For decades, Tovah Feldshuh has built a career on not playing it safe.
The actress has portrayed historical figures including former prime minister Golda Meir, taken on Broadway roles ranging from Jewish heroines to Shakespeare’s Juliet, and appeared in acclaimed television series including “Crazy Ex-Girlfriend.”
Now, at 77, Feldshuh is being introduced to a new generation through Netflix’s hit comedy “Nobody Wants This,” in which she plays Bina, a strong-willed Jewish mother who disapproves of her rabbi son’s relationship with a non-Jewish woman.
That long career and Feldshuh’s Jewish identity are the subjects of “Tovah,” a new feature-length documentary directed and produced by filmmaker David Serero.
The film features a roster of Hollywood figures reflecting on Feldshuh’s life and legacy, including Dustin Hoffman, Oscar Isaac, Kristen Bell, Katie Couric, Joy Behar and Erin Foster, among others.
The 57-minute documentary has its Los Angeles premiere on September 2 at Sinai Temple, where Feldshuh is expected to attend along with her “Nobody Wants This” co-star Adam Brody.
Feldshuh and Serero spoke with the Journal together in a Zoom interview ahead of this week’s premiere.
Feldshuh said the documentary has provided an opportunity to look back on a career she has never been particularly interested in viewing as finished.
“I am very proud of my career at this stage, my life at this stage, my values, and I’m happy to stand up for the Jewish people,” she said.
That willingness to speak openly about her Jewish identity has become increasingly prominent in Feldshuh’s public persona, particularly as she has watched antisemitism and debates over Israel become increasingly contentious in Hollywood and beyond.
“In this moment of global antisemitism, it’s very important to stand up straight and have courage and have pride,” Feldshuh told the Journal. “I remember my father banging against my chest, gently, but he said, ‘Remember who you are, because the world will remind you anyway. So, take it and love it.’”
“I love being Jewish,” she added. “I have no shame about being Jewish.”
During the interview, Feldshuh spoke forcefully against actors who have criticized Israel, including Mark Ruffalo, Susan Sarandon and Hannah Einbinder. At the 2025 Emmy Awards, Einbinder used the opportunity of her winning Best Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series to declare her support for Palestine.
“Mark Ruffalo, in my book, has a dangerous and ignorant point of view, and I do not support him,” Feldshuh said. “Pity, he’s a very good actor. So is Sarandon and so is Einbinder—Miss Emmy, from the Emmy platform, [she said] ‘Free Palestine,’ without any sense of what that means. ‘Free Palestine’ means the genocide of six million Jews and two million Arab Israelis. That’s what that means.”
Feldshuh’s willingness to express her opinions is part of the same fearlessness that has characterized her acting career. She said family members have sometimes urged her to be more cautious about speaking publicly—to no avail.
“They said you’re damaging yourself,” she recalled. “But so far, so good. So far, people are so grateful that anybody has any guts.”
Feldshuh’s pro-Israel activism is briefly discussed in the film, which highlights her participation in the 2023 March for Israel in Washington D.C., held one month after the Oct. 7 attacks against Israel. The wounds from Oct. 7 still raw, some 300,000 people turned out for the November 2023 rally at the National Mall.
Among them was Feldshuh, who was invited by Julie Platt, the immediate past chair of Jewish Federations of North America, which cohosted the 2023 rally.
“I wanted people to represent us on that stage who shared values, who shared the desire to unify, who shared the courage and bravery to stand up in a very difficult moment for the Jewish people, and Tovah came to my mind immediately, and responded immediately,” Platt says in the film.
Rather than an examination of Feldshuh’s political views, however, the film is more about celebrating the life and career of a successful actress, wife, mother, grandmother and activist, Serero said.
“I’ve always been inspired to make movies about people who are in a way changing the game in their professional field,” he said. “Tovah, she’s not only an icon – she’s an inspiration for so many people.”
The documentary traces Feldshuh’s rise from an ambitious young actress to a Broadway institution, incorporating archival footage and interviews with the people who have watched her career unfold.
Feldshuh has played a range of Jewish characters, on screen and off.
She played the title role in “Yentl” on Broadway in 1975, and she starred in the groundbreaking 1978 miniseries “Holocaust” alongside Meryl Streep.
Feldshuh starred as Meir in “Golda’s Balcony,” the longest running one-woman show in Broadway history, in the 2018 film adaptation of the play, and in the 2006 film “O Jerusalem.”
In 2021, she played her late friend Ruth K. Westheimer — better known as the famed sex therapist Dr. Ruth — in a one-woman off-Broadway production.
“Tovah” had its official premiere at the Boca International Jewish Film Festival, in Boca Raton, Florida, in January. The film won the festival’s award for best documentary feature.
The film is currently on the Jewish film festival circuit, with upcoming showings in Nashville, Tennessee, and Washington, DC., and the film’s team is hoping the documentary will be available for streaming by March 2027.
At this week’s screening in Los Angeles, Feldshuh participates in a Q-and-A session with Serero and Sinai Temple Co-Senior Rabbi Nicole Guzik.
Platt, who is a congregant at Sinai Temple, was instrumental in bringing the premiere to the Los Angeles synagogue.
Serero sees Feldshuh’s influence as extending beyond her individual performances.
“For me, Tovah is the Muhammad Ali of theater,” he said. “She really changed her industry. She introduced the Shakespeare theater people to the Jewish characters, to the Jewish culture.”
Her renewed visibility through “Nobody Wants This” has given Feldshuh another opportunity to connect with audiences who may have never seen her on Broadway or in one of her many dramatic roles.
“I plan to work well into my 90s and to live to 104,” Feldshuh said. “I have a fourth act ahead of me.”
