In the first episode of the new FX for Hulu series “Fleishman Is in Trouble,” the camera pans around a table at a diner. Around it sit familiar faces: Walt from “The Squid and the Whale,” Seth from “The O.C.” and Janis Ian from “Mean Girls,” and they are goofing around as they order sandwiches and pancakes. It only takes a minute to realize that it’s actually 2022, not the early aughts, and the people around the table are not the teenagers that were household names for the millennial set, but Toby Fleishman and his friends Libby and Seth (to be clear, not the same Seth that lived in Orange County). And they do feel like old friends — people known to each other and audiences for years, from the time they were teenagers to the present, when they are parents both on- and off-screen. “They are now people grappling with age, same as you who grew up with them,” Brodesser-Akner told Jewish Insider’s Melissa Weiss days before the show’s Nov. 17 premiere. “And that’s kind of what Fleishman is about, about whether or not you’re old.”

Midlife moments: The eight-episode series follows the trio as they navigate the quintessential challenges of middle age: when to buy a preteen their first cellphone, discovering a child has used the family computer to look at pornography, feeling disconnected from suburban family life, debating the right time to settle down, attempting dating for the first time in decades. The characters are not caricatures; though they inhabit a world of New York prestige and wealth, their struggles are relatable. The title character, Toby Fleishman, played by Jesse Eisenberg, is the first of the group to hit the life-cycle benchmarks. Though Libby narrates both the book and the series, Toby is the central character. Libby serves as a reliable narrator, her life more stable than that of either Toby — who is navigating online dating and single parenting while his children are on summer break — or Seth, a party boy reluctant to trade in late nights for stability.

Real talk: While Brodesser-Akner’s fiction — and even her profiles in the Times, which have taken her skydiving with actress Melissa McCarthy and to the set of the filming of a “Real Housewives” reunion — focuses on the extravagant and the elements of life that are beyond most people’s reach, the core of “Fleishman,” and of most of her work, highlights the challenges facing everyone at their core. The show, she said, “is something that strives to exist in realism. And realism is the only place where you can have all the factors that are affecting your life lead to an inevitable conclusion.”

Not niche: In the first minutes of the series, you are transported to Toby’s apartment, a bachelor pad with broken blinds in a building with grim, fluorescent-lit hallways. A mezuzah is posted outside his front door, but at no point does Toby draw attention to it. It’s one of several subtle references to the characters’ Jewish backgrounds — flashbacks to a family Shabbat dinner and preparations for Toby’s daughter’s upcoming bat mitzvah serve as vehicles to move the story forward, but don’t draw outsized attention. Brodesser-Akner is quick to point out that although the characters are Jewish, Fleishman is not a Jewish book. “I think about you know, The Corrections, right, or Crossroads, the Jonathan Franzen novels. Crossroads is literally about a youth minister, and nobody ever called it a Christian novel,” she explained. “And yet this is called a Jewish book. And to me, what that says, when people think that — even you, even me, even my mother, even people on the street, even the fact that you guys are interested in interviewing me — it says to me that…Jews, I always thought we had finally integrated into being American. And to me, these questions sort of indicate that we haven’t.”

Typecasting: A number of recent TV shows and films that center around Jewish characters have come under criticism for casting non-Jewish actors in leading roles. In “Fleishman,” three of the four central characters — whose friendship was cemented during a year abroad in Israel — are played by Jews. The decision, Brodesser-Akner pointed out, wasn’t intentional. “It’s such a complicated question, because I didn’t think about it. As an equal-opportunity employer, I extra did not ask anybody what their religion is,” she said. “But when I thought about who the right people were for this, that’s who there was. I don’t know what elements of them make them right for it. I’m not smart enough to know that. Like, I don’t know if it’s their genetics, it’s their cultural influences, I don’t know. I just know they were perfect for it, and I didn’t have to grapple with this question.”

Read the full interview here.

Lawmakers, envoys from various foreign embassies, members of an array of U.S. Jewish groups and congressional staffers packed into a crowded Capitol Hill committee hearing room last Thursday to discuss strategies for combating antisemitism nationwide, Jewish Insider’s Marc Rod reports.

Details: Reps. Mike Quigley (D-IL), Pat Ryan (D-NY), Kweisi Mfume (D-MD), Yvette Clarke (D-NY) and Marc Veasey (D-TX) — none of whom are Jewish — spoke at the forum, which was organized by lobbyist Ezra Friedlander and hosted by the office of Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL). The discussion was moderated by New York-based activist Leon Goldenberg and Martin Korčok, a member of the Slovak delegation to the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance. Aaron Keyak, the State Department’s deputy special envoy to monitor and combat antisemitism, was also present.

Bringing it home: Ryan, whose wife and two children are Jewish, described the concern he feels for his children. “A week ago, we commemorated the 82nd anniversary of Kristallnacht and the terror and horror that followed it,” Ryan said. “The fact that my two Jewish children would be under that same threat and that same risk as we see these forces building is just absolutely outrageous.” Ryan, who represents a district in the Hudson Valley, also recounted his experience dealing with antisemitic vandalism incidents at Jewish summer camps during his time as Ulster County executive. “We aggressively addressed it, called it out for the vile nature that it was, and made sure that we did the work afterwards to make the whole community aware that this is happening in our own backyard, and we have to address it and call it out,” Ryan said. “So that is something that I think is on every single elected official, every level and every community leader.”

Teachable lesson: Veasey said that his family was friendly with the family of Rabbi Charlie Cytron-Walker — whose congregation in Colleyville, Texas, was the site of an 11-hour hostage standoff in January — and that their children had played together at McDonalds. The Texas congressman said he used that incident, as well as the recent “terrible comments” by Kanye West and Kyrie Irving, to discuss antisemitism with his son. “A lot of people still don’t know what antisemitism is,” he lamented, describing a recent interaction on social media with someone who was unsure what antisemitism was. “A lot of people were coming up with a lot of — I hate to say it — but a lot of uneducated answers, ‘Oh, it’s just hate,’ ‘It’s just stupid,’ ‘It’s terrible,’ not really knowing what the origins of antisemitism [are],” specifically its origins in conspiracy theories about Jewish control.

Moment of crisis: Clarke, who represents a Brooklyn district with a sizable Jewish population, described antisemitism as an “unrelenting and undeniable crisis in America and quite frankly, around the world.” “It’s a real harm to innocent Jewish people due to the steady drumbeat of rhetoric that is weaponized and targeted at the Jewish people with reckless abandon and malicious intent,” she continued, lamenting the “growing normalization of hatred against Jewish communities” and its increasing presence in public discourse. Clarke referenced her efforts to reform social media to crack down on hate, and also encouraged “people of goodwill to really work against those who use social media platforms to spew hatred,” pushing back on public platforms and working to “undermine” forums that operate on the dark web.

Read the full story here.

For Chris Deluzio in blue-collar Western Pennsylvania, the key to the Democrat’s midterm victory was “standing up for the union way of life.” In Ohio, Democrat state Rep. Emilia Sykes banked on her roots in the Akron-area district. Anthony D’Esposito flipped a blue seat on Long Island by staying disciplined on the issues of crime and the cost of living. And Republican Marc Molinaro won an open seat in New York’s Hudson Valley by running against entrenched interests in Democrat-controlled Albany. As the final results from the 2022 midterms continue to trickle in, candidates, strategists and other politicos continue to pore over the election results to suss out why Democrats largely overperformed and the expected red wave largely failed to materialize, outside of a few states. Speaking to Jewish Insider’s Marc Rod in the weeks following the election, four newly elected lawmakers from purple districts, two Democrats and two Republicans, broke down what they think tipped their races in their favor.

Union label: Pennsylvania Democrats overperformed in 2022 relative to the 2020 election, outpacing President Joe Biden in many areas of the state. “We stuck to some messages that from the beginning were the things I was talking about,” said Deluzio, who won the district represented by Rep. Conor Lamb (D-PA), keeping it in Democratic hands. “No. 1 was economic, taking on not just corporate power but fighting to bring back our supply chains and manufacturing and standing up for the union way of life.” Deluzio said he sees unions as critical to his victory and those of other Democrats across the Keystone State. He added that his campaign “never strayed from our commitment to protecting reproductive freedom,” citing efforts to engage voters following the Supreme Court’s overturning in June of Roe v. Wade.

Upstate comeback: Molinaro fell short in a special election this summer, but managed to pull through to victory in November, albeit under different district lines and facing a different opponent. Political pundits attributed his special election loss in large part to concerns about the overturning of Roe v. Wade. Molinaro said he continued to double down on his message from the special election, focusing on cost of living and crime. “And there’s no question that not everybody has those as their principal issue,” Molinaro said. “But overwhelmingly this part of New York, and I think most New Yorkers, acknowledge and are concerned about the high cost of living policies, the policies of Albany that have made us less safe and a real desire to just have government respect and function for them. That remained our message because it was what residents and voters wanted us to focus on.”

Zeldin touch: D’Esposito attributed Republican’s successes statewide to the climate in the state, as well as “great candidates” up and down the ballot, particularly gubernatorial candidate Rep. Lee Zeldin (R-NY), a sentiment that Molinaro echoed. “He was a great candidate, he ran an exciting campaign, he really ignited the base and ignited a lot of people who were just tired of the one-party rule in New York and Washington,” D’Esposito said. “We saw it across Long Island in Nassau County and Suffolk County. I mean, the numbers are huge. And I think [Zeldin] had a lot to do with it.”

Read the full story here.