A new three-part documentary series, A Jew in America – Torn Identity, began showing on Hot 8 on January 8 and is available on Hot VOD and Next TV. It will continue running on Wednesday nights on Hot 8.
Directed by Naftaly Gliksberg, each episode focuses on a different aspect of American Jews and their search for identity, especially in connection with Israel. This series arrives at an especially important moment, given the resurgence of antisemitism in the US following the Hamas terror attack and the outbreak of the war. Questions that once seemed to have been settled for good are now the subject of intense debate. For anyone interested in the idea of Jewish identity, this series will be fascinating to watch, and although many will quibble with what was included and omitted, just about anyone who watches it will learn something.
The series features prominent American Jews discussing their thoughts about being Jewish in America and their relationship to Zionism and Israel. Among those interviewed are rabbis, journalists, authors, political advisors, politicians, and community leaders, including Dr. Daniel Gordis, Letty Cottin Pogrebin, Rabbi Angela Buchdahl, the late US Senator Joe Lieberman, Elliott Abrams, J. J. Goldberg, and Yossi Klein Halevi. Several interviewees speak Hebrew, which made me realize how unusual it is to see an American speaking Hebrew on Israeli television, and for some, it will be important to note that the series does not feature English subtitles. It also includes archival footage.
The first episode gives an overview of the history of the American Jewish community, dating from the mass immigration from Eastern Europe and the immigration of a more elite group of German Jews in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Gliksberg makes it clear that both groups struggled for acceptance and hoped to become integrated as Americans.
This episode details the lynching by a white mob of the wrongfully convicted Leo Frank, a young Jew who was accused of the rape and murder of a woman in Georgia in 1915, which sets up the theme that as much as American Jews managed to thrive in the US, they have always had reasons to be wary. Author Letty Cottin Pogrebin spoke for many when she said, “My mother always behaved like she was a guest in this country, she never felt completely safe and rooted.”
Nevertheless, despite the antisemitism that never disappeared completely, many felt that they had reached the promised land, and so had little need or sympathy for Zionism. Elliot Abrams, the director of Keren Tikva, noted that the German Jews who felt they were “at the top,” socially were especially disconnected from Zionism, whereas the recently arrived Eastern European Jews were more likely to feel some connection to creating a Jewish homeland.
The episode goes on to look at how one influential American Jew, President Harry Truman’s business partner in their clothing store, Eddie Jacobson, was able to convince the US president to meet with Israel’s president, Chaim Weizmann, and offer support.
Truman is quoted as saying, “And I said all right, you two Jews have put it over on me, and I’m glad you have, for I like you both... In spite of all the advice against it, I chose to recognize the de facto government of Israel. I felt we were rather the conscience of the free world.”
However, the formation of Israel created other tensions in the American Jewish community between those who felt Israel was a good solution for Holocaust survivors and deserved financial support and others who thought it was crucial to move actually move there. The series notes that Israel’s decisive victory in the Six-Day War gave many Americans a sense of pride in Israel and inspired thousands to move there. It also shows how many Jews embraced the Civil Rights movement, while still others turned toward Meir Kahane’s Jewish Defense League as a way to meld radical politics with Jewish identity.
The second episode moves on, chronologically, to look at the influence of the Yom Kippur War, the Camp David Accords, and the first Lebanon War on relations between American Jews and Israel. It also discusses how Reform Jews became increasingly upset at being marginalized or ignored altogether by the Israeli religious establishment. One glaring error in this episode is that the date of the beginning of the first Intifada is misstated: It broke out in December 1987, not September.
Episode three examines the growing disenchantment of some young, progressive American Jews with Israel, mainly because of the policies of successive right-wing governments, especially on the West Bank.
The focus shifts to the October 7 massacre
About midway through this episode, the focus changes to October 7, 2023, and its aftermath, which taught many of these same progressives that the people alongside whom they had been working and protesting for years were quite comfortable calling for the complete destruction of Israel. Many feel their former comrades were very happy about the murders that Hamas committed.
Importantly, though, it shows that the antisemitism didn’t come out of thin air, and references the Charlottesville rally in which antisemitic extremists marched in 2017, the Tree of Life synagogue attack in 2018 in which 11 Jews were murdered, and the trolling of US congressional candidate Erin Schrode, who found herself on the receiving end of a tsunami of antisemitic hate in 2016 when it was revealed in an article that she was Jewish. Special attention is given to students at Columbia and Harvard and how they feel about being Jewish on campus now. It would be interesting if the director could add another episode in a year, to analyze the ongoing changes in this issue.
There is a lot going on in the Israeli television world right now, and next Monday, the long-awaited new espionage series from Keshet 12, Trust No One, starring Yehuda Levi, will begin airing. Levi plays the youngest head of the Shin Bet security agency, who becomes the target of a cyber leak. The creators of the series include some of in the industry’s best-known talents, among them Ron Leshem (Euphoria), Amit Cohen (False Flag), and Daniel Amsel (Red Skies). With this star and this team, the series, which has not yet released episodes to the press, could well be addictive fun.
Netflix has just started streaming a recently released Israeli series, now called Seven Figures but which previously was titled Six Zeros and is about a support group for people who have recently won the lottery.
Ayelet (Roni Dalumi), who runs the group, tells them that a huge percentage of lottery winners spend all their money within three to five years. But all of the winners in her group are sure they aren’t going to do that. There are also two couples taking part. One is an older pair who live on a kibbutz (Shlomo Bar-Aba of the movie Footnote and the series Zehu Ze! and Liora Rivlin from the series Stockholm). The wife has decided they must give all the money to their daughters, while the husband would like to keep some, and their disagreement over this leads the husband to reveal a deep secret.
The younger couple, Ruti (Shani Klein, who is best known for a scene-stealing performance in Talya Lavie’s Zero Motivation) and Amir (Ofer Hayoun of Valley of Tears and Manayek) are an engaged couple struggling to make ends meet, who can’t agree on how much money to give to their needy families.
Adam (Elisha Banai of The Malevolent Bride ) is a café owner who can’t commit to his girlfriend. The final winner, Alex (Rotem Keinan, who was in Big Bad Wolves) is an accountant who is shy and withdrawn.
Although this series is set in Israel, the dilemmas and the drama that go along with getting a windfall are universal, and this show should resonate with audiences around the world.