Spies, Shtarkers, and Sex Gods: Film's New Jews

The Kobal Collection

John Goodman as Walter Sobchak in The Big Lebowski

By Alexander C. Kafka

How do you know when Jewish film characters have gone mainstream? Maybe when filmmakers relax enough to introduce a parodic action hero, like Mordechai Jefferson Carver in Jonathan Kesselman's 2003 neo-Shaftian Jewxploitation flick The Hebrew Hammer.

Adam Goldberg plays the titular "baddest Heeb this side of Tel Aviv," "the Semitic Stallion" recruited to help fend off an evil plot to use It's a Wonderful Life to lure Jewish