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‘Fleishman is in Trouble’ hits FX Thursday. Just don’t call it a Jewish series, says its creator.
(JTA) — From Taffy Brodesser-Akner’s point of view, her best-selling 2019 novel “Fleishman Is in Trouble” wasn’t all that Jewish. She’s a little perplexed by the deluge of press junket questions about its Jewish essence.
“It’s funny: I don’t think of it as a Jewish book. I know people do,” she said.
Brodesser-Akner, a journalist famous for her sharp celebrity profiles, is now the showrunner of the book’s star-studded TV adaptation, an 8-episode FX series that debuts on Hulu on Thursday. In the story, Toby Fleishman (played by Jesse Eisenberg) is a 41-year-old Jewish hepatologist who has recently divorced Rachel (Claire Danes), his ambitious, icy, blonde theater agent wife. Early on in the story, Rachel disappears in the middle of the night, leaving Toby with their two children and a truckload of resentment. Toby, who had a nebbishy and romantically insecure youth before marrying Rachel, is now drowning in the sexual bounty of dating apps.
On Zoom, Brodesser-Akner was speaking a few days after the show’s blowout bash at Carnegie Hall and Tavern on the Green, an iconic Central Park restaurant. “I’ve never been to an event like that. It was 600 people,” she said. It sounded like a scene that could have been plucked right from “Fleishman,” which is set on the extremely wealthy Upper East Side, and in which the responsibilities of marriage and parenthood are at odds with the ambitions and personal longings of its middle-aged characters.
Brodesser-Akner, 47, who was both adrenalized and a little frazzled, had to balance the premiere with parenting duties — she’s a mother of two boys, ages 15 and 12. “I’m still picking sequins from my teeth.”
As a writer, Brodesser-Akner likes to play with the power of subjectivity, and she built “Fleishman” on it. Though the story begins as Toby’s, it eventually morphs into a “Rashomon”-esque take on the divorce and what really went wrong in the Fleishmans’ marriage. The story is narrated by Libby (Lizzy Caplan), Toby’s friend from their year abroad in Israel. A former men’s magazine writer, Libby is now a lost and frustrated stay-at-home mom in suburban New Jersey (and a stand-in for Brodesser-Akner). Adam Brody steals scenes as Seth, an immature finance bro and another year-in-Israel friend with whom Toby reconnects after the divorce. (His presence is a homecoming of sorts for those of us who spent our tween years watching him play a different Seth in “The O.C.”)
“I don’t think of it as a Jewish book,” says Taffy Brodesser-Akner.
Brodesser-Akner pieced together the story’s Jewish elements: a doctor named Fleishman, a bat mitzvah, Friday night dinners, a year abroad in Israel, a few jokes about Jews being bad at home repairs (which is the subject of a very funny scene in episode six between Toby and Seth). There are a few insidery details that she fails to mention, like a fake Jewish sleepaway camp called Camp Marah, which sounds like the real Camp Ramah but roughly translates to “Camp Bitter” in Hebrew. Does all this add up to a “Jewish” story?
“I read ‘The Corrections’ by Jonathan Franzen, and it mentions Christmas I think 47 times. I read ‘Crossroads’ and it’s about the family of a youth minister. But neither of those is ever called a Christian book. This is called a Jewish book. I don’t object to it being called a Jewish book. But to me it’s mostly an American story. As a writer and as an observer of the culture, I think that calling this a Jewish book is proof of the answer to an old question: are Jews considered Americans? And the answer is no.” She threw in her characteristic meta analysis: “So now you have a very Jewish profile. How Jewish is that, Sarah?”
The self-aware comment is a good reminder that although her responses may be unguarded, she has not forgotten that she’s on the record. A name in New York media, Brodesser-Akner wrote for GQ and is now a staff writer for The New York Times Magazine, having profiled Gwyneth Paltrow, Ethan Hawke and Tom Hanks and written about the Joshua Cohen novel “The Netanyahus,” the television show “Thirtysomething” and much more. She inserts herself often into her writing, not to make it about herself, but to remind the reader that every profile is by nature filtered through the lens of the writer crafting it. Her writing is searing, self-deprecating — so raw it’s still bleeding and often quite funny.
“I wrote the book the way I would write a profile, just like I always do. But this man doesn’t exist,” she said.
RELATED: 5 Jewish places that inspired Taffy Brodesser-Akner’s ‘Fleishman Is in Trouble’
We had tried to meet in person near her home on the Upper West Side, but by the time she was available, I was in Tel Aviv, placing us along the Israel-New York axis on which “Fleishman” is set. When Toby suddenly calls Libby to tell her he’s getting divorced, he catapults her into memories of their early twenties in Jerusalem. Those thoughts make Libby miss the possibilities of her youth, the ones time has ruthlessly and inevitably extinguished. Eventually her longing for her past becomes so overwhelming that it threatens her marriage to her menschy and patient husband, played by Josh Radnor. (For more longing-for-younger-days while in Israel content, Brodesser-Akner wrote a Saveur essay about vegetable soup in Jerusalem — her Proustian madeleine. Interviewing Brodesser-Akner from my friend’s apartment in Tel Aviv, a city where I lived in my twenties, I found the theme of longing for the past hit almost too close to home.)
Part of the reason Brodesser-Akner doesn’t think the “Fleishman” story is all that Jewish is that she doesn’t feel all that Jewish — at least not relative to her mother and sisters, who are aligned with the Hasidic Chabad-Lubavitch movement and live within a few blocks of each other in Crown Heights, Brooklyn.
“I don’t think any writer has ever gotten it right,” she says of her Jewish background. “They say I was raised Orthodox. It’s interesting because it always makes me look like the black sheep in my family, when really they are. I’m exactly how I was raised to be until I was 12.”
After her mother, a secular Israeli, and her father, a Conservative Long Islander, divorced, her mother put Brodesser-Akner and her sisters in Jewish school. Some Jewish observance trickled back to her mother, who ended up going the Chabad route.
“My mom had never been inside a synagogue until the day she married my father. Now that is what we call ironic,” Brodesser-Akner said.
Brodesser-Akner’s two sisters followed, and her mother eventually remarried and had another child, the only sibling born into a religious household.
“The thing that made me a journalist was being raised in a home where, at age 12, I was relegated to observer. I had to learn how to understand other people’s points of view. And now that’s what I do,” she said.
Despite their religious differences — Brodesser-Akner attends an Orthodox synagogue but sends her children to an unaffiliated Jewish school and says she wakes up “every morning with new ideas” — the author is very close with her family, and her sisters were at the “Fleishman” premiere.
“They were at the premiere of my perverted sex show,” she joked with a laugh referring to the Hulu series, which features some sexual content as Toby explores the post-divorce New York dating scene. “They show up for me and I show up for them. I have my challenges with it, but I think their challenges must be greater. They never say this to me, but they must think that my life is comparatively…” She looked away thoughtfully, trying to find the right words. “They must think my lifestyle is comparatively less worthwhile. But we really love each other.”
To Brodesser-Akner, the most Jewish show on television is “The Patient,” which she calls “the best show I have seen in 100 years.” And that’s not because it (like “Fleishman”) is on FX. “I’m not that kind of interview!” she said.
Lizzy Caplan plays Toby’s friend Libby. (FX Networks)
“It’s the most Jewish show in all of the Jewish ways. It grapples with a Jewish prisoner; with the difference between a Conservative Jewish female cantor whose son becomes ultra-Orthodox — I’d never seen that on screen. It was kind of the only relatable Jewish matter I’ve ever seen. People ask me if I’ve watched ‘Shtisel.’ And I always say, I’m in the 47th season of an ultra-Orthodox family drama myself and not really interested!” She laughed. “But also I think of the other Jewish matters on television, which are adapted memoirs of people who were ultra-Orthodox and now aren’t. It’s like no one can imagine religious people being happy in their lives. And that’s really shocking to me. My family is very happy.”
Brodesser-Akner wound up with her dream cast: she had a list of five actors — Lizzy Caplan, Jesse Eisenberg, Claire Danes, Josh Radnor and Adam Brody — and no backup plan. She noted the fact that viewers have seen them grow up on screen as one reason they were right for the roles. For many, watching Caplan, Eisenberg and Brody sit across from each other in a diner will feel like a camp reunion, the fulfillment of a Jewish television fantasy they never knew they had.
“One thing that we were trying to get across is ‘how could it be that I am this old when I was once this young?’ And the fact that you have a memory of Claire from ‘My So-Called Life,’ or Jesse from ‘The Squid and the Whale’ — that does so much of the work of the show without writing a word,” Brodesser-Akner said.
Besides Danes (who plays the only main character with a non-Jewish parent, whom the book makes clear she resembles) the lead actors are all Jewish — a notable fact in a time when Jewish representation on screen, and who should be allowed to play Jewish characters, is the subject of continued debate.
Last month, New Yorker TV critic Emily Nussbaum, who is Jewish, tweeted, “There is a simple solution to the question of whether various non-Jewish actors are allowed to play Jews & that is to ask me.” Brodesser-Akner responded to the tweet, writing “[Non-Jew] Oscar Isaac in Scenes from a Marriage is the best ex-ortho I ever saw on screen!”
About casting Jewish actors, Brodesser-Akner noted a legal issue rarely mentioned in the representation debate: one can cast based on looks, but it’s illegal in the United States to cast based on religion. She took this very seriously.
“I spoke to [‘The Plot Against America’ director] David Simon about it and he said, ‘They’re actors. You let them act.’ And I agree with that. The question that I asked myself was who was perfect for it?” she said.
Even if Brodesser-Akner rejects the claim that “Fleishman” is a definitively Jewish story, wasn’t she consciously playing with some Philip Roth-inspired Jewish archetypes? Toby the nice Jewish doctor, the devoted, idealistic dad who’s also self-righteous, horny and insecure.
No, she insists she wasn’t. But also Philip Roth is so ingrained in her that who’s to say? And isn’t the question flawed in the first place?
“All I can say is that I am made out of Philip Roth. I’m so formed by his books. I actually would say that you have a bias in the asking of your question, in that you’re Jewish too. And you also are made out of Philip Roth books since you’re a writer. Again, that goes back to the same question as ‘are we American?’ To me, Toby is not ‘a Jewish guy.’ He’s just a guy! He’s the kind of guy I know! I was just trying to be myself.”
“Fleishman is in Trouble” premieres its first two episodes on Hulu on Nov. 17. It will release each of its six remaining episodes weekly on Thursdays.
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‘A collapse’: Number of Israelis who believe Trump prioritizes Israel’s security falls to new low, poll finds
(JTA) — The share of Israelis who believe that Israel’s security is a central consideration of President Donald Trump fell to a record low as Democratic support for Israel in the U.S. continued to decline, according to two new polls Tuesday.
A new poll from the Israel Democracy Institute found that, amid widening disagreements in Israel over U.S. efforts to broker a new nuclear deal with Iran, the share of Israelis who believe Trump prioritizes Israel’s security had seen a “collapse” from 44% in May to 28% in June, pollsters said.
The survey, which polled 603 Jewish respondents and 151 Arab respondents from June 28 to July 1, found that among Jewish respondents, the belief that Israel can fully rely on Trump has plummeted by 38 points between March and June 2026.
Just over one-third of Israelis said they believed Israel’s strategic security situation is better today than it was before the war with Iran. The margin of error was 3.57 percentage points.
Another survey released Tuesday, conducted by the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research from June 11 to 17, added to a growing number of polls showing waning support for Israel among U.S. adults.
The AP poll, which surveyed 3,040 people, including 1,022 Jewish adults, found that 40% of U.S. adults believe America is “too supportive” of Israelis, while 39% believe the U.S. is “not supportive enough” of Palestinians. While the survey included a large sampling of Jewish adults to allow for more reliable estimates of their opinions, the survey was weighted to ensure their views weren’t overrepresented in the findings, the pollsters said.
Among Democrats, the poll found that 58% now say the U.S. is “too supportive” of Israelis, up from 45% in an AP-NORC poll in January 2024.
The share dropped among Republicans, of which just 21% said they believed the U.S. was “too supportive” of Israelis. The share of Republicans who say the U.S. is “not supportive enough” of Israel has shrunk from 39% to 15% since 2024.
It also found that a third of American Jewish adults believe that Israel has committed genocide in Gaza, while another 49% said that it has not.
Among U.S. adults overall, the poll found that about one-third believe Israel has committed genocide, including roughly half of Democrats.
The poll also found that the favorability of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani was split. It found that, among U.S. adults, 38% have an unfavorable view of Netanyahu, while just 28% of U.S. adults have an unfavorable opinion of Mamdani.
Among Jewish adults, about 6 in 10 view Netanyahu unfavorably, while just 39% view Mamdani negatively and 44% view the New York City mayor positively.
For the AP poll, the margin of error for adults overall was 2.8 percentage points, and the margin of error for Jewish adults was 5.0 percentage points.
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The iconic crest worn by Messi and Argentina’s soccer team was designed by a Jewish superfan 50 years ag
(JTA) — BUENOS AIRES — Soccer fans around the world are familiar with the crest worn by Argentina and its star Lionel Messi: a vertical shield with laurel branches symbolizing victory and glory at the bottom and three stars at the top representing the team’s three World Cup titles.
But few are aware that the crest has its roots in Argentina’s close-knit world of Jewish sports clubs, where its designer developed his affinity for soccer.
Norberto “Toto” Rud was in his late 20s and a member of Club Náutico Hacoaj, a Jewish club, when he proposed the crest in 1976, drawing on the branding acumen and graphic design skills he would use throughout his career as a businessman and soccer aficionado in Buenos Aires.
Rud has long been credited with developing the crest after observing that while many European soccer teams wore distinctive emblems, his own beloved Argentina’s jerseys were notable only for their sky blue-and-white colors.
Watching international soccer in the era of black-and-white television, Rud noticed that supporters could instantly recognize teams such as West Germany by its eagle or the Soviet Union by its CCCP lettering, but Argentina could easily be confused with clubs wearing similar striped shirts. He concluded that the national team needed a visual identity equal to its footballing tradition.
Rud prepared approximately 20 design proposals and submitted them to the Argentine Football Association, in a proposal that reached its president and executive committee. The crest made its debut on Nov. 28, 1976, just days after it was approved, in a 0-0 friendly against the Soviet Union in Buenos Aires.
Fifty years later, the crest is basically unchanged and is one of the most widely worn team logos in the world, as Messi jerseys are popular across the globe.
“As a son and a member of the Jewish community and as an Argentinean, it’s a source of pride,” Toto Rud’s son Oliver Rud told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. He added, “Every time I see Argentina’s national team crest, it still amazes me.”
Toto Rud got to see Argentina wear his crest to two World Cup championships, in 1978 and 1986. But he did not live to see the third in 2022. He died in 2010 at age 61 and is buried in Buenos Aires’ La Tablada, Latin America’s largest Jewish cemetery.
Oliver Rud said his father’s mother came to Argentina from Ukraine, a common pathway for Jewish migrants in the first half of the 20th century. Toto Rud was born in March 1948 and was a longtime member of Hacoaj, where he played club soccer himself.
Founded in 1935 by Jewish immigrants to Buenos Aires, Club Náutico Hacoaj is a sports and cultural club with around 10,000 members and five facilities, one in Buenos Aires city and four in Tigre, a city in the north of the Buenos Aires province. Hacoaj, which means “strength” in Hebrew, has been the launch pad for a number of prominent Jewish athletes, including tennis star Diego Schwartzmann. Oliver Rud said a tree dedicated to his father is planted on Hacoaj’s sprawling campus.
“For Hacoaj, it is a tremendous source of pride that one of our members was the creator of the Argentine Football Association’s crest,” the club’s president, Osvaldo Ofman, told JTA. “His design not only represents the jersey of the Argentina national team, the reigning World Cup champions, but also gives us the feeling that a small part of Hacoaj and the Jewish community lives on in an emblem recognized around the world.”
Now, Argentina will face off in the Round of 16 against Egypt, whose coach Hossam Hassan waved a Palestinian flag after defeating Australia in a 4-2 shootout on Friday. Footage of him walking across the field with the flag while chants of “Free, free Palestine” were heard quickly went viral. In a post-match interview, Hassan said his “heart and soul” were with the Palestinian people and dedicated the win to both Egyptians and Palestinians.
Tuesday’s match represents something of a de facto Israeli-Palestinian showdown in a tournament in which neither the Israelis nor the Palestinians are playing. In addition to the show of support for the Palestinians from Egypt, the Argentine government staunchly supports Israel, which Messi, a Catholic, has visited. And a recent poll by an Israeli magazine found that Argentina was the clear favorite among Israeli World Cup viewers, named by 38% of respondents as the team they hope wins the tournament.
The knockout game comes a decade after Messi ignited a backlash in Egypt after announcing on an Egyptian television program that he was donating his shoes to a charity in Cairo. Presenters on the TV show accused Messi of being Jewish and aligned with Israel, which he had visited three years earlier.
“I know he’s Jewish, he donated to Israel and visited the Wailing Wall and whatever,” then-Egyptian Football Federation spokesman Azmi Mogahed phoned in to say. “We don’t need his shoes and Egypt’s poor don’t need help from someone with Jewish or Zionist citizenship.” Mogahed died in 2020.
Messi, who plays for Inter Miami during the regular season, is 39 and is widely expected not to play in another World Cup after this one, meaning that an Argentina loss could be his last game in international competition.
For Oliver Rud, the game will be an opportunity to reflect not only on Messi’s contributions but on his father’s, as well.
“Every time I see Argentina’s national team crest, it still amazes me,” he said. “In fact, my brother Guido and I were just talking about it the other day — how incredible it is to think that Toto designed the crest for the national team some 50 years ago. It’s really extraordinary. Every time I see the crest, I feel a little piece of him in my heart. It’s a beautiful way to remember him.”
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Abdul El-Sayed has refused super PAC funding. An anti-AIPAC PAC says it will spend for him, anyway
(JTA) — A super PAC formed to counter the influence of pro-Israel political action committees confirmed that it will boost Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan’s Democratic U.S. Senate primary, despite the candidate’s pledge to refuse all super PAC funding.
A spokesperson for American Priorities PAC, the anti-AIPAC PAC, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency on Tuesday that its vow two days earlier to “do whatever it takes” to help El-Sayed “means spending.”
The move would put El-Sayed, who has mounted an popular insurgent campaign for a seat viewed as a must-win for Democrats, in the company of other progressives this election cycle who specifically railed against pro-Israel super PACs when swearing off corporate funding — while also benefiting from spending by the newly created pro-Palestinian super PAC.
Super PACs have no limits on fundraising but by law are prohibited from directly coordinating with a campaign — so American Priorities could theoretically raise money to run ads and other get-out-the-vote operations to boost El-Sayed without his consent.
El-Sayed has yet to comment publicly on American Priorities’ plans.
A physician and former county health director, El-Sayed is scheduled to debate his opponent, U.S. Rep. Haley Stevens, on Tuesday night in Grand Rapids. A third candidate, state Sen. Mallory McMorrow, dropped out of the race over the weekend, which American Priorities said motivated its pledge to help El-Sayed. The primary is set for Aug. 4.
El-Sayed has made refusing PAC money a key element of his platform. “Money out of politics” forms part of the slogan that brands many of his yard signs. A new ad released by his campaign on June 30 claimed he was “the only candidate for Senate” who has taken “No Corporate PAC Money.”
The American Priorities spokesperson did not immediately respond to a follow-up to clarify what El-Sayed’s anti-PAC pledge would mean for the group’s spending plans. Requests for comment to the El-Sayed and Stevens campaigns also were not immediately returned.
Stevens, a pro-Israel moderate who has welcomed PAC support, has so far had at least $10 million in AIPAC-affiliated funding directed to boost her campaign, according to Federal Election Commission data. AIPAC-affiliated ads for her have trumpeted policies, including proposed restrictions on immigration enforcement, that AIPAC-funded ads in different races this year have lambasted.
American Priorities has complicated the narrative for the progressive wave of the 2026 primary cycle, which has made pro-Palestinian causes and opposition to corporate funding twin priorities while treating AIPAC as a particular bogeyman.
American Priorities also spent to help democratic socialists Claire Valdez and Darializa Avila Chevalier in their successful primary runs for New York congressional seats last month, even as Valdez pledged to “end Citizens United,” the 2010 Supreme Court decision that allowed unlimited political spending by corporations and unions, and Avila Chevalier called to “abolish Super PACs.”
The spending allowed the candidates’ opponents to accuse them of hypocrisy but failed to derail their success at the ballot box. American Priorities also spent heavily in favor of Adam Hamawy, a doctor who served in Gaza who won his crowded New Jersey congressional primary in June.
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