• Should we care that Debbie Wasserman Schultz got glammed up for Vogue?

• The Homeland peeps have a new show for CBS about an FBI agent. We hope her name is Mary Cathison.

• Sacha Baron Cohen’s next film project is titled The Lesbian.

• A Berkeley professor stirs trouble in Germany.

• Paul Rudd plays a born-again protagonist in the new play Grace.

• J.J. Abrams premiered some of his new movie, Star Trek Into Darkness, on Conan last night:

The post Daily Jewce: J.J. Abrams Teases ‘Star Trek’ Film, Paul Rudd is Born Again appeared first on Jewcy.

When Homeland returns for a second season this Sunday night, it will be able to boast a bevy of Emmy’s and claim Barack Obama as a fanboy. But perhaps its most noted distinction is indirectly leading to the creation of America’s new catchphrase—“Mandy Patinkin, holla.” As I’m sure you know, Homeland is an adaptation of the Israeli TV series Hatufim, Prisoners of War, and is only one in a flood of programming coming out of the Israeli-Hollywood pipeline. Just last week Universal Television bought rights to The Gordin Cell, a series following former Russian intelligence agents reintegrating themselves in Israel.

There have been various hypotheses offered for the recent obsession with Israeli television: Israelis, they’re just like us! 9/11! And inevitably—Jews run Hollywood. Showtime and HBO as well as all the major networks have at least one Israeli television adaptation in the works.

But the Israeli TV shopping spree hasn’t been particularly discriminatory and results vary: The sitcom The Ex-List was canceled after only four episodes, and the reality show 3 got the axe after two. And while the success and failure of a show can be a crapshoot, there does seem to be a pattern in whether or not a series has crossover success.

America has a long history of adapting TV shows from other countries. Iconic American classics such as All in the Family and Three’s Company were modeled on British shows. More recently, the U.K. has given us the soon-to-be-put-out-of-its-misery series, The Office, as well as NBC’s Prime Suspect and MTV’s Skins—both failures. In the hunt for new ideas, producers have turned to other countries; AMC’s The Killing, for example, was based on a popular Danish program.

Sharon Shaif, who co-edited the book Global Television Formats: Understanding Television Across Borders and is currently writing a book on Israeli reality television, told me that traditionally, the rule of thumb when scouring for potential crossover hits is to find programs that are “culturally neutral” and adhere to established formulas. For Israel, though, the lesson has been almost the opposite. The Israeli shows that have succeeded in the United States have been steeped in Israeli cultural concerns, from war and terrorism to the specter of the Holocaust.

HBO’s In Treatment, the most successful Israeli crossover before Homeland, is a case in point. Adapted from the Israeli hit B’tipul, the show centers on a psychologist, with each episode depicting a therapy session. The patients in the Israeli version included a pilot, whose father is a Holocaust survivor, grappling with having bombed an Arab school; a couple deciding whether or not to have an abortion; and a childless woman in her 30s from a traditionally conservative Mizrachi family. The U.S. script follows the Israeli version almost word-for-word, only changing Israel-specific details, such as turning the pilot into an Iraqi war veteran.

Hatufim, which aired on Arutz 2 in 2010, is even more predicated on the Israeli context. The show revolves around the return of two Israel Defense Forces soldiers who were held in captivity in Lebanon for 17 years, and thus hits on one of Israel’s most sensitive nerves: the culture of the abducted soldier. While the series was successful, it had many detractors, who accused writer and director Gideon Raff of exploiting the issue at a time when Gilad Shalit was still in captivity.

Though Raff consulted on the U.S. version and serves as its executive producer, the series diverges sharply from its Israeli model, and with good reason: returning soldiers don’t have the same hold on the national mindset in America. So while Homeland takes as its premise a U.S. Marine returning home after being held captive by Al-Qaida since 2003, it adds an element of suspense to the mix with Carrie Mathison (Claire Danes), a CIA operations officer who suspects he may have been turned.

While Hatufim and B’Tipul didn’t offer culturally neutral source material (far from it), they gave Hollywood something even more valuable: fresh ideas. The shows are unlike anything on American television, not only in theme, but in genre. For viewers used to network cop shows or cable series focused on tormented male anti-heroes, a show set entirely in a therapist’s office is nothing if not different. And Israeli television is a fertile ground for dramas that don’t conform to American models. “Israel is not wedded to the usual procedural formats—lawyer, cop, etc.,” says Shaif.

Not so with comedy. Israelis grew up on a steady diet of imported American sitcoms—the first Israeli sitcom, Krovim, Krovim, only premiered in 1983. Today many of Israel’s comedies mimic the classic sitcoms of the ’80s and ’90s. The familiar tropes are there—the plots are driven by misunderstandings; men are constantly screwing up and spend an episode working to hide it from their wives who will inevitably find out; children are a bit too precocious.

With contemporary popular American comedies trending toward meta-references and fast-paced jokes, it is not much of a surprise that American audiences would shy away from shows imitating Israeli shows that imitate American shows from 20 years ago. Take last year’s Traffic Light. The Fox show was based on Ramzor, a hit show in Israel. Now in its fourth season, the Israeli show follows three men at different stages in life: Itzko is married with a kid, Amir lives with his girlfriend, and Hefer is the perennial bachelor of the bunch. The show won an Israeli TV Academy Award for best comedy and became the first Israeli TV series to win an International Emmy Award for best comedy series.

Fox heavily promoted the show, which premiered in February 2011, but with dismal ratings it only lasted through May. Looking at the source material, one could guess why the show failed. In one episode, Itzko’s wife gives him two bags—one filled with old clothes to donate to African refuges and one with a Prada dress she needs dry cleaned. If you have ever watched an episode of Home Improvement you can easily guess that he gives away the wrong bag, his wife finds out, and hijinks ensue as he is forced to go down to the refugee shelter to get it back.

This doesn’t mean that all Israeli dramas are good, and Israeli comedies bad. Arab Labor, for example, the first Israeli sitcom to center around an Arab-Israeli family is both radical in its subject matter and riotously funny. But it may be a sign that the American audience is on the hunt for television that seems non-prepackaged, something that Israeli dramas are able to offer. And once Israeli sitcoms find their own voice, they may succeed here as well. And if anyone from Keshet is out there, I’m pretty sure a comedy centered on a multigenerational family that runs a Sabich stand in Tel Aviv is pure gold—remember to thank me at the Emmys.

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This Sunday night, the 64th annual Emmy Awards will honor the best in television. Each year a handful of episodes from each of the nominated series are selected to showcase a show’s best work. Since we’re in the business of honoring the best in Jewish television, we present the top five Jewish moments from this year’s Emmy-nominated shows, from Palestinian chicken and Camp Ramah to terrorists and concentration camps.

1. Curb Your Enthusiasm (Season 8: “Palestinian Chicken”)

Larry (Larry David) and Jeff (Jeff Garlin) try a new popular Palestinian chicken place and deem it the perfect place for Jewish men to bring their mistresses since no Jews would ever eat there. (Alan Dershowitz even sent Bibi a copy!)

Air Date: July 24, 2011
Choice Line: “We’re probably the only Jews that have ever walked in here.”

2. Homeland (Season 1: “The Weekend”)

Saul Berenson (Mandy Patinkin) opens up about his lonely Jewish upbringing to his terrorist suspect passenger while driving back to CIA headquarters, creating an unexpected parallel between their situations.

Air Date: Nov. 13, 2011
Choice Line: “I’d gladly say their prayers, sing the songs. I just wanted to not be alone.”

Unfortunately a YouTube clip doesn’t exist (let us know in the comments if you find one!), but the entire episode is available on iTunes—the scene starts at the 37-minute mark.

3. Boardwalk Empire (Season 2: “To The Lost”)

Butcher Manny Horvitz hides out in the basement of a synagogue as he nostalgically remembers his Ukrainian past and plots out his future.

Air Date: Dec. 11, 2012
Choice Line: “I wake up sometimes and think I’m still there [Odessa], 12 years old, my whole life ahead of me, but then I realize I’m in America. That world is gone.”

4. Mad Men (Season 5: “Far Away Places”)

Copywriter Michael Ginsberg (Ben Feldman), explicitly hired to appease Jewish client Manischewitz, reveals that he was born in a concentration camp, turning a punch line about the token Jew into a far more serious self-reflective matter that haunts the office.

Air Date: April 22, 2012
Choice Line: “Are there others like you?” / “I don’t know, I haven’t been able to find any.”

Again, there’s no YouTube clip available, but the entire episode is on iTunes—the scene starts at the 12 minute mark.

5. Girls (Season 1: “Hannah’s Diary”)

The excitable Shoshanna runs into an old friend who remembers her best from a raid she led during their days together at Camp Ramah.

Air Date: May 6, 2012
Choice Line: “You led the most intense kitchen raid I ever saw in my time as a junior counselor.”

Have another favorite Jewish scene from this year? Let us know in the comments!

The post Emmy Awards 101: This Season’s Most Jewish Moments on Television appeared first on Jewcy.

Though Carrie Matheson (Claire Danes) is the main character of Showtime’s tense CIA drama Homeland (which returns for a second season September 30th), Saul Berenson (Mandy Patinkin) is the force binding the show’s combustible elements together and propelling the action forward. Patinkin deserves a heap of credit: anyone who can play both Inigo Montoya and Che in Evita is a hall of famer. Still, Saul’s centrality is especially interesting because Jewish identity rests at his character’s core—an identity so richly illustrated, I offer the following proposition: Saul Berenson is the most accurate depiction of an American Jewish identity ever portrayed on television.

There is a scene midway through the first season in which Carrie bets her signed copy of Thelonius Monk’s Monk’s Dream that a polygraph test will incriminate Sergeant Brody. Saul parries: “I prefer Coltrane. Not so fussy.” The Monk-Coltrane dichotomy is an almost too-perfect metaphor for these characters. If Monk’s schizophrenic genius prefigures Carrie, Coltrane’s religious devotion to his craft encapsulates Saul.

Saul is the meticulously brilliant veteran to Carrie’s reckless savant. Steady but irrepressible, he knows exactly when to rein Carrie in and when to spur her forward. When she leaps to conclusions, he challenges her theories: “The dots are there Carrie, but you haven’t connected them yet.” Before one interrogation, Saul delivers a strangely effective pep talk: “You good? It’s good that you’re good. Good is a good thing. Carrie? Eviscerate the motherfucker.”

Saul also pushes the higher-ups to be assertive, daring, and unconventional. When the CIA nabs the American terrorist Aileen at the Mexican border, Saul convinces Estes to let him drive her back to D.C. Saul can persuade her to talk in the car; in D.C., she’ll stonewall. He “gets” her he says—and he gets her to finger Tom Walker, a huge break in a case that was going cold.

Through all of Saul’s orchestration and discovery, his fiercely cultural Judaism surfaces repeatedly. Some of these references are boilerplate. What Jew doesn’t believe chicken soup is the “elixir of the gods?”

Many are more complex. When Carrie blunderingly comes on to Saul after he discovers her illegal surveillance, he is horrified. She destroyed their trust, he hisses, when she treated him “like them—like every other schmup in this building.” Saul’s first yiddishism comes at a crucial moment. In Saul’s morality—one clearly influenced by his Jewish roots—Carrie’s misuse of her sexuality with him was grave in its suggestion of the relationship’s phoniness.

Homeland (loosely based on the Israeli drama Prisoners of War), though, pushes its exploration of Saul’s Judaism further. Viewers learn the most about Saul’s background through his conversations with Aileen. Saul expresses sympathy with Aileen, whose father was horrified at her relationship with a “little brown boy.” Aileen assumes Saul’s concern is artificial—“what do you know about it?” Saul replies, “more than nothing. I married a brown girl.” Saul leverages his personal narrative to gain Aileen’s trust, but that narrative is telling in its own right. Saul subtly indicates his family’s dismay that he married outside the faith.

The revelation is only Saul’s introduction. In one of the show’s brilliant scenes, Saul takes Aileen to the remnants of the makeshift synagogue in rural Indiana where he and his family prayed. He tells Aileen of the strict orders not to assimilate and his dutiful obedience to the prohibition on singing Christmas carols. He hated the synagogue—it was the reason why he was “different, strange, isolated.” “I’d gladly say their prayers, sing their songs,” Saul tells Aileen, “I just wanted to not be alone.” Saul grew up Jewish where that identity engendered alienation. Though as a child he may have wanted to simply blend in, as an adult, Saul ended up where many American Jews do: intermarried and non-observant, but with an intense cultural affinity and Jewish identity.

Jewish identity plays a central role in another critical scene—one whose opacity deeply challenges viewers. Saul interrogates Afsal Hamid, who is initially cooperative. But before Saul and Carrie can extract any further valuable intelligence, Hamid is found to have committed suicide. Looking at the dead body, Saul recites the first lines of kaddish, the prayer over the dead.

Before Carrie interrogates the Saudi diplomat, she reminds Saul he once told her that to extract information, you’re looking for what makes someone human, not a terrorist. Perhaps Saul finds Hamid’s humanity, seeing him break at the prospect of securing his family. Perhaps Saul says the kaddish as a show of respect, mourning the humanity of the dead.

Or perhaps Saul does it for tradition, like Jews who salt their bread irrespective of the day of the week. Saul is a cultural Jew, and he marks Hamid’s death with a formula that has no religious meaning but has cultural significance that transcends rational understanding.

But the most compelling explanation is that Saul loves his work religiously and mourns what he thinks may be the death of his case. Saul uses a ritual with deep religious significance as a grieving mechanism for his work. The kaddish isn’t for Hamid—it’s for himself.

I cannot think about Saul’s kaddish without returning to his appreciation for John Coltrane. Coltrane cut A Love Supreme after recovering from drug addiction and throwing himself into his music with unparalleled devotion. It’s the same devotion Saul shows to his own work. With his wife leaving for India and his marriage in jeopardy, Saul pleads guilty: “It’s my weakness. My Achilles heel. Every time they call me, I go.” Indeed.

At every key moment, there is Saul—playing an integral role only he can perform. “I was weaned on inter-agency non-cooperation. Nothing makes me happier than seeing the FBI stand around with their dicks in their hands, watching us work.” It’s why Saul shmears peanut butter on crackers with a ruler in the dead of night at Langley. It’s why he stays in D.C. when the love of his life returns to India. And it’s why Saul’s Judaism surfaces time and again on the job: this is his religion.

Previously on Network Jews:

Cristina Yang, Grey’s Anatomy’s Atheist Jew

Ross Geller, the nerdy paleontologist on Friends

Dr. Glenn Richie, the Jewish doctor on Childrens Hospital

The post Network Jews: Saul Berenson from Showtime’s Homeland appeared first on Jewcy.

As the finale of Aaron Sorkin’s The Newsroom approaches, questions abound. Can lovebirds Maggie and Jim overcome the obstacles in their way and convert their furtive glances and hallway shouting into some good old-fashioned smooching? Will we learn more about Charlie’s mysterious contact at the NSA? Does Will finally succeed in haranguing the world into civility? On Sunday night at 10PM, All Will Be Revealed.

Until then, though, we offer Newsroom watchers another question to ponder: Where the Jews at? The show has many signature Sorkin-isms: lots of walking-and-talking, lots of messy workplace romance that spills into the hallways, lots of impassioned monologues about Big Ideas. But, alas, none of his classic mensches to speak of.

In Sports Night and The West Wing, Sorkin weaved issues of Jewish identity into his narratives in ways large and small. Just recall the tension between Josh and Toby—arising from their shared faith but drastically different upbringings—with Brooklyn-meets-Connecticut smackdowns of a distinctly Jewish flavor. And who could forget the religious and cultural exchanges on Sports Night that come with Jeremy and Natalie’s romance? Starting his foray into WASPdom, Jeremy takes his first sip of Eggnog at his girlfriend’s behest. Once she’s left, he spits it out all over the control room floor. Alas, a valiant attempt.

Let’s revisit some of the most beloved Jewish characters from Sorkin’s earlier series.

Dan Rydell (Josh Charles, Sports Night):

From Sorkin’s perennially over-cited and under-watched debut series, Sports Night, meet Dan. He’s co-anchor of a cable sports show, an alum of Dartmouth (where, did I mention, he threw some ball…), and, oh yeah, the first Jewish character introduced on a Sorkin series. Dan is less obviously Jewish than his junior colleague, Jeremy (more to come!), but there are some indicators that he read Torah at one point or another. Hearing news of the birth of Isaac’s grandson, he shouts not “Congratulations” or “Dude, that’s frickin’ awesome,” but “Mazel tov!” And after he screws over his partner on the air and falls under a spell of discernibly Jewish guilt, how does he seek to come to terms with his deeds and find a more authentic self? By hosting a seder. What were the alternatives, really?

Jeremy Goodwin (Joshua Malina, Sports Night):

Jeremy, Jeremy, Jeremy. As an associate producer on the sports show that Dan anchors, Jeremy has many responsibilities—identifying Greek Gods and ghosts, preparing the control center for Y2K (remember that? Sorkin’s been doing TV for a while now…), and “decreeing” fights with his girlfriend, Natalie, officially over. What more can I tell you about him, having already penned a 600-word ode to him on this very website last month. Suffice it to say, he’s quite the mensch. With an ego the size of Montana, it’s true that Jeremy can be exasperating at times, offering his two cents when begrudging silence might have served his colleagues better. But his unwavering loyalty and biting wit—and, oh yeah, those super-cute, pre-nerd-chic hipster glasses—endear him to colleagues and ensure his spot on the Jewcy-approved bachelor list.

Toby Ziegler (Richard Schiff, The West Wing):

A proper analysis of Toby, arguably Sorkin’s most psychologically complex character, is the stuff of monographs, not blog posts. But for now, the basics: The communications director and Bartlet’s chief speechwriter, Toby grew up in Brooklyn with a father who worked for “Murder Incorporated” and politically radical sisters who took him to labor rallies. The most liberal of Bartlet’s staffers, hyperarticulate, a master of high and low tongues, Toby is not one to suffer fools lightly. He’ll start a shouting match with just about anyone, including the President. And he is undoubtedly the most Jewish Jew to grace a Sorkin show—which is to say, he can identify not just Yom Kippur but also Erev Yom Kippur. In one episode, he even goes to temple!

Joshua Lyman (Bradley Whitford, The West Wing):

Josh is one of those Jews who comes to us by way of Connecticut. In one memorable episode, Toby says to Josh, “You know, the Ancient Hebrews had a word for Jews from Westport. They pronounced it Presbyterian.” Zing! Josh may lack Toby’s storied Jewish pedigree, but he has other things to boast of: the ear of the president; a legion of adoring followers who confess their lust on a tribute site called LemonLyman.com (which, shockingly, does not exist on the real World Wide Web); and, most importantly, the pure and eternal love of his assistant, Donna. That last dynamic makes for the most tantalizing of Sorkin’s will-they-wont-they workplace romances (Jim and Maggie of Newsroom could learn a thing or two). Oh, yeah, and he went to Harvard. What more do you want?

These are just our four favorites; there are others, too. We wanted to include West Wing’s Will Bailey, the speech writer who joins Toby in the communications office after Sam leaves the White House to “run for Congress.” (In Sorkinian terms, Congress is that farm in Florida where all of your childhood pets live.) Setting aside the crassness of counting two characters played by Joshua Malina on the same list, we realized that the show never tells us whether Will is Jewish. That said, Malina certainly is. The actor once recalled during an interview that he missed the first day of shooting for West Wing because it fell on Rosh Hashanah. (Allison Janney reportedly quipped, “Oh, so today is not a Jewish holiday? You can actually do some work?”)

Also entitled to consideration are Will and Eliot of Sports Night, who, Dan tells us, were planning to attend the seder even before it became a multi-denominational affair. And if we’re looking at minor characters, why not count Toby’s rabbi? From his brief appearance, he seemed like a pretty cool guy—rewriting an entire sermon to persuade one congregant that “vengeance is not Jewish,” on the heels of a death row verdict in which he hopes Toby will intervene. Of course, Toby does not—nearly all Sorkin characters who are religious are also avowed secularists when it comes to matters of state. Even so, it is undeniable that Sorkin has frequently used the subtleties of religious identity to add nuance and texture to his characters. It makes the absence of any Jewish characters on Newsroom all the more conspicuous.

But perhaps I speak too soon. There is, after all, one episode left.

The finale of The Newsroom airs at 10PM on Sunday, August 26, on HBO

Writer’s Note: A commenter and astute viewer of The Newsroom has drawn our attention to a potential oversight. Might Don Keefer—bad-bad boyfriend to Maggie and executive producer for another anchor on Will’s network—be Jewish?

We’re undecided. If you want to make the case, turn to Episode 7, when Don asks the anchor, “What is this compulsion you have to look on the bright side? I can never count on you to be Jewish.” It seems likely that the anchor is Jewish. Might Don be, too? Let us know what you think below.

Previously: Jeremy Goodwin, the Wide-Eyed Wunderkind on Sorkin’s Sports Night

(Art by Margarita Korol)

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