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The 125 greatest Jewish movie scenes of all time

What makes a movie Jewish? Is it the themes or casting — or deli meat at craft services?

Or is a film only as Jewish as its most Jewish scene?

When we walk out after a movie, the first question we often ask our companions is what their favorite part was: which moments sung to them, created an indelible image or gave them a line they’ll quote for the rest of their lives.

It’s in that spirit that the Forward has picked the 125 greatest Jewish movie scenes, an assortment covering a century of film history. The list lauds the work of not one but two men named Brooks; classics of the Yiddish silver screen like “The Dybbuk,” and even a recent Oscar contender in “Licorice Pizza.” It includes gutting recreations of the darkest moments in Jewish history and tour de force theatrical takedowns of Hitler. In our catalog, Adam Sandler’s greatest work takes honors alongside the gifts of Otto Preminger — and Elaine May, Ernst Lubitsch and Stanley Kubrick.

We hope you enjoy what we’ve put together and are reminded of your own favorite parts from your favorite films.

Read the full list of 125 here.

“Happy Bar Mitzvah, Bernie” (“The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz”)

Probably the only sequence in film history to feature both a bris and a man eating razor blades, this movie-within-a-movie makes a subversive point about how some Jews have commoditized sacred memory and ritual. In his essay on the scene, our editor-at-large Robin Washington, who saw the film many times while working as an usher, writes how it shaped his Jewish identity. Read his essay ➤

“No Wonder” (“Yentl”)

Barbra Streisand’s Yentl — playing the part of her male alter ego, Anshel — has a rare moment of double consciousness while watching another woman: She is both a woman admiring another woman and a man appreciating that woman's submissiveness. “No wonder, he loves her,” she sings. “The moment she sees him, her thought is to please him.” Writing about Streisand’s most iconic scenes, Carrie Rickey explains how this moment changed the way the world perceived Jewish beauty. Read her essay ➤

“I’m quite familiar with rugelach” (“Quiz Show”)

Herb Stempel, played by John Turturro, is the Jewish foil to the WASP Charles Van Doren (Ralph Fiennes) in this movie about a 1950s quiz show scandal. The contrast between Van Doren, an Ivy League professor, and Stempel, an outer borough city worker, is grossly apparent when a congressional lawyer visits Stempel’s Queens house. The clutter, yelling, plastic-covered furniture and insistence that the visitor try the rugelach all scream “Jewish,” writes Andrew Silverstein, in a profile of the prop maven who brought it together. Read his essay ➤

The after-work beer session (“Menashe”)

No scene captures the complexities and contradictions of this film’s titular Hasidic widower more vividly than this encounter with his Latino coworkers. Enjoying a few beers together, the group establishes an unlikely camaraderie, and Menashe, for the first time, speaks truthfully about the lingering guilt he feels over his miserably contentious relationship with his late wife. Simi Horwitz writes that this “cross-cultural exchange” is a moment where the audience is finally able to understand why Menashe chooses to stay in his community – despite its scorn for him. Read her essay ➤

The girl in the red coat (“Schindler’s List”)

Oskar Schindler (Liam Neeson), in a natty suit and Nazi lapel pin, watches as Nazi troops round up Jews in the local ghetto. The film is shot in black and white, but in the teeming streets Schindler sees one small girl in a red coat, highlighting the treatment of the innocent victim. Dan Friedman writes that while the scene is derided by Holocaust scholars as “kitsch,” it is still effective storytelling. Read his essay ➤

Reuven goes to Shabbat services (“The Chosen”)

The most Jewish scene in “The Chosen” is one you may not have seen. In a moment that didn’t make the final cut the Modern Orthodox Reuven goes to the Hasidic shul where his new friend Danny’s father is a rabbi The producers deemed the moment where the congregation kisses the Torah too “extreme” for the finished film, director Jeremy Kagan writes in this reflection on how the sequence forever changed his relationship to Judaism. Read his essay ➤

“Jews of discretion” (“Call Me by Your Name”)

While nursing a bloody nose, the teenage Elio (Timothée Chalamet) tells his older soon-to-be lover Oliver that he doesn’t wear his Star of David necklace because “My mother says we’re Jews of discretion.” Forward staff writer Mira Fox writes that, in a movie about queerness in the 1980s, Elio’s wry comment feels like a metaphor for more than just religion. Read her essay ➤

The beard scene (“To Be or Not to Be”)

Ernst Lubitsch’s uproarious backstage comedy culminates in a feat of stunning stagecraft as Jack Benny’s Joseph Tura places a fake beard on a corpse and passes for a dead Nazi double agent. As Jackson Arn notes, the sequence is delightful for reducing a Gestapo officer from “from swagger to pathetic groveling in under three minutes, and all it takes is a theater prop.” Read his essay ➤

Read the full list

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