Boker tov (say it back). I thought this newsletter specifically existed as an easy way for me to be ostentatiously horny and talk about my favorite queer masterpieces solely of my own volition, and in many senses, it is, but in other concrete senses, I am for some reason writing about two new films that frighten me, and it is very difficult to write about them without implicating my own embarrassing adolescence and spiritual instability. Very unpretty, I know, but the heart wants what the heart wants. And mine wants you to watch Shiva Baby and Tahara.
In the wake of our second annual Pandemic Passover (may it be our last Pandemic Passover), I am hyping Tahara and Shiva Baby as the most interesting, insightful, horrifying portraits of young, queer Jewish chaos that make me shout “oh God, no! I did not consent to that picture! Somebody untag me immediately!” These are films that are so squeaky and new, both literally and formally, that I haven’t really stopped thinking about them since I first screened them for NewFest back in October 2020. Tahara serves up a “kissing your manipulative best friend and subsequently coming out to yourself at the burial” bagel with “there must be more than this” schmear, and Shiva Baby pairs “I have absolutely no idea what I’m doing as a young person in this economy” brisket with gulping mouthfuls of “I just need to know that something is going to be OK or I will murder someone” Manishewitz. They’re completely different narratives, set at different decibels and ages of unease, but they also create a continuum of specifically queer, American Jewish horror-comedy.
As Fran Fine says, food is forever, and I would hazard a declarative statement that the psychological tortures of reconciling faith and first loves are equally as long-lasting. Kind of a mouthy catchphrase, I know. In any case, it’s difficult to write about these films as they are without also talking about their transportive qualities, so let me take you on a little journey into my extremely gangly youth. And if you take nothing else away from my dalliance, let this be the message: watch these immensely creative, impeccably performed, brashly honest films and demand that all your friends (Jewish or not) do, too. And, specifically, if you are or know a programmer, development exec, or someone invested in whatever makes the entertainment biz go round, please tell all your colleagues to get Tahara a release date.
Tahara - Currently on the festival circuit, follow @taharathefilm for screening updates
When I was still young enough to go to synagogue regularly without putting up a fuss or having other plans, I had lots of proto-crushes on Hebrew school classmates. You know, those in which I was endlessly charmed and fascinated, and always wanted to have their approval, or a secret handshake (just as cool), but didn’t yet know what I was experiencing had a very specific name.
For the first year after our class year’s b’nai mitzvahs, we would all still attend the young adult continued education seminars on Tuesday nights, and by that point, I had started to hover just above the target of “gay.” I wasn’t quite landing, but feelings got more intense, and I was starting to attend my high school’s GSA to “support” my few gay friends.
At the juncture where I actually started to have the wherewithal to question Hebrew school teachers’ obsession with Israel and lineage intra-faith marriage and what tzedakah really means, one of my sort-of admirations turned into a full-blown crush. She was one of those people whose decision that you were her new best friend earned you a bask in the glory of that flattery and flirtatious attention in front of your mutual circle of friends, but that hardly mattered when her own singular attention was the crucial prize. I thought she was so beautiful, so knowledgeable, so vibrant, and even though I was, to borrow a phrase from Robin Thede, an awkward-in-the-body certified weirdo, she found me endearing. More importantly, I could make her laugh.
As any young ingrate born to a religious community-attending family knows, class clownery is an invaluable currency. We were always bored, and more often than not trying to get away with laughing behind our hands or under our breath or into a siddur in the middle of service. When the laughter got to be too much for the adults in the sanctuary, we would hurry off to the most sacred of spaces: the ladies’ room. There, in the soap-perfumed, salmon-hued half-lobby that more resembles a theater’s powder room than what you might imagine existing in a house of worship, a small group of giggly adolescents could easily hold court. We’d crowd onto the rattan armchair and the loudly squeaking pink couch, talking fervently until an adult who actually had to use the restroom would admonish us for skipping out on prayer. We would apologize, scurry into the bathroom stalls, and wait it out until she washed her hands, and we could jump back on the couch once more.
This is the world I remembered - my crush’s legs across my lap, me trying to find clever enough retorts that would have my crush laughing until she cried - when I first saw director Olivia Peace and writer/producer Jess Zeidman’s dryly funny, horny, and uniquely compassionate Tahara. Not to be dramatic, but I fairly gasped when I recognized the setting for a pivotal, world-bending kiss for protagonist Carrie (a charming, natural Madeline Grey DeFreece) and her deeply insecure, toxic best friend Hannah (Rachel Sennott at her most obnoxious). Sure, the film is set at the guiltily hilarious burial and subsequent Hebrew school class of a synagogue in Rochester, New York, and my home synagogue was in Northern California, but the gleeful, echo-y intimacy of a Reform synagogue women’s bathroom apparently transcends coastal affiliation.
As Hannah, worried that she’s not a good kisser, goads Carrie into proving her wrong, something in Carrie’s brain just clicks, transporting her to a stop-motion world in which the two literally meld. Unfortunately, that world – and the film expanding from a 1:1 to a 16:9 ratio – only exists in Carrie’s brain. Hannah is relieved to know that she’s not so bad after all, and can flippantly go about her day, leaving Carrie to puzzle out the pieces of an obviously uneven friendship. By the end of the day, in which Carrie learns more than she’s ever known about her other classmates, the grotesqueness of performative grief, and the lengths to which “friends” will go to get what they want, she stands more sure of herself than she’s ever been. The kiss in the bathroom with the right-wrong person was a gateway to her own individuality.
There are so many more layers to the film that are worth praising. DeFreece and Sennot’s performances as high schoolers deeply uncomfortable in their own skin but hanging on to each other for any scrap of affirmation are brilliant both individually, and as an odd couple whose deft chemistry lets them both shine even as it’s clear that their onscreen friendship severely limits Carrie’s ability to see the best in herself. The ensemble of Hebrew school classmates, instructed in mourning by an unforgiving but secretly way-out-of-her-depth Moreh Klein (Bernadette Quigley), is pitch-perfect, and the understated but pointed wardrobe and makeup design are outstanding.
On a filmmaking level, however, what sticks with me most is Peace and Zeidman’s clear collaboration. Their marriage makes for an outstandingly zingy, darkly funny script from an insider’s point of view, and an observant outside camera’s ability to both point out incongruities and absurdities, and make beautiful some of the more shudder-inducing mistakes of youth. Watching it now, it’s almost like I have the ability to tell my younger self that all of us deserve to, and will in due time, experience so much more than a crush on the wrong person.
Shiva Baby - Available to Rent on VOD
Speaking of the Wrong Person™ here comes Shiva Baby barreling down the cul-de-sac! If Tahara is a direct throwback to adolescence, Shiva Baby uncannily captures a stage of queer Jewish life that, unfortunately, I have not quite outgrown, and am therefore even more upset by. Aimless bisexual, recent college graduate, and sex worker Danielle (yet again gentile Rachel Sennott, who is having a YEAR!) misses the burial this time around, and instead arrives late to a shiva which features jump-scare surprise appearances from not only her more accomplished ex-girlfriend (a phasers-set-to-kill Molly Gordon), but her current sugar daddy and his unflappably gorgeous wife (a delightfully hostile Dianna Agron, who is Jewish, and who is yet again playing WASP).
There will be many reviews and think pieces on Emma Seligman’s claustrophobic, panic string-scored, fiercely impressive debut in the coming weeks, and there will also be me, screaming in envy, because Seligman’s technically perfect script, brought to life by a purposefully nauseating camera and whip-smart performances (a standout being Polly Draper as Sennott’s clued-in but just-shy of knowing everything mother) is now being adapted into an HBO series.
I want to critique this fairly, I really do, but all I can say at this moment is how dare Seligman create a perfect portrait of wanting to ask your mom for help so badly but just not knowing how to break through the well-meaning but effectively gutting wall of “I told you so’s” when you are in desperate need of care. But also, you’re an adult, and you’re doing fine, and no you will not explain how you’re keeping yourself financially afloat. Shiva Baby is smart, of course, and anxiety-provoking in the most calculated, successful ways, but again, like Tahara, it succeeds most because it’s, unfortunately, real.
Where so many films about young queer people (Tahara included) start somewhere around the very beginning, Shiva Baby dares to ask “OK, so you’re already gay and your family is uncomfortable but aware. Now what?” According to Seligman, the only certainty is mayhem. The film may be a quick, explosive capsule of 77 minutes, but it somehow introduces a microcosm of twists that mirror Danielle’s entire precarious existence, and I suspect I’m not the only young queer Jew a few years out of undergrad who finds both embarrassment and hope in knowing that at least we’re not physically trapped in Danielle’s position right now. At least we have a moment to eat a bagel without half a dozen loosely-related congregant women remarking on our future, weight, or hair.
There are several elements in both films that provide a linkage for a double feature (pivotal scenes in bathrooms, utter mortification, car rides toward something better, bagels) but one moment in Tahara stands out as my double feature guidepost. Hannah, alone and insufferable, wanders into the empty sanctuary and stands on the bima. She clumsily tests the mic, and the vast expanse of an unpopulated holy space stares back at her. Here it is: the unknown. Nobody’s telling you what to do, but somehow there’s still the constricting presence of everything you’re ever learned about your ability to exist in a space somebody else built without your consultation. Supposedly, what you do now is up to you, but in a life constructed by others’ rules and imbued with the burden of thousands of years of sacrifice…maybe it’s OK to be a little terrified.
If you want to watch an interview with the Olivia Peace and Jess Zeidman of Tahara, click here!
For an interview with Rachel Sennott, Molly Gordon, and Emma Seligman of Shiva Baby, click here!
Important to remember that Rachel Sennott herself is not Jewish.
Casting directors really should memorize this list before making more movies like this:
Actors with two Jewish parents: Mila Kunis, Natalie Portman, Logan Lerman, Paul Rudd, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Bar Refaeli, Anton Yelchin, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Emmanuelle Chriqui, Adam Brody, Kat Dennings, Gabriel Macht, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Erin Heatherton, Lisa Kudrow, Lizzy Caplan, Gal Gadot, Debra Messing, Gregg Sulkin, Jason Isaacs, Jon Bernthal, Robert Kazinsky, Melanie Laurent, Esti Ginzburg, Shiri Appleby, Justin Bartha, Margarita Levieva, James Wolk, Elizabeth Berkley, Halston Sage, Seth Gabel, Corey Stoll, Michael Vartan, Mia Kirshner, Alden Ehrenreich, Julian Morris, Asher Angel, Debra Winger, Eric Balfour, Dan Hedaya, Emory Cohen, Corey Haim, Scott Mechlowicz, Harvey Keitel, Odeya Rush, William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy.
Aaron Taylor-Johnson is Jewish, too (though I don’t know if both of his parents are).
Actors with Jewish mothers and non-Jewish fathers: Timothée Chalamet, Jake Gyllenhaal, Dave Franco, James Franco, Scarlett Johansson, Daniel Day-Lewis, Daniel Radcliffe, Alison Brie, Kristen Stewart, Joaquin Phoenix, River Phoenix, Emmy Rossum, Ryan Potter, Rashida Jones, Jennifer Connelly, Sofia Black D’Elia, Nora Arnezeder, Goldie Hawn, Ginnifer Goodwin, Judah Lewis, Brandon Flynn, Amanda Peet, Eric Dane, Jeremy Jordan, Joel Kinnaman, Ben Barnes, Patricia Arquette, Kyra Sedgwick, Dave Annable, and Harrison Ford (whose maternal grandparents were both Jewish, despite those Hanukkah Song lyrics).
Actors with Jewish fathers and non-Jewish mothers, who themselves were either raised as Jewish and/or identify as Jewish: Ezra Miller, Gwyneth Paltrow, Zac Efron, David Corenswet, Alexa Davalos, Nat Wolff, Nicola Peltz, James Maslow, Josh Bowman, Andrew Garfield, Winona Ryder, Michael Douglas, Ben Foster, Jamie Lee Curtis, Nikki Reed, Jonathan Keltz, Paul Newman.
Oh, and Ansel Elgort’s father is Jewish, though I don’t know how Ansel was raised. Robert Downey, Jr., Sean Penn, and Ed Skrein were also born to Jewish fathers and non-Jewish mothers. Armie Hammer, Chris Pine, Emily Ratajkowski, Mark-Paul Gosselaar, and Finn Wolfhard are part Jewish.
Actors with one Jewish-born parent and one parent who converted to Judaism: Dianna Agron, Sara Paxton (whose father converted, not her mother), Alicia Silverstone, Jamie-Lynn Sigler.