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The real Jewish history in ‘History of the World: Part II’: Part I
Spoilers for “History of the World: Part II” follow.
(JTA) – Finally fulfilling the promise Mel Brooks made in 1981, the long-belated “History Of The World: Part II” brings us … “Hitler on Ice.”
For a sketch first teased during the end credits of Brooks’ film “History Of The World: Part I,” the leader of Nazi Germany can be seen attempting to land some difficult moves (perhaps a triple Axis?) at an Olympics-like skating competition.
Needless to stay, Hitler wasn’t known as a figure skater. But some aspects of the sketch — such as why collaborationist Vichy France would give the Nazi leader’s routine a perfect score — might benefit from a more detailed understanding of the real history that’s being pilloried.
The same goes for the sendups of Christianity, the Russian Revolution and Henry Kissinger — all historical events and figures depicted in the first episodes of the series, which landed on Hulu on Monday. Produced by Brooks and offering up its share of his Catskills-style Jewish humor, the eight-episode, four-night romp through history stops frequently on items of Jewish interest. Some sketches recur throughout the series.
So here is your guide to the real-life Jewish history of “History of the World: Part II,” to be updated daily as new episodes drop.
The Russian Revolution
In a longer narrative first introduced in Episode 1, the show’s depiction of the fall of the Russian Empire is a high-wire blend of parodies and stylistic influences, as well as a crash course on Russian antisemitism.
It begins with a grody depiction of early-1900s Jewish shtetl life borrowing heavily from “Fiddler on the Roof.” Mud-pie dealer and patriarch Shmuck Mudman, played by Jewish actor Nick Kroll, uses a truncated song-and-dance number (“Submission”) to encourage his feisty son to follow Jewish traditions and stay away from cosmopolitan life in Moscow. But his son is unconvinced: “The shtetl stinks, it’s no place for a Jew.” Like Anatevka, the tiny Jewish village from “Fiddler,” the Jews are heavily implied to be living in the “Pale of Settlement,” the only region of the Russian Empire where Jews were permitted to live starting in the early 19th century and lasting until the Russian Revolution in 1917. State-backed schooling and “Russianization” programs sought to erode Jewish communal identity and replace it with a Russian national identity; a small number of Jews were allowed to work or study beyond the Pale if they had special skills.
In “History,” the Mudmans, including a mother played by Jewish comic Pamela Adlon, are menaced by the Cossacks, the Ukrainian mercenaries and feared horsemen who carried out a series of pogroms agains the Jews often at the behest of the Russian state. Meanwhile, the gilded Romanov family are depicted as Kardashian-like beauty influencers headed up by Tsar Nicholas II (Danny DeVito), who discovers their empire is on the brink of collapse.
In real life, the Russian Revolution liberated the state’s Jewish population with the fall of the tsar in 1917, and a large percentage of Communist party members at the time were Jewish. (Like DeVito, Nicholas II in real life was a short man, around five-foot-six.) In the decades to follow, Communist rule would come to have a devastating effect on the Jews of the Soviet Union, suppressing their religion and culture, and purging many of the Jewish party members.
Hitler on ice
It’s hard to impress a team of international judges when you’re the genocidal maniac who tried to conquer them.
In the skit, Hitler is despondent when judges from the countries in which he waged war all give him zeroes — with the exception of Vichy France, which awards him a perfect score, and Poland, which awards him an expletive. (It’s an uneasy restaging of the line “Winter for Poland and France,” from “Springtime for Hitler,” the musical highlight in Brooks’ “The Producers.”)
The scores reflect Nazi Germany’s relationship with the countries: It conquered France and installed a puppet government that acquiesced to Hitler’s orders to round up and denationalize the country’s Jews. Meanwhile, the Nazis invaded Poland in 1939, dividing up its rule with the Soviets and murdering much of its Jewish population in the Holocaust. Unlike the French government, which signed an armistice with Germany after heavy losses to clear the path for Vichy rule while preserving the Republic in name, Poland does not acquiesce to a collaborationist narrative; decades later, it is illegal in Poland to suggest that the country was complicit in Nazi atrocities.
But these wartime victories make Hitler the loser of “Hitler on Ice.” Accompanied by his “coach” Joseph Goebbels (the Nazis’ propaganda minister) and partner Eva Braun, this Hitler hangs his head in shame as he trudges away to the jeers of the crowd, intending to go shoot himself in his Berlin bunker in a repeat of his actual death by suicide at the end of World War II.
“If you put concentration camps in people’s countries,” offers one of the sportscasters (played by Jewish comic Ike Barinholtz), “you better be flawless on the ice.”
Jesus (Jay Ellis) and Judas (Nick Kroll) in a scene from the “Curb Your Judaism” sketch in “History of the World” Part II.” (Aaron Epstein/Hulu)
The betrayal of Jesus Christ
Titled “Curb Your Judaism,” the show’s dramatization of the events following the Last Supper is styled in the manner of Larry David’s long-running HBO comedy “Curb Your Enthusiasm.” Kroll plays Judas like he’s Larry David, and his betrayal of Jesus is depicted as a series of comic misunderstandings — which, like the original “Curb,” often revolve around questions of Jewish identity. “Curb” regulars play supporting roles as disciples, with J.B. Smoove as Luke and Richard Kind as Peter.
Besides aping the “Curb” mannerisms, including Judas’ grumblings about foot-washing and the size of the portions at the Last Supper, much of the comedy of the Jesus segments revolves around to what degree Jesus himself (Jay Ellis of “Insecure”) has formally renounced his Judaism. The segment depicts how Christ endeared himself to his followers, and introduced Christianity, by relaxing many of the requirements of Jewish tradition, including kosher laws and circumcision. “Something’s off with this Jesus guy. He’s trying to phase out his Judaism,” Judas remarks.
Jewish scholars have generally viewed Jesus Christ as a teacher, but not as a prophet or messiah as Christians believe. Jews have granted differing levels of respect to Jesus depending on Jewish-Christian relations at any given point throughout world history (Jews weren’t such big fans of Jesus during the Spanish Inquisition, so memorably depicted in “Part I”).
Whether Jesus really did instruct his followers to disregard kosher laws and other Jewish practices is disputed by New Testament scholars and interpreters of the Gospel of Mark; other scholars believe Jesus intended to live as any other Jew. But “Curb Your Judaism” does depict Jesus as ultimately perishing at the hands of the Roman Empire, with whom Jews had a contentious relationship at the time, rather than at the hands of Jews, which was a popular belief used to justify antisemitism among various Christian denominations for centuries. “Nostra Aetate,” the influential 1965 papal decree, finally “absolved” the Jews for Christ’s murder, at least according to official Catholic doctrine.
Henry Kissinger
A sketch that imagines Shirley Chisholm, the first Black female member of Congress, as the star of a 1970s sitcom modeled on “The Jeffersons” includes a role for Kroll as Henry Kissinger, Richard Nixon’s Jewish secretary of state. (Kroll is also an executive producer on the entire series, which helps explain his regular onscreen appearances.)
Historians generally view Kissinger, a refugee from Nazi Germany, as the lead architect of the Nixon administration’s most controversial decisions, including prolonging the Vietnam War and orchestrating a secret bombing campaign on Cambodia. Some call him a war criminal.
The Kissinger of “History” catches some of that criticism. A throwaway line further suggests he is an immortal demon.
Check back in throughout the week as JTA brings you Jews in space… the history space, that is.
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The post The real Jewish history in ‘History of the World: Part II’: Part I appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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What It’s Like in Israel — During ‘Operation Lion’s Roar’
An Israeli air defense system intercepts a ballistic missile barrage launched from Iran to central Israel during a missile attack. Photo: Eli Basri / SOPA Images via Reuters Connect
I haven’t been sleeping much.
It starts with an (intentionally) obnoxious screech on your phone that overrides all your “leave me alone” settings, and harangues you that a missile alarm has gone off. The radar and satellite tech behind this disruptive howl is almost magical, but in the moment, no one cares.
Then the promised air raid sirens sound all around: you have 90 seconds to reach a bomb shelter.
Fortunately, there’s a bomb shelter in my building. Some aren’t so lucky: they run down the block to public shelters, or to Tel Aviv’s new underground subway, which was built with this exact scenario in mind.
The attacks come in waves of an hour or two.
Imagine having a baby that wakes you up all day and night, except instead of a baby it’s a homicidal Islamist regime, and instead of wanting to be changed or fed, it wants to kill you.
Emergency notifications from the Israeli Home Front Command indicating the approach of Iranian missiles. Photo: Daniel Pomerantz.
Israel has the most advanced, multi-layered missile defense system in human history, but it’s only about 88% effective — and that remaining 12% takes out entire apartment buildings. Iran already claimed its first victims in Israel and across the region.
This war is horrible, but there are many reasons Israel needed to wage it:
1. Iran is developing nuclear weapons.
This isn’t some Iraq era claim of “WMDs” — we know this is true because (among other reasons) Iran essentially says so. The regime very publicly insists on enriching uranium up to levels that have no possible use other than making warheads, all while paradoxically claiming “peaceful purposes.”
And if all that weren’t enough, Iran hides its “peaceful” nuclear program hundreds of feet under a mountain. Make of that what you will.
2. Iran is also developing ICBMs (intercontinental ballistic missiles) capable of reaching the United States. We know this because (again) the regime says so. A lot. They brag about it. This is not a question mark.
3. Iran’s terror proxies have killed thousands of Americans, Israelis, Europeans, and Arabs, including the Beirut barracks bombing that took the lives of 220 US Marines, and the unimaginable October 7 Massacre in Israel. Claiming that the work of proxies isn’t “really” Iran’s doing this is like hiring a hitman and then claiming that you didn’t “personally” murder anyone.
4. Of course, the greatest victims are the Iranian people, 80% of whom want to overthrow the regime — after 47 years of unimaginable suffering. This regime murdered thousands of its own people just last month, most for protesting, some for using Star Link terminals.
We seem to forget that military might can be used appropriately and effectively.
For every nightmare of intervention, such as Iraq or Afghanistan, there are also success stories, such as Libya, Kosovo, and most recently, Venezuela. And this isn’t even “intervention,” this is self defense. The regime’s President Masoud Pezeshkian declared in December, “we are in a full-fledged war with America, Israel, and Europe,” as Iranian officials continued to scream “Death to America” in the halls of Parliament, and on the streets.
And Iran puts its money where its mouth is: backing up its homicidal rhetoric with actual homicide. Lots of it.
Iran is now spreading a distorted history, claiming that all of its problems can be traced to America. That isn’t true: it’s a psyop, designed to weaponize our democracy against us. One can debate whether America should have helped affect a coup in Iran in 1953, but the leadership America helped bring to power back then (the “Shah”) is the very same leadership whose return the Iranian people are now risking their very lives to demand. America and the Iranian people are completely aligned in this, and the death of Ayatollah Khamenei was met by cheers and celebrations.
Genocidal maniacs have a way of telling us exactly what they plan to do: we ignored Hitler in the run up to World War II, we ignored Al-Qaeda in the years before 9/11, and we now ignore Iran at our peril.
But we’re not ignoring Iran.
We must hope that the people of Iran are ready to take back their country, and institute a new, organized government. It is entirely possible that Iran, the Middle East, and the world at large are on the verge of greater peace and stability than we have seen, or even imagined, in any of our lifetimes.
But we aren’t there yet, and we need the united support of all our allies, and our entire democracy, in order to succeed.
Daniel Pomerantz is the CEO of RealityCheck, an organization dedicated to deepening public conversation through robust research studies and public speaking.
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Family of Former FBI Agent Robert Levinson Demands Iran Be Held ‘Accountable,’ Return His Remains
People walk near a mural featuring images of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and leader of Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, on a street in Tehran, Iran, Feb. 17, 2026. Photo: Majid Asgaripour/WANA (West Asia News Agency) via REUTERS
The family of former FBI agent Robert Levinson, who disappeared in Iran in 2007 and is believed to have died while in Iranian custody, is calling on the Trump administration to make sure Tehran returns his remains and is held “accountable” for its actions following this weekend’s US-Israel airstrikes on the Islamic Republic.
Washington has maintained that Levinson, a retired FBI special agent, was taken by Iranian officials on March 9, 2007, while working as a private contractor for the CIA on the Iranian island of Kish, where he had traveled to meet a source. His family was never informed of what officially happened to the American citizen, but in 2020, the US government officially concluded he had died while in Iran’s custody. The details and circumstances surrounding his death remain unknown. Levinson was a father of seven children.
Levinson’s family issued a statement, shared on social media, following Saturday’s killing of Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in the US-Israel airstrikes.
“For nearly 19 years, Iran has lied, obstructed, and refused to answer for the kidnapping, detention, and death of our father, Robert Levinson,” the family said in its statement. “Ayatollah Ali Khamenei led the regime responsible for these crimes. His death does not erase what Iran did to our father, and it does not end our fight for accountability. But it is a significant moment for our family and for every family that has suffered at the hands of this regime’s hostage-taking and wrongful detention.”
“Now Iran must do what it has refused to do for nearly two decades: provide full accountability for what happened to our father, return his remains to our family, and disclose the truth about his kidnapping, imprisonment, and death,” they added. “Our family will not stop demanding the truth. And we will not stop demanding justice.”
The family also expressed gratitude to US President Donald Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio “for using the power of the United States to confront Iran and to hold it accountable, including by recognizing and addressing Iran’s long-standing practice of wrongful detention.”
Levinson’s son, Dan Levinson, talked to “Fox & Friends” over the weekend about the need for the Trump administration to pressure Iran to take accountability.
“We’re just looking for answers. We still don’t know what exactly happened to him,” the younger Levinson said of his father. “There was no person more responsible for my father’s fate than Ayatollah Khamenei. At any time he could have waved his hand and had my dad released. He chose not to. We begged and pleaded. We sent so many letters. I went over there twice asking for a meeting and his people rebuffed us. Ignored us.”
Levinson said there is still a $25 million reward for information leading to the recovery and return of his father’s remains.
In March 2025, the United States imposed sanctions on three Iranian intelligence officers for their alleged involvement in Levinson’s disappearance.
In December 2020, the US Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control sanctioned two other Iranian officials who are accused of authorizing Levinson’s 2007 abduction. The FBI released posters seeking information about them last year.
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The Jewish space lasers are real — well, kind of
Everyone made fun of Marjorie Taylor Greene when she said that Rothschild-funded space lasers had caused forest fires.
But, as it turns out, the space lasers are real. Well, sort of. They aren’t starting forest fires or causing major weather events, as Greene claimed in her post. Israel does, however, have a laser that shoots in the general direction of space. But that’s enough for some conspiracy theorists to feel vindicated.
“No longer a ‘Conspiracy Theory.’ Israel just used a Directed Energy Weapon (DEWs),” reads one viral tweet about the lasers. “During Biden’s term the media worked relentlessly to Fact Check these weapons as conspiracy theories.”
Indeed, as Israel and Iran exchanged missiles over the weekend, videos circulated online purporting to show Israel shooting down missiles using a laser. In the video, missiles launched by Hezbollah from southern Lebanon, near the border with Israel, appear to flame out moments after taking off. (Israel has yet to officially confirm that the rockets were shot down by lasers, and the videos aren’t definitive; the missiles could have been defective and burned out on launch.)
But it is true that Israel has been working on defensive lasers for years. In 2022, Prime Minister Naftali Bennett said, “We have successfully completed a series of tests on our new ‘Iron Beam’ laser air defense system. This may sound like science fiction, but it’s real.” The laser system was reportedly delivered and deployed across Israel in December.
“It has nothing to do with the ‘Jewish space laser’ conspiracy theory,” said Mike Rothschild, a researcher on extremism and author of Jewish Space Lasers: The Rothschilds and 200 Years of Conspiracy Theories. “Conspiracy theorists often take real or in-development technology and twist it around for their own purposes.”
The laser works by shooting a grouping of small beams toward the projectile it is attempting to destroy, explains a report on the system’s development in National Defense Magazine. When one hits its target, the beams concentrate on the target until it is incinerated.
The lasers are less effective than the existing Iron Dome system, which works by intercepting missiles with other missiles and exploding them before they hit the ground. The laser can only reach missiles within about a 10 kilometer range, and, like any beam of light, can be blocked by terrain or atmospheric conditions like haze or clouds. On the other hand, the lasers are cheap to use, since they don’t require a ballistic missile for each engagement, and, for the same reason, they cause less collateral damage from falling debris.
The existence of the laser and its first — or first public — deployment has plenty of people joking about Jewish space lasers being real, and apologizing to Greene, though the Iron Beam has little to do with Greene’s allegations of a laser used to start targeted forest fires for government profit.
Conspiracy theorists may be crowing about the supposedly huge secret they’ve uncovered. But the laser isn’t secret at all. The Iron Beam is a well-funded and well-publicized project that has been in development for years, funded by both the U.S. and Israel. The first model was unveiled in 2014 at the Singapore Air Show. Smaller versions have been used to shoot down drones at close range for the past several years.
The aura of secrecy is key to the world of conspiracy theories. If antisemites can frame anything done by Jews or Israel as an underground, hidden project, it gains an undertone of corruption and danger.
The Iron Beam, however, has its own Wikipedia page. It features 40 sources — which means there are at least 40 other articles, going back over a decade, about the laser defense device. If you think that’s a secret, you’re just not paying attention.
The post The Jewish space lasers are real — well, kind of appeared first on The Forward.