December 23, 2020

When famed Russian director Pavel Lungin first read Esau, the 1994 novel by celebrated Israeli author Meir Shalev, its unexpected familiarity struck him.

As Pavel explains, it is a “novel speaking about people that I know… who are just like me.”

By the book’s end, Pavel noted a “special feeling,” that even while living in Russia, far away from the book’s Israeli setting, he himself could be “very Jewish.” Pavel ultimately approached Shalev with his vision of adapting Esau into a film. The dramatic result, 10 years later, is Pavel’s first English language pic, which he directed and co-wrote with Evgeny Ruman. 

The eponymous film opens in California where Israeli actor Lior Ashkenazi (“Foxtrot” and “Norman: The Moderate Rise and Tragic Fall of a New York Fixer”) is living as a successful sabra author writing about bread. Yes, bread…The picture soon transitions to Israel, filmed on location, and where Oscar- and Golden Globe-nominee Harvey Keitel portrays his father, a complicated former baker. In flashbacks, Shira Haas (“Shtisel” and “Unorthodox”) plays the youthful love interest Esau shares with his brother, Jacob, who inherited their father’s bakery and won over Leah. How that tension resolves itself following Esau’s return is part of the film’s compelling conclusion.

To learn more about the project, which recently enjoyed its streaming release on digital platforms, the Jewish Journal reached out to Pavel in Russia.

JEWISH JOURNAL: What kind of challenges were involved in adapting Esau to the screen?

PAVEL LUNGIN: It’s easier to make a good film of a bad novel than to make a very, very good film equal to a big novel… The project seems to me very, very interesting because it’s ambitious.

There [are] well known [film depictions] of a Jew persecuted, if you would. There’s another image of an Israeli soldier who has to defend his people. In Meir Shalev’s story, there was no war. There was no concentration camp. There was no war for independence. It was just very dense living of what Jewish families are like, with all the problems, with all the hate and tension, just like all the other families of the world, of course.

But at the same time, there is something very special, something that you cannot repeat. Something very well-seen, well-felt. For me it was like a vitamin. I just wanted to show it. I just wanted to live, in theory, of this world.

JJ: What does the film make of the biblical tale?

PL: Meir Shalev is always playing with actors and making them change places… Esau, who is strong and tough in the bible, is now much more intellectual. He’s a writer, he’s the guy who’s reading. On the contrary, Jacob is quite a different character than in the Bible.

JJ: What is universal about this story?

PL: The relationship of the family, the love and hate in the family, is one of the most universal things in the world… we still cannot solve the same problems. How to share this life with your brother? And love that cannot be shared? And one of the most universal, special Jewish questions: “Can you be a Jew if you are not living with your family and you are not living in Israel? Can you come back?”

JJ: What are the film’s most powerful scenes?

PL: For me, perhaps the scene at the end of the film when the two brothers, Jacob and Esau, are having a fight. Suddenly you understand that this old woman in the room is the wonderful, beautiful Leah, whom we have seen as a young girl. This mixture of hate and love between both brothers has really perturbed me a lot. Of course, [another] important episode was when Jacob cut his finger… Suddenly he understands, and Leah also understands, that it was some kind of sacrifice. And now Jacob will take Leah, even if she is in love with Esau.

JJ: How do you react to the film?

PL: [It] gives me a lot of emotion, with characters that are very close to me that I like, and then hate and then like… At the same time I’m feeling them like my never existing brothers and sisters.

JJ: Could you explain more about the scene in which one brother impulsively sells his birthright?

PL: In reality, this episode didn’t exist in the novel. I just made it during the shooting like some kind of improvisation because in the novel, Esau sells his birthright [for] food… The most important thing for this young boy was not to eat but to be in love with this girl. So in my version, he sells his birthright for the love of the girl.

JJ: In what ways is the lead Israeli actor Lior Ashkenazi similar to his character, Esau?

PL: He was similar to the main character of the film because he is present and he is not present at the same time. You can feel that he paid a lot in his exile. He’s not living like an artist. He lives in a different space because it’s a story of “Can you be happy when you leave your homeland? Can you be happy living in some different country? Can you be yourself?”

JJ: Why is the name Esau never spoken on screen?

PL: It was never mentioned in the novel because as I understood speaking with Meir Shalev, Esau translates to something like alien — somebody who is not good, not one, not like us, who is dangerous… No Jewish family could now, I mean, give the name of Esau to a son. So this Esau is perhaps the symbol of his spiritual existence. Because he was living in the United States, everything was good for him. He wasn’t baking the bread but he was writing books about bread. And he always made this effort to show that his life is okay, he is okay.

But at the same time, inside he always felt, himself, like Esau. Can Esau not be an alien when he is back? That is the big question of the book. I don’t have a real answer but I am optimistic. And something very deep in me believes that you can come back. You always have the possibility.

Lisa Klug (www.lisaklug.com) is a widely published freelance journalist and the author of the bestselling humor book, Cool Jew: The Ultimate Guide for Every Member of the Tribe, and its companion, Hot Mamalah. 

From childhood roles in “Beaches” and “Blossom” to her eight-year, Emmy-nominated portrayal of biologist Amy Farrah Fowler on “The Big Bang Theory,” Mayim Bialik has endeared audiences with her quirky, relatable charm.

Her latest endeavor is the Fox sitcom “Call Me Kat,” in which she portrays Kat Silver, a 39-year-old endearingly klutzy single woman who runs a cat café in Louisville, Ky. while dealing with the high expectations of her mother (Swoosie Kurtz) and the return to town of her high school crush, Max (Cheyenne Jackson). Based on the British series “Miranda,” the series reunites Bialik with “BBT” co-star Jim Parsons, who brought the idea to her. Both serve as executive producers.

Leaning into the lovable eccentricities of the character that sometimes play out in dream fantasy sequences, Kat both breaks the fourth wall to directly speak to viewers and breaks into song, sometimes duetting with Broadway vet Jackson, Kurtz, or her employees (Kyla Pratt and Leslie Jordan).

“What we’ve created is a woman who includes everyone in her world because that’s what makes her world interesting and colorful. And sometimes those are people that exist, and sometimes they are people that don’t exist [or] exist in different ways than they actually exist so that it fits better with her world view,” Bialik said during a Zoom press event. “We are including the audience. They are in on her jokes.  They are in on her experiences because that’s how she views the world.”

As for Kat’s love life or lack thereof, “She’s uncomfortable with the expectations that have been laid are out for her, and I think that a lot of people will resonate with that,” Bialik continued. “What I love is that this is not a show about a woman trying to find someone. It’s a show about a woman trying to be happy finding herself and seeing what happens along the way. We are showing a very nonconventional female, and I miss seeing women like this on television. I grew up really admiring quirky, multifaceted women and comediennes who weren’t afraid to be silly and sloppy and do pratfalls and things like that. We are showing a woman who is owning all of herself.”

Serving as star and producer, “It is a lot more pressure on me, personally; I’ll say that,” Bialik commented. “But, also, it’s been just such a joy. I mean, I’ve never had a job like this. I can absolutely say that my time on ‘Big Bang Theory’ was fantastic and life‑changing, and my time on ‘Blossom’ was fantastic and life‑changing.  But the way that we get to work and these actors, writers and just this whole team has made this, for me personally, the greatest job I’ve ever had, and even that includes being a mother because, like, that’s really rough most days.”

In an interview with the Journal, Bialik expounded further about the show, her family and her Jewish life as she prepared for Hanukkah. “We are having outdoor six-feet-apart lightings with my mom. We don’t even go inside with her, so we are lucky it’s warm in L.A. in the winter,” she said. “We make latkes as much as we can, and my ex-husband and I also make vegan sufganiyot a few times. Also, it’s my birthday on the third night so that’s fun!”

While at UCLA obtaining B.S. and PhD degrees in neuroscience, Bialik minored in Hebrew and Jewish studies, was a student leader of Shir Bruin at Hillel, and wrote four-part harmonies and conducted music for the Jewish acapella group.

“I taught a rag-tag, delightful group of young singers how to harmonize. I always love conducting music–I was a piano, trumpet, and bass guitar player–and I love singing liturgical melodies and anything Jewish. It was a true delight,” she said. “I am intimately connected to my Jewish history, identity, and all of the things about me that are me because I’m Jewish. Judaism is the lens with which I see the entire world and my place in it,” she said. “I believe in G-d. I am a Shabbat-loving halachic-studying baalabusta of a Jewess!”

“I am intimately connected to my Jewish history, identity, and all of the things about me that are me because I’m Jewish. Judaism is the lens with which I see the entire world and my place in it”—Mayim Bialik

Her new character is also Jewish. “I chose her last name, and we even have a scene with Kat and her mom sitting shiva in one of our first episodes,” Bialik said. There’s also a scene where she and Kurtz sing “Sunrise, Sunset” from “Fiddler on the Roof.”

She finds Kat’s other qualities-and the show’s premise—eminently relatable. “She turns lemons into lemonade on the daily. She is quirky and she is socially anxious and she sometimes lies, but in kind of an adorable way, when she’s nervous. She is a lot more colorful than Amy, for sure,” she compared. “I love how joyful she is and how she really does find the positive in every situation. I think we could all use a little entertainment right now.

“I also love that we are presenting a lead character who is not a size 0 and not even a size 2 or a four! No one asked me to lose weight for this role and my character dresses funky and lives by the philosophy you should wear what you want and be who you want. That’s refreshing for me for sure,” added Bialik, who also stopped straightening her hair, as she did to play Amy.

Like Kat, Bialik loves cats and has three at home, four-year-old Adamantium (Addie) and Nermal and “grumpy old lady” Frances, 13. “The cats that populate the set have several loving trainers who care for them like they are their own babies,” she said. “Our cats are not tethered or drugged, so they can be a little hard to wrangle at the end of a day, but they’re generally the kind of cats who love to just hang out and watch people act.”

Filming during the pandemic is a challenge, she confirmed, “But it’s as safe as we can make it. We are tested on average twice daily and everyone wears masks and shields and it is very important we stay six feet apart with all of our crew. We have a nurse on set full time supervising our procedures. It’s very strict. And obviously I don’t go anywhere at all so that I am the lowest risk possible for my co-workers.”

Her two sons, Miles, 15, and 12-year-old Frederick, who is now preparing for his bar mitzvah, have always been homeschooled. “My ex-husband is an amazing father and he has the boys during my work week. He handles their schooling. “They’re definitely getting a bit bored–my older son more than my younger one–but we started watching more documentaries and my older son discovered Sacha Baron Cohen’s comedy, and that’s been awesome for us to bond over,” Bialik said.

Having ventured into publishing with the bestsellers “Girling Up: How to Be Strong, Smart and Spectacular,” “Boying Up: How to Be Brave, Bold and Brilliant,” the parenting book “Beyond the Sling,” and cookbook, “Mayim’s Vegan Table,” Bialik recently launched a podcast on mental health, “Mayim Bialik’s Breakdown.” In the same vein, her Sad Clown Productions will co-produce “Hope Café,” a sitcom for NBC based on a real Chicago coffee shop where the baristas are trained mental health counselors and the profits go to mental health education. She’s set to make her screenwriting and directorial debut with “As Sick as They Made Us,” starring Dustin Hoffman and Candace Bergen.

“I wrote it after my father passed away as a way to understand my grief. I grew up in a loving, hilarious, artistic and very complicated home and I used that as the basis for writing a story about a family living with mental illness in the home,” said the San Diego native. “I especially wanted to focus on the impact on siblings who have different experiences of growing up in turmoil. It’s a very personal story but also a completely universal one. I can’t wait to direct Dustin and Candace. And Simon Helberg from ‘The Big Bang Theory’ is also in the movie. We are hoping to film this coming spring.”

Bialik also hopes to visit Israel, when it’s safe to travel again. “I usually go every other year with my kids,” she said. “The last time we went, my ex-husband and I went with our mothers for our first son’s bar mitzvah trip. I pray we can go next year for our younger son’s bar mitzvah. I miss Israel with all of her complexity and controversy. I miss my cousins and my aunts and uncles and I miss falafel and Ben Yehuda [Street, in Jerusalem] and the Tayelet in Tel Aviv. I miss everything about Israel!”

Reflecting on her long–and in a lot of ways unexpected–career, Bialik noted that she had quit acting to concentrate on her education, teaching neuroscience, and parenting her boys. “I was running out of health insurance, and I went back to acting so that I could literally just get enough insurance to cover my toddler and my infant. I went to this audition, and it was a guest spot, possible recurring [for ‘The Big Bang Theory’]. “I had no idea my life was about to change,” she said. “I love being a scientist and I do a lot of other things in science. But entertaining you seems to be where the universe wants me. It’s like a bloom where you are planted, and I keep getting uprooted and replanted and replanted, and it’s a really blessed place to be.”

“Call Me Kat” premieres Jan. 3 on Fox.