If you’re Jewish and you write about TV, there’s a type of show you’ve likely gotten to expect. It’s the show that’s obviously Jewy to you, but not as obvious to a non-Jewish audience. This is the category shows like Broad City and Crazy Ex-Girlfriend fall into — Jews have good reason to love their consistent references to Jewish life, but broader TV criticism doesn’t talk it up as their defining trait. “Jewish, Just For Us” is the loving term I’ve come up with for them.

The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, Amy Sherman-Palladino’s new Amazon pilot, is not that show. It’s “Jewish For Everyone.” It’s all Jewish, all the time.

The Gilmore Girls creator’s new series explores charming housewife Midge Maisel’s journey into stand-up comedy in 1950s New York, and it brims with joyous Semitism from the very first minute — literally. The show gets just 50 seconds in before its first jokey reference to the Holocaust, when Midge — soaking in the spotlight at her own wedding reception — mimics her dad’s reaction to wedding prices: “Do the caterers have any idea what the Jews just went through a few years ago?” Minutes later, she causes a panic by joking there’s shrimp in the egg rolls. The words “rabbi,” “brisket,” and “latkes” are repeated so many times in the episode it’s impossible to keep count. Marriage advice is framed in terms of finding the person who would hide you in their attic. And while it’s bad enough Midge’s schmuck husband leaves her midway through the episode, it’s even worse that he does it on Yom Kippur. A shonda if there ever was one.

Disappointingly, the show does suffer from the lack of ethnic diversity that’s sadly become signature in Palladino’s work. And for such a vibrantly Jewy show, it’s a little ironic to see so few members of the tribe in the main cast. Thankfully, Gilmore Girls alum Alex Borstein seems primed to correct that and take on a more central role in future episodes. But those reservations aside, the show develops into a true celebration of Jewish-American culture and a time when Jewish women specifically occupied a vibrant, brassy space in pop-culture.

Comedy nerds will likely be excited at the prospect of examining this iconic time in when Borscht Belt comedians started to define the art form, and those nerds won’t be disappointed. Lenny Bruce plays a key role in Midge’s transformation, Mort Sahl and Don Rickles get shout outs, and Midge herself is basically Joan Rivers reenacted.

This first episode was released as part of Amazon’s Pilot Season, which lets viewers vote to tell Amazon which of its new shows it should produce more episodes of. With the general buzz and glowing reviews the show is getting, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel seems likely to get picked up to series, which means we’ll probably see even more references to Jewish comedy greats in future episodes.

Who might we see next? Seeing a young Woody Allen seems likely; Rodney Dangerfield would be better. My vote goes for Sid Caesar or Carl Reiner. But with this era in Jewish history, let’s face it: it’s hard to go wrong.

Image by Sarah Shatz/Amazon Video

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Amy Schumer’s famous and Jewish, but you might be forgiven for not thinking of her as famously Jewish. Outside of a few references, such as her standup story about being called “Amy Jewmer” as a kid, the biggest moments in her career haven’t contained obvious references to being a Member of the Tribe. But if you wondered if Schumer’s Jewishness is important to her identity, fear not: The Girl with the Lower Back Tattoo, Schumer’s candid new book of essays, is going to give you the answer. Many, many times.

For example, the Jewish roots of her comedy seem to go all the way back — where else? — to her Bat Mitzvah. In an early chapter, Schumer describes how, when she inadvertently made the crowd laugh while flubbing a moment in her Torah portion, she officially became a woman and a comedian in one measure. It’s a sweet take on how the rite of passage affected her in a more personal way, capped off with a page-long rant about her rabbi’s bad breath. But as light as this chapter is, the rest of the book defines her comedy’s relationship to Judaism in much darker terms.

Of course, there are some passing references to her neighborhood’s anti-Semitism (“my town hated Jews” she writes at one point.) Schumer focuses less on that, though, and more about how her own family drama complicated her relationship with religion. In one of the book’s standout chapters, she describes how her mother’s affair with her best friend’s dad ripped apart two families who, in happier times, would go to Shabbat services together. When the affair came out, her experience going to temple and Hebrew School came to an end. It’s a loss she seems to mourn deeply: “My friends and my religion were gone.”

Schumer poignantly marks that point in her life as “ending an important chapter” in her relationship with Judaism. But as the book plays out, it’s clear that’s not the only chapter. When she describes the first time she wrote a joke she was extremely proud to work on, it turns out to be a joke about a subway preacher learning she’s Jewish. While listing surprising tidbits about herself, she confesses to enjoying the “grossest” Jewish food (whitefish salad and gefilte fish, if you were wondering and wanted to argue) and liking the fact that she’s Jewish. And when she delves into her relationship with her dad, she reveals a distinctly Jewish sense of humor that has informed the breakthrough moments in her career.

Fans of Schumer’s are likely familiar with her father’s battle with multiple sclerosis. It’s a fact she discusses openly in interviews and on social media, and she made the disease a central plot point in last year’s Trainwreck, to devastating effect. The book gets even more candid about her complicated relationship with her father, and his disease. While she never seems to deny her dad’s faults, Schumer frames much of her affection for her him around his reaction to his condition. Possibly the book’s best chapter brutally recalls two separate times her father lost control of his bowels in front of her during her teens. It’s a show-stopping moment in the memoir to be sure, but the best part comes at the end of the chapter, when she sums up just what it is she admires about her dad’s reaction to the disease.

“I look at the saddest things in life and laugh at how awful they are, because they are hilarious and it’s all we can do with moments that are painful. My dad’s the same way.”

The ability to look at life’s darkest moments right in the eye and laugh? That’s beautiful and very Jewish  — and it turns out, very Amy.

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The girls of Broad City rarely go an episode without some passing reference to being members of the Tribe — witness the very first episode where Ilana describes them as “just two Jewesses trying to make a buck”— but if the Jewish reference felt like merely a backdrop up until now, the 3rd season two-part finale put them in full view. And it happens just in time for Passover.  

After running across the city and back to make it in time for their “El Ol” flight that’ll start their “Birthmark” (read: Birthright) adventure, Abbi and Ilana turn onto a plane filled with incredible tribal satire. “Jews! Jews! Jews!” the pale crowd chants as our two heroes look on, a little shell shocked. When Abbi unexpectedly crosses a different kind of red sea (read: finds herself in desperate need of a tampon), the Passover parallels — unintentional as they probably were — became pretty clear. They may be on their way to the motherland, but they’ll suffer like hell to get there.

The initial concept for this finale was semi-spoiled for fans months ago, when it was announced that the Broad City crew had to cancel plans to film in Israel because of a recent string of violence. It seems the original plan was to actually see the girls throughout their trip, and while that would have been incredible —  who among us isn’t dying to see Abbi and Ilana at a kibbutz? — tracking their journey without reaching the Holy Land is somehow more fitting an end to the emotional 3rd season, and make for a pretty interesting Passover companion.

The past season has seen Abbi and Ilana through a lot, in still funny but uncharacteristically heavy fashion. They’ve dealt with career problems, break ups, and rat infestations — and that last one’s the happiest out of the three. “Burning Bridges” — the episode immediately preceding this two-part finale — got a lot of critical attention for its frank storyline featuring ray of wacky sunshine Ilana experiencing an emotional breakdown. With that in mind, it’s easy to imagine a finale that drops the girls in Israel as a would-be solution for all their problems, a renewing experience that helps them both confront their issues and restart their lives. Consider the fact that Ilana literally started this season enslaved in (bike) chains — is it any wonder she takes some inspiration from her ancestors and looks to end her bondage at the Holy Land?

But rather than deliver Abbi and Ilana right to the Land of Milk and Honey — or “Africa for the Jews” as Abbi calls it — we’re treated to a 10 hour flight of Jewish anxiety akin to 40 years in the desert. They have to sit through an Adam Levine flight safety video, endure heavy-handed matchmaking (Abbi’s matched with a proudly gay guy “just looking for a nice Jewish girl to marry”), and fork over $38 for a minuscule Kosher snack pack. And while Ilana does fulfill her mission of getting into the “Mohel Chai Club,”  they — much like Moses — don’t manage to make it to the Promised Land. Their travel plans get derailed in a series of events that starts with Abbi singing a Christmas carol and ends with both girls getting interrogated by Israeli officials as suspected terrorists before getting sent back to New York. Because of course.

Much like they have throughout the entire dark, wonderful 3rd season, Abbi and Ilana end up having more fun suspended in midair without a clear destination in sight.  So while no one but the writers knows what direction Broad City will be headed in Season 4, I think one suggestion is pretty obvious. What do you say ladies: Next year, in Jerusalem?

Shiran Lugashi is a writer, sometimes podcaster, and perpetual plan-canceller not living her best life in NYC.

Image credit: Facebook

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