By Bill Simons

The winter nights are cold and dark. Compelling Jewish-themed movies, laced with the sardonic wit of our tribe, can brighten the season. From that genre come endorsements for three recent films depicting present-day Jewish life. The trio is available on streaming services. 

Set in contemporary Hungary, “All About the Levkoviches” (2024) deals with serious and difficult topics – death and mourning, family alienation and oppositional approaches to Judaism – that are leavened by sharp humor. For several years, Tamás (Zoltán Bezerédi), a 70ish boxing coach living in suburban Budapest and still a shtarker, has not spoken to his son, Ivan. Pained by the generational rift, Zsuzsa, beloved by husband Tamás and son Ivan, dies suddenly as she prepares to travel alone to visit Ivan and his family in Israel. A secular Jew, Tamás reluctantly agrees that Ivan can hold shiva in the parental house, setting the stage for conflict. 

Tamás has little sympathy for Ivan’s decisions to make aliyah, embrace Orthodox Judaism and raise his own children within strict traditionalism. For his part, Ivan resents Tamás for relentlessly pushing him during adolescence to assume the mantle of older brother Marci, a budding boxing champion who drowned at age 18. Tamás ridicules Ivan’s abandoning boxing, immigrating to Israel and donning black hat and suit with tzitzit as demonstrations of cowardice. As a consequence, Tamás is shocked and hurt when he discovers a combat wound that Ivan received, and kept from him, while serving with the Israel Defense Forces. 

While Ivan attempts to observe a traditional shiva, Tamás’ mourns by imperfectly building a cabinet that Zsuzsa had wanted. Ariel, Ivan’s 6-year-old son, accompanied his father from Israel for the shiva; the boy hides in the cabinet, claiming that he must remain with his grandmother because an evil spirit is preventing Zsuzsa from following the eternal light. The evil spirit is the enmity between Tamás and Ivan. Loud escalating confrontations between father and grandfather heighten Ariel’s distress. 

During a turbulent lightning storm, Ivan, prodded by Ariel, dons boxing gloves to forcefully battle the unseen evil spirit, driving it from the house and into the night. Then, in a tableau of catharsis, grandfather Tamás, son Ivan and grandson Ariel stand together in euphoria as the rain beats down upon them. In the final scene, Tamás and Ivan argue about rebuilding the cabinet from scratch. But this is simply kvetching, not battling over defining values. 

Everyone will enjoy “All About the Levkoviches” for its warmth, humor, authenticity and reconciliation. Although spoken dialogue is in Hebrew and Hungarian, superb acting and English subtitles render this memorable movie accessible. 

In contrast to the mordant wit of “All About the Levkoviches,” the humor in “Between the Temples” (2024) is often broad and raucous. In one such vignette, a cantor, the tale’s co-protagonist, rendezvouses with a young woman encountered on a Jewish dating site, who confesses to being Protestant, but justifies her ploy based on aversion to Gentile foreskins. And the kashrut-observant cantor creates a spectacle of expulsion in a diner when he discovers that cheese is buried in the thick hamburger he was previously enjoying. As with all quintessential Jewish humor, however, the wit in both films is revealing and purposeful. 

At the center of “Between the Temples” is the evolving relationship between a 70ish retired music teacher, Carla Kessler O’Connor, played by Carol Kane (who is brilliant, as in past performances) as a quirky, adorable, distinctively expressive woman, and mid-30s Cantor Ben Gottlieb, portrayed by Jason Schwartzman, an actor gifted at displaying the intersection between the ludicrous and the tragic. 

Establishing shots and dialogue place the story in a small town in upstate New York. At the film’s onset, Ben suffers severe depression brought on by the accidental death of his wife more than a year before, resulting in his inability to perform cantorial duties at Conservative Temple Sinai, residing in the basement of his two lesbian mothers’ home and making a failed attempt to commit suicide by laying down in the path of an 18-wheel truck. 

Ben and Carla meet in a bar after the cantor has his nose bloodied in an altercation. They soon realize that – decades before – “Mrs. O’Connor” was “little Benny’s” elementary school music teacher. As dialogue and plot accelerate, the widowed Mrs. O’Connor reveals her Jewish maiden name, Carla Kessler, and persuades the reluctant cantor to prepare her for the bat mitzvah that her Communist parents denied their “red-diaper” daughter. By steps, the relationship between Ben and Carla evolves from casual, reversal of the student-teacher roles, friendship and ultimately profound love. Ben officiates at Carla’s unconventional bat mitzvah, its timing accelerated by her health problems. 

Opposition to the Ben-Carla relationship ignites disbelief and anger from Carla’s adult son, an atheist, and Ben’s two mothers, as well as from Rabbi Bruce, whose daughter Gabby, misled by Ben, made herself sexually available to the cantor. Although Ben and Carla come to share a bed, there is no implication of sexual consummation between them.
Eschewing the didactic and the judgmental, “Between the Temples” is ribald and thoughtful. It depicts love as complicated, transcending logic, and potentially providing a place for profound sharing, wholeness and sacred expression. The title suggests the separation between the physical synagogue and Judaism outside those parameters. “Between the Temples” comes highly recommended.

So, too, does “You Are So Not Invited to My Bat Mitzvah” (2023), a laugh-out-loud satire and telling observation about bar/bat mitzvahs, Hebrew day schools, adolescent angst, assimilation and generational conflict as experienced by comfortable Jewish families. Co-producer/star Adam Sandler cast his daughters and wife in central roles, and they turned in strong performances, as did the rest of the cast. The film pivots around the upcoming bat mitzvah of Stacy Friedman (Sunny Sandler) and the clash between her emphasis on the event video, the party and the launch to future success, and her parents’ prioritizing her haftarah reading, mitzvah project and speech. Also, central is the relationship between Stacy and Lydia Rodriguez Katz as they move from best friends through bitter antagonism over a boy to loving reconciliation and a happy ending. Completed and released just before the Hamas-Israel War, “You Are So Not Invited to My Bat Mitzvah” captures Jewish American confidence at its peak before Mideast carnage and resurgent antisemitism revitalized venerable threats. 

Enjoy Jewish movie nights.