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

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Move over, Cannes. The Kew Gardens Festival of Cinema is premiering its first-ever slate beginning August 4th, with more than 150 films and events scheduled throughout Queens. For those in the Jewish community anywhere in or near New York City, here’s a look at few selections that highlight unexpected and little-known stories about Jews all around the world.

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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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How do you take a superhero TV show and make it even more epic? Add a crossover episode and musical numbers penned by Hollywood’s best, brightest, and funniest, of course. On March 21, the CW will air a Flash/Supergirl crossover, “Duet.” The special will feature a song by our favorite Jewish, feminist powerhouse Rachel Bloom, who writes and stars in Crazy Ex-Girlfriend (also on the CW). Benj Pasek and Justin Paul, the increasingly lauded songwriting team behind Dear Evan Hansen and La La Land, are also contributing a tune (Pasek is Jewish; Paul isn’t). (The musical premise will be set up in Supergirl’s March 20 installment.)

“I immediately offered them [executive producers Greg Berlanti and Andrew Kreisberg] my services,” Bloom wrote in a statement released to Buzzfeed News. “As soon as they picked one of my song ideas, I hopped on the phone with my old Robot Chicken boss Tom Root and we brainstormed and, based on that brainstorm, I wrote up the song ‘Super Friend.’ I am so excited to contribute more to the upward trend that is musicals in television and film. Music can be one of the most amazing and efficient forms of storytelling and character development. Also, it was really fun to write a comedy song for two superheroes.”

Said superheroes singing Bloom’s song will be Grant Gustin as the Flash and Melissa Benoist as Supergirl, while Gustin alone will perform Pasek and Paul’s “Runnin’ Home to You.” Both actors have backgrounds in theatre and proved their vocal chops on Glee.  Fellow Glee cast member Darren Criss will co-star as the nefarious song-and-dance mastermind Music Meister.

While it’s not likely that “Duet” will share Crazy Ex’s Jewish flavor, we can at least anticipate that Bloom’s contribution will feature her delightfully oddball comic verve. But who knows? Even her YouTube hit “You Can Touch My Boobies” had a Semitic twist:

Zoe Miller is Tablet’s editorial intern. Follow her on Twitter here.

Image via Flickr.

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Showing later this week as part of America’s largest documentary film festival, DOC NYC, Supergirl tells the story of Naomi Kutin, a 95-pound, Orthodox Jewish girl who, at age nine, started breaking records in competitive powerlifting. We caught up with director Jessie Auritt to find out more about this cool project.

Jewcy: How did you hear about Naomi, and what interested you about this subject?

I came across an article in the Jewish Daily Forward about Naomi in January of 2013 and I was really intrigued, not only because there’s a young girl participating in this male-dominated sport and beating women 3-4 times her age, but mostly that she was Orthodox Jewish. I wanted to understand and explore deeper about what it looked like for her to be participating in this sport and observing pretty traditional conservative laws of Orthodox Judaism.

Jewcy: The family’s observance doesn’t come up too much during the movie – were there other obstacles to her competing, and did anyone in her community object?

The Kutins are pretty observant as far as Modern Orthodox standards go. They observe Shabbat and keep kosher, and Naomi is always dressed modestly when she’s not powerlifting. I’m Jewish but wasn’t raised religious, and I was very interested in this. We filmed them observing the rituals, doing things like eating only kosher foods out of the back of their car because they couldn’t find anything else. They always travel with their own food wherever they go since powerlifting communities aren’t usually in Jewish areas. We also filmed them getting up at 4am Sunday so that they can get to a competition since they couldn’t travel there on Shabbat. We filmed a lot, and most didn’t make it into the film. Part of me wanted to include it because a lot of people who aren’t Jewish don’t know that these things exist. If you are Jewish or do have some understanding, you know. You might think that there’s not much conflict, but there actually is. She never competes on Saturday or trains on Saturday, and she actually misses out on a lot of competitions. Sunday is usually the day that men lift, and sometimes they’ll make exceptions and she’ll be the only woman lifting.

Jewcy: Was there anything that surprised you about this intersection of the two worlds?

The one thing that surprised me was that I thought that things might be more black-and-white and that they would have received more opposition in her Orthodox community for her powerlifting because people might think that she’s not modest, since she has to wear spandex to compete. She has to wear something form-fitting that shows the shape of her body so that it shows that she’s doing the lift properly. That was non-negotiable for Naomi to compete in the sport. I was surprised that both her family and her community, including her rabbi, were wholeheartedly supportive of her doing this sport. I thought there would be criticism of her for not following the rules, but there was a great fluidity in this spectrum of Judaism.

Jewcy: Do you think you’ll return to either of these worlds in future projects?

I’m always intrigued by people who are going outside the norm and breaking stereotypes. For me, that’s what exciting in filmmaking. You take something people wouldn’t expect or believe and bring that to light. There’s something particularly intriguing about the juxtaposition of contradictory things like a young Orthodox Jewish girl and a powerlifter. It’s really interesting to see how they interact. I have a few projects in early development, and they definitely resolve around that sort of idea.

Jewcy: How do you think this film will go over with non-Jewish audiences?

Even though Naomi has this extraordinary talent, this is really a relatable, heartfelt coming-of-age story about what it’s like to find yourself while going through adolescence, something that we’ve all been through. We’ve found that people of all walks of life and ages have really enjoyed.

Jewcy: Is there anyone who thinks that you’ve made a movie about an alien from Krypton?

There is some confusion at first, but it’s the nickname her parents gave her. It’s actually very fitting for the film. Naomi does have these two dual sides of her personality, like Superman or Supergirl. She’s a typical, slight Jewish girl and, on the other side, she’s this other strong power lifter. You can easily confuse the two.

Supergirl is screening at the SVA Theatre in New York City this Sunday, November 13th at 4:30pm as part of DOC NYC and having its Philadelphia premiere earlier that day at 1:30pm at the Gershman Y as part of the Philadelphia Jewish Film Festival.tan

Image from Supergirl

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