L ifestyles /C ulture
Trouble in Mind: Shtisel, Season 3
T E L EVISION
DAVID HOLZEL | CONTRIBUTING WRITER
TWO JEWS, three problems.

That’s the mathematics behind
“Shtisel,” the runaway hit Israeli
dramedy about a family of
haredi Orthodox Jews. In 2020,
the show’s creators and cast faced
down a worldwide pandemic to
shoot a third season, coming to
Netflix in the spring.

And oy, the problems! The
tsuris this Jerusalem family
faces was manifest in the
Season 3 opener, which a paying
audience previewed online
during Chanukah. The Temple
Emanu-El Streicker Center in
New York City, which staged a
pre-COVID in-person talk with
the stars of “Shtisel” in 2019,
sponsored the Dec. 17 preview,
which included a virtual panel
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20 JANUARY 7, 2021
discussion with the show’s
actors. It’s been five and a half
years since production of the
second season wrapped. Are
the characters older and wiser
now? Having watched episode
1, I can say that the answers are
“yes” (four years of “Shtisel”
time have passed) and “I don’t
think so.” Everybody loves
“Shtisel” not because the family
spends each episode learning
Gemara or reading Psalms. It’s
because they’re busy exercising
their human foibles.

Yes, people plan and God
laughs. “God, what do you
want from your Jews?” Rabbi
Shulem Shtisel, the patriarch,
cries out during the episode.

But sometimes people just run
off the rails all by themselves.

Shulem (Doval’e Glickman)
provides a proof text. The day
starts off badly at the cheder
where Shulem is principal. One
of the boys has stolen from a
teacher and Shulem goes to the
classroom to chastise the boy.

Instead of being humbled, the
little stinker defies Shulem, who
gives the kid a smack in the
face. Problems ensue.

Akiva (Michael Aloni), the
son, the artist, is still painting.

The show’s own McDreamy
is now a father himself, now
married to Libbi (Hadas
Yaron). But there are money
problems. And being three
days away from eviction
for not paying the rent isn’t
Akiva’s worst problem.

And Yossele, Lipa and
Giti’s son, who will turn 19
on Purim, would rather learn
Torah than have a coffee with
the girl the matchmaker has set
him up with.

Problems. But iron-willed Giti (Neta
Riskin) perseveres
and Yossele (Gal Fishel) agrees to
the meeting, if for nothing
else than to keep the family
peace. Driving his son to the
The family is ready for ‘Shtisel,’ Season 3.
appointment, Lipa (Zohar
Strauss) has some fatherly
advice in favor of rushing
into marriage: “The less girls
you meet, the less you’ll have
to compare them to and the
happier you’ll be in life.”
Or as Shulem notes
elsewhere: “When life hands
you lemonade, take it.”
Yossele meets the girl,
whose name is Shira, and a
shy chemistry ignites between
them. There, at a table in the
hotel lobby, he sings to her.

She confesses that she goes to
the Ramot Forest “when I’m
scared.” “Describing yourself as
being scared takes courage,”
Yossele tells her.

He’s smitten. “We had an
amazing connection,” he tells
his parents the next day. “I
love her.”
Very. Big. Problem.

On “Shtisel,” the problems
expand exponentially. There
are so many of them in that
first episode that there wasn’t
any room for Ruchami’s
problems. Played by Shira
JEWISH EXPONENT
Haas, Ruchami sits behind a
desk in the cheder’s office in
her brief scenes with Shulem,
her grandfather.

Since becoming an inter-
national phenomenon, there
has been clamor for more
from TV’s favorite halachically
observant family.

So what took Season 3 so
long? “It could have been much
longer.” That’s “Shtisel” co-creator
and writer Ori Elon speaking
during the virtual panel
discussion. For Elon, the
characters weren’t packed away
in mothballs during the hiatus.

“I always feel the Shtisel
family is living their own
lives without me. I imagine
them sitting around the table
without me,” he said.

For the actors, playing
a character is like riding a
bicycle. “It was great to come back
to him,” Glickman said, of
Shulem. “I know him.”
“The majority of the work of
getting to know the character
Photo by Ohad Romano for Netflix
we did eight years ago,” Riskin
said. “Even if you haven’t met
them for five years, it doesn’t
matter.” Eventually, the questioning
from SiriusXM’s Jessica Shaw
reached answers that the cast
wouldn’t give. The audience
was treated to polite responses
to variations of “So what’s
going to happen this season?”
They boiled down to, “I can’t
tell you. You’ll have to watch
the show.”
Riskin delivered the most
succinct reply. She pursed her
lips and shook her head no.

It was dinnertime on the
East Coast, nearly midnight in
Israel. Despite the late hour,
the Israeli actors each lit a
menorah. The yoke of Torah requires
one set of obligations. The
necessity of promoting a TV
show another. The cast of
“Shtisel” is familiar with both. l
David Holzel is the editor of
Washington Jewish Week, an
Exponent-affiliated publication,
where this article first appeared.

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