Famous, Funny, or Dead: What the Max Carousel Reveals About Jewish American Heritage

This May, streaming service Max launched a carousel of titles to mark Jewish American Heritage Month. Subtitled “Celebrating Jewish Stories, Creators and History,” it is prominently positioned on the landing page.  In an age of rising antisemitism, when many Jews have come to expect their heritage to be ignored or misrepresented, it is a meaningful gesture from a major streaming platform. I was grateful to see it.

Then I looked a little closer.

The carousel features 35 titles presumably drawn from Max’s existing inventory. At a glance, the content broadly breaks down into three broad categories: biography, comedy, and the Holocaust. There’s a Steven Spielberg doc, “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” “The Survivor, “a handful of Jewish stand-up specials, and a smattering of antisemitism-related content. One outlier is a French-dubbed comedy about a young female rabbi — a charming series, but not remotely about American Jewish heritage, unless that is synonymous with the somewhat comical existential angst of most Jews about most things.

Many of these titles reflect Jewish excellence, resilience and the vast cultural imprint of Jewish creators. Some are hilarious. Others are devastating. But if this collection is meant to represent Jewish American Heritage, we should ask what’s missing.

Where are the stories of how Jewish Americans live? Where are the myriad documentaries that Jews create about Jews, with all the nuance of what we believe, how we live, what makes us who we are?

Max deserves credit for recognizing Jewish American Heritage Month at all. Other major platforms don’t even offer search tools that make Jewish identity visible. On Amazon, I found AI tools to search for East Asian Comedy and Canadian Perspectives — but no traceable entry point for Jewish life or content

In the U.S., most people encounter Jewish identity for the first time through humor. “Curb Your Enthusiasm.” “Seinfeld.” “Modern Family.” Among the top titles cited by non-Jews about how they learn about Jews.  Jewish comedy is a rich tradition — a coping mechanism, a mirror, a voice. But if your only reference to Jews is how Jews laugh about themselves the meaning is likely lost in translation. You can’t laugh with a culture if you don’t understand anything about that culture. 

I am a Holocaust educator and believe strongly in the need for films that help us all understand its complexity and trauma and insights better.  The Holocaust though is not Jewish heritage other than documenting the uninvited heritage of hate we are left with.

If the Max carousel is anything to go by, Jews appear to be famous, funny, or dead. Together, they risk creating a distorted view—one where being Jewish is either tragic, comedic, or synonymous with fame. Where are the everyday lives? The complicated identities? The joy that isn’t defiant, just ordinary?

So where does the problem lie?  It is not that Jews are not trying to tell their story.  In fact we are obsessed with storytelling in all its forms.  Organizations like Jewish Story Partners are trying too. They fund independent films that explore Jewish life in all its wonder and complexity — from religious practice to political activism to interfaith dialogue. But the work they support often struggles to find mainstream distribution. It seems a shame that Max did not see the value of investing in Jewish filmmakers telling Jewish stories for their inventory.  

That’s the opportunity here.

Streaming services that want to honor Jewish American Heritage Month shouldn’t stop at the easy wins. They should collaborate with the people doing the deeper work. There is a rich ecosystem of Jewish creators out there — historians, documentarians, storytellers — ready to help paint a fuller picture.

Jewish American heritage isn’t about persecution and punchlines, it is about a people, about how we live, what we value, what we carry. And what we hope to pass on.

Thanks, Max, for your recommendations.  I’m curious and grateful for the recognition afforded our small 7 million strong minority with several hundred years of heritage here. I will take what on offer though and binge my way through a bunch of new titles. At some point I will likely press pause and ask:

So what would it take to share the true wonder of the American Jewish story?

Stephen D. Smith is CEO of Memory Workers and Executive Director Emeritus of USC Shoah Foundation.