The Charlotte Jewish News- October 2026- Page 18
Who Gets to Shape the Jewish Woman’ s Story?
By Elizabeth Johnson
Jewish women have always been part of the story, cracking jokes, grounding scenes, stealing the focus. The difference now? Increasingly, they’ re the ones calling the shots. For decades, Hollywood often flattened Jewish identity into caricature: the neurotic New Yorker, the overbearing mother-in-law, the opinionated best friend. But audiences today have more room for characters who feel like someone you might actually know: your cousin, your coworker, yourself. Jewish creators are increasingly writing those characters from the inside out, and something is shifting.
Ilana Glazer’ s“ Broad City” helped break ground with its raw, hilarious, culturally Jewish energy, allowing its characters to be messy, sexual, ridiculous and unmistakably themselves. And it markedly shifted from the typical guilt and self-deprecation perfected by Joan Rivers. Rachel Bloom pushed further with“ Crazy Ex-Girlfriend,” creating and starring as Rebecca Bunch, a character whose Jewishness was neither incidental nor her defining characteristic.
Then came“ The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel,” with a heroine whose Jewishness permeated everything from family dinners to ambition. The series proved that a smart, complicated, proudly Jewish woman could anchor prestige television and captivate audiences far beyond the community she portrayed.
“ You Are So Not Invited to My Bat Mitzvah,” produced by Adam Sandler and directed by Sammi Cohen, brought that specificity to adolescence. Its Jewish world does not require explanation or translation before the story can begin. Judaism is simply the world its characters inhabit, complete with family, friendship, ritual, embarrassment and all the delicious chaos that comes with them.
And then there was“ Nobody Wants This.” Netflix’ s romantic comedy about a non-Jewish woman who falls for a rabbi became a cultural phenomenon almost immediately. It also ignited a fierce debate over its portrayal of Jewish women. Critics saw familiar stereotypes in their disapproving mothers, ex-girlfriends and sisters-in-law: controlling, territorial, marriage obsessed.
One of its creators, Erin Foster, who converted to Judaism before marrying her Jewish husband, drew on that experience for the series. She defended the portrayals, citing she wanted to cast Jewish culture in a positive light. The jury is out if she got it right; however, the disagreement itself may tell us something.
That tension becomes even more interesting in Apple TV’ s“ The Studio.” Kathryn Hahn, who is not Jewish, plays Maya Mason, the brash, extravagantly dressed head of marketing at a fictional Hollywood studio. Maya is not identified as Jewish either, yet the character draws on traits Hollywood has long coded that way: the oversized personality, statement jewelry, designer labels and roaring confidence. Hahn is hilarious, making you wince, laugh and cheer almost simultaneously. But the performance also raises a thorny question. But the performance also raises a thorny question. When we read a character as Jewish even when neither the character nor the actor is Jewish, what exactly are we recognizing?
Not long ago, the question surrounding Jewish women on screen was whether they were there at all or whether the few who appeared could escape a narrow collection of stereotypes. Now we are arguing over which portrayals feel authentic, which feel dated and who gets to make those judgments. And that is progress, even when it is uncomfortable.
It also raises a more complicated question: Who gets to tell a Jewish woman’ s story? Must the woman portraying her be Jewish? Must the person writing her be? Does lived experience confer authenticity, or can insisting on a single definition become its own limitation? There may not be one satisfying answer. Perhaps that is precisely the point.
Jenny Slate brings an offbeat sincerity to characters informed by her Jewish identity. Lena Dunham continues to mine the collision of identity, family, romance and female adulthood. In“ Too Much,” the series Dunham created with her husband, Luis Felber, Jewish family life
An expanding range of portrayals is challenging long-held ideas about who gets to define the Jewish woman onscreen.
remains part of the texture surrounding its American protagonist, Jess, without requiring Jewishness to carry the entire narrative.
What has changed is not that Hollywood has finally discovered the“ right” way to portray Jewish women. It is that there are now enough versions of Jewish womanhood onscreen to contradict one another. Representation, it turns out, isn’ t about finding a single definitive expression. It’ s about multiplicity, having enough stories that we can argue over which ones get it right.
A Jewish woman on screen can be observant or secular, ambitious or adrift, nurturing or selfish, polished or chaotic. She can make us proud. She can make us cringe. She can even
C�nect make us angry. What she no longer has to do is carry the burden of representing every Jewish woman who came before her or everyone watching from the couch.
In that regard, Jewishness has moved closer to center stage, not as background flavor but as a living, breathing identity. These characters argue, overthink, let their neurosis capture the best of them, love deeply and just sometimes eat bagels like it’ s a competitive sport.
So yes, light the candles, cue the streaming list and debate the discourse. Because the real miracle isn’ t simply that Jewish women are on screen. It’ s that there is finally room for more than one version of the story.
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