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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.”
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How a Jewish, German-averse writer came to love Berlin
Berlin Before and After: A Cautionary Mirror for Our Times
By Wendy Lesser
Harper, 352 pages, $32
For years, Wendy Lesser was a proud, Germany-avoiding Jew with what she calls “an ingrained distaste for the nation that gave rise to the Third Reich.” Then, in 2003, Lesser, founder and editor of The Threepenny Review and a prolific critic and author, was the recipient of a fellowship from the American Academy in Berlin. Those few months in residence started her love affair with that history-embattled city, where she now returns regularly and feels surprisingly at home.
“One of the things I discovered, when I eventually got to Berlin,” she writes in her latest book, Berlin Before and After, “was how deeply Jewish that city’s culture still is. Or…how thoroughly the German and Jewish cultures at one time entered into each other, so that the versions we now have of them…are still colored by that mutual infusion.”
Berlin Before and After is Lesser’s highly idiosyncratic, selective take on the city — as much travelogue as cultural history. Its subtitle, A Cautionary Mirror for Our Times, evoking the civil rights abuses of the Trump era, reveals something of its raison-d’être. But Lesser doesn’t belabor the comparison, by now a cliché of American political discourse. She is at least as interested in the diverse artistic pleasures of contemporary Berlin as in the historical shadows that shape its landscape and personality.
The conceit of the book is simple: Lesser begins with an admiring look at Berlin in the year 1929, which she defines as “the last year in which it was possible to turn a blind eye” to impending disaster. “Runaway inflation, widespread economic despair, and violent social unrest were just around the corner,” she writes, “but they were invisible to most people.”
Lesser skips over the rise of the Third Reich, the Holocaust and the devastation of World War II and resumes her narrative in the contemporary city, with its wealth of museums, memorials and other cultural attractions. An aficionado of Berlin’s public transit, she ends, somewhat bizarrely, by taking readers on an extended bus ride across the city.
Some of the greatest achievements of the Weimar period, she argues, date to 1929. Lesser proceeds chronologically but also associatively, touching on architectural treatises, novels (including Alfred Döblin’s Berlin Alexanderplatz, Erich Maria Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front and Vicki Baum’s Grand Hotel), and the photography, paintings, silent film, dance and theater of the era. Though her focus isn’t political, she lauds the achievements of chancellor and, later, foreign minister Gustav Stresemann. She also remarks on the celebrity of Albert Einstein, one of the many German Jewish scientists and intellectuals who eventually found refuge in the United States.
In the section “Berlin Now,” Lesser is concerned with the impacts of two separate, but related traumas: the Nazi era and the Cold War, epitomized by the Berlin Wall dividing the city into east and west. Berlin’s intense memorial landscape has by now been the subject of countless articles and books, but that doesn’t impede Lesser from digging in. “Berlin is the companion who never shuts up, and what it wants to tell you about is itself,” she writes. The city “lives on a daily basis with its history in a way that is true of no other place I know.”
Lesser is right on the big picture. But her patience for dissection of both the history and its memorialization is limited. She rushes through the Topography of Terror museum (admittedly, a heavy lift), built on the site of Gestapo and SS headquarters and the Reich Security Main Office. She has little to say about the German Resistance Memorial Center, another site-specific museum, located in the military headquarters where the failed July 20, 1944, assassination plot against Adolf Hitler was planned. And she contemptuously dismisses what she calls “the self-glorifying architecture” of Daniel Libeskind’s generally acclaimed Jewish Museum Berlin in a single paragraph, without any reference to the many important shows it has mounted over the years or to its revamped (in 2020) core exhibition.
Nor does Lesser explicitly consider the notion of the “counter-memorial” — those self-effacing monuments that serve as a critique of more conventional, celebratory memorials. She nevertheless describes several of them. Among the earliest is Bibliothek, the underground “empty library” memorial on Bebelplatz, commemorating the 1933 book burnings that took place there. She visits Peter Eisenman’s vast, unmissable (and controversial) Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, but makes no mention of its excellent underground museum. She examines the now ubiquitous Stolpersteine (Stumble-Stones), recording the last known residences, deportation dates and fates of Berlin’s Jewish residents, and Renata Stih and Frieder Schnock’s Places of Remembrance, whose playful signs attached to lampposts catalog the plethora of anti-Jewish ordinances enacted by the Third Reich.
She also covers memorials to Germany’s division, including remnants of the Wall, the Stasi Museum, the Spandau Zitadelle (with its collection of “toxic monuments”) and the gruesome Hohenschönhausen Prison, whose brutal past clearly captures her imagination.
Berlin’s greatest draw for Lesser is arguably its culture, though it, too, is inseparable from history. She delves into the art of Gerhard Richter, the music of the Russian-born conductor Vladimir Jurowski, the television series Babylon Berlin, and the literature and film of East Germany.
The resulting narrative is an intellectual potpourri, probably most engaging to those who know Berlin (but not too well) or who might be contemplating a visit. Lesser follows her own wide-ranging curiosity and assumes that we’ll tag along. “Viscerally and consciously, with a kind of self-awareness that is rare in a collective entity,” she writes, radiating enthusiasm, “Berlin has continued to reveal itself to me in ways I never cease to find moving.”
The post How a Jewish, German-averse writer came to love Berlin appeared first on The Forward.
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What Black voters can teach Michigan Jews about Abdul El-Sayed
Jewish Democrats in Michigan face a tough choice. They can vote for Abdul El-Sayed, a candidate whose views clash with their own, or withhold their support for the Democratic candidate for senator in a razor-close election that may determine which party controls the Senate.
In a race where a single percentage point separates the two candidates, and in which Jews make up 1.4% of the electorate, every Jewish vote counts. That’s why it’s instructive to look at the history of another minority voting bloc — Black Americans.
Black Americans have faced a version of the El-Sayed dilemma for a century: Should they support a candidate who is imperfect or even hostile on issues they care about intensely, or hold their noses, be pragmatic and vote for the larger prize of institutional power?
Black Americans “don’t have the luxury of picking a candidate who is purely for their interests,” Sam Fulwood III, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who specializes in race and public policy, told me in a phone interview. “I don’t think there’s ever been a moment in history where there’s been a pure choice.”
I get why so many Michigan Jewish voters see El-Sayed as the ultimate “impure” choice. He said he’d cut off both offensive and even defensive military aid to Israel. He called the Israeli government evil, comparing it to Hamas. He has campaigned with Hasan Piker, the influencer who called Israel “the Jewish ISIS” and said that American Jews bring violence on themselves by supporting Israel.
Amid a storm of criticism and calls to distance himself from Piker, El-Sayed reiterated his support for Jews. “I love and revere Judaism and the Jewish people,” he said.
At the same time, El-Sayed’s progressive stances on health care, education and economic justice and even his sharp criticism of the Israeli government have resonated with some Jewish voters.
Others have been satisfied by his pledges to fight antisemitism and his call for a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that, in his words, guarantees equal rights “for Palestinians and Jewish Israelis alike.”
“So many young Jewish people are active in Abdul’s campaign, and it’s their Judaism that leads them to that position,” said former U.S. Rep. Andy Levin, a self-described Zionist.
Many Michigan Jewish Democrats remain unconvinced. Just before the High Holidays, dozens of Michigan rabbis and Jewish leaders signed onto a list of “non-negotiable” principles about Jewish safety and Israel that any candidate hoping to earn their support must espouse. The petition, called Non-Negotiable Michigan, didn’t name El-Sayed directly, but it’s clear he was its target.
Ultimatums cut both ways. In setting terms for El-Sayed Jewish leaders have created one for themselves. Elections, despite what we learned in high school, aren’t popularity contests. A vote isn’t an approval. It’s a choice.
The Democratic Jews on the fence over El-Sayed may ultimately be faced, come November, with the prospect of an imperfect candidate representing a wing of the party they fear, versus two more years of a Republican majority that will continue to rubber-stamp the Trump administration’s damage to the economy, democracy, the environment, the social safety net, health care and immigrant rights.
If the choice is novel for many Jewish Democrats, it’s old news for Black Americans.
The dilemma goes back at least as far as the 1936 election, when Black voters shifted to the Democratic Party to vote for Franklin D. Roosevelt, even though FDR, fearful of losing Southern support, repeatedly refused to support federal anti-lynching legislation.
Or consider Lyndon Johnson. In 1957, Johnson, then Senate Majority Leader, stripped the enforcement teeth out of that year’s Civil Rights Act to get it passed, bypassing the objections of civil rights leaders. Seven years later, after Johnson became president and signed the Civil Rights Act, Black voters delivered him about 94% of their vote — despite a legislative record on civil rights that had been mixed at best.
Even more recently, Black voters have had to sacrifice the perfect for the good, supporting Hillary Clinton despite the impact of Bill Clinton’s 1994 crime bill that contributed to mass incarceration.
In all these cases, Black voters didn’t overlook or excuse these records. Instead, they made a strategic calculation to focus on the bigger goals, realizing politicians are often imperfect vehicles to get us there.
“Black Democrats have overlooked differences in the Democratic Party and even overlooked prejudice because they knew the Democratic Party was much better than the alternative,” Ada Horwich, a longtime Democratic Jewish activist in Los Angeles told me. “We need to learn from their political behavior.”
Perhaps the best example, Fulwood reminded me, was John F. Kennedy, who saw the civil rights movement as a domestic distraction. But in 1960, after Martin Luther King Jr. was jailed, Kennedy privately — so as not to offend Southern Democrats — called Coretta Scott King to offer support, while his brother Robert worked behind the scenes to secure King’s release. That persuaded King’s father, King Sr., to throw his considerable electoral influence behind the Democrat.
“He took a lot of Black voters with him,” said Fulwood, “even though Kennedy was not great.”
Fast-forward to 1963, and JFK came around to support the movement.
“It’s a difficult thing,” King Jr. said at the time, “to teach a president.”
One lesson is that politicians are teachable. Stances that seem “non-negotiable” now can change.
That mixture of cold calculation and hope is exactly what this election is asking Jewish Michiganders to negotiate. Or, as Fulwood said of so many electoral choices Black Americans have faced, “One candidate is very bad, and one is less bad.”
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South Florida Democrat Moskowitz airs campaign ad targeting antisemitism with concentration camp footage
(JTA) — South Florida U.S. Rep. Jared Moskowitz pulled on his family’s story as Jews in the Holocaust in a campaign ad targeting antisemitism, as he strives to retain his seat in the November general election.
“In every generation, they rise against us,” the Jewish incumbent says in the ad over a background of somber music and black-and-white photos from a concentration camp. “My great-grandparents were murdered in Auschwitz.”
“In our generation, right here, the Parkland shooter had swastikas carved into his gun,” he continues, standing in front of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, referring to the 2018 fatal shooting that killed 14 students and three educators.
Moskowitz, a top Democratic supporter of Israel in Congress, who fended off progressive challenger Oliver Larkin in a heated August primary, emphasizes in the ad that he has worked to fight antisemitism through bipartisan laws. Some of this legislative action has involved increasing security at synagogues and Jewish nonprofits and expanding education to reduce hate crimes.
“Never again is now,” Moskowitz concludes.
Moskowitz won the August primary with 63.5% of Democratic voter support, to Larkin’s 36.5%. But Larkin was vocal throughout the race about his opposition to arms sales to Israel, going so far as to label the country as a “religious supremacist” nation.
As Moskowitz prepares to face former Boca Raton Mayor Scott Singer, a Republican who is also Jewish, the Democrat may be facing a tight race in a region that had previously been solidly blue.
The 25th Congressional District, which includes parts of Delray Beach, Boca Raton and Miami Beach, is about 25% Jewish, according to local estimates.
Yet recent redistricting efforts have transformed the region into territory that President Donald Trump would have likely won in the 2024 elections. In fact, the Cook Political Report declared a shift from “solid D” to “toss up.”
“There’s no doubt that the race for the new 25th District will be highly competitive in a favorable environment for Democrats,” the report stated.
Moskowitz’s team emphasized the “deeply personal” nature of the congressman’s battle against antisemitism, in a statement issued alongside the ad’s release. He is confronting this challenge, his team explained, by “connecting his family’s experience during the Holocaust to the hatred that continues to threaten our communities today.”
While Moskowitz’s great-grandparents died in Auschwitz, his grandparents were able to escape Europe right before the war. His grandmother left on the Kindertransport, an organized effort that rescued Jewish children from Nazi-controlled territories beginning in 1938.
By Tuesday evening, the Google Ads Transparency Center, which includes data on YouTube ads, did not yet reflect how much money the campaign had spent on its ads there. Meta’s Ad Library also did not yet have data as to how much had been spent on the Facebook version of the ad posted there.
Stephen Sussman, a professor of public administration at Barry University, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that although “Holocaust imagery should never become routine campaign material,” he doesn’t believe that this ad has crossed a line.
“The Holocaust was, of course, a real event that continues to shape Jewish life and memory,” Sussman said, recognizing that Moskowitz’s great-grandparents were murdered at Auschwitz and that many Jews today feel threatened by antisemitism.
“He is not comparing his opponent to Hitler or using the Holocaust to make an unrelated political attack,” Sussman added.
The professor also noted the ad’s direct connections to the congressman’s record, such as his leadership in passing bipartisan legislation on antisemitism awareness and in boosting funding for synagogue security.
Sussman acknowledged that when Holocaust imagery becomes part of a campaign, there “is a legitimate concern” that other people might deploy that imagery less responsibly. But he stressed that given Moskowitz’s history and work record, as well as the current political climate, this particular ad is “powerful but defensible.”
Ken Goldstein, a politics professor at the University of San Francisco, offered a similar perspective, explaining that of the thousands of ads he has watched in his lifetime, he found this one to be powerful but not particularly controversial.
“He was certainly using pictures of the Holocaust, jarring images, but they were his family’s story,” said Goldstein, who is an expert on the impacts of political advertising.
“I don’t think he’s using it to personally attack anybody else except the Parkland shooter,” he added, noting that the ad isn’t being used to attack an opponent. “This one does not strike me as particularly harsh, unfair, or out of bounds at all.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
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