Cartoonist Jason Adam Katzenstein, 27, is a regular contributor to The New Yorker and the illustrator of the graphic novel Camp Midnight. He graduated from Wesleyan University and lives in Brooklyn, New York, where he plays in the band Wet Leather.

You grew up in the Los Angeles area. What’s your favorite fictional representation of your hometown?

Bojack Horseman’s been pretty great. I consider it to be one of the more realistic interpretations of LA that I’ve seen, just because LA feels like a surreal animal land.

I think E.T. takes place in Encino, which is where I grew up. There’s that shot where he first lands, and you see the city, which is a view that I sometimes would have driving to school.

Was it always your dream to be a cartoonist?

It was almost always my dream to be a cartoonist. I wanted to be an astronaut— I don’t know how I reconciled that with my fear of flying. But I guess I just thought that space was different. Then I saw the play Taps with my family, and I wanted to be a professional tap dancer. Then I wanted to be in the NBA.

Then I started drawing basketball players and drawing everything, and I was not very athletic or tall. And so my backup dream was to be a comic book artist.

A lot of dreams had to be crushed for you to be a cartoonist!

Yeah. My NBA dream was deferred, but pretty much from nine or 10 onward, I was reading MAD Magazine and Spider-man and dreaming of being a cartoonist.

I was bar mitzvahed, and my theme was superheroes. So that’s how long I’ve wanted to do this.

What was the Torah portion at your bar mitzvah?

It was Sukkot. I went to Jewish day school, so I learned Hebrew… I read seven times from the Torah. I had all this energy and ambition when I was 12, and that’s where I put it.

There were giant inflatable crayons at the party. And I don’t really like sweets, so there was a fake cake. It was a cake you couldn’t eat, with superheroes on it, that I just kept. It was at my family friend’s restaurant, so there was a lot of food. But in retrospect, yeah, I was kind of a jerk to have this fake cake in front of people.

You’ve contributed to both The New Yorker and MAD Magazine. Which had the greater influence on you growing up?

I didn’t read The New Yorker until my senior year of high school. Laurie Lew, our A.P. Language professor, had us get a subscription.

MAD was pretty formative early on. I actually recognized some of the New Yorker cartoonists because they also contributed to MAD… And then I worked for MAD when I was in college, but I was also reading The New Yorker.

They occupy two different places in my life, and I think that MAD really warped my sensibility early on, and really informs the work that I do for The New Yorker.

Shortly after graduating from Wesleyan, you illustrated the graphic novel Camp Midnight. How did you and author Steven Seagle connect?

We had a mutual friend, a guy named Daryl Sabara. He’s an actor; he was the little boy in the Spy Kids movies… He does voices on Steve’s television show, and Steve has a weekly spa day with all the writers, in LA, where they do the pools in the morning and then in the afternoon they write scripts. And Daryl invited me one time.

What was it like networking in a spa?

Well, it was… intimidating. Steve is very established in the comics world, and he leads this group, and everybody seemed to know each other, and I was shy. And I met Steve. He said, “You make comics. Are you good?” And I said, “Yes!” And then he saw my work, and he said, “Let’s do a book together.”

As I remember, you came up with your first New Yorker cartoon at a Passover seder.

I think it was Rosh Hashanah. It definitely was, because it was in September.

What led you to draw a cartoon at that particular Rosh Hashanah?

It was more that Rosh Hashanah was beginning, and I needed to finish my batch [for The New Yorker]. And so that was one of the last cartoons I was doing in the batch. And I didn’t have any time, so I didn’t have time to stress about what a New Yorker cartoon should be about or what it should look like. So I just did something quickly, kind of stream-of-consciousness.

Jews have a long history with comics, from the Superman creators to New Yorker cartoonist Roz Chast. What makes cartooning the Chosen medium?

For Jews in general, I think, it’s a long and meandering answer that I couldn’t touch on as well as The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay… That book has a lot to say about comics and Judaism and Superman as a Moses allegory. [Superman], who was created by Jews: Stan Lee was Stanley Lieber, Jack Kirby was Jacob Kurtzberg. All these Jewish creators making these superheroes with names like Peter Parker, Clark Kent, but these were all their secret identities, these very goyish names. But Superman was Kal-El, which is “All That Is God.”

[For me], I think there was something about the Jewish comedy sensibility that I recognized in MAD Magazine. I mean, they would use a lot of Yiddish terms. I went to Jewish day school; I heard all the old Jewish jokes. So there was something very familiar in MAD.

Something about the Spider-man story, too, about that particular brand of guilt that he always felt, felt familiar to me. There’s a kind of Jewish je ne sais quoi about a lot of the comics I grew up with.

You’ve drawn a number of comics about anxiety and OCD. At this point, would you say mental illness is more of a demon or a muse for you?

I don’t know that those two are mutually exclusive, that it’s a muse and a demon. All of the work that I make is about what I’m preoccupied with, so when I’m trying to find a joke—and I do feel like I’m finding these things, not creating them out of thin air—I sort of go through what’s on my mind. And this is what’s on my mind… It’s an intrusive thought, but it’s a thought nonetheless, and that becomes the foundation of what I’m working on.

Bob Mankoff has a great section in one of his books on cartooning about where different artists get their ideas. Where do yours come from?

When I was a little kid, I had a bunk bed, and I would look up at the wood above my head and all the patterns, and they would turn into these pictures. So I try and stimulate that for myself now. So I’ll take a blank page and make marks across the page until they look like images and turn into jokes.

Now that you’re a freelance cartoonist, what does a typical day look like? How often do you leave the house?

Not as often as I should. I went on a jog today, patted myself on the back. What did I do today? I draw for Amazon’s lit journal called Day One, so I did their cover this morning. And I did two Camp Midnight pages for the sequel. Now I’m working on a render of a New Yorker cartoon I sold. And tonight I will see my friend’s band play.

The New Yorker has published a few themed collections of cartoons, such as The Big New Yorker Book of Cats. If they made a book of your work, what would it be called?

I’ve always wanted to make something that I called a “neuromcomic.”

Neuroses plus romantic comedy? That sounds good.

Thanks, I’ve thought about it too much… There are a lot of breakup cartoons. I think breakups are funny. There are a lot of anxiety cartoons.

My first [New Yorker] cartoon is about somebody in a relationship revealing that they’ve been deceptive about who they really are. So I’d say that from cartoon number one the “neuromcom” theme was established.

This interview has been lightly edited and condensed.

Photo courtesy of Jason Adam Katzenstein. Comics by Katzenstein.

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Destination Unknown, which opens in New York tomorrow, is a collection of testimonies from Holocaust survivors culled over a thirteen-year period. Jewcy had the chance to speak with director Claire Ferguson, producer Llion Roberts, and 92-year-old survivor Ed Mosberg about how this film came together and why it’s vitally important to keep talking about the Holocaust.

Jewcy: How did you begin working on this film?

Roberts: In 2001, I went with my brother on a trip to Auschwitz like millions of other people have done. When I got there, I came across a picture of a 13-year-old girl named Christina. She had been in Auschwitz from December 1943 to May 1944; she only survived six months. She was the spitting image of my own daughter, who was also thirteen at the time. That struck me, so when I went home, I immediately started researching.

Eighteen months later, I made a call to a company in Ronkonkoma, New York, that was the only place that had some equipment I needed, and eventually I got through and they explained to me that they were closed for Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, and Sukkot. The conversation quickly turned to the Holocaust, and soon I was on conference call with one survivor, and then another. Ed Mosberg was the third, and this continued for the next fourteen years. In 2013, a sampler of the survivors’ interviews was put on Blu-ray. We met with Claire in December, and all 400 hours was put into her Avid.

Ferguson: I looked through all this extraordinary material, and it was then a question of how to piece together the jigsaw puzzle. What film do we make from this? It’s not possible to make a history of the Holocaust. It’s a well-trodden subject: the more you learn about it, the more it becomes unfathomable. How could you have a life with so much pain and then live with this? Focusing on the trauma of survivors and the lives they made afterwards seemed like the most powerful direction.

It was a huge challenge. Llion filmed thirty survivors, and in the film we only used twelve. Trying to tell a story with a narrative arc that would link these twelve survivors and still hold on to their individual stories was a delicate balance. The detail is what makes this film special. We even have love stories of people who survived and were reunited. There are important, moving details among horrible traumatic memories.

Jewcy: Ed, the sight of you wearing your uniform from the concentration camp and a tallit in the film is extremely powerful. Can you talk about what motivated you to do this?

Mosberg: Before the war, I had my whole family, and then everybody was murdered. This is what motivated me to do everything. My wife can’t talk about the war and what she lost because she was ashamed that she survived. Many tried to cover or eliminate the numbers on their arms. I was never ashamed. It is my duty to tell the world and show them what happened. I was wearing that tallit in Birkenau when I donated a Torah to the Israeli army. This was the end of the line of the railroad tracks: whoever came in there didn’t leave. Soldiers were saluting my wife at that time, and it was very powerful.

Jewcy: Ed, I read that you donated a Torah to Steven Spielberg’s synagogue. Can you tell me about some of the philanthropic work that you can do?

Mosberg: I’ve rescued about twenty Torahs from the Holocaust. I make them kosher, and then donate them. My mother was a religious woman – I think she would be very proud of it. I donate to Yad Vashem, to the Shoah Foundation, to rabbinical schools. Anyone who needs, I give to them, especially places where the Holocaust is involved. It’s very important that they teach people what can happen. When the camps were liberated in May 1945, Americans didn’t let them out from the camps because they were afraid that they would kill the Germans. When Patton was in charge of the camps, he said, “I cannot give to the Jews better food than other prisoners they will say I am discriminating. They want to go to Palestine, and English don’t want to let them in.”

If you were not there, you don’t know what it was. This was a terrible life. In October 1943, a group of rabbis came to talk to President Roosevelt to get him to bomb railroad tracks leading to the camps but he wouldn’t meet with them. If he had, maybe my family would be alive today.

Jewcy: What stands out to you most from your experiences?

Mosberg: When they liquidated the ghetto, I was there. I saw a baby taken from his mother and shot. Parents put a child in a knapsack and then the Germans shot into the knapsack. They made sick people run across to the other side or be shot. It was like a game for the Germans. Mauthausen was the worst concentration camp. There were 186 steps we had to walk on from morning to night, and whoever fell behind or couldn’t do it was punished horribly. They were burning and shooting those people. The smell never left me. I always smelled this. I can never forget this.

Jewcy: What lessons do you think today’s generation can learn from the Holocaust?

Mosberg: We should not forget and not forgive. We have no right to forgive! Only the dead can forgive. As long as I love this is my duty and obligation to go and talk and talk until the last day of my life. Whenever I talk, they should listen and hear it. There are plenty of deniers. If you didn’t live through this, you can’t understand.

Destination Unknown opens in New York and Los Angeles on November 10, and November 15 in Bangor.

Image: Ed Mosberg in Destination Unknown.

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The Pirate Captain Toledano, a ten-minute short from Modern Orthodox director Arnon Shorr, is making the festival circuit with screenings in New York and Los Angeles over the next few weeks. Jewcy had the chance to talk to star Stephen DeCordova about the many things that led him to get involved with this memorable project.

Jewcy: Can you talk a bit about your heritage?

My mother was born in Kingston and her family had been in Jamaica for hundreds of years. They escaped the Spanish Inquisition. Growing up in the United States, all the cultural images of Jews I saw were Eastern European; Holocaust victims, that sort of thing. Not so much my mother – she had a New York accent. My grandparents and their extended family sounded like Harry Belafonte. I was aware, however, of the fact that there were Jamaican Jews and actually quite a rich heritage. It was so unknown – when I would say to someone that, on my mother’s side, we’re Jamaican, people would look at me so strangely. I became proud and valued that.

Jewcy: So, you think you might be descended from Jewish pirates?

When Edward Kritzler’s book Jewish Pirates of the Caribbean came out, I bought it and was surprised to see that, in spite of its somewhat flippant title, it was actually a scholarly work. A lot of the names in that book were surnames that existed in my family. I was lucky enough to sit my grandmother down before she passed away and have her make a list of all the surnames she could remember that were in our family in Jamaica. One name in the book stood out – the greatest of the Jewish Caribbean pirates, Moses Cohen Henriques. He and his brother were both merchants, which is how a lot of the Jews got into piracy to begin with. The Church didn’t want Christians to be touching money, so Jews were the merchants and traveled in their work importing goods. They learned how to navigate by the stars between Europe and the Far East. When navigation became sea navigation, they became captains. When a new continent was discovered on the other side of the world, they were among the first to be going there. Some Jews who were expelled from their homes wanted revenge on Spain, so it makes a lot of sense. I think it’s very cool that I could be descended from Jewish pirates of the Caribbean!

Jewcy: How did you become involved with this short film?

I had worked previously with Arnon. He directed a web series called Mad Mentsch, a Jewish spoof of Mad Men. I got cast for a role and we had become Facebook friends. When he discovered the book and realized he had a story to tell, he found a great way to craft it that could be produced on a small budget. He got to the heart of what had created Jewish pirates. He put out a note on Facebook and I wrote to him about my heritage. I said that I would like to do anything I could to support him in getting this story told. I said that if he would like to hear the words of your script read aloud by actors, I would be happy to do a table read. In a subsequent note, I said, “Do you have any roles for an old guy?” He sent me the script and, lo and behold, the captain is in his sixties. When I went in for the table read, I met Dan Shaked, the young man who played the stowaway. We weren’t sure if we had booked these roles since Arnon was talking about production schedules already. Clearly, Arnon liked what he saw and we became the spine of the cast of the movie. This was one of those things in my life that was just clearly meant to be. It just bloomed like a flower.

Jewcy: The kiddish cup used in the film is a family heirloom, correct?

The script called for a kiddish cup. My grandfather’s had been in my family for I don’t know how many generations, so I brought it along. It was as though Arnon was struck by lightning, just like the captain is in the movie, when he saw it. It was a beautiful thing to experience. We used it in the movie.

Jewcy: What was it like filming a pirate movie?

We got to where the ships we were using were an hour early and all these guys were there carrying on cannons and props they had. It was just bustling. I had no idea that Clan Darksail [pirates for hire] even existed. They were all in costumes with sabers. It was a miracle – one of the happiest moments of my life.

Jewcy: What’s next for you?
I’ve actually just done a project I’m not at liberty to discuss a whole lot— a post-apocalyptic piece where we are a small band of people who are surviving in a desert where there’s no air. I’m the leader of the band. It’s very different from the pirate captain. We’ve just finished principal photography, so there will still be some additional shoots and ADR. Like most actors, I don’t know what’s next. I’m doing a little project at UCLA in the law school helping out as an actor in mock trials. For most working actors, it’s a short fuse work timetable, since they always audition the actors last. I don’t know what’s coming tomorrow, but something always comes!

Jewcy: Is there anything you’d like Jewcy readers to know?

For me, Toledano was an opportunity to tell the background story, in a graphic way because movies are a graphic, living, breathing medium, not just words on a page. This is the first time this story has been told at all – that there were Jewish pirates, Jewish settlers in the Caribbean. Jews were an important and vibrant part of the New World. This is a heritage that I really cherish.

Catch this short at the Crown Heights Film Festival Thursday, October 26 in New York or at the LA Sephardic Film Festival on November 7th.

Photo of Stephen DeCordova as the Pirate Captain Toledano

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One of the hottest indie theatre tickets in town is Say Something Bunny!, a “live documentary” in which one artist leads her audience on a journey through a home wire recording that she acquired, as she uses what she hears to figure out to whom the voices belonged. That artist is Alison SM Kobayashi, and her show is an entrancing dive into the lives of a New York Jewish family in the 1950s.

“I think that a person who is a bit more within the Jewish community would immediately have understood some of the references,” Kobayashi told Jewcy. Part of her research, as she explains in the show, is looking up the phrase “alter kucker,” after someone uses it on the recording. Some Yiddish, of course, was familiar to Kobayashi:

“I do schlep things around a lot!”

Considering that Kobayashi has no Jewish ancestry, she’s created a really, really Jewish show. With its meticulous delve into personal and cultural history, its main themes are family, fixation on memory and continuity, and grappling with the past. These are universal ideas, sure, but Jews as a people are sort of obsessed with them. Kobayashi said that whether or not the core of the show is universal or uniquely Jewish is “complicated”— the quirks and mannerisms of the “characters” (mostly the Newburges) were what initially captured her.

“I immediately fell in love with the family. Their humor and the way related to each other was just attractive to me. In their Jewishness, in their language… there was something there that I just fell in love with them…. the way they expressed themselves as a family.”

“We’re coming at it from outsiders,” she said of the team working on Bunny! But the show’s look at assimilation of immigrant groups in the twentieth century do also remind her of her own story.

“There are also connections about this moment of time in the U.S… My dad’s Japanese-Canadian, and they really assimilated into Canadian culture in the same way.”

In fact, Kobayashi’s grandfather was interned during WWII (Canada had camps as well). After the War, the push for assimilation was more self-conscious. While American Jews faced no similar trauma domestically, it would make sense for the War, and the Holocaust, to have driven them to become as fully American as possible. In fact, in the play, the characters discuss Easter and Christmas celebrations, with no mentions of Jewish holidays, a detail that Kobayashi says surprises, and often confuses audiences.

The Newburges & Co. are proud Americans, mid-process of assimilation. And to what end? Is it common to hear Jews today celebrate Christmas? No, for a variety of factors. For one, Chanukah has in part become a commercialized winter holiday substitute for American Jews. Also, perhaps, at a certain point of assimilation, if you can pass for white, the original identity disappears entirely. For the Newburges, this was happening fast. Their older son has a bar mitzvah, but his brother, only a few years younger, did not.

So, did it work? Did the Newburges stop being Jewish altogether? Actually, not at all. While it doesn’t come up in the piece, Kobayashi shared that the daughter of one of the younger brother— the one who skipped the bar mitzvah— eventually became a rabbi.

“The next generation went back to their roots,” said Kobayashi, who understands the appeal— she and her sister have been to visit Japan multiple times. “I think there is this kind of interest in having a better understanding of where we came from.”

This longing for understanding can be poignant. For the Kobayashis, Japan turned out to be a mixed experience.

“There’s a certain connection there, but also this sense of being an outsider because we weren’t raised with the language. We were really raised to be Canadian.”

Besides, these days Kobayashi doesn’t have time to get in touch with her own past— she’s been living and breathing the Newburges, several shows a week.

“Instead of going into my own family history I’m going to delve into this complete strangers family first,” she remarked. “It ended up becoming a detour instead of going into my family history.”

And though Say Something Bunny! runs through January, is Kobayashi ready to put the Newburges to bed? It seems instead like a dam has burst. Kobayashi wants to know more about the family, about Long Island, about the Jewish experience.

“I feel like I have so much more to learn,” she said. “I feel like I need to go to an amazing Shabbat.”

Photo by Lee Towndrow.

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It’s rather unnerving to talk with one of your idols, and when I called Eleanor Bergstein last week—the writer and co-producer of Dirty Dancing—I was unreasonably nervous.

“I’ve loved Dirty Dancing for as long as I can remember, so this is just a huge honor for me,” I gushed.

“Always sweet to hear, thank you,” she replied.

Jewcy is on a summer residency! To read this piece, and our others for July and August 2017, go to our big sister site, Tablet Magazine!

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During her time abroad in Copenhagen last fall, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC) senior Amanda Lalezarian immersed herself in the Danish Jewish community. Her time abroad became Against the Odds: Embracing Judaism in Denmark, a powerful documentary that explores both the history of and the current state of affairs for Jews in this Scandinavian country. 

At 20 minutes, Against the Odds provides a comprehensive picture of how Danes view religion, what occurred in Denmark during the Holocaust, and the varied experiences of Danish Jews in the 21st century. The film, which is Lalezarian’s senior honors thesis, is designed for an American audience that is not familiar with the Jews of Denmark. Much like her audience, Lalezarian, who hails from Long Island and whose mother is Swedish and father is Persian Jewish, had limited knowledge about Danish Jews when she embarked on this project. 

Lalezarian screened the film for the first time in late April at UNC, and has made it available on Vimeo. You can watch it yourself, embedded below this interview!

What inspired you to make a documentary about the Jews of Denmark?

It was mid-August, school was starting in two weeks, and I still didn’t have an idea for my thesis. I was home for less than 48 hours in between covering the Olympics in Brazil and going abroad to Copenhagen — which is nuts but that’s what I do — and I was having dinner with my parents and my dad asked, “You have an idea yet?” And I said, “No.” He said, “Do you know anything about the Jewish community in Copenhagen?” And I said, “No.” I just did a quick Google search and found out they’re a very small population of the country. I was like, “This sounds interesting; it could be an interesting project because I don’t know anything about them.”

Then two, three weeks later the program that I was on had a club fair where you can walk around the building and see what organizations have clubs for students. And I walked by the Chabad table and the first Jew that I met in Denmark was the Chabad Denmark Rabbi Yitzi Loewenthal. I told him that I had this idea and he said, “Oh yeah, that sounds interesting. We can chat later if you want to come to my office,” and it just started from there.

When you began, did you have any idea where this documentary would end up going?

At the beginning, I knew that I had to cover past, present, and future. For me, someone who didn’t know anything, I knew that an audience from America that didn’t know anything about the issues, they would need that background. I knew that I had to meet a Holocaust survivor. A majority of the project was about the Copenhagen attacks in 2015. That became a part of the story I didn’t expect going into it. 

How did you approach finding individuals to interview?

The first person I met was the Chabad Rabbi. He gave me the numbers for three Holocaust survivors, and the one who is in my documentary, Dan Edelsten, is the one I ended up connecting with. Through Dan Edelsten, I met his granddaughter. I met the kosher butcher just by looking him up. Everyone is connected and everyone knows everyone so people just kept introducing me to other people.

As you went about making the documentary, what did you learn about the Jews of Denmark?

The Jews came to Denmark in the 1640s and there was a small group of maybe a 1,000 of them. They came from Eastern Europe, and today there is 6-8,000. The number has increased, but not really that much and I think it’s amazing that they haven’t left. I think it’s amazing that they’ve continued to carry out their religion and culture and not shy away because of hard times. I think there they really hang onto their religion; I think that’s changing, but I think that’s amazing that they’ve continued to do it. 

The end is really powerful. You just don’t know what’s going to happen in the future. 

I kind of wanted to leave it that way. It is open ended because there isn’t an answer. There won’t be an answer until you look back at it. There is a conclusion, but not really— because who am I to say what’s going to happen?

From making this documentary, what sense did you get about the future of the Jews in country?

I asked everyone the same question: What is the future of Judaism in Denmark? And people would laugh and say, “I’m not a prophet.” “I don’t know.” One guy said, “People have been staying for the past 400 years . . . and we’re still here.” I just think some people will move, but I don’t think that many people will move. I think they will just become more cultural. 

But I really don’t see the numbers getting stronger because there’s not much opportunity. Not that you need a kosher market or a Jewish school to be Jewish … they have one daily active synagogue and the other one is a progressive. It’s just hard. I would be interested in seeing what happens 20, 50 years from now.

Do you think this experience changed or added to your own perspective on Judaism? 

It just added to my knowledge I think, to my understanding of Judaism. I think living in the States and being a Jew, you just have such a different perception of what that means compared to people who are from Europe who are Jewish. I think it’s opened my eyes to what Judaism is like in another country. 

What do you hope viewers take away from this experience? 

I just want them learn one thing they didn’t know before. So if you watch it, not that I expect everyone to get the same understanding out of it, but for them to at least acknowledge the story and whatever they walk away from it learning, and it can be different from one person to the next. And that’s kind of what I like to do with my projects, leave it open for interpretation. 

***

When asked the following question, “Did the interviewees feel it was very important to discuss the state of Jews in Denmark?,” Lalezarian felt it was best to ask an interviewee directly. The answer to this question comes from interviewee Mette Bentow, a Jewish activist, whose daughter Hannah’s bat mitzvah took place during the 2015 terrorist attack in Copenhagen. 

Why did you feel it was important to be part of Against the Odds: Embracing Judaism in Denmark? 

Mette: Firstly, I will always do my utmost to help out a fellow Jew, especially when a young Jewish student needs a helping hand. Secondly, having had the experience we did, I feel it is my obligation to share that story – for the sake of my kids and for the everlasting memory of Dan Uzan, Z”L. [Dan was Jewish, and killed in the 2015 terrorist attack.]

Jews in Europe, all of Europe, is experiencing a rise in anti-Semitism, verbal attacks, bias from the media in their reporting of the Israel/Palestinian conflict. In Denmark, we have had a long, peaceful Danish-Jewish history, without much anti-Semitism and persecution of Jews — even during the Holocaust we had the unique story of the rescue of 95% of the Danish Jewish population.

But these days, exemplified to the extreme by the terrorist attack, Danish Jews are not in the safe haven they used to be in. I think that it is very important to speak out, to insist on our rights and to be an active part, instead of bowing my head and wait for others to fix it for me — or even worse, take the abuse and degradation.

Against the Odds: Embracing Judaism in Denmark can be viewed on Vimeo, or below:

Image from Against the Odds.

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Looking for a truly fresh perspective on time travel? Check out Tomorrow Ever After, a new film about a woman named Shaina who is accidentally sent hundreds of years back in time to the present, where she can’t understand why people aren’t warm to one another. Jewcy had the chance to speak with Israeli-American filmmaker (and its star) Ela Thier to discuss the interesting journey she took to arrive at this film.

Jewcy: Where did the idea for your film originate?

Somewhere in my head, I imagine. I get asked that and I’m not quite sure. I vaguely remember I was working on another script that wasn’t going anywhere. When I’m blocked, I just start scribbling and doing something I’m never going to take seriously. This was one of those things. I started scribbling and a whole movie just came out. I wrote it in a few days and I fell in love with it. I knew this was the movie I had to make.

Jewcy: There are so few elements of society that still exist in Shaina’s time, but she does confirm that she’s Jewish. What is it about Judaism that helped it survive all of these centuries?

I’ll have to think about that. I think what mattered to me more was to make that point alone – that Judaism survives. It was like a shout-out to my people that we’re not going anywhere. I think we’ll be around for the same reason that we’ve been around, that our culture is not centered around something material. It’s about how we think about the world.

Jewcy: I read that you studied in an Orthodox seminary and that you try to embody the spirit of Tikkun Olam. How do you think your Jewish upbringing influenced this film?

Probably in very subtle and profound ways that I may not even be aware of. I do think that Tikkun Olam, the responsibility and passion for it, is in our bones. It’s passed on to us, and I’m glad it is. I don’t think it’s possible to be a Jewish artist and not be influenced by that. I very much believe artists and filmmakers are the architects of our society. We shape the way people think. It’s a tremendous power and we have a responsibility to use that well. When I make a movie, I think, what kind of movie would I want our children to see? What kind of movie would move us toward the society that I want to see us build?

Jewcy: How did you decide which things and social cues Shaina would understand, like her desire to give hugs, and which ones she wouldn’t, like the fact that one of the first people she meets only speaks to her because he’s trying to mug her?

The things that make sense to her are the things that we’ll still see in the future that I describe, where people are more human with each other. Things that don’t make sense are inhuman. She would understand relationships or friendships but she wouldn’t understand an impersonal receptionist where there’s no human connection.

Jewcy: What was the most challenging part of making this film?

The most challenging thing about it is the most challenging thing about making any film. As an artist, the harder you work, the less money you have. With that comes a sense of insecurity. It’s very hard to tell when you’re in the midst of working that what you’re doing is any good or that anyone will get to see it. You’re sort of walking upstream.

Jewcy: Did you draw any inspiration from existing films about time travel or the future?

I am not a science fiction person. Someone told me that the best science fiction writers are the ones who don’t read or watch science fiction because we’re most interested in the story and characters. (Of course, I will be seeing the sequel to Guardians of the Galaxy.)

Jewcy: No one auditioned for this film. Can you explain that process?

Writing can be one of the tougher parts of filmmaking because it’s something you do alone. I discovered a little trick to it. If you write for people you know, you’re less alone. I had a blast writing for actors that I’ve worked with and I believe in. Every single character was written for someone I knew. I used their actual names up until the moment that I sent it to them for the table read. It really brought it to life, and I could see the movie. I was laughing out loud at times because I could picture that person in it. It made writing it a much richer experience. I am in this dilemma as a filmmaker, however, since it’s hard to develop and distribute a film where you don’t have known actors.

Jewcy: Was the casting of all immigrants in the film purposeful?

I’m very proud of the fact that all of my films have very diverse casts. It’s not that I set out to do that, but rather that it’s a reflection of what my life looks like. I set out to bring diversity into my actual life, and these are the people that I have relationships to and that I’m close to. That does need to happen by decision. Our society, even though it’s not in the bylaws, is very segregated. If you don’t step out of your comfort zone and get to know people you might not have felt encouraged to get to know, you’re missing out. If I don’t do something about that, I do end up in a white bubble where I’m shut out from the majority of the world population. This was more about the fact that in my life I stepped out of my white middle class comfort zone. What you see in the movie is the reward you get from that.

Jewcy: Can you talk about the Independent Film School?

Almost everyone in the film behind and in front of the camera is someone I met at my workshop there. I make a point of holding diverse classes. The Independent Film School came to be by accident. I needed a job. I interviewed for a dog-walking job and didn’t get it. I was part of a writing group and people kept coming to me for input, and at some point I realized I was spending so much time helping writers that I should charge for it. Eight people showed up for my first screenwriting class, and ten years later it’s been thousands and thousands of people. It really came to life, and it started out as a writing workshop, then evolved as I started to produce and direct.

The school is an organic outgrowth of what I do as a filmmaker. It was the greatest accident of all time. The people that I’ve gotten to know and work with in my workshop has built a community that now supports my work and theirs. One of our guiding principles is that we reject the idea that competition makes us better artists. Supporting each other does that. One of the things I got to learn through teaching is that it’s really everyone’s aspiration to have a positive impact as an artist. My vision is not just for me to make films that have a positive impact but to be part of a whole community of artists that share that vision to help the world move in that direction.

Jewcy: What’s next for you?

I am a prolific writer, so there’s a very hefty pile of unproduced scripts in my office, and some of them are actually really fabulous. Some of them I wouldn’t produce, but some of them I would if I could. I have to be strategic about what I choose to work on. If you’ve seen this film, you know that it’s designed for a sequel. I’ve started writing it for some of the same characters. I have to figure out what to do so I can continue to derive the benefits of working with people I believe in who are extremely talented and figure out how to give the project traction. It’s at least a trilogy, but possibly more than that. The premise of this story really lends itself to endless possibilities. I could probably write these storylines for the rest of my life. I don’t know that I will, but I probably could.

Tomorrow Ever After opens this Friday, May 5th, in New York and Los Angeles.

Image: Ela Thier from Tomorrow Ever After

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Israeli-American Ultra-Orthodox filmmaker Rama Burshtein’s debut, Fill the Void, won the Israeli Oscar for Best Picture four years ago. Now, Burshtein is back with a very different film, The Wedding Plan, which is, yes, also about a wedding. Jewcy caught up with Burshtein at the Tribeca Film Festival to discuss her unconventional new comedy that follows a young woman named Michal who is so desperate to get married that she plans a wedding, invites her guests, and only then starts working on the most crucial element: finding a groom.

Jewcy: What is it about weddings that appeals to you so much?

It’s not about weddings, it’s about love. In my world love comes with marriage.

Jewcy: This is quite the premise – a woman wants to get married and doesn’t care that there’s no groom. Where did you come up what that idea?

I have no idea. I think that we lack hope, that we’re too committed to despair. I really wanted to do something about that. There’s nothing like romantic comedy to make it digestible. You can receive it better in a setting like this. We all feel very strongly. Wherever we are, the highs and lows are so close that you can be at both places at the same moment, and I wanted to show that in film.

Jewcy: It’s nice to see a wedding presented in a more comedic format. Fill the Void wasn’t particularly funny.

Not at all. It was like a Swedish film. When we shot it, I couldn’t believe that I was doing this kind of film. This comedy is more me.

Jewcy: Was Michal inspired by anyone in particular? She’s such an incredible protagonist who doesn’t really experience the world around her in the way that everyone else does, and that’s what makes her so great.

There are a lot of people. My casting director’s name is Michal. She looks like her, and she’s still not married. She’s secular and she still didn’t find someone. On the wedding invitation Michal sends out in the film, her last name is my maiden name. My sister Hadar is not married. There’s a lot of people in terms of inspiration. So many people in this world who don’t find their partner, and they’re 30, 35, or 40. It’s something that we really see a lot today. They’re my inspiration and I hope that they can get something out of it to help them move in different directions.

Jewcy: Do you think that this is a film that plays differently to religious and secular audiences, Jewish or non-Jewish?

Definitely different. The surprising thing is that it works for all them, in very different ways. For the religious, it’s much harder to grasp than the secular. They have a dialogue with HaShem, they need to work in a different way to understand this. Secular people just want to make me a guru in Israel. The surprising thing is that the non-Jews connect to the belief in the film.

Jewcy: Most movies about observant characters that make it to a mainstream audience are about fighting with that observance. Both of these movies have nothing to do with that. It’s about fighting with cultural expectations and not whether or not to be observant. Was that important to you?

It’s always a dialogue with the inside, either someone trying to get in or someone trying to get out. That’s the reason I went out to make films. This is the voice I have. It’s okay that people interpret, but it’s not okay that it’s the only interaction people have with observance on film.

Jewcy: How did you find Noa Kooler, who plays Michal?

For Fill the Void, you need a young girl. You could actually find her on the street. Hadas Yaron was in the army when I cast her; she wasn’t in acting school. This character is much more complicated, and is at the age where you can’t really find an unknown. That was a bit of a turnoff because I wanted to find someone very fresh, and at this age usually it’s the peak of a career, if not towards the end.

I saw all the actresses in Israel, and Noa was the one who I found who could make you laugh and cry in the same scene without a cut. It was bashert as soon as she walked in. I saw it in the audition. No one gave her a leading role until this. No one gambled on her, and now, today, she’s not here in New York because she has a leading role in a very primetime show that’s shooting now. Everyone is giving her leading roles now. She went through a wall herself at the age of 36 and she’s starting her career. It’s amazing.

Jewcy: I won’t spoil the ending for our readers, but I loved it. Was there ever a time that it was going to turn out differently?

No. In order for it to be built how it’s built, you have to know how it’s going to end. Otherwise it won’t work. Secular people told me that, in watching it, they didn’t think that it would follow through and that they would be able to believe any kind of ending, and then suddenly they found themselves on the other side of the wall. They don’t know at what moment they started to buy it. That’s what I feel is the divine thing in this film, you suddenly find yourself on the other side of the wall. It’s not mine, I can’t repeat it, it’s just me being a visitor in God’s world.

Jewcy:  You used the song Im Eshkachech over and over in Fill the Void. Here, you used more secular Israeli music.

First of all, you have a rock star as one of Michal’s potential husbands. The words are the movement of this film, between coming and going. The package is a romantic comedy, and that can’t exist without a song that goes very fast into your heart and you start singing it and want to hear it again. The guy that made the music, Roy Edri, made the music and the score. He’s very talented, not in terms of doing something original, but everything he does goes very fast to the heart. Seconds, and you’re already in it. This is a tough pill to swallow– you need such a package, otherwise it’s very depressing.

Jewcy: Are there other movies about either weddings or love that might have inspired this?

Yes, a lot. I thought Silver Linings Playbook was great. There was something about the integrity and the sincerity that I really enjoyed. In a way, what I’m doing now is really more of a salad. Bridget Jones’ Diary has two men, both of whom are nice-looking. In that film, you know who she’s going to end up with, but here you have no idea. It’s a suspense film, not just a romantic comedy. People are on the edge of the chair trying to see how it’s going to work itself out. I don’t think there’s any one direct influence. I love watching romantic comedies.

Jewcy: What has the response been to the film?

It’s not out in the world yet. It’s starting now. In Israel, it’s already finished, so that’s all we know. People loved it in Israel, you can tell from the admissions. I don’t know how it’s going to go over in the world, but in Israel, it has a kind of cult following. I would get e-mails from people who saw it six times. I think it will resonate for a longer time there. It’s out here and in London, and it’s starting in other places.

Jewcy: What has your experience been at Tribeca?

We had the premiere a few days ago. You can sit as a director in the screening and you get this strong feeling that they hate it. And then it ends, and they clap their hands, and they don’t let you leave. You were a total failure, and now you’re a total success with only two minutes in between. I told my husband that I think I’m getting a bit old for that rollercoaster.

Jewcy: What’s next?

TV. I feel that today TV is very different from what it used to be. It’s like a very long film. There are really great filmmakers making great shows, like Paolo Sorrentino doing The Young Pope. It’s an amazing show like a long film, ten hours with a character. The side stories get their own space, which is so interesting for me. Without the touring and the festivals, I think I’ll like it. It’s good for me.

The Wedding Plan had its New York Premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival earlier this week as a Viewpoints selection. It opens May 12th in New York and Los Angeles.

Photo by Lea Golda Holterman

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The true story of Antonina Zabinski and her husband Jan, who helped save many Jews during the Holocaust by sheltering them in their zoo in Warsaw, is currently playing in theaters across the country as The Zookeeper’s Wife. Jewcy had the opportunity to pose some questions about the experience of bringing this film to the big screen to actor Daniel Brühl, who plays German zoologist Lutz Heck, and screenwriter Angela Workman, who adapted Diane Ackerman’s 2007 book.

Jewcy: What originally drew you to this project?

Daniel: First of all, I was fascinated by the story of this very courageous Polish couple who saved so many lives and risked everything in order to do so. My character was a famous scientist at the time who had this crazy vision and idea of recreating and rebreeding extinct animals. He’s a charming smart guy at the beginning, the likable man, and throughout the story is becoming a very different man, quite an evil character. That was an interesting journey, and an interesting arc.

Angela: I was drawn to the project because, as the daughter of Jewish immigrants, whose parents were refugees from Eastern Europe, I felt that writing a film about this subject might honor them. Diane Ackerman’s book is so detailed and colorful that it sparked cinematic images in my head. I felt I could see all the images I needed to make a film. I loved the themes about the natural world: animal nature, animal instincts, and who are the beasts, really?

I loved the idea that nature survived a despot. That this shy, self-effacing woman, Antonina Zabinska, with her singular instincts to protect animals), essentially faced off against Adolf Hitler in his attempts to exterminate the “Jewish animal.” And she saved nearly every person who hid in her zoo. Hitler tried to control nature, he tried to define and perfect the human animal. But he couldn’t control nature, in the end. He lost the war, he died. He took many people with him, we know that, of course. But he didn’t take us all. The Zabinski family, a family of zookeepers, defeated a despot. I loved that idea.

Jewcy: How different is the movie in the end from the book it’s based on?

Angela: The book has been called a novel, but it’s not a novel, it’s nonfiction. It’s stuffed to the gills with Diane’s years of research — she has a very curious mind, she researches everything, and everything went into her book. I had to leave most of that out. I had to find a three-act structure, a very firm storyline, focus, and characterizations. I had to figure out how to move time forward through all the events of the entire second world war. The film is quite different than the book.

Jewcy: What makes this is a story about the zookeeper’s wife rather than about the zookeeper or both of them?

Angela: The story is focused on the zookeeper’s wife simply because that’s Diane’s focus, and that was the focus we chose for a point of view. Most of the film’s focus is on Antonina, although we do see her husband, Jan, in his own personal fight with the underground army. But we’ve seen those male-driven war stories before. We’ve never seen a film story like Antonina’s before.

Jewcy: Can you talk about how the zoo setting enhances or defines this story?

Angela: The zoo setting is everything. It’s what drew all of us, who decided to make a film from the book, into the story to begin with. The film almost entirely takes place inside the zoo, except for scenes in the Warsaw ghetto, and some in Lutz Heck’s flat in Warsaw. The first part of the film establishes the zoo with its animal life (non-human) — eventually the zoo is bombed. Then the Zabinskis create a secret sanctuary for the human animal. The zoo is a metaphor for the whole story.

Jewcy: What was it like working with the animals on set? Can you share any memorable stories?

Daniel: I was a bit annoyed that Jessica [Chastain] was such an incredible animal whisperer – I don’t know how she did it. All of the animals just loved her. They wouldn’t listen to me that well. The elephant was very smart – it took him just a couple of minutes to understand what we wanted. I think he wanted the lunch break as much as we wanted it. There were other animals that Jessica had to deal with, and I was quite impressed because we were dealing with wild animals, which are unpredictable and dangerous, but she was fearless.

Jewcy: When we first meet Lutz, he is an enthusiastic German zoologist, and the next time we see him he is a Nazi official coldly commanding the execution of all the animals because they won’t survive the winter. Did he really change, or is he still an animal lover at heart?

Daniel: He does change, and that was another interesting aspect. That’s one of the very crucial questions for every German, the question of guilt. What would I have done in a situation like this? You can see a man who has probably had other ideals and other human values before. By being given the power of the Nazi regime and supported by guys who are willing to fulfill all his professional dreams, he plays with that power and changes. Giving up his human values was something that interested me, to play that twist. It was also important to keep the balance of never losing his humanity entirely.

Jewcy: Can you talk about working with Jessica and with director Niki Caro? What was it like on set?

Daniel: Niki was very focused and well-prepared, and she had a very clear vision. I think that, as a female director, she had much more authority than most of the male directors I’ve worked with. She was tough and courageous. She wanted the real thing, not CGI, for all of the animals. Maybe because she’s from New Zealand, I can feel that she’s very connected to nature and wanted it to be real and authentic. As we all know, shooting with children and animals can become a nightmare, but it was quite impressive that she always kept her cool. I never saw her becoming nervous or angry.

Jessica is a wonderful actress. I was her biggest fan beforehand and I’m an even bigger fan now. It was such a psychologically demanding part for her, with a lot of emotions and crying involved. I was impressed to see that, off-camera, she would give you as an actor just the same amount of energy.

Jewcy: You played a Nazi hunting for traitors in Alone in Berlin, and you’re well-known for your part as a Nazi film star in Inglourious Basterds. Do you ever feel like you just want to play the good guy in a movie about Nazis?

Daniel: I’ve played the good guy for many, many years, and I’ve become bored of it. With these parts, they are never the cliché, evil Nazi part that you can see in so many other films. In Alone in Berlin, for instance, I’m not a Nazi; I’m a police inspector who has been working a long time before the Nazis came to power, but he’s intimidated by them and is part of the Gestapo. It’s clear in the film that he hates them and he’s an old-school police investigator who’s not part of the Nazi regime.

In Inglourious Basterds, it’s also about a guy who by accident becomes a war hero, and he’s actually the only likable German Nazi guy in the film, at first at least. In this case, I saw it more as a scientist who is seduced by the Nazi ideology. The uniform that he’s wearing wasn’t the most important aspects of the part; he’s a human being who is very ambitious professionally losing his humanity as he gets power.

Jewcy: What was the most challenging part of adapting this story, and what was the greatest opportunity?

Angela: The most challenging aspect of the adaptation is that it really isn’t an adaptation; this is a book of nonfiction, it is heavy with facts and statistics. I needed to turn the story into a dramatic narrative, a story about a six year war that could be told in two hours. I had to leave many, many things out, delicious, colorful, sometimes painful things. And even then, I wrote a very long and very developed screenplay that turned out to be too expensive and big to shoot. It was painful to have to cut, and then it was edited further. The opportunity, though, to tell a female-driven story about zookeepers, animal lovers, who turn their attention to the human animal during the atrocity of the Holocaust, was a great gift for me. I feel grateful to have been able to do it.

Image courtesy of Focus Features

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Do you like Star Wars? Do you have aggressively strong opinions about Marvel Comics properties? Do you spend Shabbat catching up on fantasy novels? Do you not even know what Shabbat is (wow, welcome to the site), but you like hearing Jewish women explain things? Presenting the new podcast: Nice Jewish Fangirls.

Only five episodes in, the show features three Orthodox Jewish New York women as they go over pop cultural news and discuss every element of “fandom” they can, from literature, to TV, to even, yes, sports. Fangirl (also a verb, as in, to be a woman becoming very excited about pop culture) can take on a slightly condescending connotation, but the trio of hosts claim it proudly here, debating, obsessing, and, yes, fangirling, about their latest obsessions.

All three women work as writers or journalists; Michal Schick is an entertainment reporter for Hypable, as well as a writing teacher.  Tamar Herman is a freelance writer who particularly contributes to Billboard about Korean pop culture. SM Rosenberg has done everything from working (and retiring) as an auto mechanic to fiction writing (definitely not retired).

The women for the most part became friends online, through Orthodox Ladies United in Fandom, a popular Facebook group for Jewish female geeks (Schick is a founder). Herman rallied the trio into creating Fangirls for Jewish Coffee House, a media site that has recently launched a podcast network (and is still looking for pitches!).

The trio talked to Jewcy via email to discuss why the intersection of being Jewish woman and a geek begs its own podcast, what they’re looking forward to in 2017, and passing out at one of the biggest fan conventions in the country.

Jewcy: How did you decide to do a podcast and get started?

Tamar Herman:  Modern Orthodoxy means that we’re living in modern society with our religious beliefs intact, but being too invested isn’t really socially acceptable even though so many people love seeing Marvel movies, watch tons of television, read fantasy books, etc.  OLUF served as a venue for some of us who are really involved in fandom culture, but I wanted to create a place for people to come and enjoy what those things are like through a MO [Modern Orthodox] lens. So I asked SM and Michal if they wanted to be involved and they said yes.

I don’t think you need to be Jewish, or MO, to listen to NJF and enjoy it, but we definitely went into it wanting it to be a place where we can, and should, talk about what we read on Shabbat or why we were upset the Goldstein sisters [from the new Harry Potter spinoff, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them] were just Jewish in name.

Jewcy: So, it may seem obvious, but why a podcast about the intersection of your geekiness and Jewish identities?  Much of the conversation you have could be taking place amongst people who aren’t even Jewish.

Michal Schick: I think we’re all very accustomed to separating our identities as fans and as religious Jewish women, since those are spheres that often do not have the opportunity to cross. I know that I used to feel the need to perform as a “regular person” in geek circles— I wouldn’t bring up my religious identity, and often wouldn’t engage even if there did happen to be some intersection. The same was true of my daily life as a frum woman; I was used to assuming that displaying my “fannishness” would be strange, and in certain contexts even unacceptable.

So for me, the point is not to explicitly integrate every element of these two identities, but rather to foster coexistence between them. We are both Jewish women and geeks, and depending on the subject, we may sound more like one than the other. But by bringing those identities together under the banner of Jewish Fangirls, we are honoring the importance and relevance of both simultaneously. What used to be divergent, or even contradictory, is now a holistic part of my identity.

And of course, there are many opportunities where this combination gives us a valuable and unique perspective. We can discuss Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, for example, both as Harry Potter fans and as Jewish women who want to be represented onscreen. We can bring attention to the use (or misuse) of our religion and culture in popular media. And I also hope that we can do our part to demystify Orthodox life for geeks who are not Jewish, or aren’t familiar with our lifestyles. We’re religious, but we’re not scary, or secretive, or weird; we’re just nerds, and we love our fandoms like anyone else.

TH: Michal pretty much said it. As much as many women get scorned for being fangirls, I think Jewish women even more so. What is a Nice Jewish Girl doing spending her time obsessing over something like a book or pop star? But, of course, so many of us do and, like Michal said, we hide part of our identity. I for one feel far more at ease with my fandom friends than some of my closest friends from Jewish day school and college because they will never understand why I feel the way I do. And that’s fine, because we need different people in our lives for different things. But for so many frum people, there’s no outlet.

In OLUF, so many people have said that they’d never imagine there were so many Orthodox fangirls. We can be ourselves within the scope of Judaism, but we need a place to do it. That’s why I think it’s so important for us to be talking about fandoms, in a Kosher way.

SM Rosenberg: I’ve always surrounded myself with Jewish nerdy friends and family, so I’ve never struggled finding an outlet, and I’ve also always been pretty open about my Jewishness in fandom environments and am comfortable answering questions about it (like a time at DragonCon when I donated blood and nearly passed out and spent the afternoon recuperating and teaching the con medics the kosher symbols on the snacks I could eat), so my perspective is probably different.

Mostly, I think that with any minority group, accessibility is key. How can anyone relate to people without common ground? Pop culture and fandom are amazing sources of common ground and conversation fodder. I currently help out a child who is recovering from cancer, and sometimes his friends come over and aren’t sure what to say, so they bring up Harry Potter or baseball or superheroes, and it’s so wonderful to watch the walls come down for those few minutes while they fanboy about things. Common ground makes people approachable and likable, be they Jews or Buddhists or Mormons or kids with cancer, and hey, I like being likable. And I like making it okay for other people like me to be open about the things they like.

Jewcy: What’s one thing you’re really excited to fangirl about (with a Jewish angle would be nice, but not necessary) in 2017?

MS: Wonder Woman! It’s way past time for a woman-centric superhero movie, and the fact that Gal Gadot is unapologetically Israeli and Jewish just thrills me.

TH: I was going to say Gal Gadot as Wonder Woman, but Michal beat me to it. Can I say more episodes of NJF? I really have been quite fangirly about our own fangirl podcast…

SMR: Well, The Good Place just came back from hiatus and I love it an irrational amount at the moment, and everyone should watch it. It’s gotten so much better since the pilot, and I can’t wait to see where it goes.

Thanks to the gang for talking to us! Nice Jewish Fangirls drops (more or less) every other Monday on iTunes, Stitcher, Soundcloud, or wherever you get your podcasts! You can also tweet at the show, or email the gang at nicejewishfangirls@gmail.com.

Image courtesy of Nice Jewish Fangirls.

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