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In new miniseries ‘The Calling,’ an NYPD detective’s Judaism helps him solve crimes
(New York Jewish Week) — In “The Calling,” a new miniseries streaming on Peacock, a Jewish NYPD detective fights crime and solves mysteries by letting his Jewishness lead the way.
Jeff Wilbusch plays Avraham Avraham, a detective whose Judaism is both central to his character — in more than one scene he says the Mourner’s Kaddish for a murder victim — and an identity that influences the way he does his job.
“It is so beautiful that, in our profession, as actors in the storytelling business, that you can play such a character,” Wilbusch told the New York Jewish Week. “Also, in these crazy times now, to have this beautiful role and character brought to life on screen on such a big platform is a really good thing.”
“The Calling” is based on a series of detective novels by Israeli author Dror Mishani. Though Mishani’s books take place in Israel, the show, produced by David Kelley (creator of “Ally McBeal,” “Big Little Lies” and more) and directed by Barry Levinson (“Diner,” “Good Morning, Vietnam”), transports Detective Avraham to New York. Slightly reminiscent of “Law & Order,” it has less of a procedural bent, with cases that span multiple episodes and more emphasis on the character development.
Detective Avraham — whose double name is not explained in the show further than one off-hand comment “my parents liked the name, I guess” — is a bit of a mysterious and complicated figure who works with his team to solve missing persons cases and a bomb threat at a day care.
Wilbusch, who is Israeli, is best known for his role in Netflix’s “Unorthodox” as Moishe Lefkovitch — the unruly and somewhat dangerous cousin who flies to Germany to track down Esty (Shira Haas), the show’s formerly Orthodox protagonist. For the actor, who grew up in the Satmar Hasidic community of Mea Shearim in Israel until he was 13, and whose native language is Yiddish, he feels a certain responsibility to honor the Jewish characters he plays.
“As a storyteller you have a lot of responsibility, especially when it comes to playing characters that are specific. I do feel a very strong responsibility to Avi,” the 34-year-old actor said. “I’m Jewish and I’m playing Jewish and it is a strange time for us Jews. The current events don’t really leave my head.”
Avraham is considered the best interrogator in the department because of his willingness to listen and empathize in pursuit of justice. (Heidi Gutman/Peacock)
In some instances, the show seems to combine several different streams of Judaism — Detective Avraham says he grew up in Crown Heights, though in a shot of him saying morning prayers and wrapping tefillin on his roof, he appears to live in Williamsburg. He doesn’t wear a kippah save for a few scenes, and while he attends an egalitarian synagogue, he also seems to speak fluent Yiddish.
Still, the character’s Judaism is less about the external markers of Judaism on the show — the scenes of him praying, saying a blessing, or performing “shemira,” watching over the dead — and more about how he carries himself and conducts his job.
“He’s not just Jewish because his name is Avraham, or Jewish because he wears a kippah. He’s Jewish because many different things make him Jewish, storytelling-wise. He’s not a superficial character,” Wilbusch said. “He is such a deep and complex and interesting character with such a strong message of humanity. ”
Avraham is considered the best detective in the department: He knows how to ask the right questions, how to bear witness to tragedy and how to continue to advocate for justice.
“I learned many things from him — to really listen to people, to really use the senses and to fight to see the good in people,” Wilbusch told the New York Jewish Week.
“The Talmud teaches us to see every single human being as the whole world, and that each and every person is entitled to infinite respect and concern. It’s not that I didn’t believe in this before, but just to play a character who consciously embodies this in his whole way of living is a very strong thing and a very healing thing,” he added.
Though Avraham is guided by that very Jewish conscience, he still has his blind spots. He prefers to work alone, he keeps his methods to himself and he remains guarded about his background and personality, perhaps aware that his Judaism sets him apart.
Juliana Canfield as Janine Harris, Jeff Wilbusch as Avraham Avraham, Karen Robinson as Captain Kathleen Davies (Heidi Gutman/Peacock)
Upending these tendencies in Avraham is his more junior partner Janine Harris (Juliana Canfield), who is eager to learn more about Judaism in order to understand her colleague better. Throughout the series, she asks about synagogue, shiva and Sukkot in a respectful and curious way.
“The Talmud says it’s forbidden for a teacher to reject his student,” she tells him in one scene. “If I ask you, you kinda have to teach me.”
It’s a relationship not often seen on television, a non-Jewish character with an innocent curiosity about Judaism and a recognition of how it influences one’s entire being. For Wilbusch, the relationship between Avraham and Janine was one of his favorite parts of the show.
“It says in the Torah ‘Lo tov heyot l’adam l’vado,’ a person should not be alone,” Wilbusch said, quoting a line in Genesis. “Avraham thinks he works best alone, but he needs Janine badly. The relationship that they have is not just a master-student. She keeps them in line where he has blind spots.”
The relationship on screen bled into their real world interactions on set, Wilbusch said. As production went on, Canfield, who is not Jewish, would slip in Yiddish phrases like “oy gevalt” after messing up a line.
“It means a lot to me. It’s a dream come true — a dream that I never knew I had,” Wilbusch said. “I never thought I would play a Jewish detective, that this would be my first leading role in America.”
All eight episodes of “The Calling” will be available to stream on Peacock on November 10.
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Israelis pause for a different kind of siren: the one marking Holocaust memorial day
(JTA) — For the last six weeks, whenever Israelis have heard a siren, they were instructed to run to their nearest bomb shelter. On Tuesday, a siren instead brought them to a halt.
The two-minute siren was the one sounded annually on Yom HaShoah, Holocaust memorial day. In keeping with a national tradition, Israelis stopped whatever they were doing for a moment of silence to remember the 6 million Jews murdered in the Holocaust. Drivers exited their cars on the streets; shoppers froze in grocery store aisles; and people strolling the streets paused where they were.
Even for seasoned Israelis, the dissonance was strong this year. Hillel Fuld, an Israeli influencer, wrote that he was initially unnerved to see so many people failing to follow the guidance about what to do when a missile is incoming.
“I exited my car and was about to lie down when I realized, that’s not a siren warning of a missile. That’s a siren remembering the six million!” he wrote.
“I felt that emotional confusion that every Israeli knows too well. Sadness. Devastation. Hopelessness,” Fuld continued. “And at the same time, tremendous pride, optimism, and unity.”
This year’s Yom HaShoah is the first since all Israeli hostages taken on Oct. 7, 2023, were freed from Gaza. Some of the freed hostages, including Eli Sharabi, participated in small remembrance gatherings known as Zikaron Basalon. Others posted symbols of Jewish survival, including Sagui Dekel-Chen, whose wife posted pictures of him alongside his grandfather, a Holocaust survivor, and Elkana Bohbot, who with his wife announced that he is expecting a child.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post Israelis pause for a different kind of siren: the one marking Holocaust memorial day appeared first on The Forward.
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Many children killed in the Holocaust had no one to say Kaddish for them. These Jews have stepped up.
(JTA) — As each week’s Shabbat morning service comes to a close at Temple Beth El in West Palm Beach, Florida, an unusual tradition unfolds as the congregation prepares to recite the Mourner’s Kaddish.
Rabbi Alan Bell asks to stand all those reciting the prayer on the anniversary of the death of a loved one. He also asks other congregants to stand, too: those who have taken it upon themselves to recite Kaddish for a child up to the age of 17 who was murdered in the Holocaust and for whom there are no living relatives to recite it.
The Conservative synagogue calls the program Remember a Child, and at least a third of members in the 150-family congregation participate. Most recite the mourner’s prayer on the date of the child’s burial as well as on Yizkor, the special memorial prayer for the departed recited in the synagogue four times a year.
But some recite the Mourner’s Kaddish far more often.
Bell and his wife Susan have “adopted” a girl named Renee Albersheim who was born in 1930 in Berlin. They do not know when she died, only that it was in the Kovno Ghetto in German-occupied Lithuania. As a result, Susan Bell said, they recite Kaddish for her each time Kaddish is recited — multiple times a day and sometimes multiple times in a single service.
It’s become a family tradition. “When each of our granddaughters became bat mitzvah we got each a child to show them that children their age were dying [in the Holocaust],” Susan Bell said.
“They were girls from different places in the world — one was from Greece and the other from Romania — and they had the same first name as my granddaughters,” she continued. “I wanted to show the girls how widespread the Holocaust was; it was a learning experience for them.”
The Nazis murdered an estimated 1.5 million Jewish children during the Holocaust, many of whom died alongside everyone else in their family. That left no one traditionally assumed by Jewish law to recite the Mourner’s Kaddish on their behalf — siblings, parents or, for adults, children and spouses.
Rabbi Alan Bell and his wife Susan Bell lead a Holocaust remembrance initiative at Temple Beth El in West Palm Beach, Florida. (Courtesy)
At Beth El, those who participate in Remember a Child think of themselves as having “adopted” a child who was murdered more than eight decades ago. Cheryl Finkelstein, who helmed the project for many years since it launched as a Men’s Club initiative about 40 years ago, said she found those who opted in tended to “take this very seriously” and grow deeply connected to the child they have committed to remembering.
“When I sent one woman a photo of the child she had ‘adopted,’ she wrapped her arms around it and waited until the paper was warm,” Finkelstein recalled. “It breaks your heart.”
The project has gained attention far beyond the synagogue’s walls, and elicited a range of mourning practices that go beyond reciting the traditional prayer.
“We had a number of people who are not Jewish who felt strongly that they wanted to be engaged in this,” Finkelstein added. “One of those women wrote a poem about her ‘child,’ imagining her as a little girl who chased butterflies, living in a world of innocence. And another woman purchased aging software and used it on a photo of the child she had adopted to see what the child would have looked like as an adult.”
Having taken over the initiative from Finkelstein, Susan Bell has sought to gather as much information as she can about roughly 15 of the children whom congregants have “adopted,” starting with a page of testimony assembled by Yad Vashem, the World Holocaust Remembrance Center in Israel.
Ari Rabinovitch, head of Yad Vashem’s international media section, said the names of the children murdered in the Holocaust and for whom there is no one to say Kaddish are kept in the organization’s online names database, which has 587,226 names of children up to and including age 17.
Rabinovitch noted that Yad Vashem has prepared a list of names — both children and adults — with details about them for use in Holocaust name reading ceremonies. “It is not uncommon for groups to access lists of names on their own for memorial services,” he said. But the memorial does not track how they are used, or how many synagogues may have adopted a practice like Beth El’s.
Bell believes at least some have. A Beth El member promoted the project on business trips, she said.
“Several of those synagogues picked it up but I don’t know if any have continued it,” she said. “It takes a toll on you when you do the research and learn what happened to each of these children.”
Menachem Rosensaft, general counsel emeritus to the World Jewish Congress who was born in 1948 to survivors of Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen, is an outspoken advocate for such a commemoration. He believes every synagogue should incorporate some mention of the Holocaust during Shabbat services, to ensure that its legacy is woven into the ongoing fabric of Jewish life — and he sees the Kaddish for child victims at Beth El as one powerful way to do that.
“It’s important in whatever way to bring into our consciousness that we are not letting it become just another event in Jewish history, just another occurrence, just another tragedy, just another pogrom,” Rosensaft added. “Because if that happens, in another generation the Holocaust will be a statistic and basically a catchphrase for people to throw around.”
As Holocaust memory is increasingly contested in the public sphere and the trauma of the Holocaust is joined by other tragedies for the Jews, Rosensaft’s vision has grown uncertain. But Finkelstein said she knew of at least one case where Remember a Child is likely to have impact into the next generation.
One Beth El congregant who “adopted” a child murdered by the Nazis “put in his will that his son was to say Kaddish for the child after he dies,” she said. “He put the instructions in his safe deposit box so that his son would take them out along with the keys to his house.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post Many children killed in the Holocaust had no one to say Kaddish for them. These Jews have stepped up. appeared first on The Forward.
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VIDEO: ’Love was there too:’ A Yom Hashoah commemoration in Yiddish
די פֿאַרגאַנגענע וואָך האָט דער „ייִדישפּיל“־טעאַטער אין תּל־אָבֿיבֿ אַרויסגעשטעלט אַ ווידעאָ פֿון אַ „יום־השואה“־אַקאַדעמיע וואָס די טרופּע האָט דורכגעפֿירט אין 2022. די טעמע פֿון דער פּראָגראַם איז געווען מאָמענטן פֿון ליבע בײַ ייִדן אין די געטאָס און קאָנצענטראַציע־לאַגערן.
אינעם ווידעאָ לייענען די אַקטיאָרן פֿאָר זכרונות פֿון לעבן געבליבענע ווי אויך ייִדישע לידער אָנגעשריבן בשעת דעם חורבן. זיי באַשרײַבן ווי אַזוי געליבטע פּאָרלעך האָבן זיך געטראָפֿן בשתּיקה; רירנדיקע מאָמענטן פֿון געזעגענען זיך און ווי די לעבן געבליבענע האָבן זיך באַמיט מיט אַלע כּוחות צו געפֿינען די געליבטע נאָך דער באַפֿרײַונג.
דער ווידעאָ הייבט זיך אָן מיט אַ באַגריסונג פֿונעם תּל־אָבֿיבֿער בירגערמײַסטער, רון חולדאי, אויף העברעיִש, אָבער די פּראָגראַם גופֿא איז אין גאַנצן אויף ייִדיש.
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