The Netflix show is being praised for its authenticity. But it portrays Judaism as a ‘tradition’ for immigrants to overcome.
T his week Netflix released Long Story Short, about a Jewish family navigating the ups and downs of life over the course of several decades. The show, by Bojack Horseman creator Raphael Bob-Waksberg, has been praised for its comedy, creativity, and affecting storytelling.
While it certainly has those qualities, it reflects a prevailing current in mainstream American culture: a reductive reimagining of Judaism as little more than a grab bag of traditions.
The American conception of Judaism stems from a debate within the religion dating back to the 1800s in Europe. For years, Jews were confined to the ghetto and the shtetl, where their lives were marked by superstition and old-world customs. But when they were finally emancipated, many wrongly conflated those superstitions with Judaism itself and came to see the entire religion as nothing more than traditions to be discarded upon entry into modern society. In 19th-century Germany, Jewish reformers, led by Abraham Geiger, sought to free themselves from what they saw as outdated ways in favor of German sophistication.
As Jews became more integrated into society, they embarked on a project of erasing the distinctiveness of Judaism, recasting the religion as a set of humanistic adages. Across the Atlantic, in Pittsburgh, a group of Jewish reformers inspired by Geiger declared that the Bible was merely a reflection of a primitive society, that the return to Israel was no longer relevant, and that any form of Jewish particularity must be rejected. They scorned not only the superstitions of the shtetl but also the central tenets of Judaism.
Of course, Orthodox Jewish teachers such as Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch in the 19th century and Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik in the 20th called for integrating modernity with traditional Judaism — an endeavor at synthesis that many rabbis across Jewish history have subscribed to — making sure to maintain the core beliefs of Judaism. Nevertheless, the Reform movement was far more attractive in its “liberation” from the old world. For this reason, as noted by Jeffrey Gurock, the premier historian of American Jewry, America became the symbol of modernization and assimilation and the severing not only of the ties between Jews and ghetto life but between Jews and Judaism. As Gurock documents, on the boat from Europe to Ellis Island, some Jews would happily cast religious artifacts into the sea.
This conflation of Judaism and old-world traditions is perfectly captured in Abraham Cahan’s short story “Yekl.” In 1896, Cahan, the founder of The Forward, penned his tale of a Russian-Jewish immigrant who immigrates to America alone, hoping to save enough money to eventually fetch his wife and child. But Yekl quickly realizes that America is an inhospitable place for a bearded, Yiddish-speaking Jew and thus reinvents himself as Jake, a guy who loves boxing and dancing. When Jake’s wife finally arrives in America, he is forced to reckon with his previous life and new persona. When Jake picks up his wife from Ellis Island on the Sabbath, a day when travel is prohibited according to Jewish law, she admonishes him for it. He brushes off the concern as simply a relic of the shtetl, not something to be concerned with in his new, enlightened state.
This is precisely what Long Story Short does with its Jewish characters. While the show accurately portrays certain Jewish themes and ceremonies, it reduces Judaism to Yiddish accents, European food on Jewish holidays, and having a nosy mother. Two of the children in the show, Avi and Shira, are depicted as breaking away from these traditions that have resulted in “trauma” in their adult lives. Avi marries a non-Jew because, as he says, why would he want to “subject his children to what he went through? After all, they are free from being Jewish.” When the youngest child, Yoshi, turns to Orthodox Judaism, it is mocked as an “old-world” habit. “Like Cousin Moishe?” Avi asks, referring to a Tevye-like puppet with a thick European accent, invented by their father as a caricature of the “old country.”
The stigma runs so deep that Yoshi would rather feign drug addiction than admit his faith. His mother even insists, “That’s so much worse, to be Orthodox than to be a drug dealer!” “How could this have happened?” she asks in despair. When Shira, a lesbian married to a woman who has converted to “liberal Judaism,” tries to defend Yoshi, his mother replies, “Sure, but you converted to normal Judaism, not the weird kind like Yoshi’s.” She then sums up her own philosophy, half in jest, half in earnest: “The right way to be Jewish is progressive, egalitarian Conservative Judaism, with an emphasis on ritual over faith or blind practice. That’s what I gave my children, but they rejected it.”
Even when religion does appear in the show, it is filtered through the same lens of ritual over faith. At Yoshi’s bar mitzvah — a supposed religious ceremony — Yoshi and his friends smoke marijuana while they mock him for even possibly believing in God. Yom Kippur makes an appearance, naturally, since it is the holiday that many American Jews continued to observe — as though Judaism’s essence were captured in a single day of reflection rather than in the ongoing practices that shape daily Jewish life. Moments of “faith” are shown less as covenant or commandment than as utility: religion as therapy or as cultural belonging. At its core, Judaism is an eternal faith animated by a total way of living, with knish recipes low on the list of religious priorities.
While Bob-Waksberg gets the flavor of Jewish culture and family life right, the assumption seems to be that Judaism itself is mostly a European tradition together with a set of mimetic rituals, which are either handed down or rejected. In this sense it mirrors Fiddler on the Roof, the beloved musical and movie based on the stories of Yiddish writer Sholem Aleichem: a parent wants to preserve “tradition,” but his children aren’t interested in such things and instead seek to be modern. Countless other movies and TV shows — Rugrats, The Goldbergs, Nobody Wants This, Family Guy, You Are So Not Invited to My Bat Mitzvah, to name just a few — portray American Jewish life similarly as just consisting of latkes, gefilte fish, dreidls, and Yiddish expressions like “oy vey.”
In this vein, popular culture portrays Jews in America as following the pattern of other immigrants. The first generation comes with the old traditions, the second generation maintains some of them, and by the third generation there is complete assimilation. But Judaism is far more than traditions from Europe. Judaism isn’t food and self-deprecating jokes and “things people did in the old country.” In truth, Judaism is first and foremost a binding peoplehood and faith, not something that can be diluted with each generation, even if outward forms adapt to modern times.
I enjoy watching these shows and movies as much as the next person. It’s important to laugh and partake of lighthearted entertainment. But a show about a Jewish family is not necessarily an accurate portrayal of Judaism. This is especially important to note in an age when many deny the Jewish people’s connection to the land of Israel or claim that Judaism is merely a “white” identity. We should remember that Judaism is not simply a set of traditions from Europe that fade over time — it is a living peoplehood based on covenant, continuously guided by the teachings of the Bible.