Currently Browsing: Elliot Gertel 5 articles
Crooked TV Jews
Elliot Gertel reflects on some nasty recent representations of Jews on US television. “FBI: MOST WANTED” FBI: Most Wanted definitely has it in for older, wealthy Jewish women. And the series reserves its biggest broadsides against this “type” for season closers. In 2021, it was a Southern Jewish heiress to a major grocery chain who was […]
Dave Chappelle, Jon Stewart and Jewish Anti-Defamation
Rabbi Elliot B. Gertel In response to Dave Chappelle’s Saturday Night Live monologue about who really runs things, Jon Stewart appeared on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert suggesting he would make a better “spokesJew” than those who currently fulfil that role. But would he? And what should we expect from Jewish anti-defamation groups, in the United States and around the […]
Ghosts
Elliot Gertel reviews the American sitcom Ghosts based on the British series with the same name. Ghosts, transposed from a British series to American TV by Joe Port and Joe Wiseman, is the most-watched new sitcom on the CBS Network. In it, a young overworked New York couple, Samantha “Sam” (Rose McIver) and Jay (Utkarsh Ambudkar), inherit a […]
A Serious Man’s Bar Mitzvah
Rabbi Elliot B. Gertel reflects on A Serious Man as it approaches its thirteenth-year anniversary. Here, I offer my original review (slightly edited) in retrospect, followed by a postscript in which I add some thoughts. I have not found reason to reconsider what I originally said. I confirm my past observations with a tribute to the […]
The Rabbi’s Revenge
A short story by Elliot B. Gertel. The young rabbi looked forward to the class. Fresh out of the seminary, in his first congregation, he anticipated, more than anything else, the opportunity to teach the children. After all, “And thou shalt teach them unto thy children,” is a cardinal commandment in Judaism. The teacher of […]