Not every season of RuPaul’s Drag Race has a Jewish contestant (we’re looking at you, All-Stars Season 3), but there have been plenty. In fact, two self-identifying Jewish queens have taken the crown— Jinkx Monsoon and last season’s Sasha Velour. So with Season 10 upon us, do we have another Semitic contender in the person of one Miz Cracker?

Miz Cracker is the drag persona of Maxwell Heller, 33, a New York-based performer (she has referred to herself as “Harlem’s Jewish princess”). She’s a self-described comedy queen, and the drag daughter of previous Drag Race winner Bob the Drag Queen— already establishing her as a potentially fierce competitor. Her name, which used to be Brianna Cracker, comes from her favorite snack (brie? crackers? get it?), but it was too long, so now she’s embracing being, well… a cracker.

As for her Jewish identity, she’s far from quiet about it. For example, she was in the Pharrell parody video, “Jappy” (get it?), with other Jewish queens, including season 9 contestant Alexis Michelle. She has embraced the description of her style as “Jewish Barbie on bath salts.” She also hosts a RPDR review show on YouTube called, really, Review with a Jew.

Besides, her catchphrase is “Okay, It’s time for dinner!” She’s like a young, hot, Jewish mom!

While we’re on the subject of Jews and RuPaul, it’s worth mentioning (again) that the show host is aggressively philo-Semitic. He has worn a magen david necklace multiple times onscreen, spoken about how he wishes gay culture could emulate Jewish culture, and even kept an English-to-Yiddish dictionary under his chair while filming.

We don’t tend to endorse reality-show contestants on Jewcy— we leave it to Miz Cracker to prove her own merits as she rises to the top. That said, the new season debuts tonight, and we pray that at this time next week, Miz Cracker will still be on the show. It’s a start.

While you wait, get to know the queen in this intro video.

Image via Facebook

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A superhero in Biblical rags. A comedienne rubbing shoulders with Lenny Bruce in 1950s New York. Ben Feldman’s hair on Superstore. You didn’t have to search very hard to find Jews making a splash in television this year. Even Stranger Things got in on the action, introducing a pinch of Yiddishkeit into white bread Hawkins, Indiana. (Okay, they didn’t explicitly spell out that the ambiguous but the ultimately good-intentioned Dr. Owens was a card-carrying Member of the Tribe— why else would you cast Paul Reiser?)

Stranger Things was far from the only genre show to tap a Jewish inspiration this year. Comic book shows across networks honored their creators with both Jewish characters (Gert Yorkes on Hulu’s Runaways) and Jewish metaphors (Supergirl’s ongoing debates of cultural displacement, lost history, and feeling trapped between two worlds). And though DCTV shed a few of its Jewish characters this past year, each got to go out with a bang. Martin Stein, played by the always charming Victor Garber, took his final bow in the Crisis on Earth X crossover, saving both the life of his partner and worlds entire with his actions. Still, the character popped up an episode later in a flashback, sporting a Chanukah sweater to die for and contesting for Furby-wannabe in a department store as a roided-up version of “Chanukah, Oh Chanukah” accompanies.

But the year’s standout moment belonged to Ragman, the gematria-identifying, schnapps-brewing, ancient rag-possessing superhero on Arrow. As his final act of heroism on the show, he wraps a detonating nuclear bomb in his rags and recites the Shema yes, this aired on the CW. When he survives, another character surveys the scene with an “Oh my god!,” to which Ragman groans in reply, “How come He always get the credit?”

Ragman wasn’t alone in exploring the spiritual aspects of Judaism on the small screen this year. To nearly everyone’s surprise, ABC’s new dramedy Kevin (Probably) Saves the World actually features as its underlying plot a mission to track down the Lamedvavniks who are lost this generation. Meanwhile, as Tom Hardy was reprising his role as real-life London gangster Alfie Solomons on Peaky Blinders across the pond, closer to home, Fargo embarked on its most divinely influenced season yet.

Fargo has always been a morality tale—there are shades of gray, sure, but ostensibly it is a story of good people striving to do good and bad people striving to do bad. The good people struggle but are ultimately vindicated; the bad people thrive but ultimately fail. The first season borrowed the movie’s essential conceit and expanded upon it—as Fargo the movie mused on the incomprehensibility of everyday evil by everyday people, Fargo the TV show enacts the debate on a Biblical scale.

The show has always been littered with Jewish allusion (parables of the Chofetz Chaim, a Chabad Rabbi and his Mrs. Robinson of a wife, repeated uses of 613, a plague of fish), but this season embraced a plot that barely papers over current events in order to craft a nesting doll of Russo-Jewish history in these American wastes. You have small-time crook Yuri, obsessed with identifying as a Cossack, shedding blood and spreading violence (and casual anti-Semitism), but go up the chain of command and you have his boss Varga, with his consumption and waste, and his false words, and his little portrait of Stalin (and more casual anti-Semitism). No wonder Michael Stuhlbarg’s Sy has such a rough go. But then we meet God in a bowling alley, and the world of Fargo is turned on its head— Rebbe Nachman and the slain people of Uman reemerge from their graves to enact eye-for-an-eye (or, an ear-for-an-ear, as it were) justice on Cossack Yuri. (This is the most Jewish scene on television this year, by the way.)

The influence of the past and the relationship between generations was a popular theme this year, whether it was Steven Spielberg’s joyous narration of director William Wyler in the Netflix war propaganda documentary, Five Came Back, or in the many different faces of Jewish family presented on screen. On Transparent, for instance, the Pfeffermans’ first bus ride to Jerusalem on their pilgrimage to Israel is immediately dragged into a familiar argument on Middle East relations. On The Goldbergs’ recent Chanukah special, Beverly Goldberg, “smother” extraordinaire, wearing another Chanukah sweater to die for, schemes to ensure her daughter and her daughter’s boyfriend will choose her house for all future holidays. And on Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, another mother-daughter relationship leads to a staggering moment of defeat and redemption when Rebecca reaches out for help through the screaming wash of her depression on an ill-fated plane ride.

And then of course, there’s The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, a miraculous and mellifluous mile-a-minute gabber from Gilmore Girls genius, Amy Sherman-Palladino. From the first scene, where newlywed Midge Maisel finishes her toast by confessing that they served shrimp at the reception, the show is a veritable smorgasbord of Jewish comedy (my favorite: “You’re jealous of the rabbi? He was in Buchenwald, throw him a bone.”) and Jewish experience, whether it’s the sister-in-law who returns from Israel with larger and larger mezuzahs to prove her conversion, or the father-in-law who won’t stop telling stories about how he rescued Jews from Europe during the war. And in a year when Curb Your Enthusiasm returned, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel outdid Larry David by featuring Lenny Bruce as Midge’s disheveled sage. Yet no one shone brighter than Midge herself, who was vivacious and hilarious, introspective and yearning, vulgar and well-spoken, a baker of briskets and a breaker of convention. Season 2 can’t come soon enough.

Image by Sarah Shatz/Amazon Video

The post The Year of Binging Jewishly appeared first on Jewcy.

There have always been cool Jews: Judah Maccabee, Bugsy Siegel, Lou Reed. But for one brief shining moment in the early Noughts, a curly-haired, comics-collecting, indie-listening ball of neuroses was the face postered on bedroom walls.

For fans of Marvel’s latest small screen offering, Runaways, it must have seemed like Chrismukkah came early when it was announced that showrunner Josh Schwartz would be one of the brains behind its leap from the comic pages. After all, who better to breathe life into smart, sarcastic, Jewish Gert (and her dinosaur sidekick, Old Lace) than the guy who created her spiritual ancestor Seth Cohen (and his toy horse sidekick, Captain Oats).

Seth Cohen was a different breed of teen idol, no less a romantic lead because he wasn’t muscled or athletic— or the fact that his childhood trauma stemmed from a friendless Bar Mitzvah party. But, of course, that was why The O.C. caught fire. Dipping into a genre that trends whitebread, Schwartz replaced the John Hughesian model of interchangeable suburbia and overspilling earnestness with his self-aware, highly located, unmistakably ethnic teen drama. The place, California’s wealthy and WASPy Newport Beach, would reign omnipresent and the people would be defined in relation to it. At the center of this world was a family who just didn’t quite fit in, the Cohens: exiled Bronx crusader Sandy and his blonde, blue-eyed wife Kirsten, their oddball son Seth (played, of course, by Adam Brody), and their adopted delinquent Ryan.

From the start, the Cohens’ difference to their neighbors was a source of comedic tension, and one of those many differences was that the Cohens were very, very Jewish. The show never tried to hide it and instead reveled in it as one of The O.C.’s trademarks. The first season introduced the concept of Chrismukkah, Seth’s attempt to wrangle nine nights of presents out of his blended family, to the show and to world at large, and each season would repeat the festival, escalating the drama exponentially— one Chrismukkah featured the invention of the “yamaclause”; another centered around Ryan learning a Torah portion for his Bar Mitzvah.

Unlike many Jewish characters, the Cohens didn’t simply become Jews on Christmas. Instead, their Jewishness saturated the show to the point of familiarity. One episode focuses on the visit of Sandy’s domineering matriarch, the Nana, as the Cohens scramble to put together a seder and Summer, Seth’s girlfriend, valiantly learns the Four Questions to impress his grandmother. A later storyline has Seth and Summer in a standoff over their engagement—Summer pursues conversion by grappling with a Torah scroll and learning to cook a brisket. And at a funeral, Seth, searching for the missing Summer, cracks “is she smoking the salmon herself?”

Of course, culturally, the Cohens were not the first gefilte fish out of water in the Golden State. Mark Harris, in his study of changing Hollywood in the 1960s, Pictures at a Revolution, highlights an epiphany reached by director Mike Nichols in the decades after he developed The Graduate. In Charles Webb’s book, Benjamin Braddock is another tall tanned sunburst of California WASP society.  The movie version?  Not quite.  Says Nichols:

“It took me years before I got what I had been doing all along — that I had been turning Benjamin into a Jew. I didn’t get it until I saw this hilarious issue of MAD magazine after the movie came out, in which the caricature of Dustin says to the caricature of Elizabeth Wilson, ‘Mom, how come I’m Jewish and you and Dad aren’t?’ And I asked myself the same question, and the answer was fairly embarrassing and fairly obvious: Who was the Jew among the goyim? And who was forever a visitor in a strange land?”

The casting, unconscious or not, strengthens the tone of discomfort of the movie, as Ben is paraded, handled, and manipulated like a curiosity by his family and friends. In revisiting the scenario forty years later, The O.C. flips the script—the Cohens still can’t quite assimilate in their coastal California town, but this time, their neighbors are the outsiders, and the Cohens, with the audience in tow, become insiders. For instance, in one episode, Summer starts dating another boy to make Seth jealous. The boy, Danny, is constantly cracking jokes that send everyone into exaggerated hysterics. Seth, and later Sandy, are the only characters left stone-faced. (Sandy: “Gentiles. I love your mother more than words, but – not funny.”) And because the Cohens aren’t laughing, neither are we. By attuning the Cohens’ brand of wit as the show’s usual humor, the audience sides with the Jews on this one.  

What the Cohens found cool, we found cool, and so The O.C. not only fashioned statements out of Seth’s love for The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay or Death Cab for Cutie, but also made the unglamorous—shuffleboard, bagels, showtunes, meatloaf—seem desirable. A Chrismukkah miracle, indeed.

The post Welcome to the O.C., Mench appeared first on Jewcy.

This year’s season of Difficult People is ending on Tuesday just in time for us all to reflect on our garbage person ways Pre-Yom Kippur. To quote Billy’s character, “we did the wrong thing and we still got nothing!”

Dear Billy Eichner and Julie Klausner,

Thank you for letting it be okay to be a dirt person. I constantly struggle to stay away from my garbage person impulses, but Difficult People really leans into the dirt person lifestyle. It is a celebration of all of the worst traits a person can have.    

I would like you both to know that I am not planning to become an all out horrible monster, but just a person who occasionally thinks about herself before others. I really view what your characters do on the show as a form of self-care, because let’s be honest— they only really do care about themselves. It’s cathartic to watch you guys do the things I only dream of doing.

I appreciate your characters’ infusion of Judaism in their everyday activities. It’s not like we often see them doing Jewish rituals or celebrating holidays (though there are occasional examples— shout out to this season’s plot line where Billy’s Orthodox sister became convinced she had a Golem). Still, in the proud history of TV, their background, and sense of humor, infuses every part of their hilarious existence.

I also appreciate Jews mocking other Jews— it just feels right (you know you do it). You crafted characters whose Judaism is expressed through their love of pop culture, for example. Your characters watch The Real Housewives with the same fervor some people bring to Shabbat. They may not live Jewish lives in a traditional religious sense, but they still live Jewishly.  The way they perform a Jewish life may feel wrong to some because it isn’t this idealized version of what we “should” be, but that makes it feel all the more real.

As the Day of Atonement nears, I think of when Billy tells his frum brother on Yom Kippur: “Here’s the thing. You know what the holiest day of the year for me is? The Golden Globes.” His niece exclaims in response: “That’s the most Jewish thing I have ever heard.”

As we move into Rosh Hashanah this evening we are told to be self-reflective and contrite. Difficult People has helped me do both. I am thinking more about how I interact with the world so that I can be less of a garbage person. In this reflection I am realizing all the ways I can be better in the New Year. I will apologize to those I have dirt-personed-to and hopefully be just a bit less like your characters in the horribleness in the New Year.

Difficult People asserts that we as Jewish people will always be the Other in society, and it’s better to just embrace rather than hiding from it. What I love about your show is that Julie and Billy are unapologetically themselves, dirt person ways and all.

Stay Jewish!

-Alex

Image via Hulu

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National Geographic’s TV drama Genius is following the life of Albert Einstein, following the personal and professional travails of the great scientist. On tonight’s episode, Einstein (Geoffrey Rush) and his wife Elsa (Emily Watson), seeing the tide of anti-Semitism grow around them, must consider fleeing Germany, and a rising Nazi party.

Now, for the first time, you can watch an exclusive clip from tonight’s episode below, where Chaim Weizmann (played by Peter Jacobson), who would go on to be the first president of Israel, talks about pogroms with Einstein and tries to win the physicist over to Zionism’s cause:

What will Albert do? Read a history book to find out (you can start with this Tablet article), or watch the National Geographic channel, tonight at 9/8 p.m. c!

Photo from Genius.

The post JEWCY EXCLUSIVE: A Clip from ‘Genius’ appeared first on Jewcy.

Full disclosure: I have never watched an episode of the The Bachelorette, nor an episode of its sibling series, The Bachelor. What I do know is that there are roses involved and that the array of contestants tend to be rather gentile and white (with a few notable exceptions).

And through the foolproof methodology of Jewish geography, it has come to my attention that several of this season’s Bachelorette stars are Jewish, which piques my interest about a reality TV phenomenon I would normally dismiss for being too contrived.

On Monday night, viewers met Grant Hubsher and Jack Stone, two of the 31 suitors vying for the affection of Rachel Lindsay, a 32-year-old Dallas-based attorney and the first black Bachelorette in the show’s history (she previously competed on The Bachelor).

Although *spoiler alert* he went home in Week One, Hubsher, 29, looked like a great potential beau on paper. An emergency-medicine physician from New York City (by way of the Tampa Bay area), he revealed in his official bio that he used to perform “Ice Ice Baby” at his friends’ Bar Mitzvahs. Perhaps appearing on reality shows runs in his blood: His younger sister, Cher (yes, really), was on the MTV series My Super Sweet 16 and Exiled. According to an interview with Glamour, she was also the one who sent in his Bachelorette submission.

Like Lindsay, Stone, 32, is an attorney from Dallas. His bio isn’t particularly Jewy, but he does express in interest in WWII history. Plus, he scores major points for listing his mom, who battled cancer, as his biggest role model. With everything they have in common, it seems like he and Lindsay could hit it off.

Through the magic of social media and Jewish geography, we here at Jewcy have also learned that Stone once went on a trip to Germany through AJC, and that Hubsher went to Jewish Day School, went on USY on Wheels when he was in High School, and was active in Hillel when he was a student at the University of Florida.

Remember, ladies, Hubsher got sent home already, so he’s available!

Photos (Stone on the Left, Hubsher on the right) via Facebook

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Back in February, we learned that a dream team of producers―including two members of the tribe, Jeffrey Seller and Jason Katim―was set to bring Drama High, Michael Sokolove’s inspirational non-fiction book about the theater program at his working-class high school, to the small screen. At the center of the story is Lou Volpe, the life-changing drama teacher who advocated for bringing edgy musicals like RENT and Spring Awakening to his community.

The NBC show, now titled Rise, has found its Volpe (now named Lou Mazzuchelli). And none other than Ted Mosby will step into the mentor role.

That’s right, folks: your favorite half-Jewish architect AKA the pretty-darn-Jewish-in-real-life Josh Radnor will have another TV vehicle to charm viewers. Radnor has always been close in touch with his Jewish identity; he was raised Conservative, attended Orthodox day schools, and even participated in a volunteer program in Tzfat. Plus, a few years back, in an article for ReformJudaism.org (he’s really covered all the denominational bases here), Radnor professed his belief in God and offered a pluralistic prayer for B’reishit.

This past winter, Radnor also appeared on stage at Lincoln Center Theater as a Jewish writing teacher in Richard Greenberg’s play The Babylon Line. Although his new character isn’t Jewish, in a JTA interview about Greenberg’s work, Radnor draws on a Tony Kushner comment about why reading the Talmud is like reading a play.

“There’s a surface read and then digging underneath the text,” he said. “I feel having this background, having this love of literature, looking at something on the surface and excavating and finding out what more can be gleaned from it, you get from a Jewish way of learning.”

The rest of the Rise cast may not be as notable, Jewishly speaking, but Radnor will be joined by rising star Auli’i Cravalho (of Moana fame) and Rosie Perez, whose long career has involved starring in Larry David’s play Fish in the Dark in 2015.

Photo of Rosie Perez and Josh Radnor. 2017 NBCUniversal Media, LLC

The post Josh Radnor to Star in New Series appeared first on Jewcy.

Alright, nerds. Pack it in— podcasts are over. They had a good run, but now they’re gone the way of professional wrestling, comic books, and the entire Internet and they’re too mainstream to be fun anymore. Why? Because ABC has released the trailer for its new TV show, Alex, Inc. about Alex Blumberg, the founder of Gimlet Media.

Well, there’s one thing that seems to be keeping podcast diehards safe— if you watched the trailer, you would have little to know idea what a podcast is. Instead, you will experience 3 minutes of a pleasant Zach Braff vehicle (he’s also producing and directing) in which the former Scrubs star keeps taking generic risks, and not playing by other people’s vague rules, and trying to create something unspecified-yet-great despite some sorts of obstacles. (For the record, Blumberg quit his job at This American Life to create Gimlet Media and find success with the likes of StartUp, even though this trailer seems to operate on the premise that trying to earn a living doing radio is itself folly.)

Seriously, this commercial could be about pursuing a career in any creative medium and barely change a word:

“What’s the first show about?” An eccentric investor yet to be convinced asks on the stairs of his private jet.

“A guy like me!” responds Braff/Blumberg, with his wife and children. “With a family like them. He could succeed, he could fail. I promise you— people are going to love to watch him try.”

“I’m in!” Announces the investor, now convinced.

Well, if it doesn’t turn out to be the most sophisticated of stuff, it’s neat at least to see a Member of the Tribe play another person of Jewish descent on television. And maybe now you’ll have an easier time explaining to your aunt what a podcast actually is.

Alex, Inc. doesn’t have a premiere date yet, but you can watch the trailer below:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=148&v=j91FK6K-8Dg

Image from YouTube.

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The trailer is out for GLOW, an upcoming Netflix series starring your girlfriend and mine, Alison Brie (sorry, Dave Franco). And boy, does it look good.

“GLOW” is an acronym— and Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling is a real entertainment circuit that had its heyday in the 1980s, when this series takes place. Brie’s character, Ruth Wilder (please be Jewish, please be Jewish) is a struggling actor who winds up in the pro-wrestling business, where she finds an unlikely sisterhood, and empowerment and success in a way she never expected. Marc Maron also stars as Sam Sylvia, the somewhat skeezy director of the operation.

Historically, there weren’t that many Jews involved with GLOW, but two prominent performers, Chainsaw and Spike, aka the Heavy Metal Sisters (born Sharon and Donna Willinsky, respectively), were. But the new TV show is fictionalized, so here’s hoping. Regardless, the series features a diverse cast, and Brie is perfect and amazing, so we’re off to a great start.

Plus, Jenji Kohan is attached as one of the executive producers, so you really can’t go wrong. (Plus, former Jewcy and current Tablet writer Rachel Shukert is part of the production team.)

GLOW hits Netflix on June 23rd. In the meantime, check out the amazing, funny, touching trailer below:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AZqDO6cTYVY

Image via YouTube.

The post Alison Brie. Marc Maron. Women’s Wrestling. appeared first on Jewcy.

Comedian Moshe Kasher is here to officially be your woke bae.

Wait, can we eve say “woke bae?” Don’t worry, Kasher is here to help with his brand new talk show, Problematic with Moshe Kasher, which premiered last night. The Comedy Central website describes the show thus:

“Moshe Kasher brings the internet’s most contentious topics into the studio for face-to-face discussions that are sure to make everyone uncomfortable. It’s a message board come to life – but this time, hiding behind a username isn’t an option.”

And, what do you know, without anonymity, the discourse becomes way more civil! (Plus, there’s some heavy editing at play— it looks like it took a lot to get the conversation down to the essentials at under half an hour.)

And that first half hour? Kasher dove in deep; the theme was “cultural appropriation,” with the central question: “Where is the line?” Over the course of the episode, he talked to a diverse group of artists about what cultural appropriation is, what it isn’t, and why it’s hurtful in the first place.

Since it is a Comedy Central show, there was also a rap explaining cultural appropriation, featuring white (and Jewish) rapper MC Serch. The only time Jewish culture made the list as a victim was kabbalah, but from Kenny G to the Beastie Boys, boy did Jews make the list of appropriators.

Kasher also referenced his own Jewishness a handful of times in the first episode, but it was almost always in a self-deprecating context. He doesn’t seem to be hosting the show as a member of a minority, but as a Straight White Dude. (Perhaps he’ll shift his perspective for future episodes, like people walking away from their traditional faiths in “Losing My Religion,” especially since he has Orthodox members of his family.)

Despite audience questions during the show as well, it wasn’t so much a message board as a 20-minute crash course. Kasher hosted delicately, and (rightfully) always deferred to his guests. And the show in general has a really gentle tone, which takes away most of the bite that could be entertaining but is ultimately more productive. There’s no time for real deep dives, so we’ll see what Episode 2, exploring “Is technology ruining our brains?” can do with the format.

But there’s value to a show that explores difficult topics like race in a thoughtful, if not particularly sophisticated way. Think of it like this: in the wake of recent family seders, maybe sitting down a relative in front of an episode of Kasher’s show will do more to teach them than yelling on your third glass of wine.

Problematic with Moshe Kasher airs on Tuesday nights at 10/9 p.m. Central on Comedy Central.

Image via Comedy Central

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