JANUARY 6 • 2022 | 41

and is played by Harvey Keitel — in Lansky.
The top prizewinner at this year’s Berlin
Film Festival was an angry satire about
sex tapes, COVID, history education and
antisemitism. Bad Luck Banging Or Loony
Porn depicts Romanian citizens angry over a
teacher’s private transgressions, but blind to
their own ignorance about how their coun-

try has historically treated Jews.
Israeli film imports to the U.S. shone
brightly this year, with the disability family
dramas Asia and Here We Are; melancholy
comedy Golden Voices; and intergenerational,
cross-continental LGBT+ drama Sublet.
As Israel and Gaza burned this summer
and national dialogue around the conflict
turned ugly, Israeli filmmaker Ra’anan
Alexandrowicz’s documentary The Viewing
Booth explored how one American Jew’s
preconceived views about the conflict
impacted her interpretation of video footage
from the region.
In the world of Holocaust cinema, the
documentary Final Account interviewed
elderly former Nazis about their memories
of the Third Reich; the documentary Love It
Was Not depicted the unsettling relationship
between a Jewish prisoner of Auschwitz
and her SS guard; the Slovakian drama
The Auschwitz Report told the story of two
camp escapees who tried to warn the world
about the horrors inside; documentary
The Meaning Of Hitler tried to break down
fascism’s appeal in the modern age; and

the documentary Speer Goes To Hollywood
explored the lifelong denialism of Hitler’s
architect (though its methods have been
criticized).
The summer musical In The Heights told
the stories of Dominican residents of a his-
torically Jewish New York neighborhood.



TELEVISION
The biggest Jewish TV phenomenon of
the year was the Netflix reality series My
Unorthodox Life, following the controver-
sial exploits of “ex-Orthodox” fashion
designer Julia Haart and her family. The
show spawned a new tabloid feeding
frenzy; one of Haart’s daughters split
from her husband, starting an internet
obsession.
The year was also dominated by Jeopardy!
hosting drama, with Jewish actor/presenter
Mayim Bialik eventually being crowned
co-host of the long-running quiz show
through 2022.
The HBO phenomenon Succession intro-
duced a Jewish character (played by Adrian
Brody) who causes business trouble for the
beleaguered Roy family. The mansion Brody’s
character lives in is actually owned by a
Jewish billionaire.
A smash-hit podcast about a therapist’s
obsession with his troubled client inspired
the Apple TV+ miniseries The Shrink Next
Door, starring Paul Rudd and Will Ferrell.
The show has deep New York Jewish roots.

The Club, a surprise-hit Turkish drama
series from Netflix, explores Istanbul’s
Sephardic Jewish community of the 1950s,
and features a surprisingly large amount of
spoken Ladino.
The very Jewy Curb Your Enthusiasm
returned to HBO for its 11th (and, some
might say, Jewiest) season of Larry David’s
legendary complaints. Plotlines this season
included Larry fending off a Klansman with
a shofar, and Jon Hamm learning Yiddish
so he could deliver a fake eulogy for Albert
Brooks.
Curb co-star Jeff Garlin got into some hot
water at his long-running ABC sitcom The
Goldbergs, about a Jewish family in the 1980s;
he’s exiting the show midway through its
ninth season following an investigation into
allegations of on-set misconduct.
Shtisel, the slow-burn drama about
Israeli haredi Orthodox Jews, released
a long-awaited third season, to famil-
iar acclaim. And it was announced that
respected director Kenneth Lonergan will
helm an American remake of the series.
The second season of Dave, the heady
sitcom from Jewish rapper Lil Dicky (Dave
Burd), aired on FX and established its creator
as a new force in TV comedy. It contained
plenty of Jewish jokes and an entire bar mitz-
vah episode.

The hosts of Showtime’s Desus & Mero
visited a New York synagogue and, with the
help of Jewish actor Eric Andre and a rabbi,
had a bar mitzvah of sorts.
Netflix’s academia satire The Chair fea-
tured a professor who causes controversy by
jokingly performing a Nazi salute in class —
an incident possibly based on real life.
The PBS genealogy show Finding Your
Roots welcomed Mandy Patinkin, and
revealed that he had lost family in the
Holocaust.

FROM LEFT: Comedian Eric Andre, Desus
Nice and The Kid Mero are seen in The Village
Temple in New York City during an episode of
Desus & Mero.

SCREENSHOT FROM YOUTUBE

Fashion mogul
Julia Haart,
top center, and
her children
are featured
in the Netflix
reality series
My Unorthodox
Life.

NETFLIX