Who's Who
Among
Ws Jews
In the 1994-95 television
season, there are nearly two dozen recur-
ring Jewish characters seen in prime
time. Here's a sampling of who's who
among TV's Jews.
Character: Douglas Wambaugh
Show: `Ticket Fences"
Network, night CBS, Friday
Acton Fyvush Finkel, who is Jewish
Character's occupation: Defense
attorney
Definitive Jewish episode:
"Squatter's Rights." Mr.
Wambaugh is thrown out of his
synagogue for telling a distasteful
joke at a friend's funeral. He calls
a beit din (Jewish court) and wins
the right to return to the congre-
gation.
Character study: Loud, ag-
gressive defense attorney living and working in a
small, Wisconsin town. Polish father perished in con-
centration camp.
Marital status: Married, but wife's religion has
never been mentioned.
Character: Joel Fleischman
Show: "Northern Exposure"
Network, night CBS, Wednesday
Actor: Rob Morrow, who is Jewish
Occupation: Doctor
Definitive Jewish episode:
As Joel prepares for Yom Kippur,
he is visited by his rabbi, who
takes him on a Dickensian tour of
his past, present and future.
Character study: Fish-out-of-
water New York doctor paying
back his medical school loans by
serving as doctor in Cicely, Alaska.
Marital status: Single
Character: Andrea Zuckerman
Show: "Beverly Hills, 90210"
Network, night Fox, Wednesday
Actor: Gabrielle Carteris, who is Jewish
Sophomore at fictional California
Occupation:
.
.
University
Definitive Jewish episode: A
black student group invited a
Louis Farrakhan-type speaker to
campus, and Andrea joined in a
silent protest with a Jewish stu-
dent group. She and her grand-
mother, a Holocaust survivor,
later attended the speech to learn
firsthand what he was saying.
Character study: Brainy,
Jewish student committed to social causes (animal
rights, pro-choice). From the San Fernando Valley,
used grandmother's address to attend West Beverly
High School with the "upper crust."
Marital status: Married to Hispanic lawyer Jesse
Vasquez. The two wed after discovering she was preg-
nant with their daughter, Hannah, who she is strug-
gling to raise Jewish.
Character: Fran Fine
Show: "The Nanny"
Network, night: CBS, Monday
Actor: Fran Drescher, who is Jewish
Occupation: Nanny for the
children of a British playwright.
Definitive Jewish episode:
There has been no specific episode
that deals with Fran's Jewishness
per se, but many have included
visits from her many Jewish rela-
tives and several have had "Jew-
ish" titles, like "Everybody Needs
A Bubbie."
FAREWELL, FLEISCHMAN
comforts. He has ventured far from
that nitpicking, kvetching, quibbling
Fleischman we used to know, that ar-
rogant New York Jewish boy who used
to complain that lakes were nothing
more than golf-course obstacles. Birds
didn't sing to Dr. Fleischman; they
woke him up.
Dr. Fleischman's distaste for small-
town life never failed to amuse in the
early years of the series. He called his
medical practice in Cicely "mind-
numbing." He hated the fish available
in Alaska; he liked his fish "smoked,
preferably hand-sliced from Zabar's
and served on a bagel with sliced
onions."
Poor Joel.
He made
sure everyone knew he missed his
favorite material pleasures. Fresh
out of med school, he found happi-
ness just a few times through his Or-
deal in Alaska, during which he had
an up-and-down-and-up-and-down
love affair with gentile Maggie
O'Connell.
Although there were no other
Jews that he knew of in Cicely, pop-
ulation 839, Dr. Fleischman some-
how discovered his spiritual self
during his run on the show. He
learned that a Jew can stand alone,
and not be diminished by also stand-
ing with the community.
"We wanted Joel to have a direct ex-
perience of the Almighty," said An-
drew Schneider, who produces the
show with his wife, Diane Frolov. "We
wanted him to go on a journey, to tear
down boundaries and view God in an
all-embracing way."
Dr. Fleischman's was not the first
story of a Jew discovering God among
alien peoples. The real first Jew — the
patriarch Abraham — found God
among the Canaanites. In Genesis,
God says to Abraham: "Leave your
country, your family and your father's
house, for the land I will show you."
Abraham moved his family from
Haran to Canaan, and God promises
the land to his ancestors.
Abraham bought land, negotiated
deals and became comfortable with
foreign rulers and peoples. But he al-
ways maintained his devotion to God
and family.
Joel Fleischman didn't arrive in Cic-
ely with family and many possessions.
But he did have gray matter and
sinew somehow imbedded with Jew-
ish knowledge, customs and traditions.
He had to confront his most ingrained
beliefs, predilections and habits dur-
ing his Cicelian journey, emerging
more Jewishly aware than when he
started. He repented on Yom Kippur
in an episode this season. He said Kad-
dish for his deceased uncle last sea-
son. He encountered his boyhood rab-
bi in a dream, and faced the Big Ques-
tions of mortality and morality.
That's unusual, to say the least, for
a Jewish man on television, a medi-
um that tends to depict Jews only in
the most secular ways.
Glib comics Jerry Seinfeld ("Sein-
feld") and Paul Reiser ("Mad About
You") are more typical of the trend:
they're neurotic, attractive, witty and
almost painstakingly secular. You
won't see a Miles Silverberg ("Mur-
phy Brown") or a Jack Stein ("Love
and War") explore their Jewish selves;
these characters are too absorbed in
"It becomes annoying
that all the Jewish
characters are people
for whom religion
is not much more
than a distraction."
—Michael Medved
their material worlds to practice a
Judaism that has substance and soul.
And, as in almost every case that
comes to mind, these Jewish men are
romantically linked with non-Jewish
women. So, too, was Dr. Fleischman.
"It's almost as if there were an un-
written law that says you can't be ro-
mantically interested in a Jew," said
conservative media critic Michael
Medved, co-host of "Sneak Previews"
and author of Hollywood vs. America,
which lambasted the film and TV
industries for consistently negative
portrayals of religious life.
Mr. Medved, an observant Jew
living in Los Angeles, is admired by
Jewish and Christian fundamental-
ists alike for his anti-Hollywood broad-
sides. To some, his criticisms may
seem surprising, considering so many
Hollywood power-brokers — the stu-
dio heads and mega-producers — are
Jewish. You'd think they'd want to
portray their faith in all its glory and
beauty. Yet, producers invariably can't
get past secular stereotypes.
"When it comes to Jewish charac-
ters, the attitude is dismissive," Mr.
Medved said. "It becomes annoying
that all the Jewish characters are
people for whom religion is not much
more than a distraction."
But it seems that for the prothicers,
that's all religion is. The majority of
them are youthful, male, non-religious
Jews, many of whom are married to
non-Jews.
"They are writing about their own
lives," said Baltimore Sun TV critic
David Zurawik, a doctoral candidate
in American Studies at the University
of Maryland who is writing a disser-
tation on the history of Jewish char-
acters in television. "You don't see any
sense of a religious life. The Jewish
characters are secular and cliched."
And forget about identifiably Jew-
ish women characters. `We're all but
invisible," said Ellen Sandler, a writer
and co-producer for the NBC sitcom,
"The Mommies." Ms. Sandler's words
appeared in a recent report in the Los
Angeles Jewish Journal, an article
that raised pointed questions on the
absence of Jewish women in films
and TV.
The landscape of television is not
devoid of Jewish female characters.
Some notable examples are actress
Theresa Saldana's portrayal of
Rachel Scali, the stoic and steadfast
wife on ABC's "The Commish," and
Julianne Phillips' depiction of
Frankie Margolis, a convert who
embraced Judaism on NBC's "Sis-
ters."
The preponderance of characters,
however, tend to resemble Jerry Se-
infeld's unflattering TV mother —
nagging, smothering and suffering —
or actress Fran Drescher's character
in the CBS sitcom, `The Nanny"— the
materialistic, tart-tongued, whiny
shop-a-holic from Queens.
At the same
tirne non ewis • h women in-
volved with Jewish men are seen as
beautiful, witty, tasteful and fun.
Witness Annie Potts on "Love and
War" and Helen Hunt on "Mad About
You."
As Andrea Asimow, vice president
for production for Penny Marshall's
Parkway Productions, explained to
the L.A. Jewish Journal: In an in-
dustry driven by men, "they want
female images that are easy for them
to live with and be attracted to.
"We [Jewish women] tend to be
stereotyped, but no more than Ital-
ians, blacks or WASPs," she said.
"When it's called upon for a character
to be ethnic, the tendency is to exag-
gerate, because the tradition in drama
is to heighten, tighten and simplify."
Stereotypes are an inevitable
byproduct of sitcoms that need to iden-
tify characters quickly, in the view of
Dr. Neil Postman, renowned author
and chairman of the culture and com-
munications department at New York
University.
"There isn't any group that isn't
stereotyped in popular culture," lie
said. "Ethnic stories and styles of life
are considered saleable. It's a healthy