"Where my dreidel at?": Representing Jewish Identity in Orange Is the New Black

Minority representation in the streaming era: An analysis of Jewish identity in competing subscription video on-demand platforms

“…Numerous other scholars note that when Jewishness is not stereotyped, it tends to be obscured. As Fields (2020) argues, there is perhaps no more central concept in American Jewish screen studies than that of the “crypto-Jew.” Introduced by Fiedler (1965: 91) as a critique of American theater and literature, the concept presumes that American creators, often Jewish, feel the need to universalize, generalize, and otherwise obfuscate any Jewish elements in products aimed at a general American audience. Marc (1997: 36) finds this tendency in early figures such as Jack Benny, while Fields (2020) identifies it as central to the contemporary streaming hit Orange in the New Black .…”

“…As Fields (2020) argues, there is perhaps no more central concept in American Jewish screen studies than that of the “crypto-Jew.” Introduced by Fiedler (1965: 91) as a critique of American theater and literature, the concept presumes that American creators, often Jewish, feel the need to universalize, generalize, and otherwise obfuscate any Jewish elements in products aimed at a general American audience. Marc (1997: 36) finds this tendency in early figures such as Jack Benny, while Fields (2020) identifies it as central to the contemporary streaming hit Orange in the New Black . For Jewish screen studies, understanding Jewish identity on screen has thus been an effort of searching out needles in haystacks, some of which have themselves been carefully disguised to look just like hay.…”

“…In 2019, Netflix paid $500 million for the rights to Seinfeld, television's most studied and celebrated Jewish program (Brook, 2010;Gillota, 2010;Krieger, 2003;Tanny, 2016). Netflix also produces a range of its own Jewish content, from Unorthodox and My Unorthodox Life to GLOW, Russian Doll, and Orange is the New Black, which have all been noted by scholars for offering unique, modern, and diverse portrayals of Jewish life (Fields, 2020;Kessler, 2019;Miller, 2020). Additionally, Netflix offers a robust catalog of Israeli content, including high-profile shows such as Shtisel, Fauda, and Tehran, alongside up to twenty other Israeli titles at a given moment (Wayne, 2018).…”

“…Jewish screen studies, alongside much research on minority media images, has for most of its history been largely concerned with a combination of silencing and stereotyping. Scholars tend to focus on the absence of thoughtful Jewish representation found in popular culture, or, alternatively, patterns of essentializing imagery that result when Jews and Jewishness are marketed to general audiences (Brook, 2010; Fields, 2020; Krieger, 2003). The study of media and Jewish identity has thus focused on creative interpretative acts aimed at finding meaningful moments in the silences and stereotypes (Bial, 2005; Grinberg, 2021; Pickette, 2022; Stratton, 2000).…”