The Hope and Heart of Mrs. Maisel

By Michele Willens

All the awards for The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel are obviously great for Amazon and the show’s creative forces. But at this moment, they are also great — and even necessary — for those of the Jewish faith.

Anti-Semitism is, we know, rearing its ugly head around the world. In this country, there was the massacre at a Pittsburgh synagogue in 2018. The Women’s March movement is currently seriously divided over the issue. A middle school in Ojai, California just had an incident in which students lay down in the form of a swastika. Even Hollywood is affected. Ilana Glazer, one of the stars of Broad City, was about to speak at a midterm election event at a Brooklyn synagogue, when vicious graffiti (“Kill All Jews”) and vandalism forced it to be called off.

Amidst all this, much of America is falling in love with a sharp-tongued wife and mom, who, against all odds, follows her dream of being a standup comic. Midge Maisel is neither your typical Jewish mother (though she has one) nor the Jewish princess she mocks. (When a heckler tells her to go home and clean her kitchen, Midge responds, “I pay someone to do that.”) While the series may not explicitly be about religion, and is placed in the middle of last century, Judaism infuses every frame, every hallah-day, every summer in the Catskills. Amazingly, it not only feels like a funny period piece, but contemporary. Here, after all, is a woman finding her self-confidence and standing up to the men in her life.

Is the show the first to include, and even occasionally deal with, the Jewish religion? Of course not. Larry David is clearly of the faith, not to mention the family of the recently-canceled Transparent. Yet, it’s worth remembering that there was a time when, aside from comedians like Milton Berle, and, later, many Holocaust-based movies of the week, few networks dared to go too Semitic. The director of a 1976 Oscar- winning short about an elderly group of Jews in Venice, was then approached by a network to discuss having it adapted into a series. “But do they have to be Jewish”? she was asked.

Seinfeld, debuting in 1989, did not hide his religion. Yet, when Anything But Lovecreator Wendy Kout went to NBC that same year with her pilot, an executive (also Jewish, by the way) said she’d have to change the main male character of Marty Gold. “He told me,”They (the audience) don’t like us out there,”Kout recalls. “I told him, ‘Well, maybe if there were more of us (Jews) in their living rooms, they’d learn to love us.’” She refused to make the change, NBC passed on the series, and ABC picked it up right away, with Richard Lewis cast as Marty Gold.

Lewis, who later became a regular on Curb Your Enthusiasm, says, “I have always loved well-crafted, non-stereotypical sitcoms featuring actors from every race and religion. When I was co-starring with Ms. (Jamie Lee) Curtis in Anything but Love, I never held back my Jewishness. In fact, I figured if King Solomon could marry an Egyptian, I could be allowed to make love to a brilliant, beautiful Gentile.”

Besides the decidedly UN-Gentile Mrs. Maisel, there are other creative signs of hope amid today’s disturbing mood. An all-Yiddish (with subtitles) version of Fiddler On The Roof has been such a success at the Museum of Jewish Heritage in downtown Manhattan, that it is being moved to an off-Broadway house. A piece called Survivors was commissioned for the Rochester school district, and its telling of the Holocaust story has been well received and hopes to go wider.

Similarly — -and hopefully, in terms of young people never forgetting — — lawyer-philanthropist Leslie Gilbert-Lurie and her mother, Rita, speak regularly to California schools about their joint memoir, Bending Toward The Sun. The book deals with Rita’s harrowing childhood hiding from the Nazis, and the students — yes, the texting, binge-ing generation — are riveted. “They ask questions ranging from whether my mom still believes in God, to whether the current incidents of anti- Semitism make her fearful,” says Leslie.

Mrs. Maisel has also been good for those who came before. Check out the online activity for Lenny Bruce, who is a character on the series, and who died in 1966. Leslie Bennetts’ recent biography of Joan Rivers, Last Girl BeforeThe Freeway, has received renewed attention. Rivers made no secret of who she was. “Jewishness was one of her most important formative experiences, and it never left her,” Bennetts says. “Although the story of Mrs. Maisel diverges from Rivers’ biography in many ways, it was obviously heavily influenced by her experience.”

Many others have likely been impacted by the chutzpah of the main character of the series.This year’s recently crowned Rose Queen, Louise Siskel, proudly stated, “I am the first Rose Queen to talk about being Jewish.”

All those Midge Maisels out there must be kvelling.