mark Holocaust Memorial Day, which commemorates the six million people murdered by the Nazi regime more than 80 years ago.”
“Is the BBC trying to sever all ties with their Jewish listeners? Even on Holocaust Memorial Day, the BBC cannot bring itself to properly address antisemitism,” the Campaign Against Antisemitism posted on X. “This is absolutely disgraceful broadcasting. BBC, we demand an explanation for how this could have happened.”
“The ‘Today’ program featured interviews with relatives of Holocaust survivors, and a report from our religion editor. In both of these items we referenced the six million Jews murdered during the Holocaust,” the statement read in part, as cited by GB News. “‘BBC Breakfast’ featured a project organized by the Holocaust Educational Trust in which a Jewish survivor of the Holocaust recorded her memories. In the news bulletins on ‘Today’ and in the introduction to the story on ‘BBC Breakfast’ there were references to Holocaust Memorial Day which were incorrectly worded, and for which we apologize. Both should have referred to ‘six million Jewish people’ and we will be issuing a correction on our website.”
Karen Pollock, chief executive of the Holocaust Educational Trust, said in a post on X that the BBC’s not mentioning Jews during its coverage of Holocaust Remembrance Day is “hurtful, disrespectful, and wrong.”
“The Holocaust was the murder of six million Jewish men, women, and children. Any attempt to dilute the Holocaust, strip it of its Jewish specificity, or compare it to contemporary events is unacceptable on any day,” she added.
Danny Cohen, the BBC’s former director of television, said the mistake, especially on Holocaust Remembrance Day, “marks a new low point” for the broadcaster. He said the mishap will surely be hurtful to many in the Jewish community “and will reinforce their view that the BBC is insensitive to the concerns of British Jews.”
“It is surely the bare minimum to expect the BBC to correctly identify that it was six million Jews killed during the Holocaust,” said Cohen, as cited by the Daily Mail. “To say anything else is an insult to their memory and plays into the hands of extremists who have desperately sought to rewrite the historical truth of history’s greatest crime.”
This year’s Holocaust Remembrance Day marks the 81st anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Nazi concentration camp in 1945. On Tuesday, King Charles and the Queen Camilla lit candles at Buckingham Palace in honor of the annual commemoration and hosted a reception for Holocaust survivors and their families. Last year, King Charles, who is patron of the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust, became the first British monarch to visit Auschwitz on the 80th anniversary of its liberation.
Tuesday was not the first time that the BBC has come under fire for its coverage of issues concerning the Jewish community or Israel.
In February 2025, the BBC apologized for “unacceptable” and “serious flaws” in its documentary about Palestinian children living in the Gaza Strip, after it was revealed that the documentary’s narrator was the son of a senior Hamas official. An internal review by the British public broadcaster also revealed that the documentary breached the BBC’s editorial guidelines on accuracy.
In July, the BBC apologized for streaming a live performance by the British punk rap duo Bob Vylan at the Glastonbury Festival, during which the band’s lead singer led the audience in chanting “Death to the IDF,” referring to the Israel Defense Forces.
Also last year, the host of “Good Morning Britain” apologized on-air for failing to mention Jewish victims of the Holocaust during her coverage of International Holocaust Remembrance Day.